Nowadays is seems that so many of us spend hours and hours commuting back and forth, (hopefully we are doing this on public transportation). For those of us lucky enough to be able to read while traveling it seems that a few public transportation systems are starting to offer us options. In Colombia the TransMilenio has been experimented with lending out book. This project is promoted by the Instituto de Cultura y Turismo which extended their Libro Al Viento campaign onto TrasMilenio. Here users don’t need to be affiliated with any library; great literature is made available to anyone traveling, with hopes that the books will be returned. Readers are encouraged to pick up these book and take them home or to the office until their are finished with it, and then return them to the system for another to use. This project has since extended into local grocery stores, and public markets around the city.

The Contra Costa Public Library has joined forces with BART to offer library services to commuters. The program named, Library-a-GO-Go, will install book lending machines that will allow patrons to check out books while in their commute. The first machines will be installed at the Pittsburgh/Bay Point station in April, with more machines to come at the Pleasant Hill and the Byron/Discovery Bay stations.

You can read the press release for the Contra Costa - BART project here, and an article (in Spanish) on the TransMilenio project here. You can read about LibroAl Viento in supermarkets (in Spanish) here, and in public markets (in Spanish) here.

Image info here.

This morning the New York Times had an article about two parallel art exhibits displaying art looted during WWII. The exhibit is a collaboration between France and Israel in aims at reconnecting these pieces with their original owners. Most of the art on display was either outright looted or forcefully “bought” by the Nazi, and so far has gone unclaimed, presumably because the original owners were likely killed in the Holocaust. The collections contain a number of “common” pieces, but also works from renown artist such as Cézanne, Manet, Degas, Chagall, Delacroix, and Monet among others.

Art and other cultural pieces are often looted during times of war and much has been written and discussed on the subject. Actually a couple semesters ago I attended a lecture by Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, a Harvard professor who has written extensively on collections held in Russian archives which previously belong to other nations. Her book, “Trophies of War and Empire: The Archival Heritage of Ukraine, World War II and the International Politics of Restitution” discusses the complexities of restitution and why countries loot other nations’ cultural treasures.

Fortunately there are efforts around the globe to stop this practice. The Lost Art Internet Database is a project from the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste which is working to reconnect lost cultural property to its original owners. Looted Art is another such initiative, and while many of these efforts circle the Holocaust this is not a phenomenon seen exclusively around WWII, Chile recently returned a number of book taken from the Peruvian National Library about 100 years ago. And it’s not just armies who walk away with cultural property that belongs to others. Some of the largest and best endowed universities and museums around the world have gotten some of their material in such a matter. Egypt has been demanding the return of the Rosetta Stone for years, to name just one example (You can read about this from an article in the BBC). Unfortunately we are still seeing this practice in current times; the National Museum of Iraq was gravely looted during the USA invasion. (You can read about the Iraqi National Museum from an article in the Guardian.)

A recent article in the BBC shows how recent violence in Kenya sparked from election disputes has affected the flower industry. Usually Valentines means that workers can expect to work longer hours, and make some extra money. Others can take temporary work on these large farms, but this year ethnic violence has forces many of these workers to flee their homes and jobs, leaving the Kenyan flower industry in a difficult situation for the highest demand of the year. The industry seems to be running on about 80% of it’s usual workforce, while some of the more fortunate workers have been offered housing on the farms, and have thus been able to keep their jobs, many have been forced to send their families to live elsewhere. The most unfortunate ones had to leave everything behind, or worst yet were killed.

Violence has also disrupted transportation routs forcing flower farmers to incur more expenses by having to charter flights to deliver their product. And while we can hope that this violence will be passing, failing to deliver on the industry’s most important day can damage confidence in the Kenyans flower industry for years to come.

In Colombia Valentine day has been adopted by workers in the flower as International Day of Flowers Workers; a day designed to raise awareness about the poor conditions in which many workers toil. This movement is being highlighted by Florverde certification which places its symbol on flower production which meets their social and environmental standards. Now Florverde is trying to increase labor standards and work with trade unions to continue improving the industry.

Florverde certification covers about 25% of the Colombian flower industry, and its criteria include standards such as sealing fumigated areas to protect workers. Although these seem like obvious steps it is actually commons to have workers in the same area where pesticides are being used. In the past the industry has also seen some very nasty disputes over labor issues and attempts at unionizing. Currently there are some farms that have greatly improved conditions for workers offering decent wages, and daycare, but many other farms still have a very long way to go.

Now partnerships with European markets may help improve the situation. In order to sell in European markets, Colombian flowers would have to meet UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). Complying with ETI includes freely chosen employment (no prison labor), freedom of association and respecting collective bargaining, safe and hygienic working conditions, the absence of child labor, living wages, reasonable working hours, the absence of discrimination, having regular employment, as well as no tolerance for harsh or inhumane treatment (read their full code here).

