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Category Archives: Libraries

Congressional Research Service Syndication Feed

Disruptive Library Technology Jester; “One of the hidden gems of the Library of Congress is the Congressional Research Service (CRS). With a staff of about 600 researchers, analysts, and writers, the CRS provides “policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation.” It is kind of like a “think tank” for the members of Congress. And an extensive selection of their reports are available from the CRS homepage and—as government publications—are not subject to copyright; any CRS Report may be reproduced and distributed without permission. And they publish a lot of reports. …The problem is that no automated RSS/Atom feeds of CRS reports exists. Use your favorite search engine to look for “Congressional Research Service RSS or Atom”; you’ll find a few attempts to gather selected reports or comprehensive archives that stopped functioning years ago. And that is a real shame because these reports are good, taxpayer-funded work that should be more widely known. So I created a syndication feed in Atom: https://feeds.dltj.org/crs.xml. You can subscribe to that in your feed reader to get updates. I’m also working on a Mastodon bot account that you can follow and automated saving of report PDFs in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine…”

LLRX May 2023 Issue

Is using Generative AI just another form of outsourcing?– Is the implementation of generative AI simply a new flavor of outsourcing? How does this digital revolution reflect on our interpretation of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) ethical guidelines? How can we ensure that we maintain the sacrosanct standards of our profession as we step into… Continue Reading

Book removals may have violated student civil rights

Washington Post – free link: “In a move that could affect how schools handle book challenges, the federal government has concluded that a Georgia school district’s removal of titles with Black and LGBTQ characters may have created a “hostile environment” for students, potentially violating their civil rights. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released… Continue Reading

More Than 600,000 Students and Teachers Use Z-Library

TorrentFreak (TF): “Pirate eBook repository Z-Library has shared some interesting data concluding that more than 600,000 students and scholars use the site. This is likely an underestimation, as the findings are based on email addresses. The United States is excluded from the analysis, Z-Library notes, due to the criminal prosecution of two alleged operators of… Continue Reading

A far bigger problem than book bans? Declining literacy

Washington Post: “..This criminalization of library science dovetails with other efforts in recent years to protect students from the morally corrupting influence of woke material — as well as, at times, the morally corrupting influence of un-woke material. Recall that just a few years ago, much of public education discourse involved debates over whether students… Continue Reading

PEN America Files Lawsuit Against Florida School District Over Unconstitutional Book Bans

“Free expression organization PEN America, alongside publisher Penguin Random House, authors, and parents of children affected by the unconstitutional book bans carried out by Florida’s Escambia County School District and School Board, filed suit today in federal court asking for books to be returned to school library shelves where they belong. Ensuring that students have access to… Continue Reading

School librarians face a new penalty in the banned-book wars: Prison

Washington Post: “Librarians could face years of imprisonment and tens of thousands in fines for providing sexually explicit, obscene or “harmful” books to children under new state laws that permit criminal prosecution of school and library personnel. At least seven states have passed such laws in the last two years, according to a Washington Post… Continue Reading

Navy Library at Washington Navy Yard

“The Navy Library at the Washington Navy Yard is our nation’s oldest federal library and houses a treasure vault of material, artifacts and rare books pertaining to the Washington Navy Yard and Naval Gun Factory civilian workforce1. The library is home to the most comprehensive collection of historical literature on the United States Navy. Over 13.5%… Continue Reading

Bound Congressional Record Now Back to 1873 in Congress.gov

In Custodia Legis, Andrew Weber: “In April, Robert shared the news about how we enhanced the display of historical bill text on Congress.gov. One of the longer term projects we have been working on, also related to historical material, has been to add the Bound Congressional Record to Congress.gov. Robert announced that our first Congress… Continue Reading

The Scholarly Fingerprinting Industry

Jefferson Pooley. The Scholarly Fingerprinting Industry Amerikastudien/American Studies 68, no. 1 (2023): 18–21. https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2023/1/41. 18 Amst 68.1 (2023): 5-26 “Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, Wiley, and SAGE: Many researchers know that the five giant firms publish most of the world’s scholarship. Fifty years of acquisitions and journal launches have yielded a stunningly profitable oligopoly,… Continue Reading