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  • 3y
    Members of Books for Dessert, Port Washington (N.Y.) Public Library’s book club for adults over 21 with intellectual disabilities, meet to discuss The Case of the Bicycle Bandit

    Alison Marcotte writes: “When Jamie Comer turned 21, his mother Nancy celebrated—but she also worried. Jamie has Down syndrome, and as Comer knew, it can be difficult for people with developmental disabilities to find intellectual stimulation and a supportive community once they age out of school. So with the help of Port Washington (N.Y.) Public Library, in 2003 she founded Books for Dessert, a program comprising two book clubs for adults with intellectual disabilities. Each club meets weekly at the library, and each reads everything from novels and nonfiction to poems, short stories, and plays.”

    American Libraries Trend, June

  • Latest Library Links

    • 45m

      Law booksPatrick Flanagan, Jill L. Kilgore, and Jennifer Mendez write: “Law librarianship has evolved over the last several decades. Gone are the days when law librarians were thought of as simply the gatekeepers of stacks of books—so long Federal Reporter! Law librarians have been embracing and driving innovation since at least the introduction of microfiche, which may not seem like a disruptive innovation today, but its history proves otherwise. It’s no surprise then that the role of the law librarian has continued to evolve just as the technology used in law libraries has evolved.”

      AALL Spectrum, May/June 2022

    • 3h

      Girl looking at books on a shelfHannah Natanson writes: “Republican lawmakers across the country are proposing legislation that would target online library databases and library management technology—tools built by a half-dozen large companies that catalogue millions of books, journals and articles that students peruse for assignments. These bills—already enacted in Utah and Tennessee, on the verge of becoming law in Oklahoma, and proposed in at least six other states—are broadly similar. They require databases to remove and block student access to material that is obscene, pornographic, sexually exploitative of children or “harmful to minors”—designations that opponents say could encompass a wide range of texts.”

      Washington Post, May 10

    • 18h

      Teddy RooseveltDavid Rothman writes: “One of the most fearsome anti-trusters was Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican president who jousted with the oil companies. We know who today’s oil companies are: Big Tech, in so many cases. As an ebook reader, writer or publisher, what targets would be on your anti-trust list if you ruled the world or at least the Federal Trade Commission and equivalents in the EU and elsewhere?”

      Teleread, May 9

    • 20h

      Woman with headache in officeMeredith Farkas writes: “The goal of universal design is to design spaces to minimize the need for accommodations because they work for everyone by design. While has primarily been discussed in the design of spaces and objects, I feel like the concept could be extended to organizational design. What if we provided not only spaces and furniture that helped employees do their best work, but also designed the organizational structure for maximum inclusivity?”

      Information Wants to Be Free, May 12

    • 21h

      Ashley Hawkins' school library before cleanup, from Knowledge QuestAshley Hawkins writes: “When I came to my school library in 2018, it was a dump. I mean that literally. Old books filled the school library. Posters were still up from the last time students or school librarians had occupied the space. That was 2006, when the original high school was broken into smaller high schools during New York City’s restructuring of its high school system. It’s a reasonably typical story in New York City, where most schools do not have a library” despite regulations that every school in the state have one.

      Knowledge Quest, May 12

    • 22h

      Manga-style drawingVictoria Rahbar writes: “Unfortunately, manga censorship remains an ongoing concern for libraries with manga collections, particularly school libraries. Content sanitization has not ceased nor has manga been exempt from the recent increase in challenges to all forms of literature. As summarized by Book Riot, Takako Shimura’s Wandering Son was on Texas Rep. Matt Krause’s Fall 2021 list of 850 books identified for possible removal from Texan school libraries. Like many recent bans and challenges, Wandering Son is LGBTQIA+ literature. As manga publishers continue to publish more LGBTQIA+ works, more challenges against these series should be expected.”

      OIF Blog, May 12; Book Riot, Nov. 5, 2021; NPR, Oct. 28, 2021

    • 24h

      R. L. StineAuthor, short story writer, television producer, and screenwriter R. L. Stine will present at the 2022 Annual Conference & Exhibition in Washington, D.C., June 23–28, 2022. Stine is the creator of the Fear Street and Goosebumps series and has sold more than 400 million books that have been translated into 35 languages, making him one of the bestselling authors in history. At ALA Annual, Stine will discuss his new graphic novel, “Stinetinglers,” a book of 10 new stories laced with his signature humor and a hefty dose of nightmarish fun.

      ALA, May 13

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