David Rothman acknowledges the attributes of the expanding DPLA program but highlights that it is lacking key components to make it a truly comprehensive academic digital library, including collection and business strategies. Rothman states that “DPLAers” keep insisting that the organization is a public library even though the academic and archival content in the catalog is just a subset of what a true general public library collection would offer. He recommends actionable next steps to widen the scope of access to digitized works.

Elmer Masters explains the pragmatic as well as technological value of Dave Winer’s new full featured outliner, Fargo. Fargo runs in your web browser and stores your data in your Dropbox folder. According to Masters, this combination of browser and cloud puts the outliner everywhere, making it a good choice for anyone looking for ubiquitous note taking and writing capabilities. That includes just about all of us!

Marcus P. Zillman’s guide is a comprehensive, diverse and wide ranging listing of eCommerce Resources on the Web. These resources include those in a wide range of areas such as: associations, indexes, search engines as well as individual websites.

Lorette Weldon discusses how busy business professionals determined to make the time to share and learn best practices from colleagues use a range of methods to accomplish this goal. But professionals seeking to talk to, travel and engage with experts in the skills that they wish to obtain and/or develop may be stymied in their efforts. In the late 1980’s, these Three T’s were formalized as a teaching method for the “tight time” individual. It was initially a method to help unite parent and child as they worked together on educational needs. Taking this further along, Weldon brings us forward through the dynamics of ELA, my Electronic Library Assistant, used to could build skills by taking the experts or teachers on the road. In order to use ELA as a training process, the Three T’s approach allows professionals to employ the skills of talking, traveling and tinkering with devices that they used daily in personal and work life.

This is the first article in a three-part series by David Rothman, all three of which are published here at LLRX.com. Part Two is about Carmela Hernandez and family. Set in the San Antonio area, a future scenario shows how a national digital library initiative could help turn their lives around. Part Three tells how librarians and policymakers can make the initiative happen and benefit the Hernandezes, not just the American elite.

This is the last article David Rothman’s in the current series mapping out a path for planners of America’s digital libraries. Part One encouraged librarians to be open to new ideas like BiblioTech, especially from friends outside the profession. Part Two featured the Hernandez family in a 2020 scenario telling how national digital libraries could benefit the non elite.

Ken Strutin’s new guide on criminal justice illuminates the growing importance of math in the administration of justice, with an emphasis on the areas of proof and judgment. Ken raises the examples of how statistics (evidence) and probability (analytics) have been used and challenged in many criminal cases to match people to events through such means as: DNA, soil samples, eyewitness descriptions, firearm purchase records, typewritten documents, clothes fibers, footprints, hair follicles, blood types, sperm, teeth marks, and conviction rates. Indeed, everything from traffic tickets to predictive policing draws on math in some way. Ken’s analysis and through documentation of case law adds a critical perspective on the manner in which “numbers are used, and abused” in court.