In 1935, Allen Lane, chairman of the eminent British publishing house Bodley Head, spent a weekend in the country with Agatha Christie.  Bodley Head, like many other publishers, was faring poorly during the Depression, and Lane was worrying about how to keep the business afloat.  While he was in Exeter station waiting for his train back to London, he browsed shops looking for something good to read.  He struck out.  All he could find were trendy magazines and junky pulp fiction.  And then he had a “Eureka!” moment:  What if quality books were available at places like train stations and sold for reasonable prices—the price of a pack of cigarettes, say?  Lane went back to Bodley Head and proposed a new imprint to do just that.  Bodley Head did not want to finance his endeavor, so Lane used his own capital.  He called his new house Penguin, apparently upon the suggestion of a secretary, and sent a young colleague to the zoo to sketch the bird.  He then acquired the rights to ten reprints of serious literary titles and went knocking on non-bookstore doors.  When Woolworth’s placed an order for 63,500 copies, Lane realized he had a viable financial model.  Lane’s paperbacks were cheap.  They cost two and a half pence, the same as ten cigarettes, the publisher touted.  Volume was key to profitability; Penguin had to sell 17,000 copies of each book to break even.  The first ten Penguin titles, including The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers, were wildly successful, and after just one year in existence, Penguin had sold over three million copies.  Penguin’s graphic design played a large part in the company’s success.  Unlike other publishers, whose covers emphasized the title and author of the book, Penguin emphasized the brand.  The covers contained simple, clean fonts, color-coding (orange for fiction, dark blue for biography) and that cute, recognizable bird.  The look helped gain headlines.   The Sunday Referee declared “the production is magnificent” and novelist J. B. Priestley raved about the “perfect marvels of beauty and cheapness.”  Other publishing houses followed Penguin’s lead; one, Hutchinson, launched a line called Toucan Books.  With its quality fare and fine design, Penguin revolutionized paperback publishing, but these were not the first soft-cover books.  The Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius had tried unsuccessfully to publish some in the 16th century, and dime novels, or “penny dreadfuls” –lurid romances published in double columns and considered trashy by the respectable houses, were sold in Britain before the Penguins.  Until Penguin, quality books, and books whose ink did not stain one's hands, were available only in hardcover.  In 1937, Penguin expanded, adding a nonfiction imprint called Pelican, and publishing original titles.  During World War II, Penguins, which were small enough to be stowed in the pocket of a uniform, were carried by soldiers, and they were chosen for the Services Central and the Forces Book Clubs.  In 1940, Lane launched an imprint for youngsters, Puffin Picture Books, which children facing evacuation could carry with them to their new, uncertain homes.  The United States adopted the Penguin model in 1938 with the creation of Pocket Books.  The first Pocket Book title was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, and it was sold in Macy’s.  Anne Trubek  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-the-paperback-novel-changed-popular-literature-11893941/?no-ist

Just how much blood do we have pumping through our heart, lungs, organs, veins, and arteries?  Well, the blood volume will vary depending on the size of the person, their state of hydration, and the volume of the cellular elements (white blood cells and red blood cells predominantly) in their blood.  The total blood volume for an average 70 kg human (150 pounds) is approximately 5.5 liters (or a little more than 5 1/2 quarts, or a little more than 160 ounces).  http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21474

Wander down almost any supermarket aisle and it's easy to spot one of the food industry's hottest fads.  Sriracha, the fiery red Asian chili sauce, has catapulted from a cult hit to flavor du jour, infusing burgers, potato chips, candy, vodka and even lip balm.  That would seem like a boon for the man who made the sauce a household name.  Except for one glaring omission.  David Tran, a Vietnamese refugee who built the pepper empire from nothing, never trademarked the term, opening the door for others to develop their own sauce or seasoning and call it Sriracha.  That's given some of the biggest names in the food business such as Heinz, Frito-Lay, Subway and Jack in the Box license to bank off the popularity of a condiment once named Bon Appétit magazine's ingredient of the year.  Two dozen applications to use the word have been filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  None has been granted for Sriracha alone.  The word is now too generic, the agency determined.   Rod Berman, who was primarily retained 10 years ago to tackle counterfeiters, thinks many consumers still associate Sriracha with Huy Fong.  He cited the mountain of publicity, films and growing sales as evidence.  "My instinct is to want to go after the people that used the Sriracha name," said Berman, an intellectual property lawyer who has represented the Los Angeles Lakers, Pom Wonderful and Nordstrom.  But that's not realistic, he says, especially for a medium-size company like Huy Fong.  "Large companies, the Mattels and Disneys of the world, try to protect everything and have the budget for that," Berman said. "With smaller enterprises like Huy Fong, you have to pick and choose."  That's why Tran has gone after knockoffs of Huy Fong's Sriracha from China.  Unlike the name, Tran trademarked his rooster logo and distinctive bottle.  At the same time, Tran has signed licensing agreements with a handful of specialty producers such as Rogue, which brews a Sriracha hot stout beer packaged in a red bottle and green cap to look like Huy Fong's signature sauce, and Pop Gourmet, which makes a Sriracha popcorn and will soon release a Sriracha seasoning spice.  Even with these partnerships, Tran doesn't charge any royalty fees.  All he asks is that they use his sauce and stay true to its flavor.  "The ship has probably sailed on this, which is unfortunate because they've clearly added something to American cuisine that wasn't there before," said Kelly P. McCarthy, a partner and expert on brand protection and trademark issues at the law firm Sideman & Bancroft.  She said it's not uncommon for popular products to lose their trademarks because they've become "genericized," such as Otis Elevator Co.'s use of "escalator" and Bayer AG's loss of "aspirin."  David Pierson  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sriracha-trademark-20150211-story.html#page=1

