Wired: “Kindle libraries; troves of infinitely streamable songs on Spotify and Apple Music; scores of shows and films on Netflix, Max, and Hulu. Even the Criterion Collection is online now. Cultural archives now live on server farms, so much so that the value of physical media seems ever-shifting. While there’s some benefit to it—the ineffable… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Libraries
More Than Just Mickey: Chaplin, Peter Pan, ‘Western Front’ Enter Public Domain
Rolling Stone “Winnie the Pooh’s Tigger, films by Buster Keaton, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and — yes — the Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie are now fair use as of Jan. 1, Public Domain Day 2024. Jan. 1, isn’t just New Year’s Day — it’s also Public Domain Day, where thousands of cinematic treasures, literary classics,… Continue Reading
Public libraries reveal their most borrowed books of 2023
NPR – “At the end of every year, public libraries around the country assemble lists of the books most borrowed by readers. From Charleston, S.C. to Cincinnati, Ohio, from New Orleans, La. to Minnetonka, Minn., readers favored buzzy memoirs and novels adapted into TV miniseries. “We had Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus as our… Continue Reading
The Low Down on the Greatest Dictionary Collection in the World
Atlas Obscura: From “unabridged” to “slanguage,” Madeline Kripke’s library is a logophile’s heaven (or hell). “Madeline Kripke’s first dictionary was a copy of Webster’s Collegiate that her parents gave her when she was a fifth grader in Omaha in the early 1950s. By the time of her death in 2020, at age 76, she had… Continue Reading
Read it yourself: All 673 books removed from Orange classrooms
Orlando Sentinel: “These books are among the 673 rejected by Orange County Public Schools this year [read free] for fear they violate a new Florida law that prohibits “sexual conduct” in books available to students. The books were in teachers’ classroom libraries. The books will get another review by OCPS staff, and could be returned… Continue Reading
Using Maps of Historical Locations to Understand Historic Events
This post is by Tyron Bey, the 2023-2024 Library of Congress Teacher in Residence. “In the November/December issue of Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies, our “Sources and Strategies” article features a map titled “Important farmlands map, Clarendon County, South Carolina.” Created by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service in… Continue Reading
The lives upended by Florida’s school book wars
Washington Post (read free): “…The battle over what children should be allowed to read in school has riven Florida’s Escambia County School District. It’s part of a national battle, as school book objections surge to historic highs across the country. In Escambia County, the controversy kicked off in 2022, when a high school language arts… Continue Reading
January 1, 2024 is Public Domain Day
Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain: Works from 1928 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1923! – On January 1, 2024, thousands of copyrighted works from 1928 will enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1923. They will be free for all to copy, share, and… Continue Reading
The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2023
LitHub: “Welcome, fellow haters, to another bilious edition of the Most Scathing Book Reviews of the Year. As longtime readers of this annual feature will know, each year in the run up to the holidays, we (the normally benevolent stewards of BookMarks.reviews) make a sacrificial offering to the literary criticism gods in the hope of… Continue Reading
25 Films Selected for Preservation in National Film Registry
“Twenty-five influential films have been selected for the 2023 Library of Congress National Film Registry, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today. The films are selected each year for their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage. The newest selections include a diverse group of films, filmmakers and Hollywood landmarks exploring… Continue Reading
‘It’s totally unhinged’: is the book world turning against Goodreads?
The Guardian: “The influential user review site has suffered a year of controversies, from cancelled book deals to review-bombing, and exposed a dark side to the industry.” Continue Reading
Free and liberated ebooks carefully produced for the true book lover
“Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost. Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg transcribe ebooks and make them available for the widest number of reading devices. Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project… Continue Reading
