intellectual freedom Archives | Page 16 of 29

Copyright Fair Use on Digitized and Orphaned Works: Washington Office Update #alamw12

January 21, 2012

A panel of five copyright experts offered helpful tips and advice on orphaned works and digitization at the ALA Washington Office session this morning in Dallas. Much of the conversation revolved around copyright fair use and the willingness of academic and public library leaders to take risks that authors and copyright owners might appear and … Continue reading Copyright Fair Use on Digitized and Orphaned Works: Washington Office Update #alamw12 →

Social Issues and Fiction Theme of ERT/Booklist Author Forum

January 21, 2012

Social issues and fiction were the overall themes of the Exhibits Round Table/Booklist Author Forum January 20 featuring authors Helen Schulman and Hillary Jordan and moderated by Booklist Adult Books Editor Brad Hooper. Hooper noted that Schulman’s novel, This Beautiful Life, about a New York City family whose life is upended after a sexual cellphone … Continue reading Social Issues and Fiction Theme of ERT/Booklist Author Forum →

Ebooks and School Libraries

By Christopher Harris | January 13, 2012

In their efforts to implement ebooks, school libraries face a set of challenges that differ from those confronting their public and academic counterparts. In addition to the struggle they share with other types of libraries to offer current bestselling fiction ebooks, school libraries are also working to secure backlist fiction, curriculum-focused nonfiction, and multiple copies … Continue reading Ebooks and School Libraries →

A Publisher’s Perspective on Ebooks

By Andrea Fleck-Nisbet | January 12, 2012

It was a rainy afternoon just before Thanksgiving in 2007 when I stood on a New York City sidewalk clutching my first e-reading device. I had just come from Amazon’s press conference where Jeff Bezos announced the launch of Kindle, a new e-reader designed to wirelessly deliver book content directly to customers in as little … Continue reading A Publisher’s Perspective on Ebooks →

Threats to Digital Lending

By Carrie Russell | January 12, 2012

When the Kansas Digital Library Consortium’s contract with digital-content distributor OverDrive was up for renewal last year, two issues made Kansas State Librarian Joanne Budler decide it was time to move on and transfer the ebook titles to another vendor who could offer a better deal. First, OverDrive planned to raise license fees by almost … Continue reading Threats to Digital Lending →

The Revolution Isn’t Just Digital

By Alan S. Inouye | January 11, 2012

The digital revolution in libraries is not exactly a secret. Every day we read about some upheaval in the ebook industry, a new development in digitization, or yet another service from Google. And the recent announcement of an ALA-wide initiative on digital content and libraries, while important and necessary, won’t exactly make media headlines. It … Continue reading The Revolution Isn’t Just Digital →

Joanne Budler

January 3, 2012

Kansas State Librarian Joanne Budler recently terminated the Kansas Digital Library Consortium’s contract with ebook vendor OverDrive to become a beta tester of 3M’s new Cloud Library ebook lending service. The change is the culmination of a nearly yearlong battle over whether the consortium owned the content it had purchased or had simply licensed it. … Continue reading Joanne Budler →

Making Progress by Fives

By Dorcas Hand | December 30, 2011

At the Australian School Library Association conference in October 2011, Executive Director Karen Bonanno offered several excellent insights in her keynote (Vimeo, 31:46) that are useful to all librarians in this era of tightened budgets and job opportunities. School librarians in particular may want to implement Bonanno’s five-finger mnemonic to craft that one-minute elevator speech … Continue reading Making Progress by Fives →

Add to Your (Library) Cart

By David Lee King and Michael Porter | December 19, 2011

Welcome to the first Outside/In, our new column for American Libraries. Some readers may remember us from Public Libraries magazine, where we wrote the Internet Spotlight column about web topics relevant to librarians and the public library sector. Our goal with this new column is to share practical information, news, and tips about emerging web … Continue reading Add to Your (Library) Cart →

Last Week in E-Content

December 12, 2011

Last week was a busy week for e-content, so here is your quick Monday morning catch up on three trending topics: OverDrive was bad, Kindle was jailbroken, and iBooks was fontified (I think that is the correct word for when you add fonts to a device). Rumblings continue to plague OverDrive. After last month’s lost-and-found … Continue reading Last Week in E-Content →

What’s in a Name?

