JPL Offers Digital Expo at West Bank Regional Library to Explain the Librarys Vast Digital Collection

The Jefferson Parish Library presents its first Digital Expo at 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at the West Bank Regional Library, 2751 Manhattan Blvd., Harvey.

The Digital Expo is designed to explain how to enjoy the librarys free digital content. Digital content is a growing, internet-based multimedia collection of items that complement the librarys physical collection. Content includes eBooks, audiobooks, music, movies, magazines and comics delivered directly to a patrons device smartphones, laptops, smart TVs, tablets, etc. With free apps, patrons can take the library with them wherever they go.

JPL library staff members, experts from the library IT department and representatives from digital content companies will be on site to teach patrons about the digital collection and help solve any technical issues. Patrons are encouraged to bring their mobile devices. All of the following resources are free to library card holders.

The digital collection includes:

eBooks:Cloud Library, Hoopla, and Libby by Overdrive. Patrons can choose from thousands of eBooks, including popular and best-selling titles for all ages.

Audiobooks: Hoopla, Libby by Overdrive, and RB Digital Books. With a variety of mobile apps, patrons can download an audiobook to a favorite device.

Magazines, comics and graphic novels: Flipster, Hoopla and RB Digital Magazines. Content is available for instant viewing on a digital device and items will return automatically.

Music: Freegal Music and Hoopla. Patrons can borrow and enjoy music immediately. Freegal allows access to more than 15 million songs, including Sony Musics catalog of legendary artists; Alexander Street has the most diverse catalog of music content in the world for students, scholars and patrons of the arts.

Movies and television: Hoopla and Kanopy. Hoopla offers classics, childrens films, Acorn TV, independent cinema, and more. Kanopy offers popular indie flicks, documentaries, foreign films and the critically acclaimed Criterion Collection.

Research and reference: Ancestry.com, AutoMate Car Repair, Consumer Health Complete, ConsumerReports.org, National Geographic Online, World Book Online Encyclopedia, and many others.

Adult learning: JobNow, VetNow, Lynda.com, Mango Languages, ReferenceUSA, and many more.

Resources for kids and teens: Homework LA from Tutor.com, Scholastic Go!, National Geographic Kids, Learning Express, and many more.

The librarys 3D printer also will be on display.

WRITING FOR CHILDREN: Author and educator Carol Allen will lead a seminar for writers about creating childrens books at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon Ave., Metairie.

Allen says that writing for children is serious business. Anybody who thinks writing a picture book is to just scribble down some lines and draw great illustrations is making a serious mistake, she says. There are rules for picture books, and there are serious points to address in your writing: point of view, voice, character, conflict.

JAZZ AND POP HARP: Erin Hill, a harpist and singer based in New York City and Louisville, Kentucky, is the featured performer at the sixth annual New Orleans Jazz and Pop Harp Weekend, performing concerts at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 31, and 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 West Napoleon Ave., Metairie.

The New Orleans Jazz and Pop Harp Weekend is a two-day retreat featuring free courses to members of the New Orleans Chapter of the American Harp Society, or to harp students and professionals who want to know more about playing jazz and pop music. A schedule of events can be found at the organizations website.

OLD METAIRIE WRITERS' GROUP:A fairly new edition to the library calendar,the Old Metairie Writers Group, meets at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30, at the Old Metairie Library, 2350 Metairie Road. The purpose of the group is to allow authors to have their work peer reviewed. All genres are welcome, including fiction, nonfiction, prose, poetry, screenplays, etc. It is open to all levels of writing.

HAIKU WORKSHOP: This monthly workshop gives a background and history of haiku, the Japanese form of poetry. It will include readings of some of the most famous examples, and participants read their own poems. It takes placeat 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 3, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon Ave., Metairie.

FOCUSING ON SUCCESS: Dr. Rick Landry speaks on Reprogramming Your Mind for Success, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon Ave., Metairie. All too often, we wonder why no matter how hard we try, cannot experience our desired outcomes, he says. Well uncover why we have delays experiencing what we want in life.

COMING UP ROSES: The New Orleans Old Garden Rose Society meets at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon Ave., Metairie. The nonprofit organization is dedicated to preserving and fostering Old Garden Roses.

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Learn what digital content the Jeff Library has to offer, and how to use it, at expo - NOLA.com

With information and entertainment a click away, you might think brick and mortar libraries have fallen victim to the digital age. If local and national statistics are any indication, youd be wrong.

