Macy’s history, part 2 Federated Department Stores, Inc. (renamed Macy's, Inc. in June 2007) was born through the combination of Abraham & Straus of Brooklyn, Filene's of Boston, F&R Lazarus & Co. of Columbus, OH, and Bloomingdale's of New York. Each of these retailers was an established, prominent presence with a rich history of its own. In joining together, they agreed to maintain their separate identities while linking their financial interests. These pioneers recognized the immense opportunity that lay before them and on November 25, 1929, Federated Department Stores was incorporated as a revolutionary new company in American retail. http://www.macysinc.com/pressroom/history/

DocuTicker.com publishes full-text PDF reports of government agencies, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other public interest groups— known as 'grey literature.'
See the current issue of GreyGuide here: http://www.docuticker.com/greyguide/

Wikimedia is kicking off a new project, the Bookshelf Project, developed to extend the reach and improve the quality of Wikipedia articles by increasing participation. We believe recruiting new high-value contributors to Wikipedia will necessarily increase the usefulness and quality of our encyclopedia. The Bookshelf Project will support additional educational applications by providing model lesson plans to show secondary school teachers and university professors how they can use writing, editing and collaboration in Wikipedia as core curriculum activities. In developing the Bookshelf Educational materials, we will work with subject matter experts to ensure the materials are relevant and applicable. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/04/wikimedia-launches-bookshelf-project/

On November 6, the United States Senate voted to confirm David Ferriero as the 10th Archivist of the United States. Mr. Ferriero was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries and is a leader in the field of library science. As the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL), Mr. Ferriero was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating the four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public library system in the United States and one of the largest research libraries in the world. Mr. Ferriero was in charge of collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions. http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2010/nr10-18.html

Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements
This witty and heavily illustrated volume features more than 300 vintage book advertisements—startling and strange, beautiful and funny—that together reveal a kind of secret history of American literature over the last century. New York Times book critic Dwight Garner brings together original ads for some of the most acclaimed and best-selling books of the twentieth century, including The Great Gatsby, Ulysses, On the Road, Invisible Man, Lolita, Silent Spring, The Joy of Sex, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, White Noise, and dozens of other classics. These ads show us famous books when they were simply new volumes jostling for attention on bookstore shelves, not yet icons of our literary culture.

Richard Leiter and co-host Marcia Dority Baker explore all issues of concern to law libraries, law librarians, legal bibliography and the profession on BlogTalkRadio.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thelawlibrarian Discussed recently: Why do we delegate the reporting and indexing of the American legal information system to commercial vendors using a proprietary system? We can take back legal information from the vendors. The first steps are already in place. There’s Public.Resource.Org, Justia, and The Legal Information Institute (among others) harvesting what info they can and placing it up on the free internet. The second step is to get Law.gov (recently endorsed by the Mid America Law Library Consortium) up and running. The third step? We need to come up with an open indexing system. http://sarahglassmeyer.com/?p=230

A new machine at the University of Missouri Bookstore makes the book publishing process faster and cheaper. The University Bookstore showed off its new Espresso Book Machine at an open house on Wednesday. This machine instantly prints, binds and trims paperback books for just six cents a page. It is open to students, faculty and the community during bookstore hours. The bookstore's aim is to reduce the cost of course material for students and faculty. MU Rural Sociology PhD Candidate Robin Hubbard has been working on her book for two years. It's step-by-step guide for students on how to write a research paper. Hubbard says a publisher would usually charge between $45 and $50 for a book like hers. But with the Espresso Book Machine, Hubbard published her book for only $11. The machine allows her to inexpensively update her book each semester. Her book will likely be sold on consignment at the University Bookstore for about $15 keeping the price low by eliminating the publishing house markup. The Espresso Book Machine also lets community members like 86-year-old Fred Oerly publish a book. Orley's book, "Some Mighty Good Years," is a collection of letters he wrote to his daughter about growing up in Overton, Mo. Orely's daughter complied the letters, and it cost $7.20 to publish his book with the Espresso Book Machine. http://www.komu.com/satellite/SatelliteRender/KOMU.com/ba8a4513-c0a8-2f11-0063-9bd94c70b769/c21c7b48-80ce-0971-0097-df0f5989b1ac

horse latitudes (hors LAT-i-toodz, -tyoodz) noun
either of the two belts around latitudes 30 to 35 degrees N or S, marked by high pressure, and light variable winds
Of uncertain origin. There's a story, not very convincing, that when stuck in such a region of calm with little wind to get them across, sailors threw their cargo of horses overboard to save on rations and to lighten the load. Another conjecture is that the term is derived from Spanish golfo de las yeguas, literally, mares' sea, alluding to the unpredictable nature of the mares. A related term is doldrums, the calm area in an ocean around the equator. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

On November 10, 1919, the US Supreme Court ruled in Abrams v. United States that the federal government could criminalize speech if it was of a type tending to bring about harmful results, in this case resistance to the United States war effort. In a powerful dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes countered that even during wartime, free speech could only be curtailed when there was clear and "present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about." Read more on the clear and present danger test by Professor Douglas Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/
On November 10, 1973, school officials in Drake, North Dakota, burned copies of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Kurt Vonnegut (books by this author) had served in WWII, and he was captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner in Dresden when the Allies bombed the city. Many of the students didn't want to give up their books, so the school searched all their lockers and took them, and then threw the books into the school's burner. The Writer’s Almanac