Now, access online files on Kipling’s time in India

London: Some of the rarest documents surrounding the life of Rudyard Kipling in India have now become public. The documents that were made available by the British Library include Kipling’s baptism record, grant of Probate for his widow, Caroline, reports on lectures given by Kipling on India, and anecdotes of Kipling’s life in India.

 

Since 1982, the library has been custodian of the 14km of archives of the East India Company and India Office comprising the records created or received in London initially to support commercial activities and later as part of the process of governing the British Empire in India.

 

These are a part of the 2.5 million India Office records that have now been made available online for the first time. These easily searchable records cover over 200 years, from 1698 to 1947, and chronicle the lives of Europeans here.

 

Recently, it was confirmed that Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’ that introduced Mowgli, Sher Khan and Bageera to the world may not have been purely from the India-born author’s imagination. In a handwritten letter by Kipling, he hints at having “stolen” some of the ideas from other works.

 

Source | Time of India | 3 February 2014

 

Coming, e books that feel, smell like real books

For those who love soaking in smell of paper while reading their favourite book, here comes a breaking news. Scientists in China are in the process of developing a metal ink - made of small sheets of copper - that can be used to write a functioning, flexible electric circuit on regular printer paper, said a study published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

The conductive ink could pave the way for a wide range of new bendable gadgets - such as electronic books that look, feel and smell like traditional paperbacks - said the study that appeared in the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces. To have a versatile conductive ink, researchers tried copper nanosheets, which are inexpensive and highly conductive.

They made copper nanosheets coated with silver nanoparticles in the lab and incorporated this material into an ink pen, using it to draw patterns of lines, words and even flowers on regular printer paper.

To show that the ink could conduct electricity, the scientists studded the drawings with small LED lights that lit up when the circuit was connected to a battery. To test the ink's flexibility, they folded the papers 1,000 times, even crumpling them up, and showed that the ink maintained 80 to 90 percent of its conductivity, added the research funding by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

This story has not been edited by First post staff and is generated by auto-feed.

SOURCE: http://www.firstpost.com/fwire/coming-ebooks-that-feel-smell-like-real-books-1332303.html

Website by a Student

Student's Website for Author and Readers

Online Library

Norway Decided to Digitize All the Norwegian Books

The National Library of Norway is planning to digitize all the books by the mid 2020s. 

Yes. All. The. Books. In Norwegian, at least. Hundreds of thousands of them. Every book in the library's holdings.

By law, "all published content, in all media, [must] be deposited with the National Library of Norway," so when the library is finished scanning, the entire record of a people's language and literature will be machine-readable and sitting in whatever we call the cloud in 15 years. 

If you happen to be in Norway, as measured by your IP address, you will be able to access all 20th-century works, even those still under copyright. Non-copyrighted works from all time periods will be available for download. 

Here in the States, we are struggling to make even a small percentage of English-language works accessible to the citizens of our fine country, despite the efforts of groups like the Digital Public Library of America, Hathi Trust, and (I dare say)Google. 

Which means that we are not ready for the apocalypse. But the Norwegians, that's a people preparing for the deep future. Now they are home to the Svalbard Seed Vault and they will have all the books stored away. 

Imagine digital archaeologists coming across the remains of early 21st century civilization in an old data center on the warming tundra. They look around, find some scraps of Buzzfeed and The Atlantic, maybe some Encyclopaedia Britannicas, and then, gleaming in the data: a complete set of Norwegian literature. 

Suddenly, the Norwegians become to 27th-century humans what the Greeks were to the Renaissance. Everyone names the children of the space colonies Per and Henrik, Amalie and Sigrid. The capital of our new home planet will be christened Oslo.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/norway-decided-to-digitize-all-the-norwegian-books/282008/

Source: http://io9.com/norway-is-digitizing-its-whole-library-1481064343

Food for Fine

More and more libraries are allowing patrons to pay their fines by donating food.

Here's a solution to hunger that's long overdue. More and more libraries are allowing patrons to pay their fines by donating food.

The South Burlington library in Vermont is knocking $2 off late fees for every canned good readers deliver for a food drive, ABC 22 reports.

"People don't like paying library fines but they are more than happy to donate to a good cause," Library Director Louise Murphy told the station in the segment above.

