Few people realize how much these raters contribute to the smooth functioning act we call “Googling.” Even Google engineers who work with rater data don’t know who these people are. But some raters would now like that to change. That’s because, earlier this month, thousands of them received an e-mail that said their hours would be cut in half, partly due to changes in Google’s staffing policies.
Blake
RIP Dmoz: The Open Directory Project is closing
The Open Directory Project that uses human editors to organize web sites — is closing. It marks the end of a time when humans, rather than machines, tried to organize the web.
The announcement came via a notice that’s now showing on the home page of the DMOZ site, saying it will close as of March 14, 2017:
Uncovering the Hidden Books Tucked Inside Every Single Library
“It’s really hard to find them,” says Kopley. She had more success looking in scholarly databases, where she could turn up examples that others had written about, and in collections of book reviews. But those searches revealed anonymous texts that were already known, in some way. “The hardest thing is to find a completely unknown or unstudied author who was anonymous or pseudonymous,” she says.
From Uncovering the Hidden Books Tucked Inside Every Single Library | Atlas Obscura
The value of libraries
Most library activity is entertainment, not research, not knowledge. It’s still difficult, even with SAILS, to find good technical books. Romance novels, detective stories, sure, hundreds of those. But the tech side is weak at best.
So my question is this: would the general public support libraries if all that entertainment went away? I don’t think they would
Information is garbage
And tsunami is an apt description of what we now face. We all generate and consume information on countless screens. Information is now free-form. It’s evident in our move away from formalized data stores into call-and-response APIs. It’s evident in our information-gathering habits – now more a process of grazing than a formal process of gathering. And it’s evident in our media which now comes at us with a force unmatched in history. The world around us wants to offer us all the information all the time and we have no time to assess what is true, what is not, and, most important, what is valuable.
Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs
Dewey and his crew of “a dozen catalogers and librarians” spent, in his estimation, “an hour daily for nearly an entire week” hashing out the rules of library hand. They started by examining hundreds of card catalogs, looking for penmanship problems and coming up with ways to solve them. They concluded that the “simpler and fewer the lines the better,” and decided that, while a slant was best avoided, a slight backward slant was acceptable. Then they got to the more nitty-gritty stuff, such as whether to opt for a “square-topped 3” or a “rounded-top 3.” (The rounded-top 3 won out, as it is less likely to be mistaken for a 5 during hasty reading.)
From Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs | Atlas Obscura
Thieves steal £2m of rare books by abseiling into warehouse
Antiquarian books worth more than £2m have been stolen by a gang who avoided a security system by abseiling into a west London warehouse.
The three thieves made off with more than 160 publications after raiding the storage facility near Heathrow in what has been labelled a Mission: Impossible-style break-in.
The gang are reported to have climbed on to the building’s roof and bored holes through the reinforced glass-fibre skylights before rappelling down 40ft of rope while avoiding motion-sensor alarms.
From Thieves steal £2m of rare books by abseiling into warehouse | UK news | The Guardian
The fight against fake news is putting librarians on the front line – and they say they’re ready
As fake news and complex immigration orders have inundated the public sphere, libraries are opening their doors and fact-checking skills to people of all backgrounds seeking information.
Why these librarians are protesting Trump’s executive orders | PBS NewsHour
Librarians who spoke to the NewsHour said these orders touched a nerve, especially for those who work at public libraries, which often serve a diverse population that includes new immigrants. According to the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, 55 percent of new Americans use a library at least once a week.
“We are huge resources for newcomers to this country, whether it’s for connection to this country, legal resources, testing preparation, citizen tests, services like storytimes or homework help,” said Elizabeth McKinstry, a public librarian based in Dedham, Massachusetts, who has been vocal in rallying librarians online post-election. “We are there for the most vulnerable folks in our communities, people on the other side of the digital or language divide.”
From Why these librarians are protesting Trump’s executive orders | PBS NewsHour
What’s wrong with presidential libraries?
There’s a huge problem with access. The federal government estimates that, at the current pace, it will take 100 years for the national archives to fully open a given presidential library’s records. No record is available under FOIA for five years. Initially they thought all the records could be arranged and processed in that time. It was a stunningly shortsighted view of how long it would take. There are records from the Truman library that are still being withheld. My favorite example: three years ago a researcher requested a single electronic record at the George W. Bush library and received a reply that said it’s in the queue and we estimate that it will be fulfilled in 12 years.
From What’s wrong with presidential libraries? | On Culture | Chicago Reader
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