Loan e-books on Amazon.com By William Jiang, MLS

Great news! Amazon.com announced last year that the Kindle will allow purchasers of electronic books to lend their e-books to others. This technology opens up worlds of possibilities that libraries offer eBooks to their customers with the readers of e-books. If libraries play their cards right they will be able to increase readership, increase circulation, increase visits to the libraries of all customers in a giant step by rapidly adopting this new technology. Exciting indeed!

Read more here:
http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=581

Southern California Libraries Avoided serious damage caused by torrential rains, by William Jiang, MLS

Rains that hit southern California during the week of Christmas 2010, later left a foot of snow in New York City, have done little damage to libraries in the South California. There are reports of tens of thousands of dollars in damage in Southern California, floods and landslides, however, when I spoke with a representative of the Library Cooperative of Southern California, she told me that she had not heard of a single library that was closed by the storm. This is great news for the Latino community of Southern California. According to the 2010 census Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in southern California Latinos are nearly 41% of the population followed by a little less than 40% of Caucasians and 10% from Asia and around 7 % African American. The fact that the Latino community depends on the libraries of Southern California is evident in studies of use among Latino communities in the United States. Happy New Year! This is good news in late 2010.

Latinos and public library use in New York by William Jiang, MLS

According to the 2000 census 27% of New York City are Hispanic or Latino. When you realize that there are about 8.2 million people in New York, according to the 2006 estimate, this means that more than 2.2 million people in New York Hispanic or Latino. The census of 2010 will be more accurate.

Latinos use the library as much as whites do. The only group that uses more than Latinos and Caucasians is the Asian group, which uses the library 10% more about than any other group. Library use among Latinos is about 54%, services are the main reason for people of Latino descent for library use. The privacy concerns in this community is serious. (Http: / / www.libraryjournal.com/lj/community/publicservices/861938-276/study_of_latinos_and_libraries.html.csp)

Due to economic recession, the use of the collection in all groups is rising, as they depend on them to search for jobs, entertainment and educational programs, among other things. This shows that there is a correlation between unemployment and the use of the library collections by the unemployed. Latinos have been left, economically, the poorest group in New York by the current downturn.

The ethnic composition of New York City, Latinos are as
follows:
Mexican: 282 965
Puerto Rican: 784,065
Cuban: 42,209
Other Hispanic or Latino, including Dominican 1,178,666


According to the September 28, 2010 The New York Times in 2009 about 100,000 people were pushed into poverty in New York City alone. The highest unemployment ne New York according to the article is in the Bronx community where Latinos are 36% unemployed. The Bronx became the larger community of Latinos in the city with more than 650,000 Latinos, so this is a big problem for the Latino community. It is expected that due to this the use of the library of the Bronx is up. There have been no more current measurements using the published statistics of the public library, so all we can do is guess and know New York's libraries are very important to Spanish-speaking community ..

Homeless Clients and Libraries of New York, by William Jiang, MLS

Statistics are largely unknown, however, families are 78% of the homeless population in the city of New York (http://www.ysop . org / statistics.htm) Neither widely known to the public is that homeless people generally are loyal customers of NYPL. Often, due to the negative association in the mind of the public, most homeless people feel stigma when they use the libraries.

Ideally, libraries should be a haven for anyone who wants to read, a world away from the chaotic environment of the city. For the homeless who are not in shelters, NYPL can mean a safe haven from the city's shelters, many of which are dangerous.

