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The ALA Executive Board invites the ALA membership to join a Town Hall–style conversation on Sunday, January 22, 9:30–11 a.m, at the Midwinter Meeting in the GWCC Thomas Murphy Ballroom 3–4 in Atlanta, immediately following Council I. Many members have expressed concerns about the effects of the recent election on the positions and advocacy efforts of the Association. Although it follows the first meeting of ALA’s governing council, this is a separate forum intended for all interested attendees. Please join this professionally facilitated session to share your feedback, concerns, ideas, and aspirations for ALA. We want to hear from you!...
ALA Executive Board, Jan. 5 |
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ALA Treasurer Susan H. Hildreth writes: “This is my first column as ALA treasurer, and my goal during my term in office is to make sure our membership has a clear understanding of where ALA is financially and that we strategically use the Association’s resources to support programmatic priorities. For fiscal year 2016, which just closed, I am glad that ALA came very close to its budget. It was a rather challenging year. Within this overall budget, revenue sources varied somewhat from original projections.”...
American Libraries column, Jan./Feb. |
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Atlanta is experiencing a culinary renaissance. Fine-dining restaurants now sidle up next to traditional Southern joints serving fried chicken, barbeque, and comfort food to create a vibrant food scene for the New South. American Libraries teamed with Creative Loafing Atlanta, the city’s weekly independent newspaper, to bring Midwinter guests a broad selection of restaurants to enjoy before and after their conference activities, all located within a reasonable distance from the Georgia World Congress Center....
American Libraries feature, Jan./Feb. |
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Kathy Rosa and Kelsey Henke write: “During the 2016 election year, the ALA Office for Research and Statistics tracked 150 library referenda across 22 states. More than 81% of the measures passed, with 122 wins and only 28 losses. Big winners include Michigan (73 measures passed) and Ohio (12 measures passed). Issues at stake included continued operating funds and facility renovations. This year we took a look at the population density of the communities that placed library issues before the voters.”...
American Libraries feature, Jan./Feb. |
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Going to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ World Library and Information Congress in Wroclaw, Poland, August 19–25? ALA members can register at the IFLA member rate using the ALA IFLA Membership Code US-0002. Are you involved in an interesting project or in an area of work that you would like to discuss with or show to other congress attendees? Consider contributing a paper or presenting a poster session at the congress....
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions |
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Barbara Fister writes: “This week two public librarians, Sarah Houghton and Andy Woodworth, launched Operation 451 to encourage librarians to think how we can honor key articles in the Library Bill of Rights (4 and 5) and the First Amendment and support the right of all to read, to assemble, and to speak, paying particular attention to non-celebrities who are vulnerable. It’s a great initiative to reconcile our historic commitment to the freedom to read with dedicated support of those voices that are at risk of being silenced.”...
Inside Higher Ed: Library Babel Fish, Jan. 4 |
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Helen Adams writes: “Established in 1967, the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) is 50 years old in 2017. Although you may imagine a large suite of offices with a big staff, that is not the case. OIF is manned by five dedicated individuals who work in cramped offices in ALA’s headquarters in Chicago. All are committed to preserving free access to libraries and library materials, and they help ALA members and non-members alike with intellectual freedom-related issues.” The new issue of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy (JIFP), vol. 1, no. 2–3, is now live and available to subscribers online. Subscribers can view it on the JIFP homepage or on its contents page....
Knowledge Quest blog, Jan. 3; Office for Intellectual Freedom, Jan. 3 |
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Donald A. Barclay writes: “As a long-time academic librarian, I have spent a good part of my career teaching college students to think critically about information. And I watch many of them struggle with the challenges of discovering, internalizing, evaluating, and applying credible information. For me, the recent spate of stories about large segments of the population falling for fake news stories was no surprise. What role have academic libraries played in helping people make sense of a world bursting at the seams with information?” ProQuest has just published a survey, Toward an Information Literate Society, that explores the perceived importance of information literacy among 217 librarians....
The Conversation, Jan. 4; Chronicle of Higher Education, July 7, 2014; ProQuest Blog, Jan. 5
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danah boyd writes: “Over the last 15 years, I’ve watched as countless hacker-minded folks have started using a mix of technical and social engineering skills to reconfigure networks of power. Some are in it for the fun. Some see dollar signs. Some have a much more ideological agenda. Above all, what’s fascinating is how many people have learned to play the game. And in some worlds, those skills are coming home to roost in unexpected ways, especially as groups are seeking to mess with information intermediaries in an effort to hack the attention economy.”...
Data & Society: Points, Jan. 5
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Becca Munson writes: “Not only it is important to have a web presence for your library, it is also important to provide embedded resources for students to access. It reduces the number of clicks to reach a desired location—a video, link, document, and more. Students can then view a variety of instructional resources on one page. An embed code provides a short code usually in HTML language for users to copy and paste into a website. Typically, it provides the source link and height and width of the item.”...
Knowledge Quest blog, Jan. 6
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Michael J. Bennett writes: “Over time, pulp-based and acidic newspapers have become brittle, broken, and in some instances creased in ways that obscure the print. Humidification is a common conservation technique that can be used to relax these creases in order to flatten the paper and allow for subsequent digital capture of hidden text. This was the case with recent efforts at the University of Connecticut Library on a set of 19th-century Latin American newspapers.”...
PetaPixel, Jan. 5
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The Council on Library and Information Resources is now accepting applications from collecting institutions for the digital reformatting of magnetic audio materials, as part of the pilot phase of the Recordings at Risk grant program. CLIR will award approximately $150,000 for the preservation reformatting of magnetic audio media through the Northeast Document Conservation Center’s new audio preservation service. Apply by March 3....
Council on Library and Information Resources, Jan. 4
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