The renovations at the University of Toledo’s Carlson Library have caused some in the UT community to be concerned with the process by which the university is disposing of books, periodicals and journals in order to make room for the planned “ultra quiet study space” being built on the library’s fifth floor. According to Marcia Suter, Director of Library Services on UT Main Campus, not all the physical copies will be shelved on the fourth floor. Suter said the library is disposing volumes of books that have not been checked out in eight or more years so as long as those books are available on OhioLink, an online library to which Ohio universities have access. According to Vice President of Student Government Jordan Maddocks, the library is disposing of the unused books by sending them to be shredded at Lott Industries, a local service sector company that specializes in recycling. “From going to the meetings and finding out what they’re doing with the reading materials, I was under the impression that almost all that was going to go to the depository. But I later found out that massive amounts were being basically [destroyed],” Maddocks said. Maddocks said he attended two of the committee meetings that planned the library renovations and suggested that the library donate the books as opposed to shredding them. Maddocks said one of the administrators responded to his donation idea by saying the process would be “too tedious and tough to organize.”
http://www.independentcollegian.com/news/carlson-library-renovation-woes-1.2274479

The headmaster at a New England prep school, Cushing Academy (Welcome to the Library. Say Goodbye to the Books, http://tinyurl.com/mnn986). stated that books were an outdated technology, similar to scrolls before the advent of the printing press. So what have they decided to do? Discard their 20,000 book collection of classics, novels, poetry, biographies, and tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. Their plan is to spend nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center‟‟ that consists of three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet, special laptop-friendly study carrels, and to replace the reference desk with a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine. Administrators state that they do not want to discourage reading, so to that end they will spend $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony. The readers will be distributed to some students, and will be stocked with digital material. Those who don't have access to the electronic readers will be expected to do their research and peruse many assigned texts on their computers. http://orall.org/newsletters/2010-06.pdf

Bloomberg owns Business Week, having bought it from McGraw-Hill, and in late 2009 was laying off about 100 staff people. One casualty was the library. And, according to Stephen Baker, who wrote one of the seminal articles on the importance of blogging in the corporate world, published in Business Week, reporters are being advised to take their research needs to Google. http://www.onlineinsider.net/2009/11/25/bloomberg-closes-business-week-library/

Wall Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. It runs east from Broadway to South Street on the East River, through the historical center of the Financial District. It is the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange; over time Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood. Wall Street is also shorthand (or a metonym) for the "influential financial interests" of the American financial industry, which is centered in the New York City area. The name of the street derives from the 17th century when Wall Street formed the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement. It was constructed to protect against English colonial encroachement. In the 1640s basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and residences in the colony. Later, on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant, in part using African slaves, led the Dutch in the construction of a stronger stockade. A strengthened 12-foot (4 m) wall against attack from various Native American tribes. In 1685 surveyors laid out Wall Street along the lines of the original stockade. The wall started at Pearl Street, which was the shoreline back then, crossing the Indian path Broadway and ending at the other shoreline (today's Trinity Place), where it took a turn south and ran along the shore until it ended at the old fort. The wall was dismantled by the British colonial government in 1699. In the late 18th century, there was a buttonwood tree at the foot of Wall Street under which traders and speculators would gather to trade informally. In 1792, the traders formalized their association with the Buttonwood Agreement. This was the origin of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1789, Federal Hall and Wall Street was the scene of the United States' first presidential inauguration. George Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall overlooking Wall Street on April 30, 1789. This was also the location of the passing of the Bill Of Rights. In 1889, the original stock report, Customers' Afternoon Letter, became The Wall Street Journal. Named in reference to the actual street, it is now an influential international daily business newspaper published in New York City. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street

Bartleby, the Scrivener: a Story of Wall Street is a long short story, more commonly known as a novella, by the American novelist Herman Melville (1819–1891). It first appeared anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 editions of Putnam's Magazine. It was reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. Though no great success at the time of publication, Bartleby the Scrivener is now among the most notable of American short stories. It has been considered a precursor of absurdist literature, touching on several of Kafka's themes in such works as A Hunger Artist and The Trial. There is nothing to indicate that the Bohemian writer was at all acquainted with the work of Melville, who remained largely forgotten until some time after Kafka's death. Albert Camus, in a personal letter to Liselotte Dieckmann published in The French Review in 1998, cites Melville as a key influence. The Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas wrote an award-winning novel Bartleby & Co. that creates a catalogue of the many "bartlebys" in literature: writers who gave up writing—the Literature of No—writers who sought denial. The story has been adapted for film three times: in 1970, starring Paul Scofield; in France, in 1976, by Maurice Ronet, starring Michel Lonsdale; and in 2001, Bartleby starring Crispin Glover. In 2003, a loosely adapted version of the story, called "Partanen", was filmed for Finnish TV by Juha Koiranen. In 2007, Organic Theater Company of Chicago presented its adaptation of Bartleby at the Ruth Page Theatre. This production was repeated a year later at the LaCosta Theatre. In 2009, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company of Chicago presented an adaptation by R.L. Lane at the Angel Island Theater, directed by Richard Cotovsky. In 2009, La pépinière théâtre of Paris presented as public reading by the famous French author Daniel Pennac, directed by François Duval. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartleby,_the_Scrivener

The hogan is a sacred home for the Diné (Navajo) people who practice traditional religion. Every family -- even if they live most of the time in a newer home -- must have the traditional hogan for ceremonies, and to keep themselves in balance. The Navajos used to make their houses, called hogans, of wooden poles, tree bark and mud. The doorway of each hogan opened to the east so they could get the morning sun as well as good blessings. Today, many Navajo families still live in hogans, although trailers or more modern houses are tending to replace them. The older form of hogan is round and cone-shaped. By the end of the 19th century they would be replaced by the roomier, hexagonal or octagonal, cribwork hogans http://navajopeople.org/navajo-hogans.htm