Current Affairs: “…It’s worth appreciating just how extraordinary libraries are, why they matter, and what they can tell us about the kinds of institutions we should build. They’re spaces of absolute equality, where anyone can come, regardless of financial resources, to study, learn, and hang out. You don’t have to purchase anything in order to… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Libraries
Librarians on bikes: cycling through US libraries
Oxford University Press Blog: “After working for 26 years as academic librarians, we have reached a point in our careers where we are right-sizing professionally and personally. This year, we requested and were granted a nine-month contract, enabling us to pursue our dream of cycling across the United States, from Washington, D.C., to Astoria, Oregon.… Continue Reading
Is the Library Card Dying?
The Atlantic – Sara Polsky: “..Serious library-card collectors approach the pursuit more systematically than I do. A high-school freshman in California, for example, maintains a collection of more than 3,000 cards. A librarian in Nebraska scans valid library cards from all over the world and posts the images online. The retired librarian Larry Nix maintains… Continue Reading
MOU on information-sharing relationship between LC and Peace Palace Library in The Hague
“July 19, 2018 – Two of the world’s most comprehensive international law libraries, the Law Library of Congress and the Peace Palace Library based in The Hague, Netherlands, have agreed to form an information-sharing relationship to exchange information and better serve library users. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed today in a ceremony at… Continue Reading
Bloomberg – Jeff Bezos is now the Richest Man in Modern History
Bloomberg News – “Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history. The Amazon.com Inc. founder’s net worth cracked $150 billion in New York on Monday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s about $55 billion more than Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest person. Bezos, 54, also has topped Gates in inflation-adjusted… Continue Reading
NYT – Amazon’s Curious Case of the $2,630.52 Used Paperback
“Many booksellers on Amazon strive to sell their wares as cheaply as possible. That, after all, is usually how you make a sale in a competitive marketplace. Other merchants favor a counterintuitive approach: Mark the price up to the moon. “Zowie,” the romance author Deborah Macgillivray wrote on Twitter last month after she discovered copies… Continue Reading
NIH NNLM Gov Doc/Database: Data Thesaurus
“Data Thesaurus: All – Welcome to the Data Thesaurus, a resource connecting and defining concepts, services, and tools relevant to librarians working in data-driven discovery. A definition, relevant literature, and web resources accompany each term along with links to related terms. Search by term or keyword on the right or browse the 70 terms below.” Continue Reading
The Open Library – Search Full-Text within 4M+ Books
The Open Library Blog: “Open Library now lets you search inside the text contents of over 4M books. Many book websites, like Amazon and Goodreads, give you the ability to search for books by title and author, but they don’t make it easy to find books based on their contents. This type of searching is… Continue Reading
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming
A lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens…”The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that… Continue Reading
Survey – Law Librarians Focusing More on Competitive Intelligence
Law.com: The focus is shifting toward more business intelligence research for partners and away from client-facing work, the survey results indicated. “This year’s survey results show that for firm librarians the focus is switching from practice of law research to business development research—sometimes referred to as competitive intelligence. Specifically, 75 percent of respondents expect to… Continue Reading
The Odd Paraphernalia of the NYPL’s Berg Collection
BookRiot: “On the third floor of the New York Public Library, off of a quiet, marble-tiled hallway, is the Berg Reading Room. Mary Catherine Kinniburgh is one of the literary-manuscript specialists in charge of the cache of artifacts, which includes a lock of Walt Whitman’s hair, Jack Kerouac’s boots and Virginia Woolf’s walking cane—all guarded… Continue Reading
llustrated Maps of New York Through the Ages
llustrated Maps of New York Through the Ages By The Paris Review “Since their inception, maps have been embellished with illustrations. Through July 16, a selection of illustrated maps of New York spanning six centuries is on view at the New York Public Library. A preview of the exhibition—along with captions written by its curator… Continue Reading
