Tag Archives: William F. Buckley

A national digital library endowment: How America’s billionaires could be modern Carnegies for real

Update: James Fallows’s blog on The Atlantic’s site reproduced part of this proposal, and the long version appeared in Sabrina Pacifici’s award-winning LLRX library journal. More details and an FAQ on the proposal are here. Warren Buffett was on CBS Sunday Morning. The interviewer, Rebecca Jarvis, asked if he owned an iPad. No. iPhone. No. [...]

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Dwarf-sized public e-libraries vs. abundance: Listen to veteran publishing guru Brian O’Leary and librarian Sarah Houghton

People in Bexar County, Texas, should be excited about the 10,000-e-book “BiblioTech” library system that the country is starting from scratch—without paper books. This is reportedly the first U.S. public library system to shun paper, cardboard and ink, except for computer printouts. Any books are better than none, and besides, the 10K figure encompasses only [...]

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Not enough library e-books to feed your new gadget properly? Well-stocked national digital library systems could help

If you can’t find the right library e-books for your new Kindle, Nook, iPad or other gizmo, you’re not alone. More than 100 patrons of the District of Columbia Public Library were lined up electronically today for 10 e-book copies of The Racketeer, John Grisham’s new novel about the murder of a federal judge. Some [...]

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How a national digital library system could help promote early childhood learning—and academic and vocational success later on

“People need people to learn, at least when they’re young.” Toddlers at a kid-low wooden table—drinking orange juice. Four decades later, as a ex-poverty beat reporter, I still remember that scene from the Head Start program for an Ohio factory town. The juice made sense, given the long-known link between nutrition, brain development, and learning [...]

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Well-stocked national digital library systems, please, Mr. Clinton—not a ‘Ministry of Truth’ or other police agency

Scam artists and worse infest the Internet. But the Net also brims with honest expressions of political opinion. I intensely dislike ex-President Bill Clinton’s idea of a tax-funded 1984ish “Ministry of Truth” or any other police-style approach for the Internet beyond the existing regulatory agencies—even if he doesn’t necessarily have censorship in mind. Letting the [...]

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The First iPad User: Will President Obama work toward a truly public national digital library system, full of e-books and other goodies for K-12 and many other purposes?

At TheAtlantic.com and in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I chided Barack Obama for dismissing the iPad and similar devices as distractions for the young—even when many White House people were toting them. I’m happy to report some progress, whether or not the President read of my grumpiness on this specific (I voted for him [...]

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A national digital library system for George Roper in McAllen, Texas, please–not just the American elite—and don’t write off conservatives

They called Mount Vernon “the Hoods’ High School” at one time, and fittingly this white-cupolaed brick building sat on Route 1 in Fairfax County, Virginia, just across from a police station with an overgrown radio tower. Melvin Bowman Landes, an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren, was principal, and every spring, he would [...]

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