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For daily ALA and library news, check the American Libraries website or subscribe to our RSS feed.
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During the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, Gale encouraged attendees to contribute photos of themselves to a digital mosaic. Everyone’s images—more than 3,000 in all—were grouped together over the weekend into the words “Orlando Strong” with a rainbow overlay. Gale is donating the completed 10-by-6-foot artwork to the Orange County (Fla.) Library System. See how it all came together in this video (1:30)....
Vimeo, July 6 |
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Ginny Mies writes: “If you’ve ever attended an ALA Annual Conference, you’ll probably agree with me that it is two things: useful and overwhelming. I generally try to hit up as many tech-related sessions as I can with a few author signings thrown in here and there. As I took notes, I highlighted the key tech tips from the sessions I went to. I’ve picked out five of my favorites so if you too are feeling overwhelmed or were not able to go, I hope you find these beneficial to your library’s tech goals.”...
Tech Soup for Libraries, July 7 |
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Sponsored Content
The narration process is usually straightforward—read, research, record. But what if the book is extraordinarily long? Simon Vance is narrating Alan Moore’s new novel, Jerusalem, which at one million words is 200,000 words longer than the Bible. How is Simon preparing for this massive undertaking, set for release September 15? “Jerusalem portrays the heart of England, the author’s home town of Northampton,” said Simon, “so the best research I can think of is actually going there to meet the author, and the city itself.” Sounds like the perfect plan! |
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The ALA Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services is joining with the UN Remember Slavery Programme, Fox Searchlight Pictures, and BazanED to invite libraries to participate in a nationwide lecture series and community-building initiative, “The Birth of a Nation: Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.” The series is in observance of the 185th anniversary of Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, as well as the UN International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition, observed annually on August 23....
Office for Diversity, Litreracy, and Outreach Services, July 5 |
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In response to the rainbow flag flying outside the Des Plaines (Ill.) Public Library in honor of the Orlando terror attack victims, city aldermen on July 5 approved new rules giving them the power to decide which flags can be raised over any city-owned or leased property. Under the new rules, only the flags of the United States, state of Illinois, city of Des Plaines, and the POW-MIA flag can be flown over municipal sites. Any other flag requires prior approval from the city council, according to the resolution aldermen passed in a 5–3 vote....
Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald, July 6 |
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Denisse Solis writes: “As information professionals or librarians, in whatever role you play, a big part of your job will be to serve a community. The community may be public, academic, rural, or urban, but I guarantee you it will be filled with people from different races, social classes, and age groups. It has become evident that a basic understanding of social issues and the state of the profession is missing from LIS education, and perhaps in the profession itself. I continue to encounter situations reminding me I am part of the 3% of librarians who are Hispanic.”...
Hack Library School, July 6 |
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Jeremy Miller writes: “The mission of the San Francisco Public Library goes beyond connecting people with books and research materials. In 2009, it was the first library in the country to hire a full-time social worker. Today, its staff of seven Health and Safety Advocates, or HaSAs—all of whom were once homeless—monitor the library’s six floors and bathrooms, offering resources on shelters, food kitchens, and clinics across the city to homeless patrons. The idea for the HaSA program came about around 2000, just four years after the completion of the new $126.5 million main branch.”...
Timeline, June 29 |
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Benetech, provider of Bookshare, is partnering with Georgia Libraries for Accessible Statewide Services, making more than 425,000 accessible ebooks available for free to patrons who cannot read printed books due to blindness, low vision, dyslexia, and other print disabilities. GLASS is the statewide network of talking book centers that provides library services for the blind and others whose physical abilities require the use of books and magazines in digital audio formats or in braille....
Benetech’s Blog, June 28 |
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Beth McGough writes: “Does your library blog make you go ‘blah’? It might be time to take a fresh look at the blog and revive it. But how? The audience should be at the heart of every blog post. A deep understanding of your library users and blog readers, what drives them, and what they care about will help you write relevant posts your audience will read. Every post should bring value to the reader.”...
ProQuest Blog, July 6
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Jennifer Turner and Jessica Schomberg write: “Good design makes documents easier to use, helps documents stand out from other pieces of information, and lends credibility to document creators. Librarians provide instruction and training materials to coworkers and library users. For these materials to be readable and accessible, they must follow guidelines for usable document design. Improving document usability requires a basic understanding of accessibility and Universal Design for Learning, plus a few simple tips found in Gestalt and plain language principles.”...
In the Library with the Lead Pipe, June 29
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Perri Klass writes: “Do children in a keyboard world need to learn old-fashioned handwriting? There is a tendency to dismiss handwriting as a nonessential skill, even though researchers have warned that learning to write may be the key to, well, learning to write. And beyond the emotional connection adults may feel to the way we learned to write, there is a growing body of research on what the normally developing brain learns by forming letters on the page, in printed or manuscript format as well as in cursive.”...
New York Times: The Well, June 20; June 2, 2014
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Lauren Magnuson writes: “Python is a great programming language to know if you work in a library: It’s (relatively) easy to learn, its syntax is fairly clear and intuitive, and it has robust libraries for doing routine library tasks like hacking MARC records and working with delimited data, CSV files, JSON, and XML. In this post, I’ll describe a couple of projects I’ve worked on recently that have enabled me to do library stuff faster using Python.”...
ACRL TechConnect Blog, July 5; Oct. 15, 2014
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Michael Muchmore writes: “Great movies (even great home movies) are made in the editing room—or, the laptop, as the case may be. The video editing application you choose will depend on your budget, the equipment you’re using, and how serious you are. Fortunately, you’re almost spoiled for choice with the products available for download and purchase these days. Dig into our in-depth reviews of enthusiast-level video-editing software reviews here to see which is the right one for you.”...
PC Magazine, July 6
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