But the annual program isn't so, ahem, novel. Libraries in Park City, Utah,Clearwater, Fla., and other cities across the country host similar "Food For Fines" benefits.

And their numbers seem to be increasing.

Patty Sherbondy, director of the Warren Public Library in Pennsylvania, calls the strategy a win-win.

"Donating food items is a great way for library users to take care of their overdue fines and help their neighbors," she told the Times Observer.

You might say it's a fine way to help.

 Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/library-food-fines-donate-food-canned-goods_n_4324389.html?utm_hp_ref=impact

Unique Libraries

1.Contemporary Library Installation

2.Weapons of Mass Instruction Mobile Library

3.QueenMary’sDollhouse Library





5. The Tree House Gallery Library  





5.Ecological Children’s Activity and Education Center

Source: http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/10-treehouse-dollhouse-and-other-truly-unique-libraries-part-i/

Why Libraries are Important

Why Libraries are Important

The digital age will wipe public bookshelves clean, and permanently end the centuries-old era of libraries. As libraries' relevance comes into question, librarians face an existential crisis at a time when students need them the most. Despite their perceived obsolescence in the digital age, both libraries and librarians are irreplaceable for many reasons. Nearly twenty reasons, in fact. We've listed them here:

1. Everything is Not Available on the Internet: The amazing amount of useful information on the web has, for some, engendered the false assumption everything can be found online. It's simply not true.

Google Books recognizes this. That's why they take on the monolith task of digitizing millions of books from the world's largest libraries. But even if Google does successfully digitize the sum of human knowledge, it is unlikely that the sum of contemporary authors and publishers will not allow their works to be freely accessible over the internet. It is already prohibited by law to make copyrighted books fully accessible through Google Book search.

2. Digital Libraries are not the Internet: A fundamental understanding of what the internet is and isn't can help clearly define the role of a library, and why libraries are still extremely important. Online library collections, however, are different. They typically include materials that have been published via rigorous editorial processes and are riddled with quantitative anaysis, instead of opinion.Types of materials include books, journals, documents, newspapers, magazines and reports which are digitized, stored and indexed through a limited-access database.

While one might use the internet or a search engine to find these databases, deeper access to them requires registration. You are still online, but you are no longer on the internet. You are in a library.

3. The Internet isn't Free: Numerous academic research papers, journals, and other important materials are virtually inaccessible to someone seeking to pull them off the web for free. Rather, access is restricted to expensive subscription accounts, which are typically paid for by college libraries. Visiting a college library in person or logging in to the library through your school account, is therefore the only way to affordably access necessary archived resources.

4. The Internet Compliments Libraries, but Doesn't Replace Them: The internet is clearly a great resource to finding information, but it's not a replacement for a library. There are clear advantages of libraries over the internet for research, however the benefits of the internet, includes "sampling public opinion", gathering "quick facts" and  pooling a wide range of ideas. Overall, the point is this: libraries are completely different than the web. In this light, to talk about one replacing the other begins to seem absurd.

5. School Libraries and Librarians Improve Student Test Scores: A 2005 study of the Illinois School Libraries shows that students who frequently visit well-stocked and well-staffed school libraries end up with higher ACT scores and perform better on reading and writing exams. Interestingly, the study points out that access digital technology plays a strong role in test results, noting that "high schools with computers that connect to library catalogs and databases average 6.2 percent improvement on ACT scores".

6. Libraries Aren't Just Books: Technology is integrating itself into the library system, not bulldozing it. Pushing this trend to its logical extreme (although it's likely not to happen), we could eventually see libraries' entire stacks relegated to databases, and have books only accessible digitally. So where does that leave librarians? Are they being overtaken by technology, the timeless enemy of labor?

Technology is integrating itself into the library system, not bulldozing it. Pushing this trend to its logical extreme (although it's likely not go this far), we could eventually see libraries' entire stacks relegated to databases, and only be able to access books digitally.

7. Mobile Devices are not the End of Books or Libraries: Predictions of the "end of the book" are a predictable response to digitization and other technologies, and the crystal ball of some in the pro-paper crowd seems to also reveal a concomitant crumbling of civilization. One of the latest dark threats to paper is e-books downloadable to mobile devices.

