facility:the british library

Worlds of data in seven beautiful #visualisations
▻http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/british-library-beautiful-science

These visual feasts are being celebrated in a new exhibition at The British Library in London, which shows how learning to visualise data helped shape science and society.

In 1854, during an outbreak of cholera in central London, physician John Snow interviewed local residents to find out where people were sick, and then plotted the cases on a map of the area. He found a distinct cluster centred on a water pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). The schematic below prompted the local council to disable the pump, simply by removing its handle. The move helped to end the epidemic. Snow correctly concluded that cholera is waterborne and not caused by bad air, as most people believed at the time.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/images/makeanimpact/publichealth/broadstreet(source13)-large.jpg

Can public libraries sell or capture the rights of the public? – Communs / Commons
►http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=3448&lang=en

The British Library has accepted to sell to Google something that it clearly does not own: the rights of today’s and tomorrow’s public to access and use our public domain digital heritage.

by the magic of words, the British Library acquires “all rights, title and interest in the Library Digital Copy”, immediately using this new property-like right to accept constraints defined by its contracting partner. This magic should not prevent the public and its representatives to make the British Library accountable for taking away the rights of all.

The public domain in the widest sense is not public property, it is no one’s property in which all have a stake.

Put a thousand books from the British Library on your #iPad
►http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/12/put-a-thousand-books-from-the-british-library-on-your-ipad-for-f

The British Library has released 1000 books from its 19th Century collection into a free iPad app that includes novels, historical works, poetry, philosophy and scientific books.
The books have been scanned in high resolution and color so you can see the engraved illustrations, the beauty of the embossed covers, along with #maps and even the #texture of the paper the books were printed on.

#ebooks #cartographie