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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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On April 13, ALA will launch Take Action for Libraries Day, a new national library advocacy effort during National Library Week, April 9–15. The inaugural Take Action for Libraries Day will highlight the library community’s efforts to safeguard funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which serves as a critical funding resource for every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US territories to support libraries and museums....
Public Awareness Office, Mar. 31 |
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Alan Inouye writes: “Libraries are ideal venues to provide career opportunities for youth in the digital age, explains a newly released ALA brief. In Careers for America’s Youth in the Digital Age: <libraries / ready to code>, libraries are found to increasingly offer programs in coding and computational thinking—the broader intellectual skills behind coding—and are poised to do much more. The brief is being released at the #HouseOfCode demo, panel, and reception event on Capitol Hill on April 3–4.”...
District Dispatch, Apr. 2 |
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Greg Landgraf writes: “Sadly, due to a winter blast that closed many libraries in New England, and the general confusion surrounding separating fiction from reality that’s gripping our nation, American Libraries is unable to provide our annual roundup of April Fools’ pranks from Libraryland this year. Fortunately, we’ve got an alternative. We’ve switched this year’s batch of library pranks with Folger’s Crystals. See if you can tell the difference.”...
AL: The Scoop, Apr. 4 |
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Rachel Smalter Hall writes: “Every April, cities all over the globe celebrate the two best things in the world: books and food. The International Edible Book Festival was born in 2000, and now anyone can host their own edible book festival by following three simple rules: The event must be held close to April 1, all edible books must be ‘bookish,’ and participants must share photos with the official organizers. Here are 20 of the best cakes from this year and years past.”...
Book Riot, Apr. 4 |
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In recent years, prominent internet analysts and the public at large have expressed increasing concerns that the content, tone, and intent of online interactions have undergone an evolution that threatens its future. To illuminate current attitudes about the potential impacts of online social interaction over the next decade, Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a large-scale canvassing of technology experts, scholars, corporate practitioners, and government leaders....
Pew Research Center, Mar. 29 |
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Jim Barnes writes: “In the early 1950s, Reggie Simms (right) mended damaged books so they could remain in circulation at the Purcellville (Va.) Library. But he was not allowed to check them out. For two decades after it opened in 1937, the library was available only to white patrons. Simms and other African Americans were excluded until the library was desegregated on April 9, 1957. On April 8, the library will mark the 60th anniversary of that milestone with a day-long program on the desegregation of public facilities in Loudoun County.”...
Washington Post, Apr. 3 |
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Shannon McClintock Miller writes: “To prepare for life and careers, it is essential for our students to be global digital citizens, connected virtually to others around the world. These connections can be made through digital tools and apps found both in and beyond libraries. As teacher librarians, we know that this is important and essential to the success of our students. Let’s look at five ways teacher librarians can empower students by connecting them to digital tools, experiences, others, and the world.”...
Education Week: Global Learning, Apr. 3 |
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Marcela Cabello and Stuart M. Butler write: “Some sectors, such as health care, increasingly see public libraries as a critical link to a community. For instance, the National Library of Medicine is helping local librarians to be more effective local navigators by regularly hosting webinars and training sessions on how to navigate social services, aging, mental health, welfare and public assistance, housing resources, health care, and education and employment resources. Of course, most librarians were not trained to handle many of these issues.”...
Brookings Institution: Up Front, Mar. 30; National Network of Libraries of Medicine; Honolulu Civil Beat, Feb. 9
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The Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2016, released April 3, builds on findings from the 2013 edition. It shows many library directors are becoming comfortable with the idea that the library may no longer be the starting point for research, and they are forging ahead with plans to further boost libraries’ ability to support students and faculty members with their teaching, learning, and research. But those plans are facing some resistance....
Inside Higher Ed, Apr. 3; Mar. 11, 2014
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Joe Mullin writes: “If you want to read the official laws of the state of Georgia, it will cost you more than $1,000. Open-records activist Carl Malamud (right) thinks reading the law shouldn’t cost anything. So a few years back, he scanned a copy of the state of Georgia’s official laws, known as the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, made USB drives with two copies on them, and on May 30, 2013, sent the USB drives to Georgia legislators.” The state sued him for copyright infringement and won....
Ars Technica, Mar. 30
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The so-called “doomsday seed vault” located underground on Svalbard, a remote island in the Arctic Ocean, has gained a neighbor. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built in 2008 some 620 miles from the North Pole, houses the world’s most important crop seeds. The new vault, known as the Arctic World Archive, opened on March 27 and will act as a storage option for governments and scientific institutions, as well as companies and private individuals, to keep their data safe....
Live Science, Feb. 24, Apr. 1; Sept. 23, 2016
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When ISPs have your data and sell it, it does not mean that you can go to them and offer to buy all of an individual’s browsing history. Instead, what happens is that these companies collect that data for themselves and then sell ad targeting. At no point do any of the advertisers know who the individual is. They just know that if they are willing to spend the required amount to get the ad shown via the marketplace bidding mechanism, it will show up in front of someone who is somewhat likely to be interested....
Techdirt, Mar. 29
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