But e-books are not an all-consuming transition for readers. Radio lives on despite TV, film is still in high demand despite video, people still talk on the telephone despite email. People who like paper books will continue to read paper books even if mobile downloads prompt the majority of publishers to release e-books instead of paper. After all, an immense backlog of printed books will still be accessible to readers. The presence of the digital library will continue to be extremely important role for college students in their research, whether it's paper or electronically based.

8. Library Attendance isn't Falling, it's Just More Virtual: With approximately 50,000 visitors a year, attendance at the American History Archives at Wisconsin Historical Society has dropped 40% since 1987. This statistic, when set alone, may prove sufficient for anybody casually predicting the Collapse of the Library. But it is only half the story. The archives have also been digitized and placed online. Every year the library receives 85,000 unique online visitors. The number of schools offering online degrees is constantly on the rise as well. Many of these schools are improving their virtual libraries by the day.

9. Physical Libraries are Adapting to Cultural Change: Anyone subscribing to the theories of 20th Century thinker Marshal McLuhan might say that along with changed life patterns brought on by electronic technology, knowledge that was once encased in books and compartmentalized by subject area is now being liberally disseminated in an explosion of democracy, rendering obsolete the austerity of the lonely, echoing corridors of the Library. Interestingly McLuhan, who died in 1980, once even said: "the future of the book is the blurb".

Indeed, this cultural change predates widespread use of the internet. For decades society has been seeking a more holistic understanding of the world, and increased access to information. The search for new methods of organizing educational structures (including libraries) has long been active. And while libraries might not be on many peoples' "top ten cutting edge list", they have been adapting. 

Washington State University director of libraries Virginia Steel, for example, is a proponent of maximizing the social and interactive nature of physical library space. Group study, art exhibits, food and coffee talking, not whispering; this is the new library. It's not obsolete, it's just changing.

10. Eliminating Libraries would Cut Short an Important Process of Cultural Evolution: The library that we are most familiar with today a public or academic institution that lends out books for free is a product of the democratization of knowledge. In the old days, books weren't always so affordable, and private libraries, or book clubs, were a privilege of the rich. This started changing during the 1800's, with more public libraries popping up as a result of government initiatives.

Libraries began blossoming under the watch of President Franklin Roosevelt, in part as a tool to differentiate the United States from book-burning Nazis. This increased interest in building a more perfect, liberal society culminated in 1956 with the Library Services Act, which introduced federal funding for the first time.Today there are tens of thousands public libraries in the United States.

The notion that libraries are a thing of the past and that humankind has sprouted wings and flown into a new era of self-guided. Unfortunately, it's this same notion that could lead to the notion of libraries as stuffy and out-of-date. In reality, the quality of the web depends on guidance from the library model. While moderators do have brush to clear in the new and savage cyber-scape, librarians have trail blazed significant parts of the journey.

11. Wisdom of Crowds is Untrustworthy, Because of the Tipping Point: The high visibility of certain viewpoints, analysis and even facts found online through social networking sites and wikis is engineered ideally to be the result of objective group consensus. Google's algorithm also hinges on this collective principle: rather than an in-house "expert" arbitrarily deciding what resource is the most authoritative, let the web decide. Sites with higher link popularity tend to rank higher in the search engines. The algorithm is based on the principle that group consensus reveals a better, more accurate analysis of reality than a single expert ever could. Writer James Surowiecki calls this phenomenon "the wisdom of crowds."

In a vacuum, crowds probably are very wise. But all too often we see the caveat to James Surowiecki's crowd wisdom in Malcom Gladwell's "tipping point", which, in this context, explains that groups are easily influenced by their vanguard those who are the first to do something and who automatically have extra influence, even if what they are doing is not necessarily the best idea.

The highly social nature of the web therefore makes it highly susceptible to, for example, sensationalized, low-quality information with the sole merit of being popular. Libraries, in contrast, provide quality control in the form of a stopgap. Only information that is carefully vetted is allowed in. Libraries are likely to stay separate from the internet, even if they can be found online. Therefore, it is extremely important that libraries remain alive and well, as a counterpoint to the fragile populism of the web.