A recently-released national Gallup poll shows more people visited a library in 2019 than a movie theater. Audiobooks and other digital materials were also checked out at a quick pace at the nations libraries last year.

None of this shocks Dearborn Heights City Libraries Director Michael McCaffery as we head into Februarys designation of National Library Lovers Month.

"Our activity and programming have continued to get a huge response from the public, McCaffery said. During a number of programs (at Caroline Kennedy Library), we have had to utilize overflow parking lots at City Hall. Some nights, all of our tables, lounge chairs and study rooms have been filled."

For many years, Dearborn Heights and Dearborn have enjoyed a reciprocal agreement which allows library card holders in both cities to enjoy the same privileges. With the continued renovations at Henry Ford Centennial Library, McCaffery said visits to Dearborn Heights libraries have been at a high level as the work continues.

Special programming this month includes an adults-only program that covers the world of wine from A to Z. Sommelier Jim Paron will explain the winemaking process, varieties of grapes, and offer wine samples. Also, in early February, Dearborn Heights patrons will have access to Hoopla, a multimedia streaming service that allows up to five print or digital items to be checked out.

Other events include a Valentines Day-themed bingo event, and presentations about climate change, estate planning, the Kentucky Derby, and railroading in Wayne County.

Anyone who wishes to learn more about the libraries can visit http://www.dhcl.michlibrary.org, or connect with them on their Facebook and Twitter social media accounts.

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Dearborn Heights libraries thrive in digital world | News - Dearborn Press and Guide

Colorado State Universitys year-long look back over 150 years of serving the land-grant mission would not be possible without the dedicated staff of the Librarys Digital and Archive Services.

Behind a secure door on the second floor of Morgan Library, the staff works diligently to collect, evaluate, organize, preserve and provide access to historical information about the University, and research materials about Colorado water and agriculture. From some of the earliest hand drawn construction plans for the original Camp Collins to preserving websites devoted to the legalization of cannabis, CSU library archive staff have found a place for everything most of it literally irreplaceable and are always in need of more space, both physical and digital.

Collections in the archives concentrate heavily on the agricultural, natural resources and water issues that have shaped the history of Colorado, but there are also special collections devoted to wildlife photography, materials from feminist presses in the 1970s, the craft brewing industry, and a searchable database of images from the Colorado International Invitational Poster Exhibition, the only one of its kind in North America.

The present-day University Archives owes its existence to two very happy accidents. First, when CSUs centennial was approaching in 1970, the administration thought it would be a great thing to write a history of the institution to mark the occasion and thats when James Hansen, then a newly hired professor of history, discovered there was no formal archives for the University. To write the history of the first hundred years Democracys College, which became the first of three volumes he began by gathering and organizing the materials he could find. From that effort, the University Archives was born.

The second fortunate event was the timing of a generous gift to the Archives in the 1990s. As the research project evolved and professional archivists took on the task of maintaining the collections, the materials outgrew their original space in the basement of the library. With donor support, space on the second floor of Morgan was remodeled to accommodate the Archives, and staff had just moved everything there two weeks before the devastating flood of 1997 inundated the first two floors of the building which remains one of the worse disasters in U.S. history to strike an academic library.

The staff of the Archives take their mission to ensure collections are available for present and future researchers to use very seriously. In the 21st century, that means using some of the latest technology to preserve items in danger of succumbing to the ravages of time, whether they are hand-written diaries from the early 1900s, footage on silver nitrate film that grows increasingly unstable with age, and now providing data preservation and archiving services to CSU faculty and researchers.

As part of the Universitys fundraising campaign, State Your Purpose, CSU Libraries established a fund to support digitization of films from the earliest days of the University that will also form the basis of a documentary celebrating the Universitys sesquicentennial; you can give to this fund at the Beyond a Billion website.

You can also support the ongoing needs of Digital and Archive Services at the general Library giving page.

To learn more about research data, digital archival collections, and rare treasures held by the Librarys Digital and Archive Services, contact Coordinator Mark Shelstad at mark.shelstad@colostate.edu.

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Preserving the past for the future: CSU Library Digital and Archive Services - Source

The Sherborn Library is at 3 Sanger St. (Sherborn Community Center) while the library is undergoing renovations. For information or to register, call 508-653-0770, or visit sherbornlibrary.org.

The Sherborn Library is at 3 Sanger St. (Sherborn Community Center) while the library is undergoing renovations. For information or to register, call 508-653-0770, or visit sherbornlibrary.org

Kids Programs

Storytime, Stay & Play, Friday, Jan. 31, 10:30 a.m.: We will share books, rhymes and songs that build language and motor skills. Followed by a simple craft. For children from birth to age 4.

