Listening to the Imaginary Worlds podcast about the truly astonishing number of #books being banned from #school and public #libraries in the US. About half of them are about people of colour of queer people. And I remember #reading Inger Edelfeldt's #gay coming of age novel "Duktig pojke" as a set text in middle school in the mid 80s. My teacher brought a box of that book into class as one of a few options. USA, you are a travesty.
What's next in America's book ban battle? The book ban ban. Minnesota's Gov. Tim Walz has signed into law a measure prohibiting the removal of “a book or other material based solely on its viewpoint or the messages, ideas, or opinions it conveys.” The law allows books to be challenged, but mandates that trained and licensed librarians be part of the review. Minnesota's librarians and educators told CNN they welcome legal criteria for how to address book challenges, since some are worried about losing their jobs if they order books that prove controversial.
"As more and more readers turn to ebooks, libraries are forced to keep up with the trend, often having to pay onerous licensing fees just for the "privilege" of keeping the work in stock, and, often unknowingly, exposing their patrons' data." Read the full article about IDAD 2023: https://u.fsf.org/421#LearnLibre#EndDRM#Libraries#ebooks#DayAgainstDRM
So I know in this post I was joking about going back to using encyclopedias and dictionaries instead of search engines...but now I'm starting to consider it seriously. 😅
Google is getting worse by the day and AI is ruining everything.
"As more and more readers turn to ebooks, libraries are forced to keep up with the trend, often having to pay onerous licensing fees just for the "privilege" of keeping the work in stock, and, often unknowingly, exposing their patrons' data." Read the full article about IDAD 2023: https://u.fsf.org/421#LearnLibre#EndDRM#Libraries#ebooks#DayAgainstDRM
"It's not easy being an anti-DRM activist, especially heading into 2024. Not content with locking down software and streaming media, the massive corporations peddling this unjust technology have even extended their reach into the world's libraries. OverDrive is the worst of these offenders..." Read the full article about IDAD 2023: https://u.fsf.org/421#LearnLibre#EndDRM#Libraries#ebooks#DayAgainstDRM
Yay! The National Library's café in #Stockholm has opened again after closing in 2020! And in August the basement restaurant named for an early runologist's enormous note-taking tome will reopen too!
#InformationAccess#PublicGoods#Democracy#Libraries: "Democracy means public, open spaces where civic workers are there to help members of the public navigate to and make sense of information that they need. Democracy means connected communities where people work with one another to understand the world around themselves. A search engine can be a useful tool, but Google's irrelationality goes back at least to their conception of their mission as "organiz[ing] the world's information and mak[ing] it universally accessible and useful." As Hoffmann and Bloom convincingly argue, the very framing of that goal as something that can be achieved by one company, with impersonal technology, is inconsistent with meaningful access for many (most?) of the people in the world.
So, as we look for ways to repair our information ecosystem in the wake of the depredations of the current AI hype-driven deluge of synthetic media, a key step should be shoring up support for library systems and learning from the practices, traditions, and current research of librarians and library and information scientists."
"As more and more readers turn to ebooks, libraries are forced to keep up with the trend, often having to pay onerous licensing fees just for the "privilege" of keeping the work in stock, and, often unknowingly, exposing their patrons' data." Read the full article about IDAD 2023: https://u.fsf.org/421#LearnLibre#EndDRM#Libraries#ebooks#DayAgainstDRM
The Seattle Public Library was hit with a ransomware attack. A library that has offered youth across the country access to its digital holdings with a special library card. Curious. Sickening. It's still open for physical books, using paper forms for borrowing. Bring your library cards or at least the number!
Support libraries--they are places of wonder and lifelines for the community. @bookstodon @books #books#libraries#ransomware https://shelftalkblog.wordpress.com/today/
Not sure who needs to hear this today, but remember, your local public library benefits from being used! Usage statistics are how librarians argue for funding! By using this shared service more, you are making it BETTER for everyone else!
It's the glory of the commons, not the tragedy of the commons. Go to the library!!!
"As more and more readers turn to ebooks, libraries are forced to keep up with the trend, often having to pay onerous licensing fees just for the "privilege" of keeping the work in stock, and, often unknowingly, exposing their patrons' data." Read the full article about IDAD 2023: https://u.fsf.org/421#LearnLibre#EndDRM#Libraries#ebooks#DayAgainstDRM
Anyone else read adult books in like middle school? And instead of adults freaking out, they encouraged it? I read horror "early" & everyone from teachers to neighbors were thrilled to recommend more, plenty with sexual content, worried more if the gore/terror would be too much.