An 18-year-old page at the Prairie du Chien (Wisc.) Memorial Library said they felt threatened and intimidated after Republican congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden complained about displays celebrating Pride Month. Van Orden, who recently moved to Prairie du Chien, visited the library June 17 and began to “aggressively” question the pride display in the library’s children’s section, the page said in an interview August 17, adding that Van Orden eventually obtained a library card and checked out all but one book from the display.
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Rebecca Rego Barry writes: “Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries announced August 18 a significant milestone in its digitization initiative. Not only has it reached 1 million images—the millionth being an original notebook of poet Jenny Joseph—but, unlike some libraries, it allows full access and free use of that content, including everything from medieval manuscripts to Victorian board games to 20th-century British political election posters. The Bodleian additionally reported that over the past year, these manuscripts have been the top 10 most downloaded items.”
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The Library of Congress and Harvard Law School have initiated an unprecedented, multifaceted joint collaboration to identify, select and assess the copyright status of materials focusing on national legal gazettes. The effort, initially set for three years, will coordinate access to, knowledge-sharing, and legal analysis of Library of Congress’s collections related to Islamic law, including national legal gazettes, manuscripts, and other materials.
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Nora McGreevy writes: “Anyone with an internet connection can now access more than 3.5 million records documenting the lives of free Black people during the Reconstruction period. Created by genealogy company Ancestry, the free online portal amounts to a treasure trove of information about Black communities in the United States between 1846 and 1878.”
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ALA President Patricia “Patty” M. Wong writes: “There’s an old proverb: If you plant a tree, it provides shade for generations. As Congress prepares a budget package aimed at expanding opportunity, we must plant the tree of knowledge by rebuilding our nation’s libraries. America’s 16,000 public libraries are footholds for working families, especially during uncertain times. They’re centers of lifelong learning, job training, digital access, and lifeline services for folks from all walks of life. But our libraries are in fragile shape, and in many communities, they’re falling behind—or falling apart.”
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Cass Balzer writes: “Libraries have been experiencing First Amendment audits for several years, but there has been an uptick in reported cases during the first eight months of 2021, according to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. And while these audits take the same format as before, libraries report more aggressive, targeted, and organized operations than in years past.”
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Valerie Wirtschafter writes: “Confronted by viral conspiracy theories, climate change denialism, extremist movements, and antidemocratic groups (among others) feeding off false information online, social media platforms have taken steps in recent years to curtail the spread of misinformation. But even as tech companies have come under pressure to crack down on misinformation, one key avenue of information distribution in the digital economy—podcasting—has escaped significant scrutiny, despite the massive scale of the podcast ecosystem.”
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Diné College—a four-year tribal college located on the Navajo reservation with six campuses and two microsites across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah—has marked a first among tribal colleges by granting faculty status to its librarians: Herman A. Peterson, director of libraries and newly appointed associate professor of humanities, and Rhiannon Sorrell, instruction and digital services librarian and newly appointed assistant professor of English. Faculty status is a common practice at many four-year institutions. It will give the librarians the opportunity to work up through the ranks of assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor.
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From 1619 to beyond, Black craftspeople, both free and enslaved, worked to produce the valued architecture, handcrafts, and decorative arts of the American South. The Black Craftspeople Digital Archive seeks to enhance what we know about Black craftspeople by telling both a spatial story and a historically informed story that highlights the lives of Black craftspeople and the objects they produced. The first and second phases of this project focus on Black craftspeople living and laboring in 18th-century South Carolina Lowcountry and mid-19th century Tennessee.
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Cara Bertram writes: “Last summer, the American Library Association moved from its long-lived location at 50 E. Huron Street in Chicago to its new location off Michigan Ave. This office were the longest held headquarters that ALA had, it was by no means the first, nor was Chicago ALA’s original location. ALA’s history is filled with debates about locations and new homes.”
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Claire Sewell writes: “I’m a librarian, and throwing away books is a big part of my job. I love it! Why? Because it means more space on the shelves for new books and other materials that are of current interest to our patrons. Weeding is a fundamental part of the life cycle of the library, but I get it. The decisions librarians make to get rid of books are often confusing and mysterious, especially when a photo of a dumpster full of books starts making the rounds on the internet.”
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Raymond Pun writes: “For the first time, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) was held online because of the continuing global pandemic. Between August 17–19, the virtual conference drew thousands of attendees from around the world to more than 150 sessions with topics that ranged from digital controlled lending to new skill sets for school librarians to climate impact on libraries.” Read coverage of other sessions and closing ceremonies.
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