The History of the Gunnerus Library  Founded in 1760 as Det Trondhiemske Selskab [the Trondheim Society], the institution was named Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab [The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters] when it received royal recognition in 1767.  The Society’s first librarian was appointed in 1768, and this year is regarded as the library's year of foundation.  The statutes for the Society state that anyone elected as a member either had to pay 10 rix dollars to be used for purchasing books or had to donate 2 books.  This made it possible to start building up a collection of books.  The founders of the Society, Bishop Johan Ernst Gunnerus, Rector Gerhard Schøning and the Danish historian Peter Fr. Suhm were strongly influenced by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.  Collecting plants, animals and minerals was at the heart of the Society’s activities, but the three friends also published a variety of journal articles.  Originally the Society was dedicated to general science, but a reform in 1874 placed greater emphasis on the museum's activities.  At the same time, priority was given to purchasing literature on the subjects of botany, zoology, archaeology and history.  A radical transformation took place in 1926.  The Society’s organizational structure was divided into a museum and an academy, the latter with the same functions as the original Society.  The museum, with its collections and library, became the research institution, while the rest of the society functioned as an academy for elected members, as it had in 1760.  In 1939, the library was granted the right to claim a copy of publications printed in Norway.  In 1989, this was converted into a legal deposit system.  The oldest collections of the University Library are kept at the Gunnerus Library, including LibriRari, which consists of rare books and manuscript material.  The oldest document in the collections of the Gunnerus Library is a fragment with musical notation on it, dating back to about the year 1000.  https://www.ntnu.edu/ub/libraries/gunnerus/history

Compromise evolved over a long process from the Latin compromissum, which is com- (together) and -promittere, which is a verb that also later evolved into "promise", but it meant more than just that when it gained that com- prefix.  Compromissum has more of a sense of "submit to arbitration and abide by their decision" than is usually meant by the modern word "compromise" in English.  Some of English's messiness comes from the tendency to borrow and reborrow descendants of the same original stem words, but to borrow them as meaningful different things:  it gives us bouquets of really similar-looking words with loosely relates it separate meanings.  Elliot Mason  https://www.quora.com/Just-wonder-why-prefixing-COM-to-PROMISE-gets-to-word-COMPROMISE

LexisNexis’s Role in ICE Surveillance and Librarian Ethics by Sarah Lamdan and Yasmin Sokkar Harker   A recent Intercept article listed the data corporations vying to build ICE’s Extreme Vetting surveillance system.  The list of companies signing on to this project includes LexisNexis, a go-to product for legal and business research, news, and public-records searching.  LexisNexis is a ubiquitous library resource.  It can be found on public use computers and webpages in public, academic, and private libraries across the nation.  For librarians in the legal field, especially, LexisNexis is an often unavoidable product, as it is one of two major research systems for the law.  Civil liberties activists and artificial intelligence (AI) experts quickly responded to the news by writing a letter, en masse, to IBM’s CEO, condemning the company’s potential participation in the ICE program.  The AI experts decried the program as being “tailor-made for discrimination”, as it is meant to determine and evaluate an applicant’s probability of becoming a positively contributing member of society, as well as their ability to contribute to national interests and predict whether an applicant intends to commit criminal or terrorist acts after entering the United States.  Librarians should be active participants in the conversation about the ICE project to build a system for surveillance and deportation.  Librarians are advocates and activists for privacy rights and the protection of personally identifiable information in surveillance, standing up against recent-anti-muslim Executive Orders and making it clear that libraries and information are for everyone.  Librarians know that privacy and the ability to do research without fear of surveillance are the cornerstones of intellectual freedom.  We have historically been active in the fight for civil liberties, even going to jail to protect our patrons from intrusive government surveillance.  As the gatekeepers for the databases and platforms that we use for research, librarians have an obligation to honor privacy and civil liberties in their libraries, and to stand up to research product companies helping ICE to build supersystems for “extremely vetting” citizens and noncitizens alike.  December 11, 2017  originally published on RIPS Law Librarian Blog, a publication of the Research, Instruction, and Patron Services Special Interest Section (RIPS-SIS) of the American Association of Law Libraries, on December 5, 2017.  Law Librarian Blog  Thinking Out Loud in the Blogosphere  https://llb2.com/2017/12/11/ice/

