Drag Queen Story Hour Nebraska rented the Lincoln (Neb.) Children’s Museum for two hours on July 24, set up an Eventbrite, and gathered a list of about 50 people planning to attend. Then, the nasty messages started to roll in, followed by threatening ones—even death threats—which prompted the Lincoln Children’s Museum and Drag Queen Story Hour Nebraska to cancel the event after discussing safety concerns with the Lincoln Police Department.
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Maryland’s Public Libraries Electronic Literary Product Licenses Access Law goes into effect on January 1, helping to maintain equal access for readers in the state and setting a precedent nationwide. The legislation requires publishers who offer electronic literary products to the public to also offer a license to public libraries at “reasonable” terms that would allow access for library users.
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Neil J. Rubenking writes: “It’s easy to notice that you’re too loud on the phone in public, less easy to realize that your settings let any schmo read your social media posts. And yet, protecting your privacy on social media is important, in more ways than you may realize. Perhaps you already know this. Perhaps you keep your privacy settings tuned and never overshare on social media. How about your friends? If they’re careless about their own privacy, their heedlessness can slop over and affect you.”
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Emily Austin writes: “The experiences of women through the ages have many common threads, but the heroines in different ages are all indelibly marked by their times. Esther from The Bell Jar, for instance, is a product of the “silent generation” and her struggles would be hard to imagine in any other age. Millennial heroines have echoes of Esther’s story and other characters born before them; however, they also embody their own distinct experiences. They span from serial killer apologists to office drones trying to survive a plague, pregnant pizza delivery girls and atheist, lesbian church receptionists.”
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Eric Schoon writes: “Documentaries are a great way to learn more about the world, but that doesn’t mean you have to pay a premium to watch them. Many YouTubers out there are producing high-quality documentaries that only cost your time and maybe watching an ad or two. Like every other genre of YouTube content, there’s a lot of variety in the documentary space. Regardless of whether you’re into geopolitics or video games, chances are someone has made a video on it. We focused on channels that regularly produce high-quality and distinct documentaries and found some terrific ones to share.”
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Jennifer Harlan writes: “When the days get longer and the mercury begins to rise, the books appear. Sunscreen-dappled paperbacks are tucked into beach bags and backpacks, sprinkled across picnic tables and dropped into the crooks of hammocks. Like their siblings the summer blockbuster and the song of the summer, they come: The season of summer reading has arrived.”
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Adrienne Westenfeld writes: “According to the nonprofit Romance Writers of America, 18% of romance fiction readers are men. Fully one-third of erotic audiobooks are downloaded by guys, another report says. In a billion-dollar industry comprising 23% of the adult fiction market, that’s a lot of dudes. Overall, romance is the second-most-popular genre in American fiction, below only thrillers, yet there’s still archaic stigma about romance novels and the people who read them, rooted in sexism and snobbery. I’m here to tell you that romance novels are for guys—in fact, they’re for anyone who wants to live a more emotionally rich life.”
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Esther Lo writes: “An older transgender woman incarcerated in a West Coast prison wanted to learn how to put on makeup. A simple Google search could have given her 6,440,000 results. But behind bars, she had no access to any of that. With extremely limited and expensive access to the internet, she wrote to librarians through the ‘Reference by Mail’ program. The library receives roughly 300 to 400 handwritten letters a month from people who are incarcerated of various backgrounds requesting all kinds of information.”
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Kelly Jensen writes: “Unlike the city of Chicago’s libraries, New York Public Libraries were ahead of the game last March in shutting down to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among patrons and staff. But now, amid continuously rising numbers, NYPL employees are demanding to be heard about mounting safety concerns. A group of NYPL workers published an open letter on Medium expressing disagreement with how library administration is spinning current and previous COVID concerns. They feel they haven’t been listened to, nor have their concerns as front-line workers at busy service desks across the city been addressed.”
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Debra E. Kachel and Keith Curry Lance write: “Most of us know there have been large losses of school librarians over the past two decades. What is less well known—and begs for attention—is that these losses pose a major educational equity issue. In our new study, we found that everyone isn’t losing their librarians; losses tend to occur in districts where there are more students living in poverty, more minority students, and more English-language learners. Districts with fewer such students are far more likely to have and maintain librarians. The other news is that, since 2015–2016, several states have begun to see net increases in their numbers of school librarians.”
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John S. Cusick and Clarence Okoh write: “With the loosening of COVID-19 restrictions and the end of summer quickly approaching, schools are preparing to welcome students back into their classrooms for in-person learning. With that transition comes the return of a troubling trend in education—the monitoring of students through facial recognition systems, as well as the consideration of using the technology to enforce existing school discipline policies.”
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Libraries across the US are eliminating late fees for overdue books. Burbank (Calif.) Public Library was one of several systems that went fine-free on July 1, stating on its website, “Research has shown that fines are not effective in getting materials returned on time, and libraries that have eliminated fines have found that long overdue items come back and patrons who avoided the library for years start visiting again.”
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