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Terra Dankowski writes: “When Tenzin Kalsang (left), children’s librarian at Brooklyn (N.Y.) Public Library’s Williamsburg branch, started an online series of bilingual storytimes in April 2020, the native Tibetan speaker couldn’t have predicted she’d become an overnight sensation. After all, BPL wasn’t new to hosting programs in Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Spanish, Urdu, and other languages—nor was the system unfamiliar with virtual storytimes, which typically attract 100–300 people. But her program garnered tens of thousands of viewers, from patrons in her neighborhood to students attending a Tibetan school in Australia to monks living in Nepal.”...
American Libraries feature, Jul./Aug.
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Terra Dankowski writes: “As a woman who is mixed race, has experienced elite schools and generational poverty, and has been thin and fat at different times in her life, Savala Nolan (left) has long felt that she occupies in-between spaces in society. The lawyer, speaker, and writer (whose work has appeared in Bust, Time, and Vogue) explores this liminal territory in her debut collection, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body (Simon & Schuster, July), touching topics such as dating, motherhood, and police brutality. American Libraries spoke with Nolan, executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson School of Social Justice at Berkeley (Calif.) Law, about identity, representation, and how libraries can help each of us find our story.”...
American Libraries Trend, Jul./Aug.
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Join Banned Books Week Honorary Chair Jason Reynolds (left) on August 2 at 4 p.m. Eastern for a #BannedBooksChat on Twitter. As an advocate for storytelling and an outspoken critic of censorship, Reynolds is the perfect person to headline Banned Books Week 2021, which takes place September 26–October 2 and has the theme
“Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”...
Banned Books Week, July 26
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ALA members can register for the IFLA Virtual World Library and Information Congress, August 17–19, at the IFLA member rate of 85 Euros ($120), which is half the nonmember rate. Register as a member of IFLA using the ALA IFLA member code US-0002....
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
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A report published July 19 from
School Librarian Investigation: Decline or Evolution?, a research project through Antioch University Seattle and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, highlights an ongoing decline in the number of districts nationwide with school librarians. According to the findings, there were about 20% fewer librarians during the 2018–2019 school year in the 13,000 districts examined than a decade prior. But the absence of these educators isn’t equally distributed: Smaller, rural districts, and those with higher proportions of English-language learners, Latinx students, and low-income students were more likely to lack a librarian....
EdSurge, July 19
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Richard Byrne writes: “Creating multimedia projects like videos, podcasts, and audio slideshows is a great way for students to develop a variety of skills. Finding images that meet that criteria is easy. Finding audio that fits that criteria is a bit of a challenge for some. That’s why I’ve put together a new video that highlights my three go-to places to find free audio that students can use in their multimedia projects.”...
Free Technology for Teachers, July 26
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A sign addressing systemic racism was recently removed from the Whitefish Bay (Wisc.) Public Library grounds following vocal criticism from some in the community—including former Milwaukee Bucks player Steve Novak. The sign, which was placed in a rock garden display outside the library by antibias organization Bay Bridge Wisconsin, read: “Whitefish Bay will be a welcoming community that recognizes systemic racism and actively works to address and dismantle it. How will you be a bridge in helping to repair and build a more equitable community?”...
Milwaukee (Wisc.) Journal Sentinel, July 26
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Brewster Kahle (left) writes: “As a young man, I wanted to help make a new medium that would be a step forward from Gutenberg’s invention hundreds of years before. By building a Library of Everything in the digital age, I thought the opportunity was not just to make it available to everybody in the world, but to make it better—smarter than paper. By using computers, we could make the library not just searchable, but organizable; make it so that you could navigate your way through millions, and maybe eventually billions of web pages. The first step was to make computers that worked for large collections of rich media.”...
Internet Archive blog, July 21
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Google will now show its search engine users more information about why it found the results they are shown, the company said on July 22. It said people googling queries will now be able to click into details such as how their result matched certain search terms, in order to better decide if the information is relevant....
Reuters, July 22
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Looking for online newspapers and their archives? Ancestry’s
Newspapers.com archive includes searchable articles from more than 21,000 newspapers dating back to the 1700s. A similar service exists in the UK at the British Newspaper Archive, which allows you to search archived British newspapers for free but only allows registered users to read digitized content. The NewspaperArchive offers a similar subscription service, allowing you to search newspapers globally.
The Newspaper Map provides direct links to thousands of newspapers currently operating all around the world....
Google Maps Mania, July 27
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Christianna Silva writes: “I read a lot, and I love the low pressure engagement of a virtual book club. I was bad at attending book clubs in real life before the pandemic, because my book club friends and I all have very busy schedules, so finding a time for us all to meet up was difficult. Scheduling online hangouts is easier because you can do them from anywhere—at your family’s house, with your partner, or even from your own bed. But it’s not just the scheduling—there are four main reasons book clubs are ruined by an IRL meetup, and why I’ll be staying home.”...
Mashable, July 23
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Latifah Muhammad writes: “LeVar Burton’s (left) dream of hosting
Jeopardy! has been a decade in the making, and it finally came true on July 26 with Burton kicking off his run as guest host of the long-running quiz show. Besides helping millions of kids fall in love with reading, Burton has written several books of his own, narrated books for other authors, hosted public book readings via the
LeVar
Burton Reads podcast, and recently launched a book club. Here is a roundup of some of the books that Burton has recommended.”...
IndieWire, July 27; American Libraries feature, Nov./Dec. 2017
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