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Alan S. Inouye and Vailey Oehlke write: “For the past several years, ALA has been engaged in outreach to the publishing community to advocate for improved library access to ebooks. Leading the charge for ALA is its Digital Content Working Group. This work is especially significant because of its proactive nature: not waiting for publishers and others to act but initiating our own action. Just as we’ve had a revolution in our libraries, we need a revolution in public policy.”...
American Libraries feature, June 23 |
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Walt Crawford writes:“Open access (OA) journals have become widespread in recent years, but so have misunderstandings about them, fueled by a lack of real data. In order to add data, I looked at the websites for every journal in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) as of May 7, 2014—or at least all of them that an English reader could make sense of. Here’s a little of what I found.”...
American Libraries column, June |
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Hailley Fargo writes: “The ALA Annual Conference theme this year is ‘Transforming Our Libraries, Ourselves.’ With 25,000 library-affiliated folks coming to town, it’s an event you don’t want to miss. Except, unfortunately, I’ll be diligently working in Illinois during the conference, but that doesn’t mean I have to miss out on the conversations. If you’re like me and won’t be in San Francisco, here’s a guide to staying in touch, from a distance.”...
YALSA Blog, June 23
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ALA is now accepting applications for the 2016 class of Emerging Leaders. Details on the program criteria as well as a link to the application can be found on the Emerging Leaders web page. The deadline to apply is August 1. Individuals who are considering applying to the program should be new library professionals with fewer than five years of experience working at a professional or paraprofessional level in a library....
Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment, June 19
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Through an exclusive partnership, Recorded Books and iVerse Media will offer libraries access to a selection of more than 10,000 digital comics, graphic novels, and manga titles both inside the library and remotely. This partnership gives Recorded Books the exclusive right to sell Comics Plus: Library Edition to public libraries in the US and Canada. Recorded Books will be demonstrating the new platform at the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco....
Recorded Books, June 22
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A report to be released this week will find that Boston Public Library’s problems are deep. Its 320,000 prints and drawings have been neglected for years and are in dire need of space, a massive reorganization, and a complete inventory, according to a draft copy of the consultant’s report obtained by the Boston Globe. Martha Mahard, a Simmons College professor hired as a consultant by the library a year ago, found that “the overall arrangement of the print stacks defies logic,” making it difficult to locate some items. The library has started implementing some of her recommendations, Mahard said, but many of the suggestions will have to wait for funding and administrative decisions....
Boston Globe, June 22 |
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Maura Marx writes: “The amazing world of making took hold of the nation’s capital in June, and IMLS played an important role organizing key festivities. On June 11, IMLS hosted a series of panel discussions and the first Maker Faire ever held on Capitol Hill in collaboration with the Congressional Maker Caucus, cochaired by Congressman Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Maker Media, and the Nation of Makers. The White House hosted an event on June 12 that included announcements and progress updates on the President’s call to action to create a Nation of Makers. The National Maker Faire, held June 12–13, featured 150 demonstrators and attracted thousands of attendees.”...
UpNext: The IMLS Blog, June 22 |
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As part of the “Star City Reads” program, Roanoke, Virginia, Mayor David Bowers announced the launch of “Books on Buses” in front of a group of young children and day care teachers at the Roanoke Public Library on June 22. The program is designed to encourage grade-level reading by providing free books for parents and children on their daily commutes via Valley Metro buses. Approximately 20–30 packets containing five children’s books each will be available on three city buses....
Roanoke (Va.) Times, June 22 |
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As part of the White House’s Open Ebooks initiative, the Digital Public Library of America is calling on librarians to volunteer to help coordinate books for inclusion in the program to help connect children with ebooks. DPLA is seeking motivated, engaged community members who have experience with building children and young adult book collections. To find out more about this project, go to DPLA’s White House Open Ebooks initiative page....
DPLA Blog, June 23 |
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ALA is partnering with READ Global (Rural Education and Development) libraries in Nepal to collect monetary donations, which will be sent to READ Nepal to continue leading the earthquake relief effort. The Nepal Library Relief Fund will help to rebuild libraries and archives in Nepal that were destroyed or damaged by the earthquake on April 25, 2015, followed by a series of aftershocks including one of 7.3 magnitude on May 12. Visit the ALA Development Office page to make a donation....
ALA International Relations Office |
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Meredith Farkas writes: “When I graduated from library school, I worried about anti-online-degree bias. I worried that people would think my degree was somehow ‘less than’ because I’d done it fully online. That was in 2004. I assumed that 11 years later, people had gotten the message that online courses and online degrees are not necessarily less than, and that the people who go through them can be just as (and in some cases more) qualified as students who did on-site programs. That was until I read this article by Angela Galvan from In the Library with the Lead Pipe.”...
Information Wants to Be Free, June 22; In the Library with the Lead Pipe, June 3 |
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Keisha N. Blain writes: “Here is a list of readings that educators can use to start conversations in the classroom about the horrendous events that unfolded in Charleston, South Carolina, on the evening of June 17. These readings provide valuable information about the history of racial violence in this country and contextualize the history of race relations in South Carolina and the United States in general. They also offer insights on race, racial identities, global white supremacy, and black resistance. All readings are arranged by date of publication.”...
African American Intellectual History Society |
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Erik Kwakkel writes: “The human body is one of the most common objects encountered in art, whether in paintings, sculptures, or other objects. Things have not changed much since medieval times, when artists loved to fill their work with human figures—commonly saints or individuals affiliated with biblical stories. Among the great diversity of depictions, there is one type that stands out in that the body is used (or rather, abused) to express something other than itself. These particularly fascinating and often amusing depictions are found on the medieval page.”...
medievalbooks, June 19 |
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