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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 […]
Not my original post, but Zapier has a post looking at the best screen recording software in 2020. Definitely useful if you’re prepping for online delivery in the months to come! Plenty of choices for Windows, macOS, and even mobile, but they do seem to focus on software and services that cost money. Even though […]
Each summer, the Library of Congress welcomes a cohort of Junior Fellows to its Summer Intern Program. The 10-week paid fellowship allows undergraduate and graduate students to embark on special projects with in Library collections and services, while learning about work in a large cultural heritage organization. This year, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, […]
Randi Proescholdt, 2020 Junior Fellow in the Digital Content Management Section. Every year the Library of Congress brings on a cohort of junior fellows to help expand access and use of collections. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic this program shifted to be entirely virtual in 2020. We are thrilled to have Randi Proescholdt, a […]
This time-sensitive message about open procurements comes between our normal monthly updates. Please share widely share with any lists, people, or groups who might be interested! Note: Federal hiring and procurement rules prohibit us from answering questions about open opportunities – please use the contact info provided in the listing. Current Opportunities Humans in the Loop: […]
We are pleased to share the news about the first release of the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL), officially announced earlier this month. This milestone is the cumulation of almost three years of steady collaboration between the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, Emory University, Cornell University, Lyrasis and Stanford Libraries. The OCFL is an application-independent […]
Mark Lopez, Digital Collections Specialist. I’m thrilled to share that Mark Lopez has joined the Digital Content Management section as a new Digital Collections Specialist. To that end, I’m also excited to share this interview as part of our occasional series where we learn more about the background, experience, and interests of the people that […]
[Madge Lessing, full length, on bicycle, facing left; holding musical horn to lips]. Photograph copyrighted by E. Chickering, c1898. Library of Congress Print s& Photographs Division. //www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b10346/ Digital collections in libraries are vast—and growing, as we continue to digitize cultural heritage materials and acquire new born digital collections. At the same time, the use of […]
Adrian Tomine, self-portrait With everything from New Yorker covers to New York Times–bestselling graphic novels under his belt, cartoonist and illustrator Adrian Tomine has had a more than successful career. But his newest autobiographical book, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Drawn & Quarterly, July), traces a lifetime of humiliations: disastrous book signings, rude reviews, […]
If you’re reading this, you’re likely to know that the Signal is a collaborative blog that was created to share about digital preservation efforts and has since traced the evolution of digital practices over the years. We regularly share about ongoing projects and work undertaken by Digital Collection Management specialists as well as by the LC […]
Four police officers confront a Black man at a library computer and tell him that because he’s been disturbing other patrons, he must leave the premises. The man refuses. The confrontation ends when the Black man is tased and dragged out of the library by the officers. This incident took place at the library where […]
Amid mass protests of police violence against Black people, some libraries are revisiting the ways in which they’ve historically interacted with law enforcement—such as by hosting police-led community programming like Coffee with a Cop, hiring off-duty police as security officers, or calling 911 on disruptive patrons. For example, Toledo–Lucas County (Ohio) Public Library (TLCPL) has […]
Illustration ©ivector/Adobe Stock In an April 23 Public Library Association (PLA) webinar, “Public Libraries Respond to COVID-19: Strategies for Advancing Digital Equity Now,” three public librarians shared their experiences with everything from lending laptops and mobile hotspots to low-tech solutions like using sandwich boards and direct mail to advertise library services. Larra Clark, deputy director […]
The Taiwan Reading Festival. Photo: National Central Library in Taipei City, Taiwan Four libraries earned this year’s American Library Association (ALA) Presidential Citation for Innovative International Library Projects. Their projects included smartphone training for seniors, multicultural events, a country-wide reading festival, and programming to raise awareness of Indigenous populations and their perspectives and needs. The […]
