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Daily Archives: March 9, 2021

Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.

Washington Post – “…Librarians have been no match for the beast. When authors sign up with a publisher, it decides how to distribute their work. With other big publishers, selling e-books and audiobooks to libraries is part of the mix — that’s why you’re able to digitally check out bestsellers like Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land.” Amazon is the only big publisher that flat-out blocks library digital collections. Search your local library’s website, and you won’t find recent e-books by Amazon authors Kaling, Dean Koontz or Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Nor will you find downloadable audiobooks for Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime,” Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Michael Pollan’s “Caffeine.”…In testimony to Congress, the American Library Association called digital sales bans like Amazon’s “the worst obstacle for libraries” moving into the 21st century. Lawmakers in New York and Rhode Island have proposed bills that would require Amazon (and everybody else) to sell e-books to libraries with reasonable terms. This week, the Maryland General Assembly will vote on its own bill, after the state Senate passed a version last week…”

Everything to know about the third stimulus check: Timeline, IRS calculations and more

CNET – “A third stimulus check for up to $1,400 per person could become real this week, as Congress works to finish up the final COVID-19 relief package and get to the President Joe Biden to sign in the coming days. While there’s an outside chance details on the new stimulus payment could change before the… Continue Reading

Study: Facebook Users Find Fake News More Engaging Than Facts

MakeUseOf: “…Research conducted by Cybersecurity for Democracy suggests that far-right Facebook pages that publish misinformation have the highest levels of engagement per follower when compared to any other category of news source. Cybersecurity for Democracy is a project of New York University. This study that focused on fake news on Facebook is credited to Laura… Continue Reading

CDC Guidance Dramatically Under-Represents Classroom Student Capacity Under 6′ Social Distancing

Benjamin S. Kay, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, March 9, 2021 – “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides sample classroom layouts that promote 6-foot social distancing during in-person education. These sample 30′ by 30′ classroom layouts hold at most 9 students while complying with the 6-foot social distancing requirement.… Continue Reading

Search Scholarly Materials Preserved in the Internet Archive

Internet Archive Blogs – “Looking for a research paper but can’t find a copy in your library’s catalog or popular search engines? Give Internet Archive Scholar a try! We might have a PDF from a “vanished” Open Access publisher in our web archive, an author’s pre-publication manuscript from their archived faculty webpage, or a digitized… Continue Reading

The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention

Newlines Institute – “This report is the first independent expert application of the 1948 Genocide Convention to the ongoing treatment of the Uyghurs in China. It was undertaken by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, in cooperation with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, in response to emerging accounts of serious and systematic… Continue Reading

You Know It’s Bad When The Court Decision Has A Table Of Contents: Part Deux

Above The Law -“…In DR Distributors, LLC v. 21 Century Smoking, Inc., originally filed in 2012, two companies that sell electronic cigarettes brought suit and counterclaims alleging, among other things, trademark violations under the Lanham Act. The court’s decision is 256 pages long. Like the Smalls decision 18 months ago, this decision was at times… Continue Reading