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 […]
The U.S. Labor Department’s inspector general said this week that roughly $100 million in fraudulent unemployment insurance claims were paid in 2020 to criminals who are already in jail. That’s a tiny share of the estimated tens of billions of dollars in jobless benefits states have given to identity thieves in the past year. To […]
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 […]
Background When we are talking about the Middle Ages, the first thing that comes to mind is most likely not books or art. This period took place from the 5th to the 15th century and was characterized by massive migrations of people and deurbanization. Opposed to the blooming societies of the classical antiquity, the medieval […]
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 […]
Easily the most sophisticated skimming devices made for hacking terminals at retail self-checkout lanes are a new breed of PIN pad overlay combined with a flexible, paper-thin device that fits inside the terminal’s chip reader slot. What enables these skimmers to be so slim? They draw their power from the low-voltage current that gets triggered […]
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 […]
The leader of Mexico’s Green Party has been removed from office following allegations that he received money from a Romanian ATM skimmer gang that stole hundreds of millions of dollars from tourists visiting Mexico’s top tourist destinations over the past five years. The scandal is the latest fallout stemming from a three-part investigation into the […]
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 this week’s Princh Library Blog post we have guest writer Stephen Abram sharing his suggestions on how libraries can expand and update their collections to better accommodate the changing needs of their visitors. Humble suggestions Collection development can’t stop just because public libraries may temporarily physically restricted. Indeed, our experience this year is major […]
The U.S. Justice Department today unsealed indictments against three men accused of working with the North Korean regime to carry out some of the most damaging cybercrime attacks over the past decade, including the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, the global WannaCry ransomware contagion of 2017, and the theft of roughly $200 million and attempted […]
As a total sucker for anything skimming-related, I was interested to hear from a reader working security for a retail chain in the United States who recently found Bluetooth-enabled skimming devices placed over top of payment card terminals at several stores. Interestingly, these skimmers interfered with the terminal’s ability to read chip-based cards, forcing customers […]
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 […]