12. Librarians are the Irreplaceable Counterparts to Web Moderators: Individuals who voluntarily devote their time to moderating online forums and wikis are playing a similar role to librarians who oversee the stacks and those who visit the stacks, minus the Master's degree in library sciences. The chief difference between librarians and moderators is that while the former guides users through a collection of highly authoritative, published works, the moderator is responsible for taking the helm as consensus is created. While the roles are distinct, each is evolving along with the fast paced growth of the internet and the evolving nature of libraries. Both moderators and librarians will have a lot to learn from each other, so it is important that they both stick around.

13. Unlike Moderators, Librarians must Straddle the Line between Libraries and the Internet: Admittedly, libraries are no longer both the beginning and ending point of all scholarly research. The internet is effectively pulling students away from the stacks and revealing a wealth of information, especially to one who is equipped with the tools to find it. Indeed, the dream of cutting out the middleman is possible to attain. But at what price?

Media literacy, although an extremely important asset for scholars and researchers, is far from universal. Who is going to teach media literacy? Many argue that librarians are the best fit to educate people about the web. After all, web moderators are concerned primarily with the environment which they oversee and less so with teaching web skills to strangers. Teachers and professors are busy with their subjects and specializations. Librarians, therefore, must be the ones who cross over into the internet to make information more easily accessible. Instead of eliminating the need for librarians, technology is reinforcing their validity.

14. Library Collections Employ a Well-formulated Citation System: Books and journals found in libraries will have been published under rigorous guidelines of citation and accuracy and are thereby allowed into libraries' collections. These standards are simply not imposed on websites.They can show up in search results whether or not they provide citation. With enough research, the accuracy of web resources often can be determined. But it's very time consuming. Libraries make research much more efficient.

15. Libraries can Preserve the Book Experience: Consuming 900 pages on the intellectual history of Russia is an experience unique to the book. In general, the book provides a focused, yet comprehensive study that summarizes years of research by an author or team of authors who have devoted their academic to a particular subject area.

But, even when the internet does provide actual content, the information is often snack-sized or the overall experience cursory a sort of quick-reference browsing. Knowledge can be found, but the experience of delving into a book for hundreds of pages just doesn't happen online. The preservation of stacks, therefore, will help preserve access to this approach to learning and the more traditional form of scholarship can continue alongside the new.

16. Libraries are Helpful for News Archives: Libraries continue to subscribe to and stock a vast list of newspapers, academic journals, and trade publications, and archive the back issues. This effort may seem humble alongside the lengthy lists of online news aggregators and instantaneous access to articles published within the minute. 

This news cataloging can provide a number of advantages. For starters, many publications continue to exist offline. For someone seeking a specific article by a specific journalist, a library could yield better results even if the publication had to be tracked down through inter-library loan.

Libraries often provide freely accessible issues of major periodicals that would otherwise require online subscription, like many sections of The New York Times. In addition, archives often disappear offline, or become increasingly expensive online. This can leave libraries with the only accessible copies.

Society is not ready to abandon the library, and it probably won't ever be. Libraries can adapt to social and technological changes, but they can't be replaced. While libraries are distinct from the internet, librarians are the most suited professionals to guide scholars and citizens toward a better understanding of how to find valuable information online. Indeed, a lot of information is online. But a lot is still on paper. Instead of regarding libraries as obsolete, state and federal governments should increase funding for improved staffing and technology. Rather than lope blindly through the digital age, guided only by the corporate interests of web economics, society should foster a culture of guides and guideposts. Today, more than ever, libraries and librarians are extremely important for the preservation and improvement of our culture.

Source: http://www.collegeonline.org/library/adult-continued-education/librarians-needed.html

Find rare second- hand books at city's first Crowdsourced Library

For details visit- http://www.crowdsourcedlibrary.com/index.html

Education – a necessary tool for national progress and social change: President

The President has said there should not be any confrontation between the environment considerations and development requirements.

Inaugurating the National Day Education celebration and Jawaharlal Nehru National Science, Mathematics and Environment Exhibition (JNNSMEE) 2013, at Gangtok, Sikkim, the President, Pranab Mukherjee said that it is high time that we redefine the concept of development in a wider prospective and try to find innovative ways on scientific knowledge and mathematical understanding to tackle them.

