Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication.
Sad to see a site fail after so long 🙁
Blake
‘What Makes a Book Rare?’: Librarian Learns Answer at Rare Book School – WSU Libraries
A rare book isn’t necessarily expensive, old, or fragile. Some are truly unique, while others might exist in dozens of other libraries. The common ground that unites them, if any, is that they are remarkable in some way: for the information they contain, their role in the history of printing and bookmaking, or their place in the pantheon of the literature of a particular genre or place. But how “rare” a book is depends quite a lot on the particular knowledge and interests of the beholder.
What the Brave Lawsuit Says About AI – Plagiarism Today
It’s that crawler, not the browser itself, that is at the core of the issue. According to the lawsuits, Brave’s web crawler does not respect robots.txt and does not identify itself. Brave also doesn’t publish IP addresses or other information that would allow sites to block its bots.
According to the lawsuits, Brave indexed content and then sold access to that material via an API. Those companies include Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. The lawsuits allege that Brave earned more than $100 million in revenue from these deals.
Literary Hub » In Praise of Librarians in Dangerous Times
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
The librarian is a seeker and keeper of truth, and that makes her a dangerous figure in the eyes of those who fear the fullest, most comprehensive, and most uncomfortable truths emerging.
About half of HISD campuses report zero library book checkouts this year as library staffing shrinks
About half of Houston ISD's campuses have had zero library checkouts so far this school year, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
Please Let the Internet Die | WIRED
Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over.
The Tragedy of Having a Wikipedia Page—and Then Losing It | WIRED
You Finally Got a Wikipedia Page. Then It Vanished
Every day, Wikipedia biographies of living people are flagged for deletion because the subjects are not “notable” enough. How do these poor souls take the news?
Texas State Librarian Gloria Meraz on the Power of Libraries
Most people think of libraries as the place where you get books off the shelf, and of course we do that. But there’s so much more. The best libraries reflect and respond to their communities, whether that’s an older population where you’ll see more services for senior citizens or a community with a lot of young families. Today libraries are also expected to be hubs for various services, including the delivery of health services—we’ve provided many grants to develop telehealth centers. Some libraries have programs for innovators wanting to start their own business, and some locations even have seed libraries, with actual seeds people can plant. It really is almost everything under the sun.
If British Library reading rooms become ‘co-working spaces’, what, exactly, is a national library for? | Andy Beckett | The Guardian
Despite this troubled context, and in some ways because of it, the library’s drastic reading room reduction plan has provoked “outrage” from staff, say the Prospect and Public and Commercial Services (PCS) unions that represent them. Reading room staff understandably fear for their jobs, but also for the building’s fundamental purpose, which was set out by law in 1972 – an indication of how hard the complex was to conceive and build – as “the establishment for the United Kingdom of a national library”. Staff are now “the most furious I’ve ever seen them about anything”, says a union source. A strike over the reading room plan, following one last year over low pay, could begin as soon as December.
Suit says transgender book got Georgia library manager fired
A Southeast Georgia county and library system are being sued by a local woman who alleges they fired her as the manager of the county’s public library because she allowed a book about a transgender child to be part of a display.
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