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Category Archives: Libraries

Beware of Book Blurbs

The Million: “Blurb is a funny sounding word. It’s phonetically unappealing, beginning and ending with unattractive voiced bilabial stops, and its definition—an advertisement or announcement, especially a laudatory one—carries some of the same meaning as another unattractive word, blubber, which evokes excess in its dual definition as both an expostulation of unrestrained emotion as well… Continue Reading

LC Lunch and Learn – Recent Developments in US Foreign Relations Law and Research Strategies

In Custodia Legis: “Join Us on 3/23 for a Lunch and Learn Webinar: “Recent Developments in US Foreign Relations Law and Research Strategies” On Thursday, March 23, 2023, at 12 p.m. EDT, legal reference specialist Louis Myers and Librarian-in-Residence Olivia Kane-Cruz will present our next Lunch and Learn Webinar, “Recent Developments in U.S. Foreign Relations… Continue Reading

Webinar: Congress.gov: Updates and Overview

Register to attend the live training webinar, “Congress.gov: Updates and Overview.” Date: Tuesday, March 7, 2023 Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. (EST) No Fee. Speakers: Barbara Bavis, Bibliographic and Research Instruction Librarian, Law Library of Congress; Robert Brammer, Chief, Office of External Relations, Law Library of Congress Learning outcomes: Congress.gov is the official website… Continue Reading

On the Evolution of the World’s Oldest Encyclopedia

Literary Hub: “Encyclopedias are not like rose bushes, for which pruning is everything. They are usually the opposite, more like Japanese knotweed, spreading wildly and germinating freely, invasive and persistent in all countries where a foothold is possible.When the second edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica completed its publication in 1784, sixteen years after the first, it… Continue Reading

Passion Projects in Law Librarianship: A Belated Tribute to Igor Kavass and His Personal Mission to Acquire and Organize U.S. International Agreements

Passion Projects in Law Librarianship: A Belated Tribute to Igor Kavass and His Personal Mission to Acquire and Organize U.S. International Agreements. 114 Law Library Journal 431 [2022-18]  “In 1973, Kavass and his friend, Adolf Sprudzs, a law librarian at the University of Chicago, created the UST Cumulative Index, 1950–1970, which organized more than 5,000… Continue Reading

ChatGPT launches boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon

Reuters: “…There were over 200 e-books in Amazon’s Kindle store as of mid-February listing ChatGPT as an author or co-author, including “How to Write and Create Content Using ChatGPT,” “The Power of Homework” and poetry collection “Echoes of the Universe.” And the number is rising daily. There is even a new sub-genre on Amazon: Books… Continue Reading

Libraries model sustainability

Connaway, L. S., Doyle, B., Cyr, C., Gallagher, P., & Cantrell, J. (2023). “Libraries model sustainability”: The results of an OCLC survey on library contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals. IFLA Journal, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352221141467 “A survey of more than 1700 library staff worldwide identifies how libraries contribute to five of the United Nations Sustainable Development… Continue Reading

Publishers Want to End How Libraries Lend Books Online

Medium: “When the pandemic began and schools and libraries around the country were forced to close their doors, teachers and librarians were at a loss over how to get digital books into the hands of young readers and their families. The problem was so drastic that the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit digital library, declared… Continue Reading

Federal Library Directory

“The Federal Library Directory, now in an updated second edition, profiles federal libraries and information centers in the United States and abroad. Presented with an interactive map, the directory displays geographic and collections data from nearly 1,400 federal libraries. FEDLINK is offering this public dataset to locate government resources more easily for scholars and library… Continue Reading

The Efficacy of ChatGPT: Is it Time for the Librarians to Go Home?

Via LLRX – The Efficacy of ChatGPT: Is it Time for the Librarians to Go Home? In preparation for a presentation about race and academic libraries, Curtis Kendrick, formerly Dean and currently Binghamton University Libraries Faculty and Staff mentor, tried ChatGPT (Jan 9 version) to see what it (they?) had to say. He was curious… Continue Reading

Foreign Legal Gazettes in the Law Library of Congress

Celebrating Over 10,000 Foreign Legal Gazette Issues Now Online. “Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Law Library of Congress has been collecting foreign official gazettes and maintains the largest collection of these sources in the entire world. The Law Library’s gazette collection contains current, historical, and subnational jurisdictions from most countries and in most languages. Official… Continue Reading