Feb. 1, 2015  More than 1 million Filipinos now work at call centers and in related outsourcing businesses, mostly serving American companies.  The combination of cheap labor and specialized skills has made the Filipino workforce invaluable to a growing list of U.S. companies, which use them to field customer complaints, generate sales leads, code data, format documents and read medical scans and legal briefs.  The industry in the Philippines has grown so fast that it has overtaken India as the call-center capital of the world.  India still rules the information technology outsourcing realm, but an army of Filipino college graduates now dominates most every other kind of task known as business process outsourcing, or BPO.  By next year, experts estimate that the country's BPO industry will generate $25 billion in revenue, accounting for about 10% of the Philippines' economy and as much as the total amount expected to be sent home by the 11 million Filipino nurses, sailors, musicians and others working overseas.  Don Lee  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-philippines-economy-20150202-story.html#page=1

The Sala House is located on Albany Hill in Albany, California.  Built in 1983 and 1984, the Sala House was a collaboration of Christopher Alexander and Gary Black, who at the time were architecture professors at the University of California, Berkeley, working together with Bob Smith, David Tuttle, Seth Wachtel, and Andre and Anna Sala.  The house was built to be the home for Andre and Anna Sala and their two children.  A second wing was added in 1988.  It is the first house in the United States designed and built by Alexander.  Design commenced with Christopher Alexander asking Andre Sala to close his eyes and describe "the most beautiful and comfortable room you can remember."   The center of the home is a farmhouse-style kitchen based on Andre Sala's memory of the farmhouse that he had visited as a boy in the south of France.   The house is noted for an unusual use of materials.  With a post-and-beam structure, the exterior of the house is a one-and-one-half-inch concrete shell in striped pink and grey that echoes the colors of the eucalyptus near the home.  The color was added to the concrete at the time of pouring.  The concrete shell also provides a substantial passive solar effect even though it is outside of a layer of Styrofoam insulation.  The kitchen has a terrazzo floor with decorative patterns that were made with Styrofoam forms, marble dust, marble chips and cement.  The colors and pattern were the result of Alexander working on his hands and knees on the site with colored pieces of construction paper.  The kitchen also has a Rumford fireplace rendered in concrete, rather than brick.  Alexander's 1977 book with Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, A Pattern Language, remains decades after publication one of the best-selling books on architecture; it describes a network of 253 patterns drawn from traditional construction that relate to design at every scale, including regions, cities, and neighborhoods, as well as houses, rooms, and gardens.  The Sala House incorporates many of the named patterns from A Pattern Language.  See pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sala_House

FROM THE TOLEDO-LUCAS COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 

"It’s a startling statistic:  One-third of Toledo children do not have the literacy skills to enter kindergarten.  To turn that tide, the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library Legacy Foundation has equipped a van with literature and librarians to increase literacy in underserved communities.  Librarians Lauren Boeke and Cristin Brown present Ready to Read workshops designed to help parents understand and use the skills that will help their nonnative English-speaking children to read.  After talking about the five skills that go into making a better reader — talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing — the women suggest several bilingual children’s books and related materials that families can take home.  They can also apply for a library card for themselves and their children, and check out books from the Ready to Read van.  Check out more of our selected reading news stories.  Each weekday, we gather interesting news headlines about reading and early education.  You can also sign up for our daily email service (or a weekly digest), to get the latest reading headlines sent directly to you."   http://www.readingrockets.org/news/toledo-lucas-county-public-library-legacy-foundation-aims-increase-literacy

Find Ohio contemporary fiction titles for children and teens, including  Robert McCloskey's Centerburg Tales (1951)  "Further adventures of Homer Price including those in which a mad scientist develops weeds which overrun the town and a juke box sets the whole town to singing against their will" at   http://web2.toledolibrary.org/getattachment/kids/-/OhioContemporaryFiction.pdf.aspx

Jan. 14, 2015  Museums Are Now Able to Digitize Thousands of Artifacts in Just Hours by Max Kutner   As the Smithsonian works to digitize its collection of 137 million items, the Digitization Program Office has turned to the National Numismatic Collection housed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History along with other legal tender such as bank notes, tax stamps and war bonds.  The 250,000 pieces of paper will become the Institution’s first full-production “rapid capture” digitization project.  The project team, made up of 20 people hailing from a handful of departments across the Institution, began its pilot effort last February and moved forward in October, around Columbus Day.  That’s fitting, because some of the proofs depict Columbus discovering America.  “This is a lost art form,” says Jennifer Locke Jones, chair and curator of the Division of Armed Forces History. (Even Jones admits she no longer carries cash.)  Last summer, the Digitization Office captured the bumblebees at the National Museum of Natural History.  Earlier this month, the Freer and Sackler galleries made their entire collections of 40,000 works available digitally, the first Smithsonian museums to do so.  The term “rapid capture” refers to the speed of the workflow.  Before this process was in place, digitizing a single sheet could take as much as 15 minutes, at a cost of $10 per sheet.  Now, the team works through 3,500 sheets a day, at less than $1 per sheet.  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/museums-are-now-able-digitize-thousands-artifacts-just-hours-180953867/?no-ist

FOLLOW-UP TO THE BOOK RED LIKE WINE  Find Lettie Teague's six favorite new wine books at http://www.wsj.com/articles/lettie-teagues-six-favorite-new-wine-books-1410533031 

In 2012, Americans made 1.5 billion trips to public libraries in the United States—the equivalent of more than 4.1 million visits each day, according to new research by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).  This was a 10-year increase of 20.7 percent.  More than 92.6 million people attended the 4.0 million programs at public libraries.  Attendance showed a 1-year increase of 5.2 percent and a 10-year increase of 54.4 percent.  The research indicates there is still a high demand for the resources and services of the nation’s approximately 9,000 public libraries.  On Jan. 26, 2015, IMLS released the report for the Public Libraries in the United States Survey: Fiscal Year 2012, an analysis of the most comprehensive annual data collection of U.S. public library statistics.  Ninety-seven percent of public libraries in the 50 states and the District of Columbia contribute data for the survey, which is now in its 26th year.  The survey report provides analysis of 13 key indicators of library investments and library use, and profiles for each state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.  Libraries are offering more public programs, including programs for children, and are seeing greater program attendance than in previous years.  Public libraries are also adding more to their digital holdings, including e-books and downloadable audio and video.  Spending on electronic materials has doubled since Fiscal Year 2003.  Although libraries continue to provide public access computers and Internet access, use of public access computers has seen a two-year decrease of 7.4 percent.  The decrease may be the result of customers’ use of their own devices such as laptops, smart phones, and tablets to connect to public libraries’ Wi-Fi.   http://www.imls.gov/imls_2012_public_libraries_survey_report_issued.aspx

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1253  February 6, 2015  On this date in 1788, Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution.  On this date in 1815, New Jersey granted the first American railroad charter to John Stevens.