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Academic librarianship has faced a great amount of change during the past two decades. Libraries from the higher education system, along with those outsides of it, have handled multiple technological and socio-cultural paradigm shifts, by changing their organizational strategies and services. For example, information today is created, shared, and stored differently than is has been […]
The 2020 Staff Innovator project brought together two different parts of the Library of Congress—the Library Collections and Services Group (LCSG) and the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO). LCSG sponsored a 120-day detail that temporarily placed a staff member from LCSG in my team, LC Labs to work together on a problem that […]
Microsoft today issued its final batch of security updates for Windows PCs in 2020, ending the year with a relatively light patch load. Nine of the 58 security vulnerabilities addressed this month earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” label, meaning they can be abused by malware or miscreants to seize remote control over PCs without any help […]
For a meeting last week at MPOW we were asked to read Algorithms of Oppression, by Safiya Umoja Noble. As a cis, white male, I found it a good reminder of a lot of stuff I am vaguely aware of, but don’t have to “deal with” in the same way as the majority of the […]
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said this week that beginning in 2021 it will allow all taxpayers to apply for an identity protection personal identification number (IP PIN), a single-use code designed to block identity thieves from falsely claiming a tax refund in your name. Currently, IP PINs are issued only to those who […]
What is a librarian’s worst nightmare? No, it is not the loud patrons, not the damaged books, and not even the romantic rendezvous that take place at their libraries. It is, in fact, the book thieves. Historically, libraries tried not to release information about the theft and mutilation of very rare and precious books, due […]
The following is a guest post by the 2021 Innovator in Residence Courtney McClellan, a research-based artist who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. With a subject focus on speech and civic engagement, McClellan works in a range of media including sculpture, performance, photography, and writing. She has served as studio art faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, […]
For at least the third time in its existence, OGUsers — a forum overrun with people looking to buy, sell and trade access to compromised social media accounts — has been hacked. An offer by the apparent hackers of OGUsers, offering to remove account information from the eventual database leak in exchange for payment. Roughly […]
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 […]
Gift-giving in 2020 should be all about whimsy, relaxation, and most important—comfort. And while your favorite librarians and book lovers probably don’t need more reading material, you can indulge them with thoughtful presents that help them enjoy the books they have. On our list, everything is priced under $50, from cozy clothes and decadent treats […]
A 22-year-old North Carolina man has been sentenced to nearly eight years in prison for conducting bomb threats against thousands of schools in the U.S. and United Kingdom, running a service that launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and for possessing sexually explicit images of minors. Timothy Dalton Vaughn from Winston-Salem, N.C. was a key member […]
November 2020 LC LABS LETTERA Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Our Projects It’s not too late: apply to be a CCHC researcher today! The call for researchers to work with Library collections at scale as part of the Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud (CCHC) project is […]
What are some of the key technology trends librarians should consider implementing in their libraries? Guest writer Robin Jeanne discusses her thoughts on this subject in this week’s blog post. Digitized world It’s no secret that the world is becoming digitized. Even before 2020, new and emerging technologies were playing huge roles in the evolution […]
We are buzzing with activity ~ Read on for the details Contributors to this issue are: Cathy Aster, Peter Chan, Nicole Coleman, Hannah Frost, Dinah Handel, and Annie Schweikert. Thanks to our many collaborators! New Book Scanner, New Possibilities The Digital Production Group (DPG) has a new book scanner in its fleet of digitization equipment, […]
Fraudsters redirected email and web traffic destined for several cryptocurrency trading platforms over the past week. The attacks were facilitated by scams targeting employees at GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. The incident is the latest incursion at GoDaddy that relied on tricking employees into transferring ownership and/or control over targeted […]
A 21-year-old Irishman who pleaded guilty to charges of helping to steal millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies from victims has been sentenced to just under three years in prison. The defendant is part of an alleged conspiracy involving at least eight others in the United States who stand accused of theft via SIM swapping, a […]
On this week’s Princh Library Blog post we have guest writer Barbara Brand, independent library consultant, sharing her thoughts on training up librarians – and whether training is really necessary. Is training imperative? Most people need some sort of basic training when they begin a new job. Librarian qualifications tend to be quite generic and […]
Thank goodness I haven’t personally experienced this while teaching / presenting via Zoom, but I have been a participant in a workshop that was Zoom bombed, and that was traumatic enough. I can’t even imagine how nasty that would be for the presenter. Lifehacker reports that Zoom is rolling out some new features aimed to […]
President Trump on Tuesday fired his top election security official Christopher Krebs (no relation). The dismissal came via Twitter two weeks to the day after Trump lost an election he baselessly claims was stolen by widespread voting fraud. Chris Krebs. Image: CISA. Krebs, 43, is a former Microsoft executive appointed by Trump to head the Cybersecurity […]
An increasing number of websites are asking visitors to approve “notifications,” browser modifications that periodically display messages on the user’s mobile or desktop device. In many cases these notifications are benign, but several dodgy firms are paying site owners to install their notification scripts and then selling that communications pathway to scammers and online hucksters. […]
