Blake

TN libraries close a week after Trump ‘gender ideology’ order on books

Rutherford County libraries close for week to adhere to Trump ‘gender ideology’ order

Murfreesboro Daily News JournalLibrary patrons will endure a week-long closure of Smyrna and Murfreesboro branches, following a state response to an executive order from President Donald Trump on “gender ideology extremism.”

A sign posted out front of Smyrna Public Library alerts visitors to an “EMERGENCY CLOSURE NOTICE” that’s keeping the branch closed Nov. 10-15.

“In order to meet new reporting requirements from the TN State Secretary’s Office, this library will be closed,” the sign said, “for the purpose of reviewing inventory.”

November 12, 2025 by Books Censorship

Challenges to library items in Newberg take a nefarious route

Those were official challenges. In Newberg those objecting to materials at the public library have taken a more nefarious approach. “We were notified by a patron on March 30 that people were removing or hiding our LGBTQIA+ booklists and bragging about it online,” library officials said in a March 30 report to the OIFC. “We started keeping track on a Microsoft Teams channel on April 1. Since then we have found fully-stocked booklists completely missing or moved behind other booklists on (May 3, May 22, June 10 and June 24).”

Read more at: https://newberggraphic.com/2025/10/20/challenges-to-library-items-in-newberg-take-a-nefarious-route/

November 12, 2025 by Books Censorship

AI promises to free up time. But what if it spares us from learning, writing, painting and exploring the world?

If I reduced my existence to a series of ChatGPT prompts, the act of my living is only shorter – not better

And I certainly do not want AI to write my books for me, or paint my pictures. Not only would the work be terrible: it wouldn’t even be work. As all creatives know, there is limited joy in having written a book – as soon as it is done, most of us are on to the next thing. The thrill, the joy, the beauty, is in the writing of a book. If you outsource your creative work to a computer, you are not a creative. Someone who merely churns out product is not an artist – they are a salesperson. The artist is the person who makes, not who has made.

October 22, 2025 by AI

Generative AI makes it harder to teach humanistic skills

AI makes the humanities more important, but also a lot weirder

But in the longer run, the damage is being done to students. By making effort an optional factor in higher education rather than the whole point of it, LLMs risk producing a generation of students who have simply never experienced the feeling of focused intellectual work. Students who have never faced writer’s block are also students who have never experienced the blissful flow state that comes when you break through writer’s block. Students who have never searched fruitlessly in a library for hours are also students who, in a fundamental and distressing way, simply don’t know what a library is even for.

October 21, 2025 by Technology

Blogging

I like this one:

The blogosphere, in its many incarnations since the beginning of the web, didn’t happen on its own. In fact, it often happened in stark contrast to expectations for the web (consider the many times that the web has been declared “dead”). It happened through the concerted efforts of its greatest advocates. And if you’re reading this blog you’re probably one of them, and we can all make that effort together.

October 21, 2025 by Internet

ode to libraries (the book ones)

Not just for working. Use it for thinking, for reconnecting, writing or creating. The library is a sanctuary where your mind slows down, even though the world outside keeps running. Maybe you’ve been postponing to think, to reflect, to spend time by yourself, like I did before I discovered my local library. You’ll find some kind of joy and productivity in there. We don’t have so many pure-good organizations in our world. We should appreciate them while we still have them.

ode to libraries (the book ones)

September 26, 2025 by Libraries Public Libraries Technology

How the Calgary Public Library avoided the worst after it was targeted in a massive cyberattack

Security teams chose to pro-actively shut down the servers rather than leave systems vulnerable, a decision that chief executive officer Sarah Meilleur credits with saving the library%u2019s infrastructure, stopping the attack and ensuring that no business, employee or member data was compromised.

“Because we were able to stop the attack from being fully implemented, we were never in contact with a threat actor at any point to really understand what they were looking for or what their intentions were,” Ms. Meilleur said.

“There’s no conclusive evidence to determine who the attacker was, so we’ll probably never know.”

January 2, 2025 by IT Security in Libraries

How a food crisis in India fed America’s library collections

he 132-year-old University of Chicago houses more than 800,000 volumes related to South Asia, making it one of the world's premier collections for studies on the region. But how did such a treasure trove of South Asian literature end up there?

The answer lies in a programme called PL-480, a US initiative launched in 1954 under Public Law 480, also known as the Food for Peace, a hallmark of Cold War diplomacy.

January 2, 2025 by Libraries

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