Blake

How young librarians are figuring out the field’s future

Several years ago, Forbes Magazine listed the advanced degrees with the worst job prospects—and a master’s in library sciences was No. 1 on the list. Despite that gloomy prediction and some staid image problems, young librarians say their work is relevant in the 21st Century and is as needed now as it has ever been.

“You say, I’m going to library school, and everybody is like, ‘Well, aren’t libraries kind of over? What are you going to be doing?'” said 34-year-old Jay Granger, a management and library and information sciences student in the online program at the University of Southern California.

From How young librarians are figuring out the field’s future — NewsWorks

January 14, 2016 by Internet Librarians Libraries School Libraries

At ALA’s Midwinter Meeting: BiblioBoard Pivots As ‘Libraries Transform’

What Davis is describing is one of the most energizing concepts in library evolution today, dovetailing with the messages of the Libraries Transform campaign. The BiblioBoard team envisions the library not simply as a place to go for information retrieval, but also as an enabling hub, an engine of its users’ own creativity—supporting, leveraging, even producing, promoting and distributing library patrons’ own ideas and capacities.

This is The Library as a driver-into-reality of makers’ dreams.

From At ALA’s Midwinter Meeting: BiblioBoard Pivots As ‘Libraries Transform’ | Thought Catalog

January 14, 2016 by American Library Association Libraries

You are not what you read: librarians purge user data to protect privacy

Interlibrary loans, said Alison Macrina, founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, form an ad-hoc record of departures from regular patterns of lending – the kind of thing that often interests intelligence and law enforcement analysts.

“It seems like it’s a more interesting data trail,” said Macrina. “It’s a book you wanted so bad that you went to special lengths to get it, and we know how intelligence agencies pay attention to breaks in patterns.” Macrina hadn’t heard about the CUNY Graduate Center initiative, but said it was a relief to her. “It’s taken a little too long but I’m really glad to see it’s happening somewhere.”

From You are not what you read: librarians purge user data to protect privacy | US news | The Guardian

January 14, 2016 by Legal Issues Librarians Libraries Privacy

Your goal today is to add one reference to Wikipedia!

How to Participate: Five Basic Steps
Find an article that needs a citation. There are many ways to do this. Here are some strategies.
Filling a “Citation Needed”
Finding an article with sourcing problems
Select an article while browsing
Cite a source from your collection or research
Find a reliable source that can support that article
Add a citation using Wikipedia Style. Click here to learn about adding citations and editing Wikipedia
Add the project hashtag #1Lib1Ref to the Edit Summary
Share your edit on social media and learn more about libraries and Wikipedia

From The Wikipedia Library/1Lib1Ref – Meta

January 14, 2016 by Libraries

Do You Read Differently Online and in Print?

Comprehension matters, but so does pleasure. In Proust and the Squid, Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, observes that the brain’s limbic system, the seat of our emotions, comes into play as we learn to read fluently; our feelings of pleasure, disgust, horror and excitement guide our attention to the stories we can’t put down. Novelists have known this for a long time, and digital writers know it, too. It’s no coincidence that many of the best early digital narratives took the form of games, in which the reader traverses an imaginary world while solving puzzles, sometimes fiendishly difficult ones. Considered in terms of cognitive load, these texts are head-bangingly difficult; considered in terms of pleasure, they’re hard to beat.

From Do You Read Differently Online and in Print?

January 13, 2016 by Internet

Pedalling books, Toronto friends share their love of reading with a mobile library

In the summer, they cycle the streets of Toronto with 18 kilograms of books in tow. The titles find their way from their bike to the hands of readers in city parks. In the winter, the volumes live in the cosy confines of a neighbourhood bar, where the pair leaves a small library and hosts a monthly reading series.

From Pedalling books, Toronto friends share their love of reading with a mobile library | Toronto Star

January 7, 2016 by Books Librarians Libraries

Grant Opportunities For CollectionSpace

CollectionSpace is pleased to announce a mini-grant opportunity for new adopters, implementers, and community leaders.

Are you ready to implement and need some assistance? Would an additional set of hands help to guide you through the planning process?  Is there a project you have in mind that would build capacity in your community around CollectionSpace?  Are you looking to use CollectionSpace but don’t have access to a technical team?

Mini-grants of up to $7,500 for single institutions/collections and up to $25,000 for collaborations among organizations and/or collections are now available.

Questions? Email [email protected] or attend our November walkthrough, where we’ll answer any and all questions about the grant. More information about the walkthroughs can be found on our community calendar.

From Grant Opportunities | CollectionSpace

January 6, 2016 by Uncategorized

New York Public Library Invites a Deep Digital Dive

Most items in the public-domain release have already been visible at the library’s digital collections portal. The difference is that the highest-quality files will now be available for free and immediate download, along with the programming interfaces, known as APIs, that allow developers to use them more easily.

Crucially — if wonkily — users will also have access to information from the library’s internal rights database, letting them know which items are free of what the library is carefully calling “known United States copyright restrictions.”

From New York Public Library Invites a Deep Digital Dive – The New York Times

January 6, 2016 by Librarians Libraries Public Libraries

Neal Stephenson – Why I Am a Sociomediapath

I feel that now is the time when I should devote as many of my waking hours as possible to doing what I’m good at, and to minimize time spent reading comment threads and viewing pictures of other people’s cats. So far, it’s been working well; I completed SEVENEVES recently and have three other novel projects in the works. Somewhat perversely, however, using social media has now become part of a novelist’s job. It’s one thing if you stay off social media altogether and cultivate an identity as a Luddite or recluse. But if you have a public Facebook page, Google+ identity, and Twitter feed, as I do, and you don’t actively use them to talk about and promote your work, it strikes people as being a little weird–it sends a mixed message.

From Neal Stephenson – Social Media

January 6, 2016 by EBooks Google

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