Mollys Apothecary Spa Workshop for Kids, Thursday, Feb. 6, 4-5:30 p.m.: Make your own hand and body lotion and lip gloss in this fun workshop. This program is for kids from 7-17. Register online at sherbornlibrary.org.

Ed Morgan, Childrens Garden Music Concert, Friday, Feb. 7, 10:30 a.m.: Come to the library for a musical concert featuring musician Ed Morgan. Sing along and dance to traditional childrens songs with a twist. Recommended for children age 3-8.

Cookies and Coloring, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 3:30-4:30 p.m.: Stop by the library for a snack. We will have bookmarks and coloring sheets to decorate and color.

Adult Programs

Mah Jongg, Mondays: Join the librarys Mah Jongg Club. Our Mah Jongg players are welcoming and inclusive. Novices will receive very relaxed instruction from players who are happy to share their knowledge. The club meets on Mondays at noon or 1 p.m. your choice. Contact the library if you would like to participate, 508-653-0770.

Going to Extremes: A Travel Journalists Tour of the Globes Most Adventurous Places, Thursday, Feb. 4, 6:30 p.m.: An award-winning adventure travel journalist for the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, National Geographic Kids and the Providence Journal, Peter Mandel hunts his stories and photos in the worlds far corners, including Antarctica, India, Egypt, Patagonia, the fjords of Norway, the mountain pathways of Japan, and the deserts of Africa. The author of 10 books, he'll show slides of his most extreme travel experiences surviving a coup in Ecuador, visiting a city of penguins at the South Pole, fishing for piranha on Brazils Rio Negro, floating in the Goodyear Blimp, sailing on an Arctic icebreaker, camping in the African bush, and kayaking to the Statue of Liberty and talk about how adventure travel turns to prose in today's media. Register online at sherbornlibrary.org.

Spa Night, Thursday, Feb. 6, 6:30 p.m.: Join us for a fun, hands-on workshop with Mollys Apothecary. Well be creating our own lotions and bubbling bath soap. Learn a new skill and take home handcrafted items to show off your hard work. For ages 18+. Register online at sherbornlibrary.org.

Cookbook Club, Thursday, Feb. 13, 6:30 p.m.: Are you a food adventurer? If you love to try new recipes, try out our club. Each person selects a recipe from the same cookbook (the library will provide copies) and prepares it for the group. We meet, eat our creations, discuss our recipes and select the next cookbook. Involvement is flexible participate one month, skip a month. Its OK. To sign up, contact the library at 508-653-0770. Next cookbook: Indian(-ish) by Priya Krishna.

Genealogy Club, Wednesday, Feb. 19, 1 p.m.: Everyone is welcome to the librarys ongoing Genealogy Club. Periodic guest speakers and helpful group discussion. Newcomers to genealogy and experienced researchers share thoughts and suggestions. The club meets the third Wednesday of the month at 1 p.m.

The Friends of the Sherborn Library have generously funded this program. Event facilities have been provided by the Sherborn Community Center Foundation. The SCC is available for private functions.

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Programs at the Sherborn Library - MetroWest Daily News

FRANKFORT, Ky. - Kentucky public libraries set a new record for funding commitments from education rate (E-rate), a federal program that provides discounts on Internet, telecommunications, and networking equipment for schools and public libraries. For the July 2019 June 2020 funding year, Kentucky public libraries have a record commitment of $2,195,532 in E-rate funding to be disbursed as they are invoiced for eligible products and services, marking a record amount since the programs inception in 1998.

E-rate discounts provide critical budget relief to public libraries and allow them to spend local tax dollars on other services and programs in their communities. A librarys E-rate funding amount is determined by the areas poverty level.

The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA), an agency in the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, provides one-on-one consultations and extensive training in completing the required forms to help libraries meet deadlines and follow the program rules correctly because filing for the discounts can be a lengthy and difficult process.

The agency devotes considerable resources to E-rate assistance in recognition of its importance to library budgets and public services, said Terry Manuel, state librarian and commissioner for KDLA. To date, more than $18.7 million in E-rate discounts has been disbursed to Kentucky libraries, and 75 percent of public library branches now have fiber internet connections.

Each year, the majority of the states public libraries apply for E-rate discounts that make broadband service more affordable nationwide. They complete a competitive bidding process to drive down costs and request 20 percent to 90 percent discounts based on the percentage of students in the local district who qualify for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the designation of their library system as either rural or urban according to the U.S. Census.

