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On-demand everything is really hot right now. As consumers, we've come to expect that endless catalogs of content will spring to our fingertips at our command. There's movies and TV (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, HBO Now) and streaming music (Spotify, Apple Music, Rdio). All we have to do is subscribe.

To coincide with the conference, ALA released its own National Policy Agenda for Libraries, developed by an advisory committee of major library organizations. The two major thrusts of the document, which provides a framework for advocacy, are around capacity building and advancing the public interest. Under the rubric of the first come the core areas of library impact (and outcome measurement): education and learning, employment and entrepreneurship, health and wellness, government information services (which includes providing access to the social safety net), heritage and history.

Last week I described a "hackathon" as the book world's equivalent of a sporting event...well, having attended the CODEX Hackathon organized by Plympton to coincide with the American Library Association annual conference in San Francisco this past weekend - I can tell you that was far from the truth. For starters, it is very quiet. If I were to try and belabor the analogy, I would say that is is probably like the LeMans 24-hour road race, albeit without the roar of engines

Booktrack (www.booktrack.com), an industry leading global technology company that enhances the eBook experience by adding movie-style soundtracks and ambient audio to eBooks, today announced that publishers and self-publishers are now able to sell their Booktrack titles through the site.  This is the latest enhancement to the innovative Booktrack platform, which has enabled the publishing of more than 12,000 titles in 30 different languages, and is an unparalleled opportunity for authors to expand their reach to the Booktrack reader base of more than two million users-a number that has doubled in size every quarter since launch.

Farewell, GigaOM: Tech News Powerhouse Shutting Down (Mashable) San Francisco-based tech blog GigaOm, a widely-respected name in the industry for nearly a decade, is shutting down for want of funding, according to its founder. *** How to Unplug Your Kids Despite Schools Pushing Tech with Common Core (MediaShift) The American Society of Pediatrics’ most recent […]

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