Paying rich tribute to the first Education Minister of the country, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the President described him as a great visionary, freedom fighter, scholar and eminent educationist. He said it was Maulana Azad who had woven the fabric of a secular, liberal, modern and universal education system. Calling for promotion of innovation, he said it will be the determining factor of growth in the future. In a world marked by resource constraints growth will increasingly depend on technology upgradation.

It is the innovation in Science and Technology which can lead to development of new products and processes which could act as a catalyst for growth. Describing education as a necessary tool for national progress, human empowerment and social change the President said the changes made in the education system including Right to education, implementation of Sarva Shiksha Abiyaan, Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abiyaan (RMSA) to strengthen the seconadry school system in the country and now launching of the Rashtriya Uttachar Shiksha Abiyaan (RUSA) will have far reaching positive implications.

Speaking on the occasion, MoS HRD Dr. Shashi Tharoor also paid tribute to Maulana Azad. He said that the modern secular education in the post independent India is a product of his initiative and vision.

The Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling said that the state has made a rapid stride in the field of education. The literacy rate in the state has jumped from 56 per cent in 1984 to 82 per cent till last year. Efforts are being made by the state government to up lift the standard in higher education and it also proposes to provide best possible facilities in the higher education sector.

The National Education Day is celebrated on the birth anniversary of Maulana Azad.

Source: http://www.indiaeducationreview.com/news/education-%E2%80%93-necessary-tool-national-progress-and-social-change-says-president/13582

BookMooch: Give books Away. Get Books you want

BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books.

BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for
books you really want.

*  Give & receive: Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point
and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you've
read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for
someone else, as you wish.

*  No cost: there is no cost to join or use this web site: your only
cost is mailing your books to others.

*  Points for entering books: you receive a tenth-of-a-point for every
book you type into our system, and one point each time you give a book
away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least
one book for every two you receive.

*  Help charities: you can also give your points to charities we work
with, such as children's hospitals (so a sick kid can get a free book
delivered to their bed), Library fund, African literacy, or to us to
thank us for running this web site <grin>.

*  World wide: You can request books from other countries, in other
languages. You receive 3 points when you send a book out of your
country, to help compensate you for the greater mailing cost, and it
costs the moocher 3 points to get the book. John Buckman, who runs
BookMooch, has lived in California, England, France and Germany, and was
frustrated by the vast number of books that were printed in just one
country and not available in the other countries (for example, many
books are published in Britain and never made available in America).

*  Wishlist: you can keep a "book wish list" that will automatically
arrive to you when you have the points and/or the book becomes available
in our catalog.

*  Feedback score: each time you receive a book, you can leave feedback
with the sender, just like how eBay does it. If you keep your feedback
score up, people are most likely to help you out when you ask for a
book.

*  How we pay our bills: We tap into Amazon's book database, and if you
follow an Amazon link from our web site, we receive a commission from
Amazon if you buy that book instead of getting it free from BookMooch.

*  Why "Mooch"?: dictionary.co.uk defines "mooch" as: "to obtain
something without paying for it, or to borrow something without
intending to return it" as in "You're old enough to get a job and stop
mooching off your family." And so, the word fits this project: BookMooch
is a way to get books without paying, and without any intention of
returning the book. This is the American definition of "mooch" and one
of two British definitions. The other British definition is "to walk or
act slowly and without much purpose" as in "Stop mooching about in your
room and do something useful!" which isn't an entirely appropriate
definition for this web site, but it is funny so we'll just live with
it.

*  Why create this?: if you're passionate about books, you know how
emotionally difficult it is to throw a book away, even if you will never
read it again. You want to find a good home for your books, have them
find someone who appreciates them. Also, you may be interested in trying
a lot of books out, and keep the ones that are great. It's a great crime
to have a book disappear, out of print, for none to read. BookMooch
keeps books in circulation, and finds new readers for them. If you're
not interested in getting free books, you can donate to charities, the
points you gain by giving your books away.

*  Who are we? BookMooch is conceived, designed, written and
administered by John Buckman.


For more details: http://bookmooch.com

Banaras Hindu University- Library

Google will put 100 Indian monuments online

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and Google have partnered to map and create 360-degree virtual views of 100monuments in India. Once the data has been collected, it will be put online, allowing web users to get a virtual tour of a monument. Almost all major monuments, including the Taj Mahal, are part of the list.

