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Sarah Nicolas writes: “Many people have feelings about renaming the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award as the Children’s Literature Legacy Award. Ignoring the fact that most of the people upset [including Captain Kirk] and signing petitions had never even heard of the Wilder Medal before and don’t even know what ALSC stands for without looking it up. I wanted to address some of the monologues (it’s certainly not dialogue) I’ve seen floating around. This is what the award name change means.” Here is OIF’s perspective....
Book Riot, July 5; AL: The Scoop, June 25; Inside Higher Ed, July 6; Intellectual Freedom Blog, July 3 |
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Ron Charles (right), reviewer and editor at The Washington Post’s “Book World,” is taking the art of book reviewing from the ivory tower to the viral contours of internet streaming. Earlier this year, Charles won the Louis Shores Award for excellence in reviewing from RUSA. He chatted with American Libraries about summer reading, feminist dystopias, and his run-ins with the Secret Service....
American Libraries Trend, July 5; RUSA, Mar. 30 |
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Six months ago the Dayton (Ohio) Metro Library eliminated overdue fines, and revenues—as expected—have declined since then. But surprisingly, fewer borrowed materials have become overdue, and borrowers actually have returned more overdue materials than they did in 2017, officials said. Patrons seem to be more motivated to return items to avoid replacement costs and lose borrowing privileges than they were to avert accumulating fees....
Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, July 5 |
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Someone has been playing a game of hide-and-seek at the Berkley (Mich.) Public Library with the trilogy of Fifty Shades movies and two other films on DVD by moving them elsewhere. But the library says what the person did isn’t a game—it’s censorship. To fight back, the library is displaying the recently found missing movies with a sign that reads: “The Berkley Public Library is against censorship. Someone didn’t want you to check these items out. They deliberately hid all of these items so you wouldn’t find them. This is not how libraries work.”...
Detroit Free Press, July 3 |
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The third time’s a charm for longtime Jeopardy! fan and Ball State University Head of Serials Cataloging Scott McFadden (right, with host Alex Trebek). Though McFadden’s show was filmed in February and he must remain tight-lipped about his winnings, it aired June 27. On the first night of the show he came out on top, earning $26,001. His second night was rockier, as he got off to a slow start. However, in a come-from-behind-win, McFadden again racked up his winnings to $59,602. His streak continued June 29 with total earnings of $78,401. McFadden is set to appear on the show again July 9....
Kokomo (Ind.) Perspective, July 3 |
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Noah Lenstra writes: “Health care systems and hospitals can be the best partners you can have for health programming. Public libraries in the US have worked with hospitals to offer everything from bike safety programs to healthy cooking classes to fun, engaging, hand-hygiene games. Here are a few of the programs you can do in collaboration with your local hospital.”...
Programming Librarian, June 28 |
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Allie Barton writes: “Planning programs around a theme can feel either limiting or liberating. The theme can create inspiring programs that can hold up beyond its lifespan. As the primary planner for elementary programming at the Belle Isle Library in Oklahoma City, I was challenged and inspired by this year’s ‘Libraries Rock!’ reading theme. I produced a few programs that can live outside summer reading, such as ‘Instrument Exploration,’ and ‘Rock Buffet.’”...
ALSC Blog, July 6 |
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Rebecca S. Wingo, Alexis Logsdon, and Christopher Schommer write: “On November 29, 2017, a photo of a sign asking library patrons ‘please do not let in the cat’ went viral. It wasn’t long before the internet lore surrounding Max the Cat exceeded the scope of the original post. Until news agencies picked up the story and tracked us down, the image (and the cat) was largely divorced from its original context. Few knew it was taken at Macalester College, or in Minnesota even.”...
College and Research Libraries News 79, no. 7 (July/Aug.): 350–353 |
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In a 318–278 vote, the European Parliament on July 5 shot down proposals that would have made online publishers liable for users’ copyright infringement and made even linking to other websites fraught with legal risk. The web’s inventor Tim Berners-Lee and others had expressed concerns about the proposed rules, which they said threatened internet freedom. The bill, widely reviled for its service to legacy media interests and general ignorance of the internet itself, now goes back to committee....
Boing Boing, July 5; BBC News, July 5 |
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Siobhan Adcock writes: “Climate change is not fiction, but some of today’s most compelling writing about it is. To the surprise of exactly no one who has read a newspaper in the past decade or so, cli-fi has emerged as a robust, exciting movement in modern fiction. The books listed here are part of the new vanguard of fiction taking climate change seriously, addressing its impact on the stories we tell now and the stories we may tell about ourselves in the coming decades.”...
Literary Hub, July 5
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The Asian Division at the Library of Congress has rolled out the North Korean Serials Database, an online indexing tool that offers researchers enhanced access to periodicals and articles published as far back as 1948. The database contains 34,000 indexed records for articles in 18 journals from North Korea that are now searchable online for the first time. In the past, there were no indexing resources at the article level for North Korean serials anywhere in the world....
Library of Congress, July 6 |
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Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan write: “We’ve just returned from the ALA Annual Conference, where medals were handed out, speeches were given, and photos were taken. All of the award celebratin’ put us in the mood to issue another round of Cindy & Lynn’s Book Awards like the ones we gave out in February for 2017 titles. This time, we are handing out awards for books we hauled home from New Orleans, thanks to generous publishers. Drum roll, please.”...
The Booklist Reader: Bookends, Feb. 9, June 29 |
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