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Sylvia Knight Norton and Marci Merola write: “In December 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act amid strong bipartisan support. The House passed the bill by 359–64, and seven days later the Senate passed the bill 85–12; President Obama signed it into law on December 10. The act, a long-overdue reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, for the first time included language on ‘effective school library programs’ and student learning outcomes.”...
American Libraries feature, Nov./Dec. |
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Bernard F. Reilly Jr. writes: “The recent appointment of Carla Hayden as Librarian of Congress makes this a good time to reconsider the library’s role in the life of the nation and confront the problems caused by years of stasis at this revered national institution. During the most transformative decades in the history of information since Gutenberg, the Library of Congress was outpaced by the lightning developments in digital technology and now finds itself dwarfed by information behemoths like Amazon, Bloomberg, and Google and struggling to remain relevant.”...
American Libraries feature, Nov./Dec. |
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ALA President Julie B. Todaro writes: “The tenets of professions vary, but many require members to join and become active in at least one professional association. For librarians, staff, and stakeholders, that’s where we immediately stray into a variety of issues, including but not limited to which associations to join, costs of membership, benefits of membership, benefits of activity, competition between associations for our interest, and an individual’s institutional requirements for membership and activity.”...
American Libraries column, Nov./Dec. |
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Miguel Figueroa writes: “The ALA Center for the Future of Libraries’ work around futuring and foresight has helped reinforce the importance of looking outside our immediate context to help better understand and prepare for our futures. Two recent AtlanticLIVE events showed promising glimpses into the future: What’s Next and the Future of Work Summit.”...
AL: The Scoop, Nov. 3 |
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Davis Erin Anderson writes: “MozFest, an annual conference hosted by the Mozilla Foundation, took place in London on October 28–29. The nine separate spaces comprising MozFest were each curated by teams of wranglers who played host to each floor. Themed spaces featured handcrafted posters and signs, large-scale installations, and technology-focused exhibits. The pop-up nature of each floor made the experience of wandering through MozFest feel much like clicking through links on the early days of the web.” Don’t miss Part 2 of this special report....
AL: The Scoop, Nov. 7 |
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At age 4, Meredith Evans (right) mailed in money ($1.01) to then–President Jimmy Carter to help him “be president.” She also sent a letter asking to have her birthday party at the White House. (Carter politely declined both.) Years later, Evans is now working for the 39th president. As director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Evans is the first African-American woman to be appointed as a presidential library director. Here are some statistics about the collections in our presidential libraries....
American Libraries Bookend, Nov./Dec.; American Libraries Trend, Nov./Dec. |
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Erin Allen writes: “The Library of Congress has numerous collections related to US elections, presidents, politics, and government. This election year hasn’t been the first to see name-calling and insults. In 1828, a highly contentious rematch between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson saw personal aspersions cast against Jackson’s wife and mother, and Jackson being faulted for a murderous past. The 1828 campaign became one of the most bitter in American history.”...
Library of Congress Blog, Nov. 8 |
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The Queens (N.Y.) Library and its former CEO and President Tom Galante (right) have agreed to settle a civil lawsuit brought by Galante in 2015. According to a 14-page agreement, the library and its insurers will pay Galante $300,000 for lost wages that he sought as a result of his termination in December 2014; and $1.2 million in legal fees for his lawyers. The library’s insurance carrier will pay $725,000 of the total. Neither side admits liability....
Queens (N.Y.) Chronicle, Nov. 1
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A collection of 18th-century books on plague, witchcraft, and astrology discovered in Wimbledon by an antiquarian bookseller has been welcomed by the London Library, which will be getting them back more than half a century after they were borrowed from the shelves. The rare volumes are believed to have been removed in the late 1950s. Patrick Marrin of Marrin’s Bookshop soon realized that attempts had been made to remove the markings of the London Library from the volumes....
The Guardian (UK), Nov. 3
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The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France, by historian Ethan B. Katz, is the winner of the fourth annual American Library in Paris Book Award. The book tells the story of how the sense of identity of Jews and Muslims of North African origin living in France became more fixed and hostile to each other between the Six Day War in 1967 and the early 21st century. The award honors the most distinguished book of the year about France or the French, and carries a cash prize of $5,000....
American Library in Paris, Nov. 4
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David A. Kluft writes: “If you are a Star Trek fan, the name Axanar has almost certainly crossed your computer screen recently. Axanar was a prospective film set in the Star Trek universe, which tells the back story of Garth of Izar, a character who appeared in one episode of the original series. But what makes Axanar notable is that it was completely unauthorized by Paramount Pictures or any of the other entities connected to the official Star Trek franchise. It is, in many senses of the word, fan fiction.”...
Trademark and Copyright Law, Oct. 18
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Farhad Manjoo writes: “For years, technologists and other utopians have argued that online news would be a boon to democracy. That has not been the case. In a 2008 book, I argued that the internet would usher in a post-fact age. Eight years later, there is more reason to despair about truth in the online age. Why? Because if you study the dynamics of how information moves online today, pretty much everything conspires against truth.”...
New York Times, Nov. 2
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