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The following is a guest post by Brian Foo, 2020 Innovator in Residence and creator of Citizen DJ. Background This past weekend, the Citizen DJ Showcase aired at the National Book Festival and the Citizen DJ application went from beta to officially launched as an LC Labs experiment. For the Showcase, the renowned DJ, Kid […]
By the People at the National Book Festival Tomorrow, Friday 9/25, marks the beginning of the 20th Library of Congress National Book Festival! Representatives from across the Library will be hosting festival-goers via virtual booths, where visitors can connect with their favorite Library programs and collections. A member of the By the People team will be […]
Today’s guest post is from Marcus Nappier, who is a Digital Collections Specialist in the Digital Content Management Section at the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress maintains over 470 format description documents (FDDs) on the Sustainability of Digital Formats website that provide information about file-formats, bit stream structures and encodings, and their usage in […]
There are those people that come into your life, and shift it. They alter your trajectory, put you on a new trail, to a new place that you weren’t expecting, and maybe didn’t even know existed. I’ve been lucky enough to have learned from many wonderful people, and a few extraordinary teachers. Dr. Mac Luckey […]
Welcome! As summer draws to a close, it’s time to highlight hot news in digital library services. Featuring contributions from: Cathy Aster, Hannah Frost, Dinah Handel, Amy Hodge, Michael Olson, and Sarah Seestone. First Spanish-English exhibit published | Primera exposición publicada en español-inglésThe first Spanish-English Spotlight at Stanford exhibit has been published, The Maria Jesús Casado García-Sampedro […]
Anqi Xu, pictured above, is one of 240 students who deposited their work to the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) as part of completing their programs of study at Stanford in 2020. Xu received her MA in East Asian Studies. Her thesis, available at PURL and SearchWorks, is a case study using a combination of business and […]
We’re pleased to announce expanded discovery for Spotlight at Stanford exhibits is now available via library.stanford.edu and searchworks.stanford.edu. Our colleagues on the DLSS Access Team have recently added an Exhibits tile to the bento search options, adding another discovery point for Spotlight at Stanford. There are different ways to conduct a search that will yield […]
The year’s most impressive new and renovated libraries By Phil Morehart | September 1, 2020 Library Learning Center at Texas Southern University in Houston. Photo: Kayla Hartzog Welcome to the 2020 Library Design Showcase, American Libraries’ annual celebration of new and renovated libraries. These shining examples of architectural innovation—completed before the COVID-19 pandemic—address user needs […]
A floor plan for furniture removal at Hennepin County (Minn.) Library’s Eden Prairie branch. Illustration: MSR Design Libraries have always been spaces for discovery. But in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been tasked with transforming themselves into places that allow users to physically distance while being more digitally connected than ever. As some […]
A worker installs solar panels on the roof of Ledding Library in Milwaukie, Oregon. Photo: Katie Newell/Ledding Library in Milwaukie, Oregon Sarah Preskitt has lived in Alaska for almost 40 years—and seen its climate change in ways the Lower 48’s hasn’t. “We used to joke that you had to arrange your Halloween costume over your […]
Each year, the American Library Association (ALA) recognizes the achievements of more than 200 individuals and institutions with an array of awards. This year’s winners, chosen by juries of their colleagues and peers, embody the best of the profession’s leadership, vision, and service as well as a continued commitment to diversity, equality, education, and outreach. […]
In 1956, Abraham Maslow published a seminal paper on the influence our physical surroundings have on us. Participants viewed photographs of people’s faces and evaluated them based on different attributes. Maslow wanted to test how people reacted to this content while located in different physical environments. Some viewed the images while seated in a beautiful […]
Graves County (Ky.) Public Library’s bookmobile. Photo: Graves County (Ky.) Public Library 1982Year the Association for Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL) was founded by Bernard Vavrek, director of the Center for the Study of Rural Librarianship at Clarion (Pa.) University. 5Number of days the ARSL Conference will take place, September 28–October 2. Previously scheduled for […]
Top: Puppeteer Morgan Matens (left) and Children’s Librarian Greg Hall pose with puppets from Nashville Public Library’s in-house troupe, Wishing Chair Productions. Below: Scenes from their viral Facebook video “Curbside Baby.” Photo: Samantha Saldana/Nashville Public Library (Matens and Hall) When Greg Hall and Morgan Matens met and fell in love as graduate students over a […]
Six years ago, a group of Dartmouth College students petitioned the Library of Congress (LC) to change the catalog subject heading “illegal aliens” to “undocumented immigrants.” Four years ago, the American Library Association (ALA) Council passed a resolution urging LC to comply. LC agreed—before quickly backing down in the face of GOP opposition in Congress. […]
Illustration: Kwun Yee/Adobe Stock When Boston College Libraries was forced to close its doors this spring during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rodrigo Castro, head librarian for access services, made a list. “I started identifying the tasks that individuals could do remotely versus tasks they could do onsite,” he says. “When you are in this situation, your […]
Meghan Lyon, Librarian in Residence with the Web Archiving Team. Meghan Lyon recently joined the Web Archiving Team in the Digital Content Management section as a Librarian in Residence. In support of developing the next generation of librarians and information professionals, the Librarians-in-Residence program (LIR) gives early-career librarians the opportunity to gain meaningful work experience […]
BOOKHUB offerings available from Van Meter (Iowa) Community School District. In Park County, Wyoming, the number of COVID-19 cases is relatively low—only 31 reported as of August 11—and K–12 schools plan to open in-person on August 30. That’s with the understanding that the plans could change at any moment and teaching could shift online. “Part […]
Our online column Letters of the Law explores the wide range of legal issues that arise in libraries, with the help of a pair of leading authorities: Mary Minow, a librarian who became a lawyer, and Tomas A. Lipinski, a lawyer who became a librarian. Together they have authored four books on the subject, including […]
Buckminster Fuller has loomed large over the Stanford Media Preservation Lab ever since his archives were fully processed and described in the mid-2000s. Over the past eight years we’ve been slowly reformatting the extensive media component of this collection, but there was one media format that remained elusive: wire. A magnetic recording format that predated […]