On average, Kentucky public libraries receive an 80 percent to 90 percent discount on Internet, data transmission service, mobile hotspots for bookmobiles, and upgrades or maintenance for networking equipment such as routers, switches, and wireless access points.

Kentucky public libraries also set a new participation record with 47 libraries requesting discounts on networking equipment or maintenance for a 38 percent increase from the previous record set in 2017.

Manuel praised the efforts of Kentuckys E-rate libraries. Kentuckys public libraries continually seek improvements to their services, and E-rate discounts help them pay for faster internet and upgraded networking equipment to support online learning, workforce development, and videoconferencing.

This years fiber internet upgrade with E-rate discounts is going to help our customers immensely, said Robertson County Public Library Director Carol Mitchell. Many people in our community rely on our library for internet access. Our computers and Wi-Fi are used to search and apply for jobs, complete coursework, obtain medical information, and receive government information and services. Its crucial that we provide both reliable and high-speed access to information resources our customers need to fulfill their goals.

Telecommunications carriers providing international and interstate service and earning above certain revenue thresholds are mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make universal service contributions to fund the program. The funds come from the universal service charge on every phone and cellphone bill.

For more information on the E-rate program, visit https://www.usac.org/e-rate/. Kentucky public libraries may request filing assistance by contacting Lauren Abner at the KDLA at lauren.abner@ky.gov or 502-564-1728.

KDLA provides equitable access to quality library and information resources and services, as well as helps public agencies ensure that legislatively mandated documentation of government programs is created, efficiently maintained, and made accessible. For more information on KDLA resources, programs and services visit http://www.kdla.ky.gov or call 502-564-1753.

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Kentucky public libraries break E-rate record with more than $2.1 million in funding - Times Tribune of Corbin

A milestone two million ebooks and audiobooks were checked out through theMidwestCollaborativefor Library Services OverDrive group in 2019.

According to Forbes, the number of OverDrive digital checkouts rose by 20 percent since 2018. Last year, the top ebook title borrowed from the digital collection was Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, and the top audiobook was Becoming by Michelle Obama.

"When the MCLS OverDrive group first began, libraries took a major gamble. We couldn't predict what would happen, said Scott Garrison,executive director at MidwestCollaborativefor Library Services.

Clearly, the gamble has paid off, and it is so gratifying to see how successful this program has been. Reaching the milestone of two million checkouts shows how greatly many, many users value 24/7 access to books from their libraries.

MidwestCollaborativefor Library Services is made up of more than 650 member libraries in Michigan and Indiana, including Brandon Township, Orion Township, Royal Oak, South Lyon and Troy public libraries.

With a valid library card, patrons can borrow books at mlc.overdrive.com or through the mobile app Libby, which was named one ofPopular Mechanics 20 Best Apps of the 2010sand one ofPCMags Best Free Software of 2019.

Through the app, readers can browse the librarys digital collection, put books on hold, instantly borrow titles and start reading or listening for free. All titles automatically expire at the end of the lending period (the default is 14 days), and there are no late fees. Readers can also download the borrowed books for offline use.

Our OverDrive group has worked together really well for many years to make this possible. This achievement is a testament to how well they have worked to deliver for their users, on a large scale, said Garrison.

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Two million digital books checked out through the Midwest Collaborative for Library Services in 2019 - The Oakland Press

Bachman found that an aspect of the society archives and the folksong recordings ties into the 21st century, he said.

In addition to the teachers who were part of it, it was a community effort. People wrote to A.K. Davis from lots of places about the airs [another word for ballads] they knew about or sang, he said, adding that hed like to build that same kind of community again. He has shared many of the recordings with descendants of the singers, even organizing a reunion of the descendants of Texas Gladden and playing recordings of her singing.

The recordings are not remastered for pristine listening, however. The UVA Library has digitized the audio as is, per the preservation grant, so the recordings are not reproduced for high fidelity.

The preservation grant expressly forbids mastering costs. Aluminum discs were a limited format in terms of sound quality to begin with, Villereal said. Lacquer discs sounded better and caught on when introduced after about 1934.

One short-term goal might be to reproduce some of the songs in high fidelity. Bachman and Dye said they would love to work further with Villereal and plan to curate some raw tracks for a box set of CDs with extensive liner notes on the society and the performers. Such a document, they said, would be a valuable resource for those interested in Virginia music.

