In 1956, Abraham Maslow published a seminal paper on the influence our physical surroundings have on us. Participants viewed photographs of people’s faces and evaluated them based on different attributes. Maslow wanted to test how people reacted to this content while located in different physical environments. Some viewed the images while seated in a beautiful […]
Graves County (Ky.) Public Library’s bookmobile. Photo: Graves County (Ky.) Public Library 1982Year the Association for Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL) was founded by Bernard Vavrek, director of the Center for the Study of Rural Librarianship at Clarion (Pa.) University. 5Number of days the ARSL Conference will take place, September 28–October 2. Previously scheduled for […]
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 […]
Teen participants in Boston Public Library’s “Drag vs. AI” program test their makeup and props against facial recognition software. Photo: Kathy Pham/American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts In November 2019, Boston Public Library’s (BPL) Teen Central hosted a digital privacy instruction workshop for teens that centered on facial recognition technology. Titled “Drag vs. AI,” the […]
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 […]
With this in mind it’s safe to assume that organizations are highly interested in protecting their data; after all, it’s at constant risk. If it’s valuable to the organization, it will surely be valuable to malicious actors, whether to be sold on the black market, used for market advantage, leveraged to ruin reputations, or just […]
August 2020 A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Job Announcements WE’RE HIRING! The Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is seeking an Innovation Specialist (GS-12) to work with our curators and reference librarians supporting reference questions that require data […]
Email service provider Sendgrid is grappling with an unusually large number of customer accounts whose passwords have been cracked, sold to spammers, and abused for sending phishing and email malware attacks. Sendgrid’s parent company Twilio says it is working on a plan to require multi-factor authentication for all of its customers, but that solution may […]
Kathleen O’Neill is currently serving as one of two Staff Innovators at the Library of Congress. Their 2020 project, Born Digital Access Now!, explores existing pathways for accessing born digital materials in the Manuscript Division. In this series of blog posts, Kathleen describes the complexities of gaining access to born digital materials through the lens […]
Yesterday’s piece told the tale of Hieu Minh Ngo, a hacker the U.S. Secret Service described as someone who caused more material financial harm to more Americans than any other convicted cybercriminal. Ngo was recently deported back to his home country after serving more than seven years in prison for running multiple identity theft services. […]
One of the professional paths that pique the interest of the most curious minds in the Library & Information Sciences “universe“ is that of mobile libraries. These nomadic, wandering, itinerant units —with as many shapes and appearances as potential names— are devoted to taking books from the safe comfort of their shelves and moving them […]
Since September of 2007, it’s been maintained and upgraded by Lyon and a number of developers, many from Google’s Summer of Code program. And on top of its long history, it continues to offer many cool features that are still extremely helpful when conducting mapping of network-facing services, for all sorts of assessments that can […]
At the height of his cybercriminal career, the hacker known as “Hieupc” was earning $125,000 a month running a bustling identity theft service that siphoned consumer dossiers from some of the world’s top data brokers. That is, until his greed and ambition played straight into an elaborate snare set by the U.S. Secret Service. Now, […]
Kathleen O’Neill, Senior Archives Specialist Kathleen O’Neill is currently serving as one of two Staff Innovators at the Library of Congress. Their 2020 project, Born Digital Access Now!, explores existing pathways for accessing born digital materials in the Manuscript Division. In this series of blog posts, Kathleen describes the complexities of gaining access to born […]
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 […]
While yes, there are adrenaline-seekers among us who would gladly take the plunge, let’s look at it from a non-thrill-seekers’ perspective: you would only jump if you knew you had the skills to do it safely, consider all the circumstances, assess the terrain, enlist someone to help out if necessary; essentially, prepare yourself for everything […]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Thursday issued a joint alert to warn about the growing threat from voice phishing or “vishing” attacks targeting companies. The advisory came less than 24 hours after KrebsOnSecurity published an in-depth look at a crime group offering a service that […]
The following is a guest post by Senior Archivist Kathleen O’Neill. Kathleen and her colleague Chad Conrady are currently working on a project called Born Digital Access Now! as the 2020 Staff Innovators in LC Labs. Their first blog post introduces the project, which aims to provide greater access to born digital materials held in […]
The COVID-19 epidemic has brought a wave of email phishing attacks that try to trick work-at-home employees into giving away credentials needed to remotely access their employers’ networks. But one increasingly brazen group of crooks is taking your standard phishing attack to the next level, marketing a voice phishing service that uses a combination of […]
