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“There is no truly sustainable development without access to information, and no meaningful, inclusive access to information without libraries,” IFLA President Donna Scheeder told the delegates at the Closing Session of the World Library and Information Congress in Wroclaw, Poland, on August 24. The WLIC saw a busy week of discussions on scholarly communication, sustainability, transparency and access, inclusion, and libraries in crisis. The 2018 IFLA Congress will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia....
AL: The Scoop, Aug. 21–25 |
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Arizona’s law banning classes “designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group” was enacted and enforced with racist intent, making it unconstitutional. After a lengthy trial, Judge A. Wallace Tashima wrote in an interim opinion August 22 that the Arizona Superintendent’s office violated the First and Fourteenth Amendment when it terminated a Mexican-American Studies program found to be in violation of the law. He also found that the racist ban was “a political boon” to former state education officials. The Freedom to Read Foundation’s legal counsel wrote the lead First Amendment amicus brief for the plaintiffs, and ALA and its ethnic caucuses signed on to the brief....
National Coalition Against Censorship, Aug. 23; Associated Press, Aug. 22 |
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Americans have always had a problem with free speech. Those in the latest Economist / YouGov poll are no exception, as many Americans would not allow dangerous speech or speech many of them disagree with, especially for speech associated with a group like ISIS. Most Americans—Democrats and Republicans—would forbid an ISIS supporter from making a speech in their community. It matters little whether someone is worried about becoming a terror victim or whether the expectation for an attack on US soil is high or low. All groups oppose ISIS speech....
YouGov, Aug. 24 |
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Frederic Murray writes: “In the past year, a number of higher education faculty across the country have been accused, harassed, and threatened for things they have not said. These stories ring true and they ring hard, because it has happened to me. I’ve been hesitant to write about this, because my situation never became public, was resolved amicably, and I received nothing but support from my administration. But since the spring semester of 2017 I have watched other, worse cases, of this scenario play out across our nation’s campuses.”...
Intellectual Freedom Blog, Aug. 24 |
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A Superior Court judge in Washington on August 24 ordered the web hosting company DreamHost to turn over data associated with a Trump protest website to federal prosecutors—but not as much as the Justice Department had originally sought. The ruling by Judge Robert E. Morin allows the government to proceed with a scaled-back search warrant for records related to the website DisruptJ20.org, which served as a clearinghouse for plans to protest President Trump’s swearing-in on January 20. DreamHost is now considering an appeal....
New York Times, Aug. 25; Forbes, Aug. 24 |
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DPLA is launching an open-source tool for fast, large-scale data harvests from OAI repositories. The tool uses a Spark distributed processing engine to speed up and scale up the harvesting operation and to perform complex analysis of the harvested data. It is helping the organization improve its internal workflows and provide better service to its hubs. The Spark OAI Harvester is freely available. Other groups working with interoperable cultural heritage or science data can find uses for it in their own projects....
DPLA Blog, Aug. 16 |
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New plans from the UK government will make it easier for people to delete embarrassing or erroneous information about themselves online. Digital Minister Matt Hancock said in early August new privacy legislation would expand the “right to be forgotten,” bringing the UK in line with the European Union’s existing General Data Protection Regulation, which takes effect in May 2018. But an exception would be made for the British Library, which by law keeps a complete archive of all UK websites....
The Next Web, Aug. 24 |
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Despite the protests of hundreds of angry residents, the Escondido (Calif.) City Council voted 3–2 August 23 to begin the process of outsourcing the city’s library service to a private company. An overflow crowd of more than 250, almost all opposed to the plan, packed the council chambers and pleaded with them not to move forward with signing a contract with Maryland-based Library Systems and Services Inc. The council hopes to save $4 million in the next 10 years in operational costs and more than that in future pension payouts....
San Diego (Calif.) Union-Tribune, Aug. 23–24
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Florida State University in Tallahassee is asking for a lawsuit filed by a student paralyzed in the 2014 shooting at Strozier Library to be dismissed, asserting the school is not liable for the “action of a madman.” Farhan Ahmed (right) filed a lawsuit in June against FSU, seeking damages in excess of $15,000 for pain and suffering, disability, and medical expenses. Ahmed, a biomedical engineering student at the time, was paralyzed from the waist down and has limited use of his right arm following the November 20, 2014, incident....
News Service of Florida, Aug. 24 |
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Melissa Carr writes: “When a patron asks you to recommend some bone-chilling new horror novels, but you haven’t read a scary book since the Goosebumps series, what do you do? How do you provide confident readers’ advisory in genres outside your personal expertise? Thirty librarians from across the Chicago area gathered with Booklist editors at the Chicago Public Library August 22 to answer those questions at ‘How to Stay in Top Genre Shape.’”...
AL: The Scoop, Aug. 24
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Beth Cron writes: “Advances in computing have made moving files between different platforms much easier than just a few years ago. Adopting good file naming conventions can help ensure that files will work with different operating systems and disk formats, such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix. File naming is also an important consideration when transferring files via the internet, where it may not be evident what platform was used to create the file. Here are some best practices for file naming.”...
National Archives: Records Express, Aug. 22
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Jessica Plummer writes: “A variant is a comic released with a different cover than the ‘official’ cover for the book. Typically a publisher will print significantly fewer issues with the variant cover, with the idea that rarity will increase its desirability to collectors. The variants may show a theme or a hot artist and often retail for more than the usual cover price for the issue. Ali Colluccio and Brian K. Vaughan did an excellent breakdown of the logic behind variants and all their complexities here.”...
Book Riot, Aug. 24; Mar. 3, 2015
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