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It's all there 

Linus Pauling Research Notebooks

As with many scientists, Linus Pauling utilized bound notebooks to keep track of the details of his research as it unfolded. A testament to the remarkable length and diversity of Dr. Pauling's career, the Pauling Papers holdings include forty-six research notebooks spanning the years of 1922 to 1994 and covering any number of the scientific fields in which Dr. Pauling involved himself. In this regard, the notebooks contain many of Pauling's laboratory calculations and experimental data, as well as scientific conclusions, ideas for further research and numerous autobiographical musings. [read the notebooks]

Read any good e-books lately? 

Though the dot-com boom is over, e-book sales still on the rise

The theme at this year's annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers seems left over from the dot-com boom: ``Protecting Intellectual Property in the Digital Age.''

The recent shutdown of electronic imprints at Random House and AOL Time Warner Inc. makes e-books look like a dying fashion. Between the slow economy and the events of Sept. 11, publishers apparently had higher priorities than worrying about hackers and electronic copyrights.

The e-market continues to expand nevertheless. While annual numbers for individual publishers remain small -- in the tens of thousands of copies sold -- Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press, HarperCollins and others report double-digit growth over the past year. [read more]

Read any good websites lately? 

The Literary Web: Web sites featuring the word are thriving

In the fickle world of the Web, it's nice to know there are sites that are resistant to shifts in fashion and economy. Literary Web sites, for example, traffic in a form that moves at a less frenetic pace than other online media does. Communities of writers, especially those poets, spoken-word artists and experimental-prose writers whose works rarely make it to the shelves at Barnes and Noble, or even into the farther reaches of Amazon.com's warehouses, have made effective and enduring use of literary webzines -- and they may barely have noticed the fallout of the technology crash.

For a publishing cottage industry of small, independent presses and copy-machine poetry rags that, in pre-Internet days, were by necessity limited to three-figure circulation, the advent of the Web has made the prospect of distributing new, difficult, highbrow or edgy pieces of writing cheap and globally accessible. As one poet jests, "When those poems go live, everybody and their mother will be reading them." [read more]

Bad idea 

Senators talk tough on digital piracy

At a hearing over a proposed bill that could require security technology on computers and other digital devices, the Senate Commerce Committee chairman gave technology and media companies a deadline for working out their differences.

Hollings gave media and technology companies 12 to 18 months to come up with their own solution before federal agencies set a standard, according to Reuters.

"Almost no legal high-quality content (is) available on the Internet" because companies can't agree on one open standard for providing anti-copying features, Hollings, a Democrat from South Carolina, said in his statement to the committee.

Hollings and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, are co-sponsoring a bill that could require computer and device makers to install a government-approved anti-copying technology intended to thwart piracy of digital works.

The proposed Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) would prohibit people from removing or altering such technology. The bill would also make it illegal for someone to make a copyrighted work publicly available after its protections have been removed or altered. [read more]