Google says that it has already photographed and mapped Qutub Minar. The virtual tour for this monument will be soon available to web users. Humayun's Tomb will be mapped next. The company says that creating 360-degree imagery of a monument takes around 7 to 10 days.

Google is using a special tool called Street View Trekker to film the monuments. This is a camera mounted on a backpack. A traveller can wear the Trekker and go into places where Google's Street View cars cannot. Using this tool the company has brought several tourists attractions, including Grand Canyon and Palace of Versailles, online.

In India, the project to film 100 monuments is an extension of Google's earlier project for which the company collaborated with museums in the country and filmed famous paintings housed in them to make them accessible to web users.

"India's historical and archaeological sites are an important part of world's knowledge and through this partnership we hope to engage more people, both around the world and here in India, in discovering and learning about our country's rich cultural history," said the union minister of culture Chandresh Kumari Katoch at an event in Delhi.

Google said that once it has collected the data to create virtual tour of a monument, it will be put online at Google Maps as well as on the World Wonders Site, which is part of Google Cultural Institute.

Rajan Anandan, vice president and managing director at Google India, said, "The company was honoured to be working with the ASI to make Indian heritage sites available to the world to experience online."

Pravin Srivastava, director general of ASI said that the project would not only make monuments more accessible but would also "digitally preserve India's heritage for future generations".

Though the project carries Street View tag, this is a not a part of Google's Street View service. In 2011, the company started filming Indian roads in Bangalore to put them online but had to stop after cops objected. At that time Google said it had necessary clearance to film Indian streets and was talking to Bangalore cops to resolve their concerns.

But two years later, Google is yet to get permission to film Indian roads, the way it has done in most of the developed countries.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/internet/Google-will-put-100-Indian-monuments-online/articleshow/23457218.cms

The Life of a Newspaper

This is the last time you will be reading The International Herald Tribune; as of tomorrow, it is The International New York Times. But weep not:

This is not the first name change for what was popularly known in its early years as the ‘‘Paris Herald,’’ and if the genealogy of a news paper is reflected in its name (the original parent, The New York Herald, at one point the most profitable and popular paper in all the United States, ended its days as The New York World Journal Tribune), the DNA of a great paper is defined by evolution of the complex and intimate interplay of reader and editor, owner and technology.

And that is best discovered in the figurative basement of the paper, in those stacks of brown, brittle copies of old newspapers that trace the ever-changing interests, dramas, world views and pleasures   —  all that we call ‘‘news.’’

Mining these vintage broadsheets is a pleasure that may be lost to future generations if the ‘‘paper’’ goes out of news papering.  The real gems buried in these stacks are not necessarily the ‘‘first rough drafts of history’’ that reporters like to claim as their product   — these are easier to access in footnotes and online   —  but rather the obscure little story on an inside page (‘‘Is London Hairdresser 

Really a German Spy?’’) alongside an ad for a forgotten product at a forgotten price (‘‘Take Carter’s Little Liver Pills … The stomach, liver and bowels will be cleansed of poison …’’) or the society news from a time when everybody knew who everybody was (‘‘Mr. Irving Marks, an American resident of Paris, has moved from the George V to  the Plaza Athénée, where he plans to remain indefinitely’’). 

Many a brief item leaves us craving for more: An 1897 dispatch from Kronstadt, the port of St. Petersburg,  describes the arrival of President Félix Faure of France: ‘‘Ladies faint and utter strangers embrace affectionately.’’ Why?  

The paper of Feb. 20, 1898, described how it took 12 Parisian policemen aided by two victims to get two muggers to the station house. Even then, one of the suspects would have escaped ‘‘had it not been for the appearance of a gigantic policeman, who goes by the name of Napoleon and who is kept on the premises specially to overpower disorderly prisoners.’’

This was the daily cafe fare of the gilded generation of ‘‘An American in Paris,’’ of the Lost Generation (‘‘America is my country and Paris is my hometown,’’  Gertrude Stein declared), of doughboys and tourists. The Paris Herald flourished at a time when the goings-on at England’s Downton Abbeys were still news even as a new social era was fast rising: A cartoon I found from 1896 shows two women resting in front of their modern bicycles. Bell: ‘‘Why did old novels all end with ‘And they lived happily for ever after?’’’ Nell: ‘‘Because the New Woman was not known then.’’

