Let's get the "Word on the Web" and check out some recent topics of interest and discussion from the tech, literary, library, and arts and entertainment intersections of the World Wide Web that happened in December 2014.
- If you still haven't had your fill of seasonal sweets, take a look at this incredibly creative take on baking: a Gingerbread USS Enterprise! See phasers to YUM!
- In other retro intergalactic news, you may have seen the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special (and once it has been seen, it truly cannot be unseen), but did you know a few years later a Star Wars Christmas album was released in 1980?! Radio Canada has the unbelievable oral history behind this pop culture oddity.
- Read these eight books before their film adaptations come out in 2015.
- io9.com goes back to ye olden times to spotlight how Medieval libraries developed a crude GPS system to locate books.
- OpenCulture.com takes a 4-hour journey via an inclusive Spotify playlist through the classical music used throughout Stanley Kubrick's filmography.
- The A.V. Club goes off the map on a quest to find places that have appeared in multiple works of fiction.
- Technical.ly Philly runs down the Top Tech Stories of 2014.
- One of this year's most entertaining Author Events here at Free Library was when John Waters visited on his Carsick book tour. Mr. Waters gives Artforum his Top 10 Films for 2014 and you can bet there are some interesting selections!
- The National Education Association talks with librarians and teachers about how diverse books help to create diverse students.
- Worldbuilders, whose mission is to harness the power of readers, fellow authors, and book lovers to make the world a better place, recently got supporters to help raise over $600,000 in donations. Their reward? Neil Gaiman reading The Jabberwocky.
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Happy New Year!
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