Several major research libraries in the us have rebuffed offers from Google to scan their books into computer databases. The libraries, including a large consortium in Boston, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort to make digital material as widely accessible as possible.

>> E-bay, the world's largest online auctioneer, has launched a website that allows people to invest in loans that lift people out of poverty. The website, called MicroPlace, acts as a broker between ordinary investors and microfinance organisations. For as little as US $100, investors in the US will be able to help entrepreneurs in poor countries, be they coffee sellers in Cambodia or hairdressers in Ghana. The investments last between two and four years.

One doesn't usually associate medical and scientific journals with anti-poverty campaigns. But more than 200 such journals from 34 nations ran simultaneous articles on a range of poverty and development-related topics in their October issues. There are commentaries on microfinance programmes and health; China's health care system; health effects of declining us income; innovation, licensing and global health; poverty and mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa and disseminating global health change.