Latest Library Links
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Google will now show its search engine users more information about why it found the results they are shown, the company said on July 22. It said people googling queries will now be able to click into details such as how their result matched certain search terms, in order to better decide if the information is relevant.
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Children’s librarian Chelsey Roos writes: “I found there was a real dearth in my library of middle-grade novels that include puberty stories. While we had plenty of nonfiction books that gave the facts in various levels of detail and chattiness, this wasn’t what my patron wanted. We had a lot of novels about the ‘developing romantic feelings for someone’ aspect of puberty, and several with off-handed mentions of a character who ‘really changed over the summer,’ but very few about how it actually feels to be going through the body changes. Since then, we’ve added a couple of great books, like Kim Harrington’s Revenge of the Red Club, and Karen Schneemann and Lily Williams’s graphic novel Go with the Flow, but the pickings are definitely slim.”
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Goodreads has collected a catalog of books about books, published since January 2020, in a variety of genres—metafiction that features books within books, heartfelt nonfiction about the power of reading, historical novels about courageous librarians, romance writing about romance writers, and even the occasional mystery or horror plot that hinges on the genre savviness of bookish people.
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Under its new Read in Color initiative, the Little Free Library is partnering with Brilliant Detroit—an organization which provides children educational programming and support in high-need Detroit neighborhoods—to bring thousands of diverse books to Detroit neighborhoods through Little Free Library boxes. Fourteen book-sharing boxes stocked with 2,500 books will be installed in high-impact areas.
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Miranda Bryant writes: “In the middle of Redbridge Central Library in London, among all the bookshelves and displays, is a phrase that may surprise some visitors: ‘The death-positive library.’ The sign sits above a collection curated to help people deal with death, dying and loss, including books by former England footballer Rio Ferdinand, the late novelist Toni Morrison, and anthropologist Sue Black. The initiative, intended to encourage people to talk more openly about death and dying, is not simply about book recommendations.”
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Join Banned Books Week and Honorary Chair Jason Reynolds (right) on August 2 at 4 p.m. Eastern for a #BannedBooksChat on Twitter. As an advocate for storytelling and an outspoken critic of censorship, Reynolds is the perfect person to headline Banned Books Week 2021, which takes place September 26–October 2 and has the theme “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”
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At the Northampton (Pa.) Area School District Board of Education meeting July 19, the majority of the estimated 45 district residents in attendance expressed concern about the donation of books—including I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark and We Are Water Protectors—to the school district by The Conscious Kid nonprofit. After public comments that included calling the books “Marxist critical race theory,” the nine-member board agreed to table the donation.
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Danielle Cooper writes: “In order to more fully realize streaming media’s academic potential, it is essential for libraries to come together, assess the broader streaming landscape, and create new strategies for licensing and managing streaming use. This intervention will be most effective if libraries can connect on this issue across institutional silos. To this end, Ithaka S+R is launching a new project this fall in collaboration with a cohort of libraries to share evidence about and strategies around streaming media licensing terms.”
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Brewster Kahle (right) writes: “As a young man, I wanted to help make a new medium that would be a step forward from Gutenberg’s invention hundreds of years before. By building a Library of Everything in the digital age, I thought the opportunity was not just to make it available to everybody in the world, but to make it better—smarter than paper. By using computers, we could make the library not just searchable, but organizable; make it so that you could navigate your way through millions, and maybe eventually billions of web pages. The first step was to make computers that worked for large collections of rich media.”
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Edith Williams writes: “I admit to spending my summers reading through unread classics at a leisurely pace. But this summer, as someone who spends way too much time surfing the internet during the day for work and in the evening for research, I am going to give in to a good, summery book about surfing.”
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ALA members can register for the IFLA Virtual World Library and Information Congress, August 17–19, at the IFLA Member Rate of 85 Euros ($120), which is half the nonmember rate. Register as a member of IFLA using the ALA IFLA member code US-0002.
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
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Following community protests and a union complaint filed with the Illinois Labor Relations Board, the Niles-Maine District Library Board on July 21 refrained from making $1.5 million in budget cuts and instead opted to approve a compromise budget. It does not reduce current staffing or cut building hours; however, it does include several other cuts, including to programs, books and materials, and sending librarians and books to schools and nursing homes.
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