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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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Allison Brungard and Jennifer Bartek write: “Infusing green practices into a library involves little investment, yet yields large returns. Bailey Library, where we work, is located in the heart of Slippery Rock University’s campus in rural western Pennsylvania. Our midsized university has been named a ‘green college’ by education services company The Princeton Review for many years, and the environmental nonprofit Sierra Club considers it a ‘cool school.’ A library organization acts as its own ecosystem, so it seems natural to improve its health by intentionally reducing its environmental footprint, including reducing waste and saving energy.”...
AL: The Scoop, May 18 |
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Do you have an incredible #BannedBooksWeek program idea, but need some support on making it a reality? Libraries, schools, and universities are encouraged to apply for $1,000 or $2,500 Judith Krug Fund grants to support activities that raise awareness of intellectual freedom and censorship issues during the annual Banned Books Week celebration (September 27–October 3, 2020). Grantees are encouraged to share their events on social media and local press. Applications are due by May 31....
Freedom to Read Foundation |
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In Episode 50, Dewey Decibel looks at privacy issues in libraries, including how COVID-19 is affecting privacy for patrons and librarians alike. First, Dewey Decibel host Phil Morehart speaks with Becky Yoose, a library data privacy consultant with LDH Consulting Services, about Zoombombing—what it is, who it targets, and how to stop it. Next, Morehart talks with Peter McCracken, electronic resources librarian at Cornell University, about a privacy-services program instituted by the library to protect patron data and how the pandemic is affecting those services....
AL: The Scoop, Apr. 23, May 15; Cornell University Library |
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Jason Nargis writes: “At the end of February, English Department Artist in Residence and Instructor Eula Biss contacted me about hosting a visit to Special Collections and Archives for her English 498 class. She specifically requested wide-ranging overviews that highlight items with a unique resonance or viewer impact. My usual entry point for this kind of instruction is material culture, or a kind of archeology of the artifact. But how do I convey the physicality of objects and primary source literacy in a distance-learning environment? Very little of Northwestern University’s collection material has been digitized. With a little creativity and searching, I was able to put together a meaningful selection of items.”...
Northwestern University Libraries Blog, May 13 |
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Jennifer Burek Pierce writes: “One of the many things faculty members worried about in our switch to remote teaching was how to provide course materials when students could no longer walk into a campus library. Lately, although I rely on print documents in my own work, I’ve been feeling like an evangelist for digital resources: Have you heard the good news about HathiTrust’s emergency-access provisions? Libraries have responded to this crisis by providing high-quality online materials capaciously. Setting aside for now the issue of students’ broadband access, there are two categories of course materials you can rely on if you are planning for the possibility of more remote instruction.”...
Chronicle of Higher Education, May 14 |
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Emily Niekrasz writes: “As part of its five-year strategic plan, the Smithsonian committed to reaching one billion people each year through a digital-first strategy. One part of that strategy includes making our collections available through digitization. Our staff prioritizes digitization for access and for preservation. But a lot more work—far beyond scanning, storage, and upload—goes on behind the scenes to make even one digitized document ready for our web audiences. Let’s hear from Marguerite Roby (photo archivist), Jessica Scott (digital imaging technician), Kira Sobers (digital media coordinator), and Heidi Stover (reference photo archivist) about the process.”...
Smithsonian Institution Archives Blog, May 19 |
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Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe writes: “Unsub is the game-changing data analysis service that is helping librarians forecast, explore, and optimize their alternatives to the Big Deal. Unsub (known as Unpaywall Journals until just this week) supports librarians in making independent assessments of the value of their journal subscriptions relative to price paid rather than relying upon publisher-provided data. Librarians breaking away from the Big Deal often credit Unsub as a critical component. I am grateful to Heather Piwowar and Jason Priem, cofounders of Our Research, a small nonprofit organization with an innocuous sounding name that is the provider of Unsub, for taking time to answer some questions.”...
The Scholarly Kitchen, May 19; May 22, 2018; Our Research Blog, May 16 |
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Lorcan Dempsey writes: “Over the past few years I have been talking about three systemic ways in which collections, broadly understood, are evolving in a network environment. They are the collective collection, the facilitated collection, and the inside-out collection. In different ways, each moves beyond the carefully constructed and locally acquired collection. I believe that we will see accelerated adoption of these approaches post-pandemic, as collections activity further peels away from the locally acquired collection. In this piece, I speculate about this and briefly introduce three additional cross-cutting collection contexts (optimizing, pluralizing, and computational reading at scale).”...
Lorcan Dempsey’s Weblog, May 19; Apr. 1, 2019; OCLC Research, Dec. 13, 2019; LIBER Quarterly, Oct. 11, 2016 |
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Alexandra Alter writes: “Three months into the biggest public health and economic crisis of our era, authors and publishers are racing to produce timely accounts of the COVID-19 outbreak, with works that range from reported narratives about the science of pandemics and autobiographical accounts of being quarantined, to spiritual guides on coping with grief and loss, to a collection of a poems about life in the pandemic and a book about the ethical and philosophical quandaries raised by the pandemic, written by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. Several forthcoming books look at the dire economic consequences of the pandemic, including Going Dark, by the Wall Street Journal reporter Liz Hoffman.”...
New York Times, May 18; Publishers Weekly, May 13 |
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Maureen Schlosser writes: “What art supplies can learners find at home? If they have colored paper, recycled materials, and music, they could make something wonderful. Here is a list of picture books that will inspire learners to get crafty and create. Some titles include links to authors reading their books.”...
Knowledge Quest blog, May 18 |
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Nicole Hill writes: “Looking for a summer reading list? Project Gutenberg is the place to be. With more than 60,000 free ebooks, Project Gutenberg hosts some of the world’s most revered classics, along with older and lesser known works that deserve that designation. You can find high-profile reads like Pride and Prejudice and Treasure Island for free on Project Gutenberg, if you’ve never had a chance to pick them up. But if you’re looking for a different summer reading challenge, consider the following must-read classics you likely haven’t encountered on a syllabus.”...
Book Riot, May 18 |
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Beverly L. Jenkins writes: “Every Caturday, Lisa Shaffer, bibliographic services assistant at Centre County Library in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, debuts another one of the hilariously elaborate costumes she makes for her cat Horatio. She’s doing it for the best of reasons. Knowing how much the internet loves all things feline, Lisa approached her supervisor a few years ago and asked if she could share pictures of her cats dressed up as famous characters from literature and pop culture. After getting the green light, the creative library employee got to work making her vision a reality. The posts were an instant hit and drew in more audience members than the library ever had before.”...
InspireMore, May 18; American Libraries feature, Jan./Feb. 2017; Centre County (Pa.) Library Facebook page |
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