A majority of this year’s finalists at the national book awards made a collective statement calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war at the ceremony in New York on Thursday, amid a storm behind the scenes as sponsors pulled out in anticipation.
War Sows Disruption at the National Book Awards
Thanks Robin!
The ARChive of Contemporary Music, which houses more than 90m songs and is supported by names such as Martin Scorsese, is in need of a new home
The Arc preserves copies of every recording in all known formats. It has electronically catalogued more than 400,000 sound recordings and digitised 200,000 with the Internet Archive – more than any other public university or private library in America. It also contains more than 3m pieces of material including photos, videos, DVDs, books, magazines, press kits, sheet music, ephemera and memorabilia.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/16/archive-of-contemporary-music-new-york
WSJ about new variations of book clubs, for people who don’t like the traditional ones – and it does feature a cool “not-a-book-club book club” at the public library in Woodstock, Vt.
Pella voters keep library independent by slim margin following failed 'Gender Queer' challenge
In a tense battle over book censorship, Pella residents voted Tuesday to protect the local library board’s independence.
About 51% of voters cast ballots against a measure to give City Hall officials oversight of the library’s actions and budget, according to unofficial results. The non-binding referendum reached the ballot after some residents petitioned the library board to remove a graphic novel about gender fluidity, mirroring a national debate driven by conservatives over what books taxpayer-funded libraries should carry.
Just 87 votes separated the two sides, according to unofficial results.
Thanks Robin !
A door at a Swedish library was accidentally left open — 446 people came in, borrowed 245 books. Every single one was returned
They say a reader does not steal and a thief does not read. In the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, that’s definitely true.
Mihai AndreibyMihai Andrei November 9, 2023 in News, Offbeat
When Anna Carin Elf arrived at her workplace in Gothenburg, she immediately realized something was not right. She works at a library, and she was greeted by several visitors, just like any other day. But this was not any other day — the library was supposed to be closed.
“They were surprised. They thought it was a bit empty,” she says. “The people in the library behaved as usual. Many were sitting reading newspapers, some families were in the children’s section and others were searching for books on the computer.”
Moves are spreading in Japan to set up private libraries where each bookshelf is owned by individuals who display books on their hobbies or those that they recommend.
Such libraries are helping revitalize local communities by creating a place where people can mingle through events. Around 50 such facilities have been created throughout the country.
Shining a Light on the Digital Dark Age
Without maintenance, most digital information will be lost in just a few decades. How might we secure our data so that it survives for generations?
The Internet Archive also takes multi-century preservation energy costs into account: “We own and operate and run all our own data centers,” says Bailey. “That’s partly because we’re an archive and don’t want to be dependent on corporate infrastructure, and partly because we can then run less expensive climate control operations.”
My Books Were Used to Train AI
I have said in one of my few forays into nonfiction (On Writing) that you can’t learn to write unless you’re a reader, and unless you read a lot. AI programmers have apparently taken this advice to heart. Because the capacity of computer memory is so large—everything I ever wrote could fit on one thumb drive, a fact that never ceases to blow my mind—these programmers can dump thousands of books into state-of-the-art digital blenders. Including, it seems, mine. The real question is whether you get a sum that’s greater than the parts, when you pour back out.
The Buchanan County party leader threatened not to allow city council members to run as Republicans if they approved the appointment of a gay pastor to the city’s library board. The controversy has created a push for broader change in St. Joseph.
In St. Joseph, local GOP pressured lawmakers to block approval of gay library board member
“This transgender and homosexual propaganda is pure evil, It is designed to destroy the family, to undercut traditional American values and our way of life, and ultimately institute governmental control that will undermine our city, county, state, and nation.”
Why the smell of vinegar shut down a Toronto library’s historical newspaper archive
But in the years since, libraries, archives and collectors have discovered “safety film” actually poses a huge threat to film-based archives and collections because it eventually breaks down. An early indication is the smell of vinegar, which comes from acetic acid that the film gives off as it degrades. Eventually, the film shrinks and cracks until the image is lost.
The destructive and contagious chemical decay is aptly called “vinegar syndrome” — and it means the clock is ticking for those trying to preserve history from this era in Toronto, across the country and around the world.
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