In fact, the presence of homeless people in the libraries can sometimes create a problem. According http://www.crowbold.com/homepage/homeless.htm, "... there is actual conflict between the rights of the homeless and the rights of other users and library workers. Homeless can sleep with a snoring loudly enough to disturb the contemplation of other customers. For hygiene reasons, customers may feel uncomfortable handling of materials that the homeless have been handling. As a result Many librarians classify homeless people as "problem customers". "

Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately homeless in NYC, "Approximately 90% of homeless Yorkers are black or Latino, but only 53% percent of the population of the city are black or Latino." (Http://www.ysop.org / statistics.htm)

There is a disproportionate number of homeless Latinos compared with the general population of Latinos in New York. For this reason, the de facto use of libraries as temporary shelters should receive more attention from Latino leaders. There are a lot of inertia to help this marginalized population due to the common thought that this population is crazy, "... in the late 1970’s and early 1980's deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, along with a reduction in public housing, resulted in an increase in the population of homeless people .. "(http://www.crowbold.com/homepage/homeless.htm) Also, there is a single population increase of alcoholics and other drug abuse among the homeless as opposed to homeless families. (Http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/pages/basic-facts) Few want to deal directly with this population problem.

Homeless people in the Latino population, whether in a family who is homeless or a single person with no home care in New York need smarter and better government. I think first, we must create safe havens for homeless families who are not struggling with mental health or drug abuse. Then the rest should be divided into three groups: the mentally ill, substance abusers, and the group is called MICA, which is composed of drug users with mental illness because these three groups have different needs. All homeless people who are taken care of decrease the desire to increase the number of people in prisons in New York City. It is not only humane thing to do, is economic to do, and think about the children! Approximately 50% of homeless are children! (Http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/nyc-j07.shtml)

Learn languages ​​free? by William Jiang, MLS

The world knows certain courses such as the Rosetta Stone and the English sin Barreras. These courses are excellent, however, they are quite expensive and not affordable given that costs can be prohibitive.

Livemocha.com is the first resource that I would point to learn other languages. This site has free classes in various languages ​​for people around the world. The portal is located at www.livemocha.com . One of the most useful features of this program is the chat feature where you can learn the languages ​​through writing chat or voice chat with someone who speaks the native language. Incredible!

To learn to conjugate verb is very important when learning many languages. The link http://www.verbix.com/languages ​​can conjugate verbs in 60 languages ​​on a platform that is easy to use and is free.

Wordreference.com multilingual dictionary is a wonderful, because not only is free and easy to use, but also includes forums where people can ask questions to a global online community to clarify specific and accurate words in all languages ​​with people from all over the world. This is a great resource for translators.

Another good dictionary is Onelook.com which is the largest English language dictionary. Onelook is known as a search engine "goal" of dictionaries. It's basically a search engine only dictionaries and a fantastic resource for translators of English. Also, scientists, engineers, and any others who are involved in the academic world with great influence of English can use. There are currently 1062 general and specialized dictionaries.

The Google language tools can be useful for quick translations. The Google language tools can be found off of the home page under "Language Tools" and they are very useful for translating between various languages. Also visit the Toolkit "Google Translator Toolkit." Finally, the defined plugins for browsers like Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome can help you with instant translation of words.

E-LIS, By William Jiang MLS

Beginning September 14, 2010, E-LIS has the largest collection of documents written information science on the Web and are freely available. In Spanish there are about 3,960 items, while in all the languages ​​together a total of 1100. This means that more than one in three articles in the archive E-LIS are in Spanish. In English there are only 3,388 items. To put this in terms relevant: Spanish is the language most represented in this database.

The description on its "About E-LIS is as follows:" E-LIS is a free repository created in 2003 for the depository of documents within the subjects of Library and Information Science and related topics. It is the first international e-server dedicated to this subject area, and its objective is to promote the Open Access philosophy through a core business: providing access to texts and Science Library Information. For this, the volunteers work with a large number of individuals from different countries and with different academic backgrounds. It is therefore an initiative which is non-profit and in line with the FOS movement ( Free Online Scholarship) and E-Prints, the latter based on standards and protocols of the OAI (Open Access Initiative). E-LIS is the result of the project DoIS RCLIS and promoted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and maintained on servers CILEA (Interuniversity Conzorcio Lombardo per Ellaborazione Automatica) Italian.

Although the e-LIS project was a joint effort between the Ministry of Cultures of Spain and Italy, the literature of library science in science of Spanish libraries is the dominant content of the database.

