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
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Category Archives: Libraries
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
Reading print improves comprehension far more than looking at digital text
The Guardian: “Reading print texts improves comprehension more than reading digital materials does, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Valencia analysed more than two dozen studies on reading comprehension published between 2000 and 2022, which assessed nearly 470,000 participants. Their findings suggest that print reading over a long period of time… Continue Reading
ChatGPT Is Turning the Internet Into Plumbing
The Atlantic [read free]: What does life online look like filtered through a bot? By Damon Beres: “…Earlier today, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, announced a partnership with the media conglomerate Axel Springer that seems to get us closer to an answer. Under the arrangement, ChatGPT will gain the capacity to present its users with… Continue Reading
What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2024 A Festive Countdown
Public Domain Review: “At the start of each year, on January 1st, a new crop of works enter the public domain and become free to enjoy, share, and reuse for any purpose. Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain — and here we focus on three of… Continue Reading
The best books of 2023
The Economist – This year’s picks transport readers to mountain peaks, out to sea and back in time Continue Reading
Over One Million Card Catalog Records Digitized in Copyright Public Records System Pilot
Library of Congress Blogs – Copyright: “This summer, the Copyright Office reached a new milestone in our modernization efforts: surpassing one million card catalog records digitized with searchable metadata and added to the Office’s Copyright Public Records System (CPRS) pilot. As the number of card catalog entries in CPRS continues to grow, now is a… Continue Reading
Napoleon’s Kindle: Discover the Miniaturized Traveling Library That the Emperor Took on Military Campaigns
Open Culture: “Every piece of technology has a precedent. Most have several different types of precedents. You’ve probably used (and may well own) an eBook reader, for instance, but what would have afforded you a selection of reading material two or three centuries ago? If you were a Jacobean Englishman of means, you might have… Continue Reading
A History of Bookmaking, From Scrolls to Scrolling
HyperAllergic: “If you’re shopping for the bibliophile on your list this holiday season (or you are said bibliophile), look no further! The Book by Design: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Greatest Invention (2023, University of Chicago Press) is an ambitious compendium that seeks to catalog and analyze the history of the book in myriad… Continue Reading
Henry Kissinger: The Declassified Obituary
National Security Archive: “Henry Kissinger’s death today brings new global attention to the long paper trail of secret documents recording his policy deliberations, conversations, and directives on many initiatives for which he became famous—détente with the USSR, the opening to China, and Middle East shuttle diplomacy, among them. This historical record also documents the darker… Continue Reading