Cost Differentials between E-Books and Print in Academic Libraries by Timothy P. Bailey, Systems Librarian, Amanda L. Scott, Cataloging Librarian and Rickey D. Best, Collection Development Librarian   Academic libraries continue to face funding pressures compounded by the need to provide students with access to electronic resources, both in journal and book formats.  A survey conducted at Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) has confirmed for academic libraries the work of Gray and Copeland on e-books being more expensive than print for public libraries.  For AUM, the mean cost for e-books are significantly higher than for the print counterpart of those titles.  The cost differentials between the two formats show e-books as being consistently higher than print in initial price.  Accepted for publication in College & Research Libraries October 17, 2013.  http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2013/10/23/crl13-542.abstract  

Comment on the article:  OK, it’s official – ebooks are more expensive than print books. The article in pre-print from College & Research Libraries shows that even after taking costs of processing, physical books are just cheaper.  The biggest factor is the ebook maintenance fees – this prevents libraries from truly owning ebooks and from becoming part of the legacy collection.  The authors calculated that processing of physical books cost about $13 per book, but maintenance costs for ebooks was nearly $20.  And that was for netLibrary books, which charges a one-time fee (55% of price).  Most platforms require annual fees, which continually adds to the cost; the question is, though, is this fee more, the same or less than costs of physical storage, particularly for those auxiliary storage locations.  There were, of course, variations in the price differentials by subject (LC classes), with the J & K classes (political science & law) showing the greatest differences (over $50), and M and T-Z (music and engineering, technology & information sciences) with the least ($1-2).  Looking solely at university press titles (the bread & butter of academic libraries), titles in the G class (geography & anthropology) had the greatest differential ($55) followed closely by J & K, and BJ-BT (ethics & religion) and HA-HX (social sciences) actually showing a negative differential (that is, ebooks were actually cheaper).  https://librariesareforuse.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/confirmed-ebooks-are-more-expensive-that-print-books/

The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is the largest intact remnant of a vast habitat that once covered more than one million acres of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.  Formal protection of this resource began in 1973, when the Union Camp Corporation (a local forest products company) donated 49,097acres to The Nature Conservancy.  The Nature Conservancy conveyed the donated land to the federal government, which, combined with additionally purchased land, was used to establish the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in 1974.  http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Great_Dismal_Swamp/about.html  

One of the first business supporters of the Great Dismal Swamp was George Washington.  It was his suggestion to build the canal which was begun in 1793.  Read more of the swamp's history at http://www.dismalswamp.net/

CLAPTRAP   noun  pretentious nonsense, trash   origin:  clap; from its attempt to win applause  first known use:  1799  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/claptrap

Seven chimpanzees from a safari park in Holland were placed into an enclosure at the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, alongside six adult chimps, in 2010.  When caretakers placed apples in the cage, the new arrivals spoke with high-frequency shrieks.  The chimps who were already living in Scotland emitted sounds with lower pitches.  However, within three years, the newcomers were forming the same sound as their companions when apples were presented to the group.  "Our study shows that chimpanzee referential food calls are not fixed in their structure and that, when exposed to a new social group, chimpanzees can change their calls to sound more like their group mates," Katie Slocombe from the University of York, said.  Researchers are uncertain why the new arrivals changed their grunts to those matching their compatriots.  The new sounds were only heard from the Dutch chimps after they established social bonds with the other chimpanzees.  It is possible that social forces were at work, driving the animals to sound more like the others in their enclosure.  Another possibility is that the chimps wanted to be better understood by others in their group.  James Maynard  http://www.techtimes.com/articles/31172/20150205/chimps-develop-ability-to-learn-new-sounds-alter-calls-and-words.htm

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1264  March 4, 2015  On this date in 1909, President William Taft used what became known as a Saxbe fix, a mechanism to avoid the restriction of the U.S. Constitution's Ineligibility Clause, to appoint Philander C. Knox as U.S. Secretary of State.  On this date in 1917, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.