The idea that writing should be clear, concise, and low-jargon isn’t a new one—and it isn’t limited to government agencies, of course. The problem of needlessly complex writing—sometimes referred to as an “opaque writing style”—has been explored in fields ranging from law to science. Yet in academia, unwieldy writing has become something of a protected tradition.
From The Ig Nobel Prize and Other Efforts to Eradicate Complex Academic Writing – The Atlantic
SPL cannot keep going down this road to ruination. We love our libraries, and we demand that Seattle Public Library carry the torch of knowledge for generations to come.
Director Jason LaMotte was profoundly affected by his neighbourhood library in Houston Texas – and the magical feeling it carried was the inspiration behind his new film The Library
From The Library: a new short film on the wonder of libraries – video | Children’s books | The Guardian
Over the years, I’ve watched libraries adapt in order to stay relevant. They’ve modified their programming and their collections to reflect changing users and use cases. Many of these modifications and projects are ones that journalists should check out – no pun intended – because they’re equally relevant to our field. Here are my favorites.
From 4 ideas journalism can borrow from libraries | Poynter.
An Indonesian villager is encouraging rural children to read by delivering books with his free mobile library on the back of his favorite horse Luna.
Three times a week Ridwan Sururi, 42, travels with his “horse library” on the dirt tracks of Indonesia’s Central Java Province to provide books for young readers in an area where libraries are rare and school resources are limited.
“The purpose of this library is to encourage reading. The reason why I used the horse is because, in my opinion, the horse attracts children,” Sururi explained.
All of the books in the mobile library were given to him by friends and donors.
From Mobile library delivers books on horseback in rural Indonesia | Reuters
Most of us, most of the time, use immensely popular technologies without masks or noise. We post in what you might call corruptible silence. On Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google, we document our personal spaces, our frailties, our desires, questions and answers. We are naked, exposed and eminently traceable, now and into the future, by an ever-increasing range of data-hungry agents. To concerned citizens living this reality, and to thoughtful designers of technology, what Brunton and Nissenbaum offer is a compelling moral defence and some ready-to-hand tools for a small, distributed revolution of resistance.
Tryniski’s site, which he created in his living room in upstate New York, has grown into one of the largest historic newspaper databases in the world, with 22 million newspaper pages. By contrast, the Library of Congress’ historic newspaper site, Chronicling America, has 5 million newspaper pages on its site while costing taxpayers about $3 per page. In January, visitors to Fultonhistory.com accessed just over 6 million pages while Chronicling America pulled fewer than 3 million views.
One of the pioneers is LibraryBox, an open-source hardware and software project put together by Jason Griffey, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
The box is a low-powered Wi-Fi router that can be run from a solar panel, battery or even a bicycle charger. Users can copy material from the internet, including entire websites, on to an attachable USB stick, then broadcast it to nearby users.
From LibraryBox offers users a chunk of the Splinternet | The National
The Kansas City Public Library engaged in a fun Twitter battle with the Toronto library, both used book spines as their ammunition. It caught the attention of people everywhere in the two countries.
Librarians today are forced to take on a variety of functions that their society is too miserly or contemptuous to fulfill, and the use of their scant resources to meet those essential social obligations diminishes their funds for buying new books and other materials. But a library is not a homeless shelter (at the St. Agnes library in New York, I witnessed a librarian explaining to a customer why she could not sleep on the floor), a nursery or a fun fair (the Seneca East Public Library in Attica, Ohio, offers pajama parties), or a prime provider of social support and medical care (which American librarians today nonetheless routinely give).
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