There are even more recordings and documents that could be digitized from the Virginia Folklore Society records and the Kevin Barry and Kelly Scott Perdue Archive of Traditional Culture, plus the rest of the Perdue papers, which the library is in the process of acquiring. Chuck Perdue died in 2010 and Nancy Martin-Perdue in 2017.

(To access the recordings, click here. To search the Virginia Folklore Society records, go to this site.)

After three generations of UVA professors, with the contributions of many students and other enthusiasts, kept the Virginia Folklore Society going, Dye and Bachman are interested in reviving it again. They request anyone interested in participating to contact them at aad9ga@virginia.edu or danilbachman@gmail.com.

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Digging into the Archives, UVA Library Brings Old Folksong Recordings to Light - UVA Today

Public technology is one of a librarys most important services, according to Peterborough Town Library director Corinne Chronopoulos.

If I had to pick five things that we offered, that would be number one, she said.

The regions libraries serve a vital role in an area that has inconsistent access to internet at home.

Library directors Laura Abrahamsen of FrancestownsGeorge Holmes Bixby Memorial Library, Donna Straitliff of RindgesIngalls Memorial Library, and Cindy Jewett of Antrims James A. Tuttle Library also spoke on the significance of the digital services that libraries provide their communities.

You see people parked outside on Main Street using the WiFi, Abrahamsen said, a pattern that Straitliffalso observes when she comes in an hour before the library opens.

It's a 24-hour service, Chronopoulos said. My own husband has driven down because it's a better upload speed than at home.

When people are new into town and have a wait period before their homes hooked up, we're their sole access, Straitliff said.

Chronopoulos knows that the library is the sole source of internet for many of her patrons. She said that the seven computer terminals are in use at the library from the moment we open til we close. And many patrons who work remotely go to the library when they want to work near other people, she said.

Not everybody has to own everything themselves, Abrahamsen said, saying the librarys role in providingtechnologies for public use besides internet, such as access to a printer and scanner.

Patrons often come to the Peterborough library to send a PDF, or to complete a legal document that requires printing and scanning, Chronopoulos said.

Peterborough library staff routinely provide necessary instruction for patrons computer needs, including help with setting up email accounts and electronic resumes, or doing taxes.

The Antrim library expanded their services to include notary access for that reason, Jewett said.

[Patrons] rely on us for entertainment, absolutely, Jewett said.

Patrons in their 30s request library cards andexclusively use them to access digital content.

Technology is moving so fast, we try to keep up with what people want, she said. We have access to e-books, audiobooks, downloaded films, comic books, and databases to read the latest People magazine if you want to.

Digital materials are slowly growing in their proportion of the librarys overall collection, Jewett said, but this poses a difficulty in rural areas where infrastructure isnt keeping pace with national trends towards streaming services. Even while she expands access to downloadable materials, shes also catering to patrons withno ability to stream video at home, or audio on their phones a consideration shared by the librarians in Francestown, Peterborough and Rindge.

It impacts how I build the collection, Abrahamsen said.

In Rindge, Straitliffsaid the DVD collection is probably the highest circulating collection in the library.

The Antrim library maintains a collection of 2,600 DVDs and receives frequent requests for audio books on CD,Jewett said, but shes beginning to have difficulty finding some materials on anything other than MP3s nowadays.

The government is really pushing people to do their census work online, Straitliff said.

Currently, the four public access computers at the Rindge library all run Windows 7, she said, and they recently received aLibrary Census Equity Grantto update some hardware and purchase additional Chromebooks in advance of the 2020 Census rollout.

In Antrim, Jewett is currently applying for a grant to get mobile hotspots patrons can check out in order to have internet access at home, and would also like Chromebooksfor patrons to use while at the library. She envisions people being able to sit at a chair or a table and spreading out their papers by taking advantage of the librarys coffee area instead of being limited to the computer bank.

We have pretty reliable access right now, at the Rindge library, Straitliff said, but believes speed could improve if the town adopts a municipal fiber optic network in March.

Were talking 1G upload and download speeds, which will make everyone's productivity better, both patrons and staff. she said, adding the agreement, if approved by voters, would serve town buildings at no charge.

Currently, she said the library boasts a download speed of 50 mbpsand an upload speed of 22 mbps through Consolidated Communications.

We're probably one of the fastest served in town, she said, and seesfaster speeds as potentially attracting new patrons.

Abrahamsen initially received some complaints about the internet speed when she started at the Francestown library in July, but said that Comcast agreed to boost their speed at no extra charge and its been working well since then, with a download speed of 59 mbps and an upload of 11 mbps.

