libraries

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  4/21/2022
  

  Union Organizing in the Long Shadow of the Gilded Age

  by Daisy Pitkin

  On listening to Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library as librarians perform the kind of social services Carnegie deplored (and try to organize a union, which he deplored more). 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/17/2022
  

  The Next Front of the Culture War? Your Public Library

  "Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures."

• 
• SOURCE: Jacobin
  4/5/2022
  

  Meet the Socialist Librarian Running to Lead the American Library Association

  Libraries are just one example of vital community institutions decimated by austerity politics and culture war battles; Emily Drabinksy says enough is enough. 

• 
• SOURCE: Austin American-Statesman
  3/31/2022
  

  Tom Staley, 86, Built UT's Ransom Center into Key Research Destination

  "Staley turned the archives into a global powerhouse that rivals the collecting achievements of Harvard University, Yale University and the British Museum."

• 
• SOURCE: The Real News Network
  2/22/2022
  

  Save Libraries, Save the World

  Emily Drabinsky is running for the presidency of the American Library Association to defend some of our most vital public institutions. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  1/6/2022
  

  In Praise of Search Tools

  by Diedre Lynch

  Books by Dennis Duncan and Craig Robertson examine the history of indexing, filing, and other technologies for locating information in books and the resultant culture of research.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  11/16/2021
  

  ‘We’re Preparing For a Long Battle.’ Librarians Grapple With Conservatives’ Latest Efforts to Ban Books

  by Olivia B. Waxman

  “We’re seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Executive Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “I’ve worked for ALA for 20 years, and I can’t recall a time when we had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis.”

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/6/2021
  

  The Fight to Ban Books

  "Pennsylvania does not have a law banning critical race theory from schools, at least not yet. In states where Republican governors have signed legislation banning critical race theory, books are disappearing from shelves."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/18/2020
  

  The Black Women Who Launched the Original Anti-Racist Reading List

  by Ashley Dennis

  Black women librarians have been important leaders in promoting books and publishing standards that encourage readers to recognize human dignity and reject racist stereotypes in children's literature.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  6/15/2020
  

  The Risky Journey That Saved One of China’s Greatest Literary Treasures

  by Janie Chang

  The story of the Siku Quanshu Wenlan Ge is inseparable from the story of people who risked all to protect a cultural legacy, from the librarian who sold off his house to the students who would not abandon the heavy boxes that slowed their travel.

• 
• SOURCE: Scholarly Kitchen
  4/2/2020
  

  The Internet Archive Chooses Readers

  by Karin Wulf

  To elevate the needs of the reader above all others is to dismiss the labor of archivists, authors, compositors, designers, editors, librarians, marketers, metadata creators, and all the other myriad people involved in bringing knowledge into being and into the marketplace.

• 
• 8/4/2019
  

  PubMed Central Offers a Historical Treasure Trove

  by Jeffrey S. Reznick, Christy Henshaw, Laura Randall, Rosalyn Leiderman, and Kathryn Funk

  The digitization of medical journals now allows access to valuable historical research opportunities.

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher ED
  11-23-16
  

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology invites academe to collaborate on future of libraries

  “I don’t think we need to save libraries, but I do think we might need libraries to save us.” — Chris Bourg, director of libraries at MIT

• 
• SOURCE: BBC News
  12-18-13
  

  Naples' Girolamini: The looting of a 16th Century library

  The Biblioteca Girolamini's invaluable fifteenth and sixteenth century book collections have been plundered.

• 
• SOURCE: Religion News Service
  12-4-13
  

  Two world-class libraries launch online archive of ancient Scriptures

  The Vatican Library and Oxford's Bodleian Library are teaming up.

• SOURCE: Press release
  6-28-13
  

  National Library of Medicine launches new biomedical history blog

  The NLM's History of Medicine Division has launched a new blog, Circulating Now, to encourage greater exploration and discovery of one of the world's largest and most treasured history of medicine collections. Encompassing millions of items that span ten centuries, these collections include items in just about every form one can imagine—from books, journals, and photographs, to lantern slides, motion picture films, film strips, video tapes, audio recordings, pamphlets, ephemera, portraits, woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs. The NLM's historical collections also include items from the present day: born-digital materials and rich data sets—like the millions of records in its IndexCat database—that are ripe for exploration through traditional research methods and new ones that are emerging in the current climate of "big data" and the digital humanities.