It would be great if the other large consumer of cut flowers would also set up to the plate and help improve conditions in this industry that brighten our days, while exploiting so many others.

You can read the BBC article about Kenya here, Colombia here. You can read another article on the situation in Kenya from the Washington Post here.

Image from AP Photo/Bernat Armangue.

The European Digital Library project has been working since September 2006 on creating a portal to gather digital collection from National Libraries around Europe, including Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Sweden. Europeana, as the site has been named, will be part of the European Library providing access to a multitude of digital objects from across Europe.

Currently Europeana is in beta form, and is being demoed to gather input on how to make if as effective as possible before release. The site aims at offering users the possibility of searching content in a multitude of languages and will allow comparisons of related material across different countries.

Hosting for the site will be done by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands. Europeana aims for a November 2008 release, hosting about 2 million items including book, photographs, maps, audio files, and archival records from libraries, archives, and museums throughout Europe.

You can read the press release for Europeana here. You can view the site demo here.

Image from Europeana.eu

Yesterday The Harvard Crimson published an Op-Ed by Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library, who has set the groundwork to create an Office for Scholarly Communication which will manage an open access repository hosting the works of Harvard’s faculty of arts and science (FAS). This project will be established to make these publications available to the entire world, and not just those who can afford the expensive journals in which they are often published. Articles will be available through the university’s OPAC Hollis.

The project’s goal is two fold. First it aims at sharing Harvard’s wealth of information, and second it hopes to make a statement against the high prices of many academic journals. Darnton has only recently taken on the job of university librarian, but promises large moves towards accessibility and openness. Actually this effort to make all faculty publications freely accessible comes on the heels of other projects at Harvard making more and more of their collections available to everyone. Currently the university participates in the Harvard-Google project which will make monographs in the public domain actually available to the public. Their Open Collection Program is working hard to digitize many of the treasures housed at their various libraries and making them available to everyone.

This new initiative to make faculty’s publications available to the world for free establishes an automatic “op-in” stance, requiring faculty who don’t want to participate to fill out a waiver. In terms of copyright, the project would make faculty share copyright with the university library which would allow the library to publish the material, but it would still allow faculty to publish their work in other venues which allow for non-exclusive copyright. This set up should not hinder or devaluate publications by faculty members, and Darnton explains that for those participating in the project, they will benefit from having the full weight of the institution behind them.

You can read the Op-Ed in the Harvard Crimson here, or an article on the subject from Library Journal here.

05.21.08 - The Harvard Law School has also joined this initiative, making them the first law school to adopts such a commitment towards open access. You can read more about this here.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has recently published Information Economy Report 2007-2008 which notes that the digital divide is still very much an issue that must be addressed. The report explains that while digital penetration is growing daily through the world, most developing countries are still far behind (with the few exceptions of countries like Korea and Singapore).

The report notes that in terms of information communication technologies, mobile phones are opening new pathways for people around the world to communicate and access information, and are in many occasions frog leaping several steps in the communication development process. Countries with high rise in mobile phone penetrations are starting to experience a new form of commerce, “M-commerce”. People in countries such as Nepal and Ghana are using mobile phones to buy and sell products, as well as keeping in touch. This same report illustrated their point by commenting on results seen in Thailand. The study showed that a 10% increase in computer literary will produce a 3.5% in productivity increase.

In terms of internet penetrations, most developing countries are also still far behind, with internet access being prohibitively expensive, even when it is available. Still the silver lining is that just a few years ago the developed world had ten times more access to internet, and now the disparity is only of 6 times the amount. I guess this is an improvements, but the situation is still highly unequal.

And while a discussion on access is very important we also still need to have a discussion on related policy issues that should ensure equal access, plus security for users.

A couple of days ago the BBC had an article about this issue. You can read it here. For more visual information on this issues check out the for the Internet User Stats showing a variety of graphs on internet penetration, growth, and usage divided by geographical regions.

Graphs from ITU Free Statistics.

This morning on NPRs Morning Edition I heard a fascinating story about schools in Tucson that are trying to address both the high rates of Latino student dropout from school, and the lack of bilingual interpreters in the city. The school is beginning to harness these children’s language skills by training them to be simultaneous interpreters in the hopes that this will provide the children with enough incentive to stay in school, allow them to have a good job upon graduation and supply enough interpreters to meet the city’s demand.

Some of the children interviewed for the show commented that they have been working as interpreters from a very young age, since many have family members who need help communicating.

How refreshing to see programs encouraging children to be multilingual and multicultural. This type of program is the perfect example of how all of us can greatly benefit by encouraging the assets that each cultural group brings with it. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend that helps these students achieve in any field, not just as interpreters.

You can listen to the program here.