The basement and second floor of the library have inconsistent connectivity, she said, and shed like to make it a little more consistent.

We could relocate or add a router and probably make coverage in the building better, she said.

The Peterborough Town Library has internet thats a workable speed for most of what people use the library internet for, Chronopoulos said.

She acknowledges, however, that uploading speeds can be slow.

Tim Brezovec, the Peterborough librarys IT specialist, said Comcast guaranteesa download speed of 25 mbps for free, although he said hes tested and observed higher speeds.

The public library will always be an affordable access point for internet, Chronopoulos said.

As well as technological hardware and instruction, she added.

Today, you have to have the internet to participate in modern society, she said, for medical appointments, job applications or receiving electronic receipts. Its vital that every town supports their public library and supports that source of internet.

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Libraries bridging the digital divide - Monadnock Ledger Transcript

Its like a big crossroads Town House by Grafton Architects. Photograph: Ed Reeve

A raucous urban dance extravaganza might not be every librarians idea of a welcome backdrop to their bookshelves. But then not every library is conceived like Town House. From the open-plan study floors of this 50m addition to Kingston University, you can look down into a dramatic triple-height performance space and straight across into the dance studios, where students flex their limbs on wall barres opposite pharmacologists deep in textbooks.

We were attracted by the universitys radical ambition to mix things that are usually incompatible, says Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects, the Irish practice responsible for this majestic multilevelled theatre of higher education that has just opened in south-west London. The building takes pleasure in these abrasions, combining the two extremes of silence and noise.

Standing on the former site of some unprepossessing temporary buildings that had outstayed their welcome, the Town House has the bold civic presence of a public facility which, it turns out, it is. In a brave departure from most security-conscious university buildings, there are no turnstiles or swipe-card access gates to be found here. Instead, an airy atrium welcomes people in through a street-front colonnade, where a ground floor cafe sits beneath a wide open stairway that zig-zags up through the five-storey lobby. The summit is crowned with another public cafe, complete with a roof terrace that commands panoramic views across to Hampton Court Palace and the Thames, twinkling in the distance between the trees.

This is the first building in the UK for Grafton, and the timing is fitting. Farrell and her co-founder Shelley McNamara will be awarded the 2020 RIBA gold medal next month, in recognition of their powerful body of work around the world. Since the Dublin duo founded their firm in 1978, they have built a reputation for crafting muscular structures that revel in their sheer heft, enjoying the play of light and people across massive volumes of concrete and stone. Their buildings often have an archaic, timeless air, standing as robust armatures that could be occupied in any number of ways.

Their heroic facility for the Universidad de Ingeniera y Tecnologa in Lima, Peru crowned the best building in the world in 2017 stands as a modern day Machu Picchu, a world of terraces and walkways woven into a concrete cliff face. Kingtons Town House takes many of the same ideas of processional circulation, views between levels and interconnected terraces, but filters them through an urbane English lens, dressing the principles in a polite costume for the royal borough. The calibre of the design is an important symbol for the university, too.

World-class architecture isnt just the preserve of the Russell Group, says Kingstons vice-chancellor, Steven Spier, himself a trained architect. Fifty-five per cent of our students are from BAME backgrounds, and many are the first generation in their families to go to university, so we wanted to provide something aspirational.

With its chunky white concrete frame rising proudly from the pavement, holding a series of cascading terraces on the facade, the Town House is certainly a grand step up from the existing motley collection of faculty buildings nearby. Inside, it embodies the universitys desire for a learning landscape, with landings flowing into the library, which in turn flows into project rooms and dance spaces, with little of the compartmentalised sense that many academic buildings suffer from. Above all, it feels social, designed to encourage encounters.

Its like a big crossroads, Farrell enthuses, visibly thrilled at the level of buzz in the building, as a gaggle of hijab-wearing girls comes down the staircase mid-gossip, while a group of boys saunters past, eyeing up whos here. Why do you come to university, when you can study online? she adds. Its about meeting people and falling in love.

In use for just a few weeks, the building is already thronging; indeed, it feels like theres a slight danger it might prove too popular for its own good. The library saw a leap in visitor numbers from 350 people on the first day of term last year, in its former dingy incarnation, to 6,000 on the same day this year. On a January afternoon, most study tables are occupied and all seats taken in the lounge areas. It will be interesting to see how it copes come exam time; 7,000 students study at this campus and the building has a capacity of 2,500.

