On a March evening in Brooklyn, Donatella Madrigal is standing at a Vandercook Universal press, wiping her ink-stained hands on a denim apron. She has just run off several hundred greeting cards, which she’ll sell online and in neighborhood gift shops for up to $5 apiece. By day, the Madrid-born 27-year-old is a graphic artist who designs ads for clients such as Bobbi Brown Professional Cosmetics, working mostly on a computer. In the evenings, she goes analog, printing cards at The Arm Letterpress, a former garage filled with vintage printing presses rented out by the hour to artisans. In the past decade, letterpress printers have grown into a thriving community. Many of the most devoted members are graphic designers who, like Madrigal, are seeking an alternative to their digital day jobs. “It’s almost like artisanal breadmaking,” says Sarah Schwartz, editor of Stationery Trends magazine, a trade publication. “People are returning to things done by hand, and it’s a very tactile art form.” The market for letterpress items has resisted the downturn in luxury goods that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Kate’s Paperie, an upscale Manhattan stationer, says letterpress products jumped to 44 percent of sales last year from 33 percent in 2010. Etsy, the website that hosts online stores for handmade goods, listed over 22,000 letterpress items in early April, more than triple the number a year earlier. The Arm Letterpress is the creation of Dan Morris, whose great-grandfather was a printer in Ohio. Morris studied art and architecture in Australia before apprenticing to a letterpress printer in Baltimore. Fourteen years ago, he paid $285 for his first Vandercook, a mid-20th century model considered the Cadillac of hand-cranked letterpresses. The same machines sell for $10,000 today. The decline of the letterpress began at the end of the 19th century, when linotype machines allowed printers to set type as fast as they could tap at a keyboard. By the early 1890s, the country’s remaining type manufacturers had consolidated into a single company, American Type Founders, says Morris, whose bookshelves are lined with type catalogs from the early 20th century. Letterpress managed to hold on through the advent of offset printing, the Xerox machine, and the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Canon. “These presses can last 100 years, and some of my best presses were only built in the 1960s,” Morris says. “As long as there are people who know how to use it, there will be letterpress.”
http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-05/the-letterpress-thrives-in-an-ipad-age?section=small-business

As the national economy continues to struggle toward recovery from the Great Recession, 2011 was a year of grim headlines. The federal Library of Congress lost about 9% of its budget and 10% of its workforce. Detroit, a city in fiscal crisis, agonized all year over how many library branches to close. What became clear through it all was that amid the shifting winds of an economic storm, libraries continue to transform lives, adapting to and adopting new and emerging technologies, and experimenting with innovative and transformational ideas to provide services that empower patrons. The public libraries in many major U.S. cities continue to see circulation rise, with Seattle leading the way with a whopping 50% increase in the past six years. The rapid growth of ebooks has stimulated increased demand for them in libraries. Nationwide, 90% of libraries are making ebooks available to the public, and availability and use are up. But libraries only have limited access to ebooks because of restrictions placed on their use by the nation‘s largest publishers. Macmillan, Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster have refused to sell ebooks to libraries. HarperCollins imposed an arbitrary 26 loans per ebook license, and Penguin refused to let libraries lend its new titles at all. Find the 68-page report at: http://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/StateofAmericasLibrariesReport2012.pdf

Libraries are technology hubs that thousands turn to and depend on for resources, including free computer and software workshops, employment databases and free access to digital media. Communities across the U.S. will celebrate the valuable contributions of our nation’s libraries during National library Week, April 8 – 14. This year’s National Library Week theme is “You belong @ your library,” and libraries will offer programs and services that showcase technology and educational resources. http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/ala/you-belong-your-library-libraries-transform-lives-through-technological-literacy

Gray hair is cropping up on runways, at work and in an age bias suit pending in Texas federal court. Gray is becoming more fashionable, but 44-year-old Washington, D.C., civil rights lawyer David Scher doesn’t think workplaces will be transformed, the Associated Press reports. "I think women in the workplace are highly pressured to look young. If I were an older working person, the last thing I would do is go gray." The hair color is an issue in an age bias suit pending in Houston federal court. Sandra Rawline, 52, says that she was fired after she refused her boss’s order to dye her gray hair. Rawline, who was working as a branch manager and escrow agent at Capital Title of Texas, claims her boss also ordered her to wear “younger fancy suits” and lots of jewelry. Her replacement was 10 years younger, the Houston Chronicle reported at the time. http://www.chron.com/business/sixel/article/Manager-claims-boss-asked-her-to-dye-gray-hair-2080057.php http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/is_gray_ok_on_the_job_civil_rights_lawyer_sees_risks_plaintiff_claims_bias/

Would-be heroes of ancient Greece used harsh soaps and bleaches to lighten and redden their hair to the color that was identified with honor and courage. First-century Romans preferred dark hair, which was made so by a dye concocted from boiled walnuts and leeks. Today, hair color remains hot, with a booming 75 percent of American women reportedly coloring their hair. (In 1950, only about 7 percent of American women colored their hair.) Red is currently the most requested color at beauty salons. Men increasingly cover gray or, following the female lead, completely change their look. http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/hair-coloring.htm

The Law Library of Congress has published TRANSLATION OF NATIONAL LEGISLATION INTO ENGLISH March 2012 Global Legal Research Center LL File No. 2012-007612 for Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, and Russia, International Organizations and International Courts. This is a finding tool, an annotated bibliography rather than translations. http://www.loc.gov/law/find/national-legislation/pdfs/2012-007612_RPT_website.pdf

Knowledge wins: public library books are free See the poster created by Dan Smith (1865-1934) at: http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc443/

For Memorial Day, a World War I poster from our collection of world war posters: "Knowledge Wins...Public Library Books are Free". This is one of several posters commissioned by the American Library Association. This particular poster was designed by Daniel Stevens, an American illustrator originally from Philadelphia, who was best known for his depiction of Western Americana scenes. http://blogs.libraries.claremont.edu/sc/2009/05/knowledge-winsamerican-library.html Note the different names. Created by Dan Smith and designed by Daniel Stevens.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 10-10038 Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No. v. 3:08-cr-00237- DAVID NOSAL, MHP-1 Defendant-Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Marilyn H. Patel, Senior District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted December 15, 2011—San Francisco, California Filed April 10, 2012 KOZINSKI, Chief Judge: Computers have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. We use them for work; we use them for play. Sometimes we use them for play at work. Many employers have adopted policies prohibiting the use of work computers for nonbusiness purposes. Does an employee who violates such a policy commit a federal crime? How about someone who violates the terms of service of a social networking website? This depends on how broadly we read the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 18 U.S.C. § 1030. See the 22-page opinion at: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2012/04/10/10-10038.pdf