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The Internet’s keepers? “Some call us hoarders—I like to say we’re archivists”

The longtime non-profit’s physical space remains easy to comprehend, at least, so Graham starts there. The main operation now runs out of an old church (pews still intact) in San Francisco, with the Internet Archive today employing nearly 200 staffers. The archive also maintains a nearby warehouse for storing physical media—not just books, but things like vinyl records, too. That’s where Graham jokes the main unit of measurement is “shipping container.” The archive gets that much material every two weeks.

The company currently stands as the second-largest scanner of books in the world, next to Google.

From The Internet’s keepers? “Some call us hoarders—I like to say we’re archivists” | Ars Technica

October 7, 2018 by Archives Google Internet

Google’s “right to be forgotten” Transparency Report

In May 2014, in a landmark ruling, the European Court of Justice established the “right to be forgotten,” or more accurately, the “right to delist,” allowing Europeans to ask search engines to delist information about themselves from search results. In deciding what to delist, search engines like Google must consider if the information in question is “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive”—and whether there is a public interest in the information remaining available in search results.

Understanding how we make these types of decisions—and how people are using new rights like those granted by the European Court—is important. Since 2014, we’ve provided information about “right to be forgotten” delisting requests in our Transparency Report, including the number of URLs submitted to us, the number of URLs delisted and not delisted, and anonymized examples of some of the requests we have received.

From Updating our “right to be forgotten” Transparency Report

February 27, 2018 by Google Technology

Ten Stories That Shaped 2017

Can you believe it’s almost 2018? That means it’s time to look back at some of the notable library-related stories from the past year.

10. Librarians Fight Fake News

The problems with fake news caused many of us to revamp our web evaluation handouts into guides for spotting bogus information sources.

9. Elsivier Roundup

Elsivier made several headlines this year, in the form of boycotts and resignations. Their buyout of bepress also raised eyebrows.

In related news, Beall’s List went dark in January.

8. ALA’s Trump Statements

Late last year, many librarians were quick to jump on an initial (and now retracted) press release by the American Library Association about being “ready to work with President-elect Trump.” Recent statements have taken a far more militant tone.

7. Milo’s Book Cancelled

Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos found himself out of a book deal after making pro-pedophilia comments. The use of sensitivity readers and related author edits also made the news this year.

6. Whither the Open Web?

It’s too early to tell what the end of net neutrality will mean for the Internet, although most experts predict it won’t be a good thing.

Bonus: Favorite Presentation

For anyone sick of hearing about how, “during these hardships, it’s time for you to demonstrate your coping skills,” the ACRL talk, Resilience, Grit, and Other Lies: Academic Libraries and the Myth of Resiliency is for you.

5. Remember Electronic Reserve?

I first heard about the Georgia State e-reserve lawsuit in grade school. Well, not quite, but after almost a decade, the case is still open.

4. Chinese Censorship

Both Springer and Cambridge found themselves in hot water this year for agreeing to self-censor parts of their web publications for Chinese readers.

3. Little Free “Libraries” Criticism

An interesting point about those community bookshelves was made recently: they don’t often reside in “book deserts” where the need is greatest.

2. The Opioid Crisis

A staggering number of people die every day from overdoses in the United States. This year, public libraries found themselves on the front lines in the fight against opioid overdoses.

1. The Paradox of Tolerance

In the wake of neo-Nazi protests, librarians found themselves discussing the fine line between protected and hate speech.

What was your favorite story of the year?

December 15, 2017 by American Library Association Censorship Google Internet Legal Issues Libraries School Libraries Stories Of The Year

Understanding Bias in Peer Review

To conclude, we see that the practice of double-blind reviewing yields a denser landscape of bids, which may result in a better allocation of papers to qualified reviewers. We also see that reviewers who see author and institution information tend to bid more for papers from top institutions, and are more likely to vote to accept papers from top institutions or famous authors than their double-blind counterparts. This offers some evidence to suggest that a particular piece of work might be accepted under single-blind review if the authors are famous or come from top institutions, but rejected otherwise. Of course, the situation remains complex: double-blind review imposes an administrative burden on conference organizers, reduces the opportunity to detect several varieties of conflict of interest, and may in some cases be difficult to implement due to the existence of pre-prints or long-running research agendas that are well-known to experts in the field. Nonetheless, we recommend that journal editors and conference chairs carefully consider the merits of double-blind review.

From Research Blog: Understanding Bias in Peer Review

November 30, 2017 by Google

Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?

The core of Elsevier’s operation is in scientific journals, the weekly or monthly publications in which scientists share their results. Despite the narrow audience, scientific publishing is a remarkably big business. With total global revenues of more than £19bn, it weighs in somewhere between the recording and the film industries in size, but it is far more profitable. In 2010, Elsevier’s scientific publishing arm reported profits of £724m on just over £2bn in revenue. It was a 36% margin – higher than Apple, Google, or Amazon posted that year.

From Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? | Science | The Guardian

June 28, 2017 by Google Publishing

The end of Academia.edu: how business takes over, again

The lessons to be drawn from this, are the same ones that Siva Vaidhyanathan listed when talking about the Google Books projects. The academic production of knowledge should not be used to make profit, but to improve society. Academic knowledge is, or at least should be a common. The fact that academic knowledge is now part of the ‘for profit’ business can only be understood as the failing of the state and the dominance of neoliberalism. The market destroys academia and the only way to change that is to set up our own platforms. Platforms that only have one goal: to give that knowledge back to society. Fortunately, in a way, this policy shift in Academia.edu now opens a space for new platforms offering genuinely open access for a community of scholars around the world, craving to read and discuss each others’ findings, but increasingly constrained by insane paywalls.

From The end of Academia.edu: how business takes over, again | diggit magazine

April 30, 2017 by Google

The secret lives of Google raters

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.

From The secret lives of Google raters | Ars Technica

April 27, 2017 by Google Technology

File This Under Nostalgia: New Book Pays Tribute To The Library Card Catalog

If you do a Google search for “card catalog” it will likely return Pinterest-worthy images of antique furniture for sale — boxy, wooden cabinets with tiny drawers, great for storing knick-knacks, jewelry or art supplies.

But before these cabinets held household objects, they held countless index cards — which, at the time, were the pathways to knowledge and information. A new book from the Library of Congress celebrates these catalogs as the analog ancestor of the search engine.

Full story on NPR

April 13, 2017 by Books Google Librarians Libraries

Equipping librarians to code: ALA, Google launch ready to code university pilot program

“Libraries play a vital role in our communities, and Google is proud to build on our partnership with ALA,” noted Hai Hong, who leads US outreach on Google’s K-12 Education team. “We’re excited to double down on the findings of Ready to Code 1 by equipping librarians with the knowledge and skills to cultivate computational thinking and coding skills in our youth. Given the ubiquity of technology and the half-a-million unfilled tech jobs in the country, we need to ensure that all youth understand the world around them and have the opportunity to develop the essential skills that employers – and our nation’s economy – require.”

From Equipping librarians to code: ALA, Google launch ready to code university pilot program | News and Press Center

January 25, 2017 by Academic Libraries American Library Association Google Librarians Libraries Technology

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