The new restrictions are disheartening. I don’t have a solution to this systemic problem. But I encourage everyone to talk about it more. If you’ve been in the profession for decades, talk with newer professionals and students about how much the financial picture has changed since you were in school—they should understand this isn’t how things have to be. If you have student loans, talk about them (and not just when you get them forgiven!), so people can get their heads around the idea that it’s not a moral failing to be in debt. Our cultural silence about money issues is damaging: it fuels anxiety, shame, and financial illiteracy. You have the power to change that, one conversation at a time.
Anthropic illegally trained Claude with Stanford professors’ books
“To put me to work that way, without remittance, is a form of slave labor,” said Wolff, professor emeritus of English and winner of the National Medal of Arts. “They’re using my work without paying for it. As time goes on, they’re going to make the lives of writers very difficult if there’s no fruit to their labor.”
New ‘Reading Rainbow’ host talks new kid’s book – Texas Standard Texas Standard
In his new picture book, “I’m So Happy You’re Here,” librarian Mychal Threets lays out all the joys of the library for kids. Threets made a splash on TikTok making videos about his experiences as a librarian, and he’s been tapped to lead a reboot of the beloved program “Reading Rainbow.”
The EPA Is Quietly Killing its Web Archive – Mother Jones
While the usability of the archive has historically been far from perfect—researchers often encountered dead links and frustratingly limited search capabilities—the archive has held a trove of tens of thousands of EPA documents dating back to the 1990s simply not available elsewhere.
Dallas ISD pulls books after Dan Patrick library warning
A year after Texas lawmakers passed a bill giving parents and school boards a bigger role in deciding what books are included on library shelves, some policymakers are looking to further limit what they describe as obscene material in schools. Free speech advocates and parents say pressure from officials in Austin is leading districts to pull books from libraries, cutting off students’ access to thousands of literary works.
‘You Chose to Pick a Fight with Librarians?’ – CT Examiner
You chose to pick a fight with Librarians? Seemingly the only humans left fighting to protect all people’s right to read for free, and you’re calling us the biggest censors!? Do you have any idea how outrageous of a statement that is? You’re projecting your politics onto the library, Sir, and they have no place there. Walk into any library and you will find books of all kinds from all sides. Don’t see what you want? Ask your librarian. They may buy it for their collection, or they can get it for you from another library. Books are available to all. Just because a book is there doesn’t mean you need to read it. Do you go to the grocery store and complain to the manager every time you walk past a food you don’t like or are allergic to and call the whole grocery store a garbage heap? There will always be books someone doesn’t like. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable to another person who is living that experience, seeing themselves in it. That is why we have all the books.
Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia – LSE Impact
Academics are not the ones that have harmed Wikipedia, they – as fellow stewards of knowledge – have a duty to help defend it from those that have. And academics are well-equipped to do so; their subject matter expertise can be used to address content gaps, correct errors, and provide context on complicated topics on Wikipedia. Academics’ access to and facility with high-quality sources can help improve Wikipedia’s quality. And as Wikipedia’s citation practices mirror those academic practices, academics may find editing Wikipedia to be less daunting than others do.
Friends don’t let friends feed their data to AI agents | The Verge
“Meta says Muse only remembers what you choose to share. But the idea that people are making an informed choice in this case is laughable,” said Whittaker. “There is no way to assume with a straight face that the majority of people installing this system understand the consequences of using it, or the creepy dossiers that are being compiled about those they know and communicate with.”
In this way, AI assistants like Muse are creating a new spin on a classic privacy problem that has been around since the creation of Gmail and social media platforms writ large: Even if you avoid using AI agents, there’s no guarantee someone you know won’t share your private conversations, address, personal history, and other sensitive data with Meta’s virtual assistant, or one of its competitors.
While their numbers decline, some say school librarians are more important than ever – The Lansing Journal
Illinois currently ranks 7th out of 48 states and Washington D.C. for the total number of full-time-equivalent school librarians, according to the academic research group SLIDE, which monitors school library employment at the national, state, and district levels. (Tennessee and South Carolina don’t share their data with Slide.)
Only SOME think that??
Crawlers, floods and fleets: a year of keeping our digital collections open
I think anyone who runs a website is now going through the same thing. It is exhausting.
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