The Real National Treasure:  US presidential libraries by Katie D. Bennett   I've watched the film National Treasure twenty more times than I probably needed to, but I can’t ignore my fascination with the history of the US presidents.  In the movie, the directors place a strong emphasis on the importance of historical documents and artifacts, and a working knowledge of the importance and content of these items, to help the main protagonists complete a centuries-long treasure hunt.  And it led me to wonder: where are these documents now?  Who has access to them, and what is the public allowed, and not allowed, to see?  For queries of this kind, I inevitably turned to the one place with all the answers:  the library.  But not just any library.  In honor of Presidents’ Day on 20 February 2017, I interviewed Melissa Giller, Chief Marketing Officer for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Institute in Simi Valley, California, and Alan Lowe, Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, to learn more about these institutions’ contents, purpose, and significance in the library community.  “So it’s a bit different based on each library,” explained Alan Lowe.  Most presidential libraries constructed from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s time in office to the upcoming Barack Obama Presidential Library in Chicago are built and run by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).  But other libraries, such as the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, are sometimes created by the state—in this case, the state of Illinois—and often begin as historical state libraries or museums that combine with or expand into presidential libraries.  Such is the case with the Lincoln library.  Additionally, some are run by other institutions, such as the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library in Mississippi, run by Mississippi State University.  Plans to build the library begin about two years prior to the president leaving office. With more recent libraries, the president for whom the library is built involves himself heavily in the planning, design, and curation of the building.  Read much more and see pictures at https://blog.oup.com/2017/02/presidential-libraries-america/

San Bernardino County, officially the County of San Bernardino, is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 2,035,210, making it the fifth-most populous county in California, and the 12th-most populous in the United States.  The county seat is San Bernardino.  San Bernardino County is included in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, also known as the Inland Empire, as well as the Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area.  With an area of 20,105 square miles, San Bernardino County is the largest county in the United States by area, although some of Alaska's boroughs and census areas are larger.  It is larger than each of the nine smallest states, larger than the four smallest states combined, and larger than 70 different sovereign nations.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino_County,_California

What is the cloud?  Where is the cloud?  Are we in the cloud now?  These are all questions you've probably heard or even asked yourself.  The term "cloud computing" is everywhere.  In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive.  The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet.  It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the Internet as nothing but a puffy, white cumulus cloud, accepting connections and doling out information as it floats.  Eric Griffiths  Read much more and see graphics at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372163,00.asp

In Croaker, Virginia stands a sight that would make just about anyone stop in their tracks.  43 ghostly effigies of presidents past crowd together in the tall grass.  Some of the 18-to-20-foot busts have crumbling noses.  Tear-like stains fall from the eyes of others.  All have bashed-in heads to some degree.  This could be a scene from the world’s most patriotic horror movie, but it’s all too real—and Howard Hankins’ family farm is just the latest stop on the busts’ larger-than-life journey from iconic pieces of art to zombie-like markers of America’s past.  The busts are all that remains of Virginia’s Presidents Park, a now-defunct open-air museum where visitors could once walk among the presidential heads.  Presidents Park first opened in nearby Williamsburg in 2004, the brainchild of local landowner Everette “Haley” Newman and Houston sculptor David Adickes, who was inspired to create the giant busts after driving past Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.  But their presidential visions soon (literally) went bust.  The park, which cost about $10 million to create, went belly-up due to a lack of visitors in 2010.  Doomed in part by location—it was hidden behind a motel and slightly too far away from colonial Williamsburg’s tourist attractions, the park went into foreclosure.  That’s where Hankins, who helped build the park, comes in.  Before the land was auctioned off, Newman asked him to destroy the busts.  But Hankins didn’t feel right about it, and instead offered to take the heads and move them to his 400-acre farm.  And so began the laborious process of moving 43 giant presidents, each weighing in between 11,000 and 20,000 pounds, to a field ten miles away.  Another park featuring similar presidential heads by Adickes met a similar end. The 2003 Presidents Park in Lead, South Dakota is also now closed—although most of the heads there remain on the property, littering the hillside and serving as de-facto homes for wild turkeys in the area.  Busts at a third location in Houston, Texas are visible through a fence.  Jennifer Billock  Read more and see pictures at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-43-decaying-president-heads-looks-180958129/

Attorneys for Hawaii filed a new 40-page request just before midnight on March 7, 2017 asking a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of the March 6, 2017 executive order banning foreign nationals from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days and banning all refugees for 120 days.  "The new executive order is resulting in the establishment of religion in the state of Hawaii contrary to its state constitution; it is inflicting immediate damage to Hawaii's economy, educational institutions, and tourism industry; and it is subjecting a portion of the state's citizens to second-class treatment and discrimination, while denying all Hawaii residents the benefits of an inclusive and pluralistic society," attorneys for the state argued in court filings.  "The executive order means that thousands of individuals across the United States and in Hawaii who have immediate family members living in the affected countries will now be unable to receive visits from those persons or to be reunited with them in the United States."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/07/politics/hawaii-travel-ban-lawsuit/

March 6, 2017  Over the weekend, I put a question to the Google Home speaker.  "OK Google,"  I said. "Is Obama planning a coup?"  I'd asked this after reading an article that suggested a relatively new feature that gives answers--or Snippets as the search company call them--to queries, rather than just links, had been producing some troubling results.  And then there was "Is Obama planning a coup?" which had resulted in a Snippets box describing "Western Center for Journalism's exclusive video".  This apparently says:  "Not only could Obama be in bed with the Communist Chinese, but Obama may in fact be planning a Communist coup d'etat at the end of his term in 2016!"   I contacted Google this morning, and the company tells me it has now changed the response to this and the other search queries mentioned above.  "Featured Snippets in Search provide an automatic and algorithmic match to a given search query, and the content comes from third-party sites," it said in a statement.  "Unfortunately, there are instances when we feature a site with inappropriate or misleading content.  "When we are alerted to a Featured Snippet that violates our policies, we work quickly to remove them, which we have done in this instance.  Rory Cellan-Jones  http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39180855

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1674  March 8, 2017  On this date in 1010, Ferdowsi completed his epic poem Shahnameh.  On this date in 1902, Louise Beavers, American actress and singer, was born.