Viatical Settlement  A transaction in which a lfe insurance policy holders sells his/her policy to a third party.  The life settlement provider becomes the policy's new beneficiary, is responsible for maintaining premiums, and upon the death of the insured person, receives the benefit.  Farlex Financial Dictionary.  © 2012 Farlex, Inc.  All Rights Reserved  https://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/viatical+settlement

Art Buchwald’s archives are bound for the Library of Congress by Caitlin Gibson   The room was filled with towers of storage boxes, stacks of documents and carefully curated artifacts:  posters, photographs and typewritten letters; the prosthetic leg he wore at the end of his life; the program from his funeral, with his owlish grin on the cover.  Historians eagerly pored over folders filled with his papers, hunting for records to highlight a long and prolific career.   “Look at this great pic of him with Eunice Kennedy Shriver,” said Barbara Bair, a historian in the manuscript division of the Library of Congress.  “Here’s one with Mike Wallace,” said Ryan Reft, who specializes in modern United States history, as he sifted through a stack of photographs.  In the basement of the home in Northwest Washington where the legendary American humorist lived his final years with his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren, the historians gathered a few standout items:  a social worker’s character evaluation of Buchwald from his early years in foster care; a column he wrote about the war in Iraq, and inscribed to Colin Powell; a fan letter from John Steinbeck.  They selected a screenplay, a book manuscript, and transcripts of speeches he’d given about the perils of drug addiction and the need to destigmatize mental illness.  Buchwald’s son, Joel Buchwald, watched from the periphery, clutching a video camera in his hand.  He wanted to chronicle what was, in a sense, a second and final goodbye—the departure of nearly 200 boxes of his father’s prized belongings from the family home, nearly 11 years after his death in 2007.  Read more and see pictures at https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/art-buchwalds-archives-are-bound-for-the-library-of-congress-he-would-have-been-thrilled/2018/01/02/995eef38-e502-11e7-833f-155031558ff4_story.html?utm_term=.e283f4a87b85

Four approaches to problem solving as taught by the late great Russell Ackoff.   He called these “Problem Treatments”--the ways one deals with problems.  They are:  Absolution – This is a common reaction to a problem.  This means to ignore a problem with the hope that it will solve by itself or it will go away of its own accord.  Resolution – This means to do something that yields an outcome that is “good enough”.  This involves a clinical approach to problems that relies heavily on past experience, trial and error, qualitative judgment, and so-called common sense.  Solution – This means to do something that yields the best outcome that “optimizes”.  This involves a research approach to problems, one that often relies on experimentation, quantitative analysis, and uncommon sense.  This is the realm of effective counterintuitive solutions.  Dissolution – This means to redesign either the entity that has the problem or its environment in such a way as to eliminate the problem and enable the entity involved to do better in the future that the best it can do today--in a word, to “idealize”.  https://harishsnotebook.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/four-approaches-to-problem-solving/  See also https://flowoftesting.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/what-we-can-learn-from-russell-l-ackoff/

American Arts Commemorative Series medallions are a series of ten gold bullion medallions that were produced by the United States Mint from 1980 to 1984.  They were sold to compete with the South African Krugerrand and other bullion coins.  The series was proposed by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms after the United States Department of the Treasury began selling portions of the national stockpile of gold.  Iowa Representative Jim Leach suggested that the medallions depict notable American artists.  President Jimmy Carter signed the bill containing the authorizing legislation into law on November 10, 1978, despite objections from Treasury officials.  The medallions were initially sold through mail order; purchasers were required to obtain the day's price by telephone before ordering.  Later, the Mint sold them through telemarketing.  Mintage ceased after the ten different medallions approved by Congress were produced.  All were struck at the West Point Bullion Depository.  The series sold poorly, prompting critics to blame the involved process by which they were first marketed, and the fact that they were medallions rather than coins.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Arts_Commemorative_Series_medallions

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1824  January 10, 2018  On this date in 1710, George Frederic Handel's music was performed in London for the first time when excerpts from his opera “Rodrigo” were performed as incidental music during a revival of Ben Jonson’s play “The Alchemist.”  Handel’s opera “Rodrigo” had, in fact, debuted in Italy in 1707, just three years before its tunes were recycled for use on the British stage.  On today’s date in 1713, Handel’s opera “Teseo” had its premiere at the Queen’s Theater in London.  Composers Datebook