By Joseph Janes | December 7, 2011

If you haven’t googled the word “Santorum,” now would be a good time—otherwise most of what follows won’t make a lot of sense. Fair warning: What you find won’t be pretty (i.e., it will be explicit), but it will be instructive. Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s examine this phenomenon. The neologism … Continue reading What’s in a Name? →

Latest Library Links

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Steph Campbell writes: “From a combination of hype from Stranger Things, captivating performances on Critical Role, acceptance of ‘nerd culture,’ and so many other reasons, TTRPGs have greatly increased in popularity over the past few years, and youth activities are reflecting this. Running games is often seen as the core for facilitating this interest, but you can connect your library’s book collection to this too. By displaying books that focus on themes from your library’s game sessions, you can help players find other stories that they relate to.”

ALA Games & Gaming Round Table, July 11
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Share innovative strategies and resources with your peers by submitting an education program proposal for the 2025 LibLearnX: The Library Learning Experience, taking place January 24–27, 2025, in Phoenix, Arizona. The submission site is open now through August 12. The programmatic theme of LibLearnX 2025 is Reimagine, Refocus, Reset: Charting a Path for the Future. The LibLearnX Program Submission Guide provides detailed explanations of the learning formats and step-by-step instructions for submitting a proposal. Consult the Program Proposal Rubric for evaluation criteria and scoring and view a video on using the submission site to create and submit your proposal.

ALA Conference Services, July 15
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Summer is in full swing. This means getting outside, soaking up some sunshine, and listening to our favorite tunes—from oldies-but-goodies to today’s hits. In Episode 97, Call Number covers music. This episode includes conversations with librarians who have organized programs for local patrons who love Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and K-Pop, as well as librarian and Grammy Award–winning French horn player Joy Worland. Attendees of ALA’s 2024 Annual Conference and Exhibition in San Diego also share memories of the first concert they attended.

AL: The Scoop, July 15
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Sheila Craft-Morgan writes: “Citations are a key measure of the impact of a researcher’s work. However, research in a variety of disciplines has found that women are less likely to be cited than men; citations contain geographic bias; and the Matthew effect—in which those who begin with advantage continue to gain advantage—leads to more citations for prominent scholars in a specific discipline. These findings contribute to the notion that scholarly knowledge comes from a homogenous group of researchers, thereby overlooking the contributions of other groups.”

American Libraries column, June
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Mel Baldwin writes: “Regardless of why someone comes into a library, every patron should be free to interact with staff, browse materials, and use the internet without fear of harassment or worse. That freedom depends on libraries upholding patron privacy. With nearly 400 active anti-trans bills pending in state legislatures as of April 2024, it is a dangerous time in the US to be gender nonconforming, someone whose gender expression does not align with the traditional male or female binary. And for trans people of color, studies show the risk of discrimination and violence is higher.”

American Libraries column, June
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Greg Landgraf writes: “On a school morning last September, small groups of 5th-graders crowded around tools connected to scientific research—a microscope, a robotic camera, and even a snake named Morgan Freeman—clipboards and pencils in hand. They were at the Melrose branch of Roanoke (Va.) Public Libraries (RPL), judging graduate students from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on their research. The event was RPL’s second Flip the Fair, introduced in 2022 to help graduate students develop skills to effectively communicate their research while engaging local elementary students with STEM topics and the library.”

American Libraries Trend, June
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Aaryn Bierly writes: “Disability Pride Month is traditionally celebrated in July to celebrate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. The ADA regulates laws regarding service animals, requires employers to accommodate their employees’ physical and medical needs, stipulates the number and placement of accessible parking spaces and restrooms, and more. One in five Americans has some type of disability that makes working more difficult, and the ADA has made working conditions easier for a significant number of Americans. We’ve got several great lists of books for kids and teens of different ages featuring characters with a range of disabilities.”

Herrick District Library (Holland, Mich.), July 1

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