Unannounced and Unexpected: The Desegregation of Houston Public Library in the Early 1950s

Houston Public Library operated as a racially segregated system until 1953, when it quietly changed its policy to one of token integration. Occurring some seven years before the Houston Independent School District began to desegregate, the public library???s policy change depended on a few key individuals. Drawing on the library???s records of discussions and events, this article traces the history of a major shift in philosophy and practice at a large urban public library in the U.S. South.published or submitted for publicatio

Copyright transfer agreements and self-archiving

Concerns about intellectual property rights are a significant barrier to the practice of scholarly self-archiving in institutional and other types of digital repositories. This introductory level, half-day tutorial will demystify the journal copyright transfer agreements (CTAs) that often are the source of these rights concerns of scholars. In addition, participants will be introduced to the deposit processes of self-archiving in an interdisciplinary repository and open access archive (OAA), such as DLIST, Digital Library for Information Science and Technology. Editor's Note: This is a 1-page summary of the tutorial at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL '05), June 7, 2005, Denver, Colorado. It does not include the actual tutorial. Contents: Introduction, Learning Outcomes, Topics to be covered, About the Presenters, and References

Effects of Anacetrapib in Patients with Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease

BACKGROUND: Patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease remain at high risk for cardiovascular events despite effective statin-based treatment of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels. The inhibition of cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) by anacetrapib reduces LDL cholesterol levels and increases high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels. However, trials of other CETP inhibitors have shown neutral or adverse effects on cardiovascular outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 30,449 adults with atherosclerotic vascular disease who were receiving intensive atorvastatin therapy and who had a mean LDL cholesterol level of 61 mg per deciliter (1.58 mmol per liter), a mean non-HDL cholesterol level of 92 mg per deciliter (2.38 mmol per liter), and a mean HDL cholesterol level of 40 mg per deciliter (1.03 mmol per liter). The patients were assigned to receive either 100 mg of anacetrapib once daily (15,225 patients) or matching placebo (15,224 patients). The primary outcome was the first major coronary event, a composite of coronary death, myocardial infarction, or coronary revascularization. RESULTS: During the median follow-up period of 4.1 years, the primary outcome occurred in significantly fewer patients in the anacetrapib group than in the placebo group (1640 of 15,225 patients [10.8%] vs. 1803 of 15,224 patients [11.8%]; rate ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval, 0.85 to 0.97; P=0.004). The relative difference in risk was similar across multiple prespecified subgroups. At the trial midpoint, the mean level of HDL cholesterol was higher by 43 mg per deciliter (1.12 mmol per liter) in the anacetrapib group than in the placebo group (a relative difference of 104%), and the mean level of non-HDL cholesterol was lower by 17 mg per deciliter (0.44 mmol per liter), a relative difference of -18%. There were no significant between-group differences in the risk of death, cancer, or other serious adverse events. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease who were receiving intensive statin therapy, the use of anacetrapib resulted in a lower incidence of major coronary events than the use of placebo. (Funded by Merck and others; Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN48678192 ; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01252953 ; and EudraCT number, 2010-023467-18 .)

The Social (Tagging) Act of Reading

On Flickr, a Web-based service for managing and sharing digital images, reading and tagging come together in ways that reveal how people -- as individuals organizing their own photographs as well as making them available for discovery by others -- think about reading when they attempt to depict it in images and in words. In this pilot study of the tags assigned to a sample of 100 photographs tagged with the terms book and reading, only 80 of the 561 total tags were used more than once. The broad range of unique tags suggests an idiosyncratic approach to labeling that makes it difficult to draw conclusions about images of reading. Consequently, additional searches were conducted on Flickr and the results are reported and interpreted. The paper concludes with a discussion of proposed follow-up research

Imagining Information Retrieval in the Library: Desk Set in Historical Context

In the 1950s, a computer that could hold the contents of a library, retrieve facts, and formulate questions was laughable to many. The 1957 movie Desk Set accurately mirrored the way ordinary citizens perceived computers and their possible consequences. On another level, the film's focus on libraries was an ideal juxtaposition of human's intellectual capacity with machines' processing capacity

Louisville Free Public Library's Racially Segregated Branches, 1905-35

Drawing on primary sources such as original library records, this article traces the founding and early years of the first Carnegie-funded, purpose-built library for the exclusive use of African Americans

When More is Better: A Counter-Narrative Regarding Keyword and Subject Retrieval in Digitized Diaries

Many commercial full-text databases and digital libraries provide keyword and preferred-term (subject) indexing, but few allow participatory tagging of content by users or provide ontologies in support of natural language information retrieval. Consequently, keyword and subject searching strategies still matter. But keyword searching, because it can yield results high in recall and low in precision, is often seen as a beginner's strategy best replaced by subject searching using authoritative headings and descriptors. In certain circumstance explored in this essay, keyword searching may be quite effective in and of itself for retrieving digitized primary sources for the study of history

When More is Better: A Counter-Narrative Regarding Keyword and Subject Retrieval in Digitized Diaries

Many commercial full-text databases and digital libraries provide keyword and preferred-term (subject) indexing, but few allow participatory tagging of content by users or provide ontologies in support of natural language information retrieval. Consequently, keyword and subject searching strategies still matter. But keyword searching, because it can yield results high in recall and low in precision, is often seen as a beginner's strategy best replaced by subject searching using authoritative headings and descriptors. In certain circumstance explored in this essay, keyword searching may be quite effective in and of itself for retrieving digitized primary sources for the study of history