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Category Archives: Libraries

The late summer release for GovInfo included 85 individually tracked system changes

GovInfo – RSS Feeds for Searches, Browse Pages Updates, and New Mobile Buttons – The late summer release for GovInfo included 85 individually tracked system changes. Highlights were functionality to create RSS feeds based on search criteria, design improvements for mobile button display, browse updates that include migrating the Public and Private Laws collection to the… Continue Reading

Inside the $621 Million Legal Battle for the ‘Soul of the Internet’

RollingStone via MSN [no paywall]: “Major record labels have sued the online library Internet Archive over thousands of old recordings, raising the question: Who owns the past?Before founding the Internet Archive, Kahle worked as a computer scientist, making major contributions to personal computing and the early internet during the Eighties and Nineties. With the Archive,… Continue Reading

U.S. Court Orders LibGen to Pay $30m to Publishers, Issues Broad Injunction

TorrentFreak: “Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon granted the default judgment without any changes. The anonymous LibGen defendants are responsible for willful copyright infringement and their activities should be stopped. “Plaintiffs have been irreparably harmed as a result of Defendants’ unlawful conduct and will continue to be irreparably harmed should Defendants be allowed to… Continue Reading

What Are American Students Learning about US History?

American Historical Society: “In 2022, the American Historical Association (AHA) launched the most comprehensive study of the national US history teaching landscape undertaken in the 21st century. We wanted to know what is actually happening in public school classrooms across the country. Are teachers distorting history or indoctrinating children? Careful research transcends the heat and… Continue Reading

3 imagery updates to Google Earth and Maps

Google Blog: “Our world is in constant motion. Cities expand, landscapes evolve and the climate continues to reshape our globe. To help people visualize these changes and learn more about the world around them, we’re announcing new updates to Google Earth and Street View. Travel back in time with Earth — and plan projects more… Continue Reading

We Underfunded Our Libraries Once. It Almost Lost Us World War II

TIME – Graham is a historian and professor at Stony Brook University. – Her latest book is BOOK AND DAGGER: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II: “2024 has seen many devastating budget cuts to libraries. Earlier this year, New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams proposed to cut more than… Continue Reading

Banned Books Week

American Library Association: “In a time of deep political divides, library staff across the country are facing an overwhelming number of book ban attempts. In 2023 alone, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 1,247 efforts to censor books and other resources in libraries—an increase of 65% from the year before. In total,… Continue Reading

The National Archives: a small agency with a big responsibility safeguarding American and world history

CBS 60 Minutes: “The National Archives has been in the news lately, not so much for what is in its collection, but for what was missing. After former President Donald Trump and then-Vice President Biden held on to records when they left office that should have been sent to the Archives… we wanted to know… Continue Reading

Museo del Prado offers free online access to more than 11,500 publications from late 15th century to early 20th century

“The new Digital Library of the Museo del Prado, developed with funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), offers free access to 5600 magazine issues and 6,000 books specializing in artistic literature and published between the end of the 15th and early 20th centuries. More than 1,700,000 pages have been digitized, the cataloguing… Continue Reading

Inside Iron Mountain: It’s Time to Talk About Hard Drives

MIX: “A few years ago, archiving specialist Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services did a survey of its vaults and discovered an alarming trend: Of the thousands and thousands of archived hard disk drives from the 1990s that clients ask the company to work on, around one-fifth are unreadable. Iron Mountain has a broad customer… Continue Reading

Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries: Mid-Atlantic Roundtable Report

Laskowski, Casandra and Miguel-Stearns, Teresa M. and Ching, Tina and Florio, Emily and Lohmeier, Kerry and O’Grady, Jean and Postar, Adeen and Williams, Austin and Wolek, Kristin, Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries: Mid-Atlantic Roundtable Report  (July 31, 2024). Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 24-25, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4955870 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4955870 – On… Continue Reading