This is an enticing place to walk around as a nosy visitor, catching continual glimpses between the different spaces, but one wonders if the level of transparency and views might sometimes feel a bit much, as if youre in a goldfish bowl, always on display. Even the black box studio space has a big window looking in from the main lobby (although Im told it can be blacked out). Theres something to be said for a study space where you can squirrel yourself away without the distraction of gyrating Lycra-clad bodies, or the street life outside passing by through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

It has a talking floor, a whispering floor and a silent floor. It seems to be working so far

A world without walls also raises the question of noise. Norman Fosters equally open-plan law library for the University of Cambridge famously suffered from disastrous acoustics, with nothing to stop sound from the ground floor public spaces echoing up into the study areas. Grafton assure that large panels of Weetabixy wood wool and soft acoustic linings are sufficient to dampen the sound, while the library has graduated levels of noise as you rise through the building, with a talking floor, a whispering floor and a totally silent floor, which seems to be working so far.

Grafton are particularly fond of celebrating the movement of people through their buildings, but theres a slight sense here that the desire to choreograph a vertical spectacle of activity across the buildings facade has led to circuitous, confusing circulation. There are innumerable outdoor terraces scattered across the different levels (which will be a boon come summertime), some of which are connected by stairs, others of which arent.

It turns out that the route down the northern side of the building is now only to be used as a fire escape, because of the proximity of residential neighbours who dont want to be overlooked. Trying to leave via the suggested outdoor route, Im stumped by locked doors, dead ends and walkways to nowhere, and have to retrace my steps. Still, perhaps its all part of the convivial, match-making aspect of the buildings role. You might just bump into someone special lingering on a balcony while youre trying to find the exit.

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The 50m lovenest: Kingston's new library is a place to find books and romance - The Guardian

Upol Ehsan once took a test ride in an Uber self-driving car. Instead of fretting about the empty drivers seat, anxious passengers were encouraged to watch a pacifier screen that showed a cars-eye view of the road: hazards picked out in orange and red, safe zones in cool blue.

For Ehsan, who studies the way humans interact with AI at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, the intended message was clear: Dont get freaked outthis is why the car is doing what its doing. But something about the alien-looking street scene highlighted the strangeness of the experience rather than reassuring. It got Ehsan thinking: what if the self-driving car could really explain itself?

The success of deep learning is due to tinkering: the best neural networks are tweaked and adapted to make better ones, and practical results have outpaced theoretical understanding. As a result, the details of how a trained model works are typically unknown. We have come to think of them as black boxes.

A lot of the time were okay with that when it comes to things like playing Go or translating text or picking the next Netflix show to binge on. But if AI is to be used to help make decisions in law enforcement, medical diagnosis, and driverless cars, then we need to understand how it reaches those decisionsand know when they are wrong.

People need the power to disagree with or reject an automated decision, says Iris Howley, a computer scientist at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Without this, people will push back against the technology. You can see this playing out right now with the public response to facial recognition systems, she says.

Ehsan is part of a small but growing group of researchers trying to make AIs better at explaining themselves, to help us look inside the black box. The aim of so-called interpretable or explainable AI (XAI) is to help people understand what features in the data a neural network is actually learningand thus whether the resulting model is accurate and unbiased.

One solution is to build machine-learning systems that show their workings: so-called glassboxas opposed to black-boxAI. Glassbox models are typically much-simplified versions of a neural network in which it is easier to track how different pieces of data affect the model.

There are people in the community who advocate for the use of glassbox models in any high-stakes setting, says Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, a computer scientist at Microsoft Research. I largely agree. Simple glassbox models can perform as well as more complicated neural networks on certain types of structured data, such as tables of statistics. For some applications that's all you need.

But it depends on the domain. If we want to learn from messy data like images or text, were stuck with deepand thus opaqueneural networks. The ability of these networks to draw meaningful connections between very large numbers of disparate features is bound up with their complexity.

Even here, glassbox machine learning could help. One solution is to take two passes at the data, training an imperfect glassbox model as a debugging step to uncover potential errors that you might want to correct. Once the data has been cleaned up, a more accurate black-box model can be trained.

It's a tricky balance, however. Too much transparency can lead to information overload. In a 2018 study looking at how professional users interact with machine-learning tools, Vaughan found that transparent models can actually make it harder to detect and correct the models mistakes.

Another approach is to include visualizations that show a few key properties of the model and its underlying data. The idea is that you can see serious problems at a glance. For example, the model could be relying too much on certain features, which could signal bias.

These visualization tools have proved incredibly popular in the short time theyve been around. But do they really help? In the first study of its kind, Vaughan and her team have tried to find outand exposed some serious issues.

