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John Windhausen writes: “On June 14, the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC’s net neutrality ruling across the board. The latest ruling (PDF file) is a significant victory for ALA, libraries, and public access to the open internet. This landmark decision confirms that internet service providers cannot engage in ‘paid prioritization’ and must keep the internet open to all users, content providers, and application developers. This decision has a direct impact on library services.”...
AL: The Scoop, June 20; Office for Information Technology Policy, June 14 |
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People of all ages and backgrounds come to libraries to transform new business ideas into reality. The People’s Incubator: Libraries Propel Entrepreneurship (PDF file), a new report from the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy, highlights how public and academic libraries make use of their diverse resources to work with entrepreneurs during all stages of the business start-up process—from writing a business plan and raising capital to performing market analysis and prototyping....
Office for Information Technology Policy, June 20 |
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ALA’s Task Force on Gay Liberation hosted a “Hug a Homosexual” booth at the ALA 1971 Annual Conference in Dallas, and with the events of #PulseOrlando, we all need some love. New York’s Que(e)ry Librarians are hosting a new booth (named in honor of the 1971 event). Come hug and kiss each other and show solidarity with the LGBTQA community at the Exhibits Opening on June 24. The hugging will take place in the Zine Pavilion, Booth 751....
Hug a Homosexual Facebook event; Librarian.net, Mar. 30, 2013 |
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Christie Gibrich writes: “Whether this is your first ALA conference or your 10th, it is always easy to get stressed out and overwhelmed with the enormity that is ALA Annual. With approximately 25,000 people attending annual every year, it’s easy to get lost within the crowd on the exhibits floor alone. Add in over 250 different programs, plus 2,500 separate events, and your head can swim. However, here are some tricks to keep your sanity, make the most of conference, and have some fun as well.”...
Teen Services Underground, June 17 |
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A Charleston County (S.C.) Public Library branch was renamed and dedicated June 21 in honor of Cynthia Graham Hurd—a 31-year library employee who died in the Emanuel AME Church shooting on June 17, 2015. At the time of her death, Hurd was the manager of the branch, which is now called the Cynthia Graham Hurd–St. Andrews Regional Library. The date would have been Hurd’s 56th birthday. The Imani Milele Children’s Choir from an orphanage in Uganda performed at the ceremony....
WCBD-TV, Charleston, S.C., June 21
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Through its school library, Calhoun Community High School in Battle Creek, Michigan, is making sure Mary Jo Nye’s love for literacy lives on for years to come. In honor of Nye, a longtime CCHS teacher who died in the February 20 Kalamazoo shooting rampage, the alternative high school is working to update its school library, created by Nye during her CCHS career but neglected in recent years. And it’s renaming the library in her honor....
WZZM-TV, Grand Rapids, Mich., June 18 |
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The Burton Barr Central Library in Phoenix decided to celebrate the Summer Solstice on June 20. A large crowd showed up for the event in the 116-degree heat. A musical program consisting of a pianist, two harpists, and a percussionist entertained visitors as they waited for solar noon, which happened at 12:30 p.m. Numerous skylights, seven feet in diameter and made of pale blue glass, welcomed the midsummer sun as a choir sang Vivaldi’s Gloria. The library also held a contest for best solstice poem....
QuinnCreative, June 20; Phoenix Public Library Facebook, June 20 |
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David W. Dunlap writes: “More a theater for learning than a citadel of research, the new 53rd Street branch of the New York Public Library offers one surprise after the next as it unfolds below the sidewalks of New York. The library, which opened June 20 and will have a grand opening on June 27, is the long-awaited, long-delayed replacement for the Donnell Library Center, a beloved and heavily used branch that closed in 2008.” Its main room has an amphitheater with video displays, a laptop bar, and a huge community meeting room....
New York Times, June 20 |
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Toronto’s public libraries have followed New York and Chicago’s lead in offering Wi-Fi hotspot lending to low-income families, allowing them to “check out the internet” and take it home with them. But the program is not faring well, thanks to the libraries’ telecommunications partner, an unnamed wireless company. That company is capping the hotspots’ bandwidth at a paltry 10GB/month, less than 14% of the cheapest commercial home internet service offered by Bell Canada....
Boing Boing, June 20
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Klint Finley writes: “If Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, internet pioneer Vint Cerf, and their allies who recently came together at what they called the Decentralized Web Summit have their way, the world will one day have a web that archives itself and backs itself up automatically. Some pieces of this new web already exist. Interplanetary File System is an open source project that taps into ideas pioneered by the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin and the peer-to-peer file sharing system BitTorrent.”...
Wired, June 20
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Jacob Kastrenakes writes: “For years we’ve been hearing that super-fast 5G wireless is on the way. This week, the Federal Communications Commission will start to make that happen. On June 21, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a proposal to kick off 5G wireless proceedings. If passed, the commission will begin to identify and open up swaths of high-band spectrum, which is capable of delivering data at much higher speeds than that currently used for 4G and LTE.”...
The Verge, June 20
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Mirela Roncevic writes: “Librarians know the benefits of audiobooks and listening to the spoken word. However, many people outside the library and publishing industry still believe that listening to audiobooks is a form of cheating and not really the same thing as reading. This is puzzling. All you need to do is consider how people used to verbally pass on knowledge to each other for generations. Audiobooks need to be recognized for what they have become the past two decades: ebooks.”...
No Shelf Required, June 20
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