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Digital library services news 1

Welcome to the Spring 2020 Digital Library Services Newsletter, prepared by the Product and Service Management team! This newsletter includes contributions from: Cathy Aster, Hannah Frost, Dinah Handel, Sarah Seestone, Andrew Berger, Jacob Hill, and Michael Olson.  The Digital Library of the Middle East  The Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME), which aims to become one […]

Digital library services news 1

Welcome to the Spring 2020 Digital Library Services Newsletter, prepared by the Product and Service Management team! This newsletter includes contributions from: Cathy Aster, Hannah Frost, Dinah Handel, Sarah Seestone, Andrew Berger, Jacob Hill, and Michael Olson.  The Digital Library of the Middle East  The Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME), which aims to become one […]

Our production team: working i1

By Linda Lam, Laura Nguyen, Tati Scutelnic, and Astrid J. Smith As the daily work of Stanford Library’s Digital Production Group (DPG) is primarily hands-on, imaging and performing post-production work on images of collections materials, making the switch to working from home while sheltering in place has taken patience, flexibility, and creativity. Coordinators and imaging […]

Our production team: working i1

By Linda Lam, Laura Nguyen, Tati Scutelnic, and Astrid J. Smith As the daily work of Stanford Library’s Digital Production Group (DPG) is primarily hands-on, imaging and performing post-production work on images of collections materials, making the switch to working from home while sheltering in place has taken patience, flexibility, and creativity. Coordinators and imaging […]

Our production team: working i1

By Linda Lam, Laura Nguyen, Tati Scutelnic, and Astrid J. Smith As the daily work of Stanford Library’s Digital Production Group (DPG) is primarily hands-on, imaging and performing post-production work on images of collections materials, making the switch to working from home while sheltering in place has taken patience, flexibility, and creativity. Coordinators and imaging […]

Experimenting with speech-to-t1

This guest blog post is shared by Chris Adams, Solutions Architect in the Office of the Chief Information Officer/IT Design & Development Directorate, and Julia Kim, Digital Projects Coordinator at the National Library for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress, formerly the Digital Assets Specialist at the American Folklife Center, supporting […]

Making a valuable resource eve1

Making a valuable resource even better: the Recommended Formats Statement and RFS 2.0

Today’s guest post is from Jesse Johnston (Sr. Research Development Officer Office of Research, Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Michigan), Kate Murray (Digital Projects Coordinator, Digital Collections Management & Services Division), Marcus Nappier (Digital Collections Specialist, Digital Content Management Section), and Ted Westervelt, Chief, US/Anglo Division. It has become ever more […]

ALA Virtual Preview

The American Library Association (ALA) made a historic decision to cancel its 2020 Annual Conference in Chicago, as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But in these unprecedented times, it’s more important than ever for librarians and library workers to seek and embrace community and keep up with professional development opportunities. ALA Virtual (June […]

Coping in the Time of COVID-19

Illustration: Tom Deja On March 20, American Libraries Live hosted the webinar “Libraries and COVID-19: Managing Strategies and Stress.” Moderator Dan Freeman, director of ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions, led a discussion with librarians and health professionals on the front lines of the crisis about the library response to the pandemic and methods to reduce stress […]

The Rainbow’s Arc

The ALA Gay and Lesbian Task Force ­marching in the 1992 San Francisco Pride parade. Photo: ALA Archives Fifty years ago, under the auspices of the American Library Association’s Social Responsibilities Round Table, a small group of activists, librarians, and activist-librarians formed what was then known as the Task Force on Gay Liberation—the very first gay […]

Narcan or No?

Illustration: © Atstock Productions/Adobe Stock If your library were offered two chances to save a life, would it take them? The response might seem like an obvious “yes.” But for many public libraries the answer is more nuanced. In October 2018, Emergent BioSolutions, the company that manufactures the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan (generic name: […]

By the Numbers: Pride Month

Cruise: The Guide to Gay Entertainment in the Southeast. Photo: Queer Music Heritage 1970Year the Rainbow Round Table (RRT) of the American Library Association (ALA)—the nation’s first LGBT professional organization—was founded as the Task Force on Gay Liberation. (For more on the RRT and its 50th anniversary, see our story “The Rainbow’s Arc.”) 49Number of years […]

Bookend: Remote and Ready

Staffers at Chicago Ridge (Ill.) Public Library, which closed its doors March 16 because of COVID-19, advertise the library’s remote-reference services in a group Zoom call. Photo: Chicago Ridge (Ill.) Public Library Much has changed since Chicago Ridge (Ill.) Public Library (CRPL) closed its doors March 16—but not the assistance the library strives to provide […]

Using 3D to Make PPE

Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham, Michigan, donated 100 3D-printed protective face shields to Beaumont Hospital in nearby Troy. Photo: Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham, Michigan. Personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers, including face shields, surgical masks, and N95 respirator masks, is in critically short supply. To mitigate the ongoing crisis, some public and […]

Pandemic Forces Programs to Mo1

Salt Lake County (Utah) Library’s story sacks contain a blank book, a pencil, and other materials that serve as prompts to inspire storytelling. Photo: Melodie Kraft Ashley On March 12, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Coeur d’Alene (Idaho) Public Library (CDAPL) canceled its in-house programming. By March 13, Young Adult Coordinator Angela Flock and […]

How to Sanitize Collections in1

Illustration: Tom Deja Keeping libraries safe is important for both workers and guests. But during the current COVID-19 pandemic, questions about how to do that—particularly when it comes to materials and surfaces—have complicated answers. It’s an unprecedented situation. Conservators, who are experienced in diagnosing and repairing collection damage, say that historical information on sanitizing library […]

LC Maps for Robots

The following is a repost from the blog Worlds Revealed: Geography & Maps at the Library of Congress. The author is Rachel Trent, Digital Collections and Automation Coordinator in the Geography and Maps Division. Interested in bulk downloading maps from the Library of Congress’s online collections? Need a corpus of historical map images to build a training dataset […]

Innovator Ben Lee and LC Labs 1

A gallery of historic moustaches, a wall of 12,000 photos, a collage of First World War-era “damn the Kaiser” cartoons, and more were on display May 7, when 135 people attended a virtual “data jam” to dig into a massive new collection of historic newspaper images.  LC Labs hosted the event to showcase Library of […]