Latest Information Industry News and Resources
Report: “UF (University of Florida) Reprimands Book-Hungry Prof Over 2017 Behavior”
From Gainesville.com: The University of Florida has thrown the books at English professor Richard Burt. Burt, 65, who contested the university library book check-out limit of 350, was made to sign a written letter of reprimand by his chair, Sid Dobrin, and associate dean, Mary Watt. They met … [Read More...]
Amazon Makes Another $1 Million Gift to the Wikimedia Endowment to Help Ensure Long-Term Sustainability of Wikipedia
From the Wikimedia Foundation: We are pleased to announce a new $1 million gift to the Wikimedia Endowment from Amazon to support greater access to information for everyone. This is Amazon’s second gift to the Wikimedia Endowment, a permanent fund dedicated to ensuring the long-term … [Read More...]
Penn. State University: Dean of University Libraries Barbara Dewey to Retire August 2020
From Penn. State University: Penn State has announced that Barbara I. Dewey, Penn State’s dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications, will retire in August 2020 after a 45-year career in librarianship. [Clip] During her tenure as dean, Dewey oversaw the transformation of … [Read More...]
Digital Privacy News Roundup
Apple Safari Browser Sends Some User IP Addresses to Chinese Conglomerate Tencent by Default (via Reclaim the Net) How to Stop GoogleSoftwareUpdate.app From Trying to Run on Your Mac (via iMore) … [Read More...]
Roundup (October 14, 2019)
Costs of Course Materials: Results of the Fall 2019 University of Ottawa #TextbookBroke Survey Note: $1 Canadian = approx. 76 Cents/USD. Decline of the Ebook Market in Viet Nam (via Viet Nam News) Library Publishing Coalition Posts Program and CFP For 2020 Library Publishing Forum University of … [Read More...]
Big Update! The Internet Archive Adds 2,500 More MS-DOS Games to Play Online
From an Internet Archive Blog Post by Jason Scott: Another few thousand DOS Games are playable at the Internet Archive! Since our initial announcement in 2015, we’ve added occasional new games here and there to the collection, but this will be our biggest update yet, ranging from tiny recent … [Read More...]
Oxford English Dictionary Adds More Than 650 New Words, Senses, and Subentries Including Chillax, Cyptocurrency, Fake News, and Jedi Mind Trick (October 2019 Update)
From the OED Blog: New additions this September cover a lot of ground, stretching alphabetically from abugida (a system for organizing words or characters in the Semitic languages of Ethiopia, or a writing system used in some South or South-East Asian languages) to the slangily dismissive whatevs. … [Read More...]
United States Army Defends Decision to Close its Historic 57-Year-Old Space and Technical Library at Redstone Arsenal.
From the Associated Press: The U.S. Army is defending a decision to close its historic 57-year-old space and technical library at Redstone Arsenal. Army officials said it was a joint decision made by interested parties. [Clip] In a statement released this week, the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities … [Read More...]
More Than 1,700 Maps Added to USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection
From ESRI: In collaboration with the US Geological Survey (USGS), Esri recently updated the online USGS historical topographic map collection with over 1,700 new maps. Esri’s USGS topographic map collection now contains 177,061 historical quadrangle maps dating from 1882 to 2006. Previously … [Read More...]
New Data on Postsecondary Tuition, Fees and Degrees in the United States From the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)
From the National Center for Education Statistics: Between 2016–17 and 2018–19, the average tuition and required fees at 4-year public institutions increased 1 percent for in-state and decreased 0.2 percent for out-of-state students (after adjusting for inflation). During that same time period, … [Read More...]
New Report: “The Market of Disinformation”
From OxTEC (Oxford Technology and Elections Commission/Oxford Internet Institute): This report by Oxford Information Labs examines the impact of algorithmic changes made by social media platforms, designed to curb the spread of disinformation, through the lens of digital marketing. The report … [Read More...]
Now Available Online: The “Digital Collections Management Compendium (DCMC)” From the Library of Congress
From a Post by Jesse Johnston on "The Signal" (a Library of Congress of Congress Blog): Over the past two years, my colleagues and I in the Digital Content Management section have been working with experts from across many divisions of the Library of Congress to collate and assemble guidance and … [Read More...]
Interview: UNC at Chapel Hill University Librarian Elaine Westbrooks on Academic Publishing, Open Access, and Elsevier
From The Well (UNC Publication): There’s really no other industry where the creator and the consumer are one and the same, but the final product is apart from the creator and the consumer,” said University Librarian Elaine Westbrooks. “That cycle has made publishers quite wealthy.” In an … [Read More...]
Roundup (October 11, 2019)
SPARC Receives Grant $75,000 Grant From Arcadia Trust To create and support initiatives that enable the academic community to retain and/or regain control of crucial infrastructure – and attendant data – underpinning the open scholarly ecosystem. You Can Now Speak to Amazon's Alexa in Spanish … [Read More...]
Climate Change: National Audubon Society Releases “389 Bird Species on the Brink” Report & “Bird and Climate Visualizer”
From the National Audubon Society: Today, the National Audubon Society announced a groundbreaking climate report, Survival by Degrees: 389 Bird Species on the Brink. “Two-thirds of America’s birds are threatened with extinction from climate change, but keeping global temperatures down will help … [Read More...]
Research Article: “Library Catalog Analysis and Library Holdings Counts: Origins, Methodological Issues and Application to the Field of Informetrics” (Preprint)
The following research article (preprint) was made posted on arXiv earlier this week. Title Library Catalog Analysis and Library Holdings Counts: Origins, Methodological Issues and Application to the Field of Informetrics Authors Daniel Torres-Salinas Universidad de Granada, Spain Wenceslao … [Read More...]
205 Unique Data Sources From Around the Globe Added to U.S. Census HIV/AIDS Surveillance Data Base
From the U.S. Census: The U.S. Census Bureau has added 205 unique sources of data from around the world to its HIV/AIDS Surveillance Data Base, providing easy access to key findings in one place. The data were gleaned from presentations and posters showcased at the 22nd International AIDS … [Read More...]
Video: Watch the 2019 IMLS National Medals Ceremony
The 2019 IMLS National Medals Ceremony took place on Wednesday, June 12, 2019, in Washington, D.C. A video recording of the event was posted on YouTube earlier today. See Also: IMLS Announces Recipients of the 2019 National Medal for Museum and Library Service (May 7, 2019) See Also: Meet the … [Read More...]
Report: Public to Get Access to Nuremberg Trials Digital Recordings
From the Associated Press: Audio recordings from the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders will be made available to the public for the first time in digital form after nearly two years of work conducted in secret. [Clip] The files capture several hundred hours of the first, high-profile trial of top … [Read More...]
Roundup (October 10, 2019)
ACRL Diversity Alliance: President-Elect Jon Cawthorne Interviews LSU University Libraries Dean Stanley Wilder University of Arizona: David Hume Kennerly Has Photographed 10 Presidents, and Now UA Has Acquired His Archive (via AZCentral) Europe: Launch Of Triple, the European Discovery Solution … [Read More...]
