On December 4, Dave Sheppard became the new librarian at Oneida's Greig Memorial Library, and the first male in a lengthening list of live-in librarians. Local taxes and other funding add up to a small library budget, so the library board’s solution continues to be an offer of living quarters plus a small salary. Sheppard, who also works full time at Walmart, and his wife, Lois, will move into the library sometime after the holidays. As he provided a tour of the six rooms on the upper level of Greig Memorial Library on Wednesday, Sheppard seemed comfortable with the concept of living in a library, an option that had not occurred to him before his response to the ad for his new position. Despite the six rooms in the librarian’s private space, the only kitchen is on the main level, connected to the library’s main hallway, which houses computers and shelves of books for sale, and one of the main rooms which contains reference materials, juvenile fiction and videos available for borrowing. A quick online search located no references to live-in librarians, although some libraries in the New York City Public Library system had superintendents/custodians who lived in until possibly as recently as the early 1990s. Those employees — only men were mentioned — apparently often had families they raised in the library. While they maintained the buildings, they most likely did not answer research questions or check out books. In Oneida, Illinois, the situation is not so unusual. There has been a resident librarian since 1939 when Hugh Greig left a bequest in his will which made his former home into a city library. http://www.galesburg.com/news/x1790518469/Oneida-welcomes-new-live-in-librarian

At the Charlotte, N.C. children’s bookstore Author Squad, kids and parents don’t just buy books, they make books—as in writing, illustrating, laying out, and hand-binding hardcover volumes, at the store’s own publishing center. Owner Lauren Garber has gotten the process so kid-friendly, in fact, that even two-year-olds can get in on constructing their own books. Garber opened the store just three years ago—they celebrated their birthday the second week in November—having developed the idea after a stint teaching third grade. “When I gave the kids free time, they would make books,” she recalls. Noting the limited opportunities in typical school curricula for cooperative learning and creative expression, Garber thought it would be fun and valuable to make a business out book-making. She looked for examples of the concept at work elsewhere—and came up with virtually nothing. “You could do photobooks online, obviously, and there’s always been those put-your-kid’s-name-into-a-book services, even when I was a kid,” said Garber. More recently, she’s heard that some of the bigger chain stores have started similar services, but those still require you to send away your materials and wait for the result. At Author Squad, customers make their books on-site, from start to finish, using scanners, Microsoft Publisher, and binding materials the store orders from a library supply company. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/45364-bookstore-turns-kids-and-parents-into-self-publishers.html

If content is king, is distribution queen? That appears to be the lesson to be the derived from the saga of Netflix, the hugely successful video distributor. In fact, after reading Tim Arango and David Carr’s story about Netflix in the New York Times, you could easily reverse the pecking order and no one would give you a serious argument. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/business/25netflix.html?_r=2&hp Netflix “has gone from being the fastest-growing first-class mail customer of the United States Postal Service [half a billion dollars annually] to the biggest source of streaming Web traffic in North America during peak evening hours,” they write. Thus a major brick and mortar operation has transformed itself with lightning speed into a major digital one. Once again, digital delivery of content has disintermediated traditional means of delivering tangible content. The closest analogy to Netflix in the book world is probably Google. When Google Editions finally comes out of the clouds – and it will very soon – we may see a similar phenomenon of the distribution queen capturing the content king. http://ereads.com/2010/12/netflix-and-movies-a-good-metaphor-for-book-business.html

Changes in Airport Passenger Screening Technologies and Procedures from Congressional Research Service: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R41502.pdf

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) provides monthly income support to families with disabled children, disabled working-age adults, and people 65 or older who have little or no income from other sources. The benefit is administered by the Social Security Administration. SSI is one of the four major cash or near-cash components of the nation’s social assistance system. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of SSI recipients grew by 14 percent, about 6 percentage points more than total population. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided a $250 payment to every SSI beneficiary. The SSI system was an ideal vehicle for rapid distribution of stimulus funds, given that SSI eligibility is means tested, the apparatus for distributing monthly benefit is well established, and beneficiaries likely live in households with a high marginal propensity to spend. But while useful as a stimulus, a one-off $250 payment obviously has no structural consequences. Read excerpt and find link to full report at: http://www.urban.org/publications/412266.html

Bumpers are the first line of defense against costly damage in everyday low-speed crashes. Bumpers on cars are designed to match up with each other in collisions, but a long-standing gap in federal regulations exempts SUVs from the same rules. New Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash tests demonstrate the results: SUV bumpers that don't line up with those on cars can lead to huge repair bills in what should be minor collisions in stop-and-go traffic. http://web.docuticker.com/go/docubase/62364

From ancient times through the Middle Ages, and into the 13th century, man or animal power was the driving force behind hoisting devices. In ancient Greece, Archimedes developed an improved lifting device operated by ropes and pulleys, in which the hoisting ropes were coiled around a winding drum by a capstan and levers. By A.D. 80, gladiators and wild animals rode crude elevators up to the arena level of the Roman Coliseum. Medieval records contain numerous drawings of hoists lifting men and supplies to isolated locations. Among the most famous is the hoist at the monastery of St. Barlaam in Greece. The monastery stood on a pinnacle approximately (200 ft) above the ground. Its hoist, which employed a basket or cargo net, was the only means up or down. The first elevator designed for a passenger was built in 1743 for King Louis XV at his palace in France. The one-person contraption went up only one floor, from the first to the second. Known as the "Flying Chair," it was on the outside of the building, and was entered by the king via his balcony. The mechanism consisted of a carefully balanced arrangement of weights and pulleys hanging inside a chimney. Men stationed inside the chimney then raised or lowered the Flying Chair at the king's command. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/elevator.htm

Bombazine is a fabric originally made of silk or silk and wool, and now also made of cotton and wool or of wool alone. It is twilled or corded and used for dress-material. Cambric is a lightweight cotton cloth used as fabric for lace and needlework. Oilcloth was, traditionally, heavy cotton or linen cloth with a linseed oil coating: it was semi-water-proof. The most familiar use was for brightly printed kitchen tablecloths. Dull colored oilcloth was used for bedrolls, sou'westers, and tents. By the late 1950's, oilcloth became a synonym for vinyl (polyvinyl chloride) bonded to either a flanneled cloth or a printed vinyl with a synthetic non woven backing. See glossary of textile manufacturing at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_textile_manufacturing