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Photo: ©Monkey Business/Adobe Stock In her professional life, coauthor Lauren Stara has worked for three architectural firms, one zoo, one multinational corporation, two museums, five universities, three public libraries, and one state library agency. She has also done freelance work or consulting in both architecture and librarianship. Over those 32 years, she has worked in […]
Deaf actor Linda Bove played Linda the Librarian on Sesame Street for 31 years. Photo illustration: YouTube (screenshot); ©R. Gino Santa Maria/Adobe Stock (television) 15Number of years National Deaf History Month has been celebrated. In 2006, the American Library Association (ALA) and National Association of the Deaf announced the month would be observed March 13–April […]
Items from the Greenpoint collection, including a newspaper, a photo of an implosion of natural gas storage tanks, and an award presented to Greenpoint Against Smell and Pollution. Photos: Brooklyn (N.Y.) Public Library, Brooklyn Collection Greenpoint, New York, a historically working-class Polish immigrant community, sits at the confluence of the East River and Newtown Creek, […]
©wei/Adobe Stock When the COVID-19 pandemic started spreading throughout the US in early 2020, Jessica Daly, consumer health librarian at hospital network Orlando (Fla.) Health, knew it was time for her—and other information specialists in the medical field—to step up. “As medical professionals and librarians, we tell people what to do, but we don’t often […]
A kamishibai box is a small stage containing a sequence of cards that illustrate traditional folktales. Photo: Geo1208 The performance begins like this: Erica Siskind, librarian at Oakland (Calif.) Public Library, rides her bike to the front of the room, parks it, and pulls from her basket two sticks and a small wooden box. Clack, […]
Human visitors explore the butterfly garden at Kokomo–Howard County (Ind.) Public Library’s South branch. Photo: Kokomo–Howard County (Ind.) Public Library When members of the Howard County (Ind.) Master Gardener Association became enchanted by the idea of creating a local butterfly habitat, their first stop was Kokomo–Howard County Public Library (KHCPL). Not for books and information […]
We’re pleased to announce the availability of a new Spotlight at Stanford feature. Exhibit creators can now set up and configure browse groups for their digital exhibits. This high priority feature has been requested by Stanford Libraries staff as well as many external Spotlight stakeholders. Browse groups is an optional feature that can be useful […]
Well that was a sobering read. A few weeks ago the following post by Barbara Fister was circulated at MPOW: Lizard People in the Library. We were supposed to have a discussion about it, but I wasn’t able to make the Zoom time, so I didn’t read it then. Yesterday someone pointed out that the […]
February 2021 LC LABS LETTERA Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Announcements Launching the Black, Indigenous, and Minority Americans Digital Futures Program! As part of the Library’s new Of the People initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Black, Indigenous, and Minority Americans Digital Futures Program will sponsor digital […]
Here’s a good article from the University of Alberta student newspaper: Queering Zoom: students and educators say online learning must be more inclusive. A couple of points and counterpoints: While professors often include anti-harassment and inclusionary policies in their syllabus, Morris noted that they feel these are hollow statements. “[These professors that have these inclusion […]
Kazuo Ishiguro Photo: Andrew Testa Many may know Kazuo Ishiguro as author of The Remains of the Day (1989) and Never Let Me Go (2005). Now, with the March release of Klara and the Sun (Alfred A. Knopf)—his first novel since receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017—Ishiguro tells the story of Klara, an […]
Our online column Letters of the Law explores a 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 […]
The following is a guest post by Josh Levy, Historian of Science and Technology in the Library’s Manuscript Division. What’s a historian to do with a born digital file? On Christmas Day, 1854, between family gatherings and fretting over the cost of living in Washington, engineer Montgomery Meigs was notating his plans to build a […]
Spotlight was developed by Stanford Libraries in 2013/14 as open source software, to provide a solution enabling librarians, curators and others to create attractive, feature-rich websites that highlight digital collections. This has facilitated its adoption by many universities as a primary digital exhibit platform. In turn, Stanford benefits from community sharing of inspiration, design and […]
On February 8, 9, and 10th 2021, 175 people from across the globe met for the 6th annual Geo4LibCamp. This time the conference was hosted online using the Zoom platform. Previous Geo4LibCamps have been hosted on Stanford University’s campus at the Hartley Conference Center and in the David Rumsey Map Center. This year’s online event […]
Last year, LC Labs worked with partners across the Library and outside its walls to advance the Digital Strategy. Here’s a look back at some of our work on the strategy’s goals of opening the treasure chest, connecting, and investing in our future, and a preview of this year’s plans. In the coming year, we […]
Since 1908, the American Library Association’s (ALA) Midwinter Meeting has taken place 107 times, with only a few pauses. Held virtually, this year’s Midwinter was the last in its current format; next year ALA will launch LibLearnX, a learning, networking, and collaboration experience scheduled for January 21–24, 2022, in San Antonio. Though this year’s event […]
January 2021 LC LABS LETTERA Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Reflecting on a new season When people hear the word “innovation,” they may think of doing things in a way that is new and, for lack of a better word, “unprecedented.” In a time and world where […]
Well this seems like good news. One of the biggest annoyances of trying to do research on Twitter, IMHO, is the difficulty in obtaining older tweets. There are workarounds, such as using a previously-captured dataset from Documenting the Now, or collecting via snscrape, but it seems there is now better official access for researchers via […]
The following is a repost from the blog Of the People. The author is Kate Zwaard, Director of Digital Strategy. Chicago, Illinois. Painting class at the South Side community art center. Jack Delano, photographer. 1942. You may have seen the news about the Library’s exciting new program Of the People, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, […]