The team took two popular interpretability tools that give an overview of a model via charts and data plots, highlighting things that the neural network picked up on most in training. Six machine-learning professionals were recruited from within Microsoft, all different in education, job roles, and experience. They took part in a mock interaction with a deep neural network trained on a national income data set taken from the 1994 US census. The experiment was designed specifically to mimic the way data scientists use interpretability tools in the kinds of tasks they face routinely.

What the team found was striking. Sure, the tools sometimes helped people spot missing values in the data. But this usefulness was overshadowed by a tendency to over-trust and misread the visualizations. In some cases, users couldnt even describe what the visualizations were showing. This led to incorrect assumptions about the data set, the models, and the interpretability tools themselves. And it instilled a false confidence about the tools that made participants more gung-ho about deploying the models, even when they felt something wasnt quite right. Worryingly, this was true even when the output had been manipulated to show explanations that made no sense.

To back up the findings from their small user study, the researchers then conducted an online survey of around 200 machine-learning professionals recruited via mailing lists and social media. They found similar confusion and misplaced confidence.

Worse, many participants were happy to use the visualizations to make decisions about deploying the model despite admitting that they did not understand the math behind them. It was particularly surprising to see people justify oddities in the data by creating narratives that explained them, says Harmanpreet Kaur at the University of Michigan, a coauthor on the study. The automation bias was a very important factor that we had not considered.

Ah, the automation bias. In other words, people are primed to trust computers. Its not a new phenomenon. When it comes to automated systems from aircraft autopilots to spell checkers, studies have shown that humans often accept the choices they make even when they are obviously wrong. But when this happens with tools designed to help us avoid this very phenomenon, we have an even bigger problem.

What can we do about it? For some, part of the trouble with the first wave of XAI is that it is dominated by machine-learning researchers, most of whom are expert users of AI systems. Says Tim Miller of the University of Melbourne, who studies how humans use AI systems: The inmates are running the asylum.

This is what Ehsan realized sitting in the back of the driverless Uber. It is easier to understand what an automated system is doingand see when it is making a mistakeif it gives reasons for its actions the way a human would. Ehsan and his colleague Mark Riedl are developing a machine-learning system that automatically generates such rationales in natural language. In an early prototype, the pair took a neural network that had learned how to play the classic 1980s video game Frogger and trained it to provide a reason every time it made a move.

Upol Ehsan

To do this, they showed the system many examples of humans playing the game while talking out loud about what they were doing. They then took a neural network for translating between two natural languages and adapted it to translate instead between actions in the game and natural-language rationales for those actions. Now, when the neural network sees an action in the game, it translates it into an explanation. The result is a Frogger-playing AI that says things like Im moving left to stay behind the blue truck every time it moves.

Ehsan and Riedls work is just a start. For one thing, it is not clear whether a machine-learning system will always be able to provide a natural-language rationale for its actions. Take DeepMinds board-game-playing AI AlphaZero. One of the most striking features of the software is its ability to make winning moves that most human players would not think to try at that point in a game. If AlphaZero were able to explain its moves, would they always make sense?

Reasons help whether we understand them or not, says Ehsan: The goal of human-centered XAI is not just to make the user agree to what the AI is sayingit is also to provoke reflection. Riedl recalls watching the livestream of the tournament match between DeepMind's AI and Korean Go champion Lee Sedol. The commentators were talking about what AlphaGo was seeing and thinking. "That wasnt how AlphaGo worked," says Riedl. "But I felt that the commentary was essential to understanding what was happening."

What this new wave of XAI researchers agree on is that if AI systems are to be used by more people, those people must be part of the design from the startand different people need different kinds of explanations. (This is backed up by a new study from Howley and her colleagues, in which they show that peoples ability to understand an interactive or static visualization depends on their education levels.) Think of a cancer-diagnosing AI, says Ehsan. Youd want the explanation it gives to an oncologist to be very different from the explanation it gives to the patient.

Ultimately, we want AIs to explain themselves not only to data scientists and doctors but to police officers using face recognition technology, teachers using analytics software in their classrooms, students trying to make sense of their social-media feedsand anyone sitting in the backseat of a self-driving car. Weve always known that people over-trust technology, and thats especially true with AI systems, says Riedl. The more you say its smart, the more people are convinced that its smarter than they are.

Explanations that anyone can understand should help pop that bubble.

Original post:

Why asking an AI to explain itself can make things worse - MIT Technology Review