Google Chrome, Google Instant, and Google Caffeine: Where We Are, by William Jiang, MLS

In November 2009, the new algorithm called "Caffeine" began to be the power behind the Google search engine. Caffeine renews, improves and accelerates results displayed on Google. "The first step in the process allow us to increase the size, indexing speed, accuracy, completeness and other dimensions," explained Sitaram Iyer, software engineer, and Matt Cutts, Google's chief engineer, in the official blog.

There seems to be a new tool released by Google almost every day. Google Instant makes the search faster and interactive displays search results instantly displayed during the search. Google has put its database on AJAX technology! AJAX is a great technology that Google has used in the past with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, and more.

AJAX stands for "Asynchronous Javascript And XML", and it is a new technique that allows the browser "Google Chrome" to step forward and makes things more interesting since Google Chrome has the fastest JavaScript engine of all browsers including Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Mm?. The best search engine and the best browser engine together? Another Google technology is dead! Long live Google!

Libraries of Sierra Leone, by William Jiang, MLS

My interest in Sierra Leone began with the DiCaprio movie "Blood Diamonds." In this film there was a world full of bloody conflicts and short life revolved around the diamond trade. That's why the movie is called "Blood Diamonds" because of blood being shed to collect the gems.

Sierra Leone is a small West African country bordered by Guinea, Liberia, and the Pacific Ocean. The country has 5 million people with a GDP of just over $ 4 billion with an average per capita income of about $ 900 per year. In Sierra Leone there are very rich and very poor. About half of the population is involved in agriculture, and about half of export revenues generated by diamonds. Sierra Leone is a young democracy. The median age of the population is 19 years of age. A median age so young is an indication that life is hard there. 10,000 children fought in the year of the civil war in Sierra Leone. And now, another 500,000 are in the paramilitary groups.(Http://www.un.org/works/goingon/soldiers/goingon_soldiers.html)

Amid all this death and destruction in this small country, I wondered if there would be some libraries to serve this nation devastated by war. According tohttp://www.sabre.org,

there is a main library in the city of Freetown and two of the nine branch libraries survived the war. The country also has a repository of the United Nations Library at the University of Sierra Leone. This leaves the main library sources of war-scarred country and university libraries, the University of Sierra Leone and Njala University, with a combined number of 500,000 books and no web presence.

As of September 2010, the University Sierra Leone does not have online page dedicated to their library or library catalog and there are very terse instructions on a website of the institution: http://www.tusol.org/.

Njala University has a website http://www.njalauniversity.net

and a page for their library that says "Coming Soon". There is no other information. Much of this information is by John Abdul Kargbo, Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Library, Information and Communication Studies at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.

Getting a good book to read is generally not a priority of a population facing major problems of life and possible early death in their daily lives. However, for the long-term health of Sierra Leone’s democracy it would be great if they could increase their collections in order to serve its people.

AMD Bulldozer versus Intel Sandy Bridge versus NVIDIA CUDA

AMD Bulldozer versus Intel Sandy Bridge versus NVIDIA CUDA
By William Jiang, MLS

The new battleground for microprocessors is now the realm of graphics, and there are three major combatants: AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel. Intel produced the Sandy Bridge series of processors which integrate the Computer Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). This integration of CPU and GPU seems to be a trend for the future. AMD’s flavor of this hybrid CPU and GPU is called an APU or Accelerated Processing Unit. AMD’s new processor architecture named Bulldozer has come out with their first chip aimed at the mobile segment: Llano.

The “system on a chip” was not always in existence. Since the Intel 8066 chip came out in 1978 video cards handled video, and the CPU was divided into the CU (Control Unit) and ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) and never did the two meet. NVIDIA emerged as the video card power more than a decade ago, and relatively recently NVIDIA started the CUDA technologies which gamers and people involved in multimedia use for drastic improvements in performance. As of yet, a strong CPU with a strong NVIDIA video card combination’s performance can not be touched by an integrated CPU/GPU as of yet, so NVIDIA has some breathing room. However, as the CPU/GPU integration becomes tighter, NVIDIA may need to find a strategic partner in AMD or Intel.