Why Early Modern Books Are So Beautiful

https://resobscura.substack.com/p/why-early-modern-books-are-so-beautiful

Early modern printed books are a much wider category, encompassing the entire period between ~1450 CE and ~1800 CE (I tend to date the end of the early modern period to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, 1815). Printed books from this period cover a huge range of topics and dozens of languages, but for me at least, they have one thing in common: I almost always find them far more interesting — more beautifully designed, more strange, more intriguing — than modern books.

August 3, 2023 by Books

Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
1. It’s generalized, not specialized.
2. It can understand natural language.
3. It understands context.
4. It is responsive.
5. Its apparent grasp of the world is flexible, implicit, and general.
6. The way it gains its grasp of the world is flexible, implicit, and general.
7. Its errors are not nonsense; they are alien.

It is too early to say that the new AI class is an inherently antihuman technological paradigm, as social media has proven itself to be. But it is not too early to suspect that AIs will dwarf social media in their power to disrupt modern life. If that is so, we had better learn some new and unfamiliar ways of interrogating this technology, and fast. Whatever these entities are — they’re here.

August 1, 2023 by AI

Florida teacher fired over viral video of empty library shelves after DeSantis branded it a “fake narrative”

Florida teacher fired over viral video of empty library shelves after DeSantis branded it a “fake narrative”
Teachers and librarians have shared images of empty bookshelves following a directive from Duval County Public Schools

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/florida-teacher-fired-ron-desantis-book-bans-b2285004.html

February 20, 2023 by Censorship School Libraries

New policies address paper mills and unprofessional conduct – The Official PLOS Blog

On February 1, 2023, PLOS introduced two new policies: one addressing manipulation of the publication process and the other outlining standards for professional conduct. Here, we provide brief excerpts and information about the policies for which the full text is on our journals%u2019 Ethical Publishing Practice pages.

 

New policies address paper mills and unprofessional conduct

February 19, 2023 by Libraries

POLICY BRIEF: Opposing Attempts to Criminalize Librarianship through State Obscenity Laws

https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/opposing_attempts_policy_brief_2023

 

The EverLibrary Institute is releasing a new Policy Brief “Opposing Attempts to Criminalize Libraries and Education Through State Obscenity Laws” to help state library associations anticipate this legislation and prepare properly to oppose unnecessary politicized changes to settled state law.

January 20, 2023 by Politics

New Year, New Weed

New Year, New Weed

The biggest takeaway from this project was that deselection of materials had a largely positive impact on the age of the collection, greater than just adding brand new materials could. It’s like trying to mix a grey paint; you’re going to need to dump a whole lot of white onto your black paint to get it to lighten up. It’s so much more effective if you take all the old, unused stuff away first. Committing to keeping up with how we are progressing towards our goals is the only way I would have found out that the time invested by liaison librarians into collection development has been paying off – and more importantly, just how much of an impact their actions made. I think it is so much more valuable to see that quantitative comparison in the data than to simply say “good job.”

January 20, 2023 by Books Librarians Libraries

The Smithsonian Will Restore Hundreds of the World’s Oldest Sound Recordings

The Smithsonian Will Restore Hundreds of the World’s Oldest Sound Recordings
They were made by Alexander Graham Bell and his fellow researchers between 1881 and 1892

“Over the three-year duration of this remarkable project, ‘Hearing History: Recovering Sound from Alexander Graham Bell’s Experimental Records,’ we will preserve and make accessible for the first time about 300 recordings that have been in the museum’s collections for over a century, unheard by anyone,” says Anthea M. Hartig, the museum’s Elizabeth MacMillan director, in a statement. The new initiative will begin in the fall.

January 18, 2023 by Technology

LISNews Archives