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In Lessons From History: The Copyright Office Belongs in the Library of Congress, a new report from the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy, Google Policy Fellow Alisa Holahan compellingly documents that Congress repeatedly has considered the best location for the US Copyright Office and consistently reaffirmed that the Library of Congress is its most effective home. Holahan’s analysis comprehensively reviews the history of the locus of copyright activities from 1870 to the present day....
District Dispatch, Aug. 9 |
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Each year, the Institute of Museum and Library Services recognizes outstanding libraries and museums that have made significant contributions to improve the well-being of their communities. The winning museums and libraries are presented with the National Medal for Museum and Library Service. IMLS is now accepting nominations for the 2018 awards. Applicants must complete and return a nomination form by October 2....
Institute of Museum and Library Services, July 24 |
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Nearly 200 angry residents were thrilled August 8 when the Escondido (Calif.) Library board of trustees unanimously decided to recommend that the city council not outsource library services to a private company. Board members agreed that the $400,000 in predicted annual cost savings is not worth the risk of diminished service to the community. During a meeting scheduled for August 23, the council will probably decide whether or not to contract with Library Systems & Services....
San Diego (Calif.) Union-Tribune, Aug. 9 |
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Angie Miller writes: “The reality of the school library is that it falls under parameters laid out by an administrator, and sometimes those parameters feel like inflexible boxes that we just can’t break out of. It’s important to remember that administrative rules for libraries don’t derive from bad intentions; they are usually just deeply rooted in the ease of following long-set tradition. But with some leadership strategies, advocating skills, and a little rebellion we can redefine our boxes and break out of the ‘but my principal won’t let me’ trap.”...
Knowledge Quest blog, Aug. 10 |
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Amanda M. Leftwich writes: “As a young librarian in the field, no one told me about the microaggressions that I might face on the job. In fact, no other librarian of color mentioned it either. Seemingly, it’s something that you just deal with or something you talk about with your friends after you leave librarianship altogether. However, instead of being a passive recipient as I was in the past, here are some ways you can change the conversation.”...
Letters to a Young Librarian, Aug. 10 |
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Jennifer Howard writes: “It was a crazy idea: Take the bulk of the world’s books, scan them, and create a monumental digital library for all to access. That’s what Google dreamed of doing when it embarked on its ambitious book-digitizing project in 2002. It got part of the way there, digitizing at least 25 million books from university libraries. Though the promised library of everything hasn’t come into being, academics now regularly tap into the reservoir of digitized material that Google helped create, using it as a dataset they can query.”...
EdSurge, Aug. 10 |
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Joshua Steverman writes: “One of the projects of the HathiTrust’s US Federal Government Documents Program is to develop a metadata registry of every work published by the federal government. Measuring the completeness of the corpus is difficult. One way to do that is to evaluate a smaller known subset. Are we missing records for agencies that should be represented in the corpus, or are there suspicious gaps in the publication history? Before we answer that question, we must be able to identify authors reliably.”...
University of Michigan Library: Library Tech Talk, Aug. 10 |
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Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson write: “What will happen to online trust in the coming decade? In summer 2016, Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a large canvassing of technologists, scholars, practitioners, strategic thinkers, and other leaders, asking them to react to this framing of the issue: Will people’s trust in their online interactions, work, shopping, social connections, pursuit of knowledge, and other activities be strengthened or diminished over the next 10 years?”...
Pew Research Center, Aug. 10
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Sarah Zhang writes: “The York Gospels were assembled more than 1,000 years ago. Bound in leather, illustrated, and illuminated, the book contains the four gospels of the Bible as well as land records and oaths taken by clergymen who read, rubbed, and kissed its pages over centuries. The York Gospels are also, quite literally, a bunch of old cow and sheep skins. Skin has DNA, and DNA has its own story to tell. A group of archaeologists and geneticists in the UK have now analyzed the rich DNA reservoir of the York Gospels.”...
The Atlantic, Aug. 8; bioRxiv, July 24 |
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Peyton Stafford writes: “Even though indie authors do not get the promotion that Big Five authors do, they still produce books that sell in the millions and should be in public library collections. Libraries that use any of the three major library ebook platforms should be able to get most indie ebooks through their platforms. Libraries that want to build collections of local authors can also add the BiblioBoard platform specifically for that purpose. There is no reason libraries can’t provide their patrons with ebook editions of most popular indie authors.”...
No Shelf Required, Aug. 4
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Michael Schaub writes: “It’s not just your @#%& imagination: American books have gotten much more profane over the last six decades, according to a study led by a San Diego State University psychology professor. Psychologist and author Jean Twenge’s team used Google Books to search for seven swear words in American monographs published since the middle of the last century. Books published between 2005 and 2008 were more likely to contain the profane words by a factor of 28.”...
Los Angeles Times: Jacket Copy, Aug. 9; SAGE Open, Aug. 3
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Eugenia Williamson writes: “The three-generation Kim Dynasty has made North Korea one of the most reviled—and ridiculed—nations in the world. And recent events have escalated that impression. Beyond the finger-pointing, threats, and not-so-funny humor are the hidden people of a devastated country whose stories are slowly coming to light. Insightful books provide our best opportunities for encouraging education and understanding. Here’s a selection of fiction and nonfiction titles that allow us a closer look.”...
The Booklist Reader, Aug. 10
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