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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
When law enforcement agencies tout their latest cybercriminal arrest, the defendant is often cast as a bravado outlaw engaged in sophisticated, lucrative, even exciting activity. But new research suggests that as cybercrime has become dominated by pay-for-service offerings, the vast majority of day-to-day activity needed to support these enterprises is in fact mind-numbingly boring and […]
A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Our Projects Jamming with the Newspaper Navigator DatasetOn Thursday, May 7th, Innovator in Residence Ben Lee presented the Newspaper Navigator dataset containing over 100 million images extracted from the Chronicling America database using a machine learning algorithm. Over 130 participants tuned in remotely to get […]
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 […]
The United Kingdom’s anti-cybercrime agency is running online ads aimed at young people who search the Web for services that enable computer crimes, specifically trojan horse programs and DDoS-for-hire services. The ad campaign follows a similar initiative launched in late 2017 that academics say measurably dampened demand for such services by explaining that their use […]
A group of Romanians operating an ATM company in Mexico and suspected of bribing technicians to install sophisticated Bluetooth-based skimmers in cash machines throughout several top Mexican tourist destinations have enjoyed legal protection from a top anti-corruption official in the Mexican attorney general’s office, according to a new complaint filed with the government’s internal affairs […]
The red team is considered the offensive side of the security. Red teams think like the attacker, they imitate real-world attacks and mimic adversary techniques and methods, uncover vulnerabilities in an organization’s infrastructure, launch exploits, and report on their findings. This is often a group of white hats — ethical hackers, offensive security professionals that […]
Several people asked if I was going to record the speech from my previous post. It had crossed my mind, but I wasn’t sure, and so over the last week I tried a few different takes, and finally got an edit that I think came out ok. So one more time, here is The World […]
When a reliable method of scamming money out of people, companies or governments becomes widely known, underground forums and chat networks tend to light up with activity as more fraudsters pile on to claim their share. And that’s exactly what appears to be going on right now as multiple U.S. states struggle to combat a […]
The Princh Library blog provides library stories and insights from around the globe. The blog is brought to you by Princh, the only printing solution designed specifically for – and with – libraries! Our user-friendly printing solution makes it easy for library users to print and pay from their own device. Try out our solution […]
Abstract Over recent years, Louisiana State University (LSU) Libraries, like many others, has targeted collections spending to invest in e-books. We designed this study to better understand barriers to use and frustrations students encounter using e-books and to explore gaps in the field. While numerous studies have reported on usage analysis or survey results, few […]
Abstract Knowledge workers such as healthcare information professionals, legal researchers, and librarians need to create and execute search strategies that are comprehensive, transparent, and reproducible. The traditional solution is to use command-line query builders offered by proprietary database vendors. However, these are based on a paradigm that dates from the days when users could access […]
In January 2019, dozens of media outlets raised the alarm about a new “megabreach” involving the release of some 773 million stolen usernames and passwords that was breathlessly labeled “the largest collection of stolen data in history.” A subsequent review by KrebsOnSecurity quickly determined the data was years old and merely a compilation of credentials […]
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 […]
Almost daily now there is news about flaws in commercial software that lead to computers getting hacked and seeded with malware. But the reality is most malicious software also has its share of security holes that open the door for security researchers or ne’er-do-wells to liberate or else seize control over already-hacked systems. Here’s a […]
A well-organized Nigerian crime ring is exploiting the COVID-19 crisis by committing large-scale fraud against multiple state unemployment insurance programs, with potential losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new alert issued by the U.S. Secret Service. A memo seen by KrebsOnSecurity that the Secret Service circulated to field offices around […]
The following guest column is a reprint from the rereleased May 1 issue of Booklist. Last week, it came to the attention of the editors at Booklist that there were issues around the magazine’s May 1 cover. After discussing the matter internally and with me, they decided to change the cover to the one you […]