The paper evolved with the times. The European edition founded in 1887 by the wild and wealthy owner of The New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett Jr., for his fellow American expatriates in Paris spread first to London (‘‘In order to ensure an extremely rapid delivery of the New York Herald in London, the airplanes of the Air Union Company carry it over every morning’’   —  1932), then across Europe, and finally to Asia. 

Its names and owners changed from time to time   —  it became the European Edition of The New York Herald Tribune in 1924; then, in 1967, The International Herald Tribune, under the joint ownership of The Herald Tribune, The New York Times and The Washington Post. This troika was reduced in 1991 to The Washington Post and The New York Times and then in 2003 to only The Times. And thus, as of tomorrow, it will be The International New York Times.

Whatever the name, the connection between the paper and its audience has long been clear. Already in 1911, an art magazine of the time called Lotus noted, ‘‘As all American travelers in Europe know, or should know, the ‘N.Y. Herald’ publishes in Paris a European edition that usually is spoken of as ‘The Paris Herald.’’’ (The Herald had reported a claim by the Prado Museum in Madrid that its ‘‘Mona Lisa’’ was the real one, not the Louvre’s.) And by its 100th anniversary   —  a birthday marked by a memorable feast at the Trocadéro, with the Eiffel Tower across the Seine recruited as a spectacular birthday candle   —  the Trib, aka the IHT, had become ‘‘the first global newspaper,’’ the trusted daily fare of Americans and other English-speaking travelers, businesspeople, diplomats, expatriates and journalists across Europe and Asia.   

I became a regular user, and contributor, when I went abroad as a foreign correspondent 35 years ago. In my years as a New York Times correspondent in the Soviet Union, we would get the Trib in stacks, the freshest never less than four days old. But we would still devour them all   —  not so much for the news, which by then we’d learned, but   —  as with those musty stacks of Gilded Age and Jazz Age Paris Heralds   —  for a taste of the life in the world out there. 

Of course, a lot of people will lament the latest name change, just as they do any change. Among the letters to the editor I read in the papers of yore, one railed against ‘‘the loud-speaker radio’’ and the ‘‘croaking and screeching of unseen tenors and sopranos’’ filling Parisian apartment houses; another ranted against central heating   —  ‘‘What can beat a good coal fire for comfort and health?’’ And newspapers, I have learned, are notoriously habit-forming   —  loyal readers resist any alteration of their daily fix. 

But even back in the day, lurking among those who lamented change were always a few who welcomed it. The paper itself devoted an entire page in 1896 to advising ladies how to ride a bicycle and what to wear (and eat   —  this was France) when cycling. In 1932, one James J. Montague submitted a poem (something we don’t see much any more, alas) addressed to an infant growing up in an era of rapid technological advances: ‘‘The progress of science foretells/ That when you grow up all your work will be done/ By photo-electrical cells.’’ 

The fact is that The Herald/IHT/INYT (will that be the next nickname?) was itself from its inception a child of revolutionary technological advances. According to the history of the paper by Charles L. Robertson, it was industrialization and the rapid development of steamship travel after 1850 that created a new class of wealthy, Atlantic-hopping Americans. And it was the trans-Atlantic telegraph cables, first laid in 1858, that made it possible to keep them in close touch with their country, their businesses and the world. Bennett, in fact, was instrumental in lowering the cost of trans-Atlantic communications   —  and thus making a European edition of his paper economically feasible   —  by partnering with another magnate to break the monopoly of Western Union in laying trans-Atlantic cables. 

The world has not ceased shrinking since. The first trans-Atlantic transmission by cable moved 98 words in 16 hours. Today, suppliers fight to shave milliseconds off the speed of transmission via fiber optic cables. But Mr. Montague’s prophecy of photo-electric everything, including eyes, has not come to pass, and it takes us as long to read those 98 words as it did in 1858. So long as that doesn’t change, we will still need trusted reporters and editors to sort out the vast waves of information sweeping this chaotic world of ours. We need those first rough drafts, the smart commentary, the impartial news, to function in these times. And we should hope that our grandchildren will delight in finding telling tidbits about our era when they find this newspaper in your attic. 

Source | http://www.nytimes.com