December 2018
For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain
At midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain. It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S.
That deluge of works includes not just “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which appeared first in the New Republic in 1923, but hundreds of thousands of books, musical compositions, paintings, poems, photographs and films. After January 1, any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” any middle school can produce Theodore Pratt’s stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and any historian can publish Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis with her own extensive annotations. Any artist can create and sell a feminist response to Marcel Duchamp’s seminal Dadaist piece, The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) and any filmmaker can remake Cecil B. DeMille’s original The Ten Commandments and post it on YouTube.
Alleged killer of Natomas librarian had history of threats toward librarians
Ronald Seay, the man accused in the deadly ambush shooting of a Natomas librarian last week, had been arrested multiple times for causing disturbances in libraries in the St. Louis area before moving to Sacramento this fall, Missouri officials told The Sacramento Bee.
Full article here.
Ten Stories That Shaped 2018
As we limp our way into 2019, let’s take a look back at some of the notable library stories from the past year.
10. The Opioid Epidemic Continues
The abuse of narcotics has become so widespread in this country that our average life expectancy has declined as a result. The use of Narcan to treat overdoses occurring in libraries is one way we can contribute to public health.
9. More Fake News
Although political propaganda is nothing new, the growing threat of what has been dubbed “information terrorism,” aided by technological advances in the creation of bogus pieces of reporting, make our role as archivists and educators all the more important.
8. Search Engines are Bigots
The popular book Algorithms of Oppression brought to light something that librarians have long known: “Garbage In, Garbage Out” applies when it comes to aggregating information. Here’s hoping that future generations of AI can unlearn the prejudices of the past.
7. Prison Book Bannings
The majority of Republicans think that higher education is bad for the country. So it’s little wonder that efforts to provide for a literate prison populace have met stiff resistance by those in charge of the prison–industrial complex.
6. Judicial Issues Roundup
Legal cases making headlines in 2018 include: the right to repair; abandonware and Fair Use; the GSU e-reserves case; the Marakesh Treaty; Ebsco and pornography; 3D printing of guns; and moving the Copyright Office out of the Library of Congress.
Honorable Mention
Kudos to John Oliver for donating all proceeds to The Trevor Project and AIDS United from the sales of his bunny book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo.
5. A New “Fake Paper” Scandal
There was a split verdict this year over the success of an elaborate sting to publish hoaxes and other dubious scholarship in peer-reviewed humanities journals.
4. Whither Open Access
A proposed European policy that would eventually require journals to make published articles freely available and without an embargo, known as “Plan S,” has won over many Open Access advocates, although not everyone is totally on board with the idea.
3. Eschewing Fines
Several libraries made the news this year by eliminating fees for overdue books.
2. Data Breaches Fuel Privacy Concerns
The Cambridge Analytica scandal and similar exploits have led librarians to carefully examine their own data collection practices. Be on the lookout for a gradual erosion of patron privacy through new tracking mechanisms on the horizon.
1. LGBT Challenges & Drag Queen Story Hours
Amidst the backdrop of a Utah library director banning LGBTQ-themed displays and an Iowa man burning LGBTQ library books, libraries in Louisiana, Kansas, and Texas faced strong criticism for planning childrens’ programs with drag queens, prompting a reasoned blog post titled, “Appeasement Doesn’t Work.”
What was your favorite library story of 2018?
Keep Copyright Office in Library of Congress
Urgent! Contact Your Senator About S. 1010
If passed, Congress would voluntarily hand over the power to appoint the copyright advisor to the president.
The Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act (S. 1010), a Senate companion to House bill (H.R. 1695), will be voted on by the Senate Rules and Administration Committee this Tuesday, in spite of previous concerns by committee members. This legislation would make the position of the Register of Copyrights subject to Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. Under current law, the Librarian of Congress selects the Register. ALA strongly opposes this bill and needs you to contact your U.S. Senators to express your objections to this bill and ask them to vote against it.
From Send a Message
Thanks Thanks Robin!
Forget Book Trailers: Book Playlists are the New Hotness
Book trailers are already such a thing that there’s whole weekly columns devoted to them, a whole slew of tips and tricks; a veritable ecosystem. People want multimedia with their books. But what if the new hotness wasn’t a trailer at all? What if it was something that lots of us already do anyways, with a much lower barrier for entry?
I’m talking about book playlists, music that reflects the theme or the time and place of the book, a non-audiobook soundtrack that enhances and embellishes the written word.
From Forget Book Trailers: Book Playlists are the New Hotness
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