Monday, July 30, 2018

Book: Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library's Future in an Uncertain World

https://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Thinking-Ensuring-Librarys-Uncertain/dp/0838916880/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1532888306&sr=8-1&keywords=Sustainable+Thinking:+Ensuring+Your+Library's+Future+in+an+Uncertain+World&linkCode=ll1&tag=digitization1-20&linkId=c3a58b75283b2b1c93ebcc8457309084&language=en_USThis year, Rebekkah Smith Aldrich published her book Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library's Future in an Uncertain WorldSustainable Thinking is part textbook, part workbook, and totally an appeal for libraries to engage their communities as a way to ensure the library's future.

Smith Aldrich draws from her education in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) to develop ideas on how a library can become more sustainable through developing relationships and engaging in more interactions. Rather than giving vague directions, she provides short worksheets at the end of each chapter, which allow library staff and trustees to put the text into meaningful actions in their communities.  This is not a book which a staff member or library trustee should just read; it is a book that should lead to specific actions that will develop resiliency.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Smith Aldrich really grabbed my attention on page 18, when she discussed Maslow's hierarchy of needs in comparison with what libraries normally do.  That section - and you'll have to read the book to understand it - is particularly important to me because I know of public libraries that are struggling with providing safe space, and at the same time defending what else they are doing.  (Intrigued?)

Sustainable Thinking is a book which I hope is widely read by library leaders, including trustees.  Even if it doesn't lead immediately to actions, I can imagine the useful conversations it might spark.  Personally, I'm looking forward to giving my copy of the book to the president of the local library board of trustees, and then talking with him about it.

Smith Aldrich holds an MLS degree and the  Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Accreditation for Professionals.  She is also a certified Sustainable Building Advisor (cSBA),  Smith Aldrich is well-known in New York State library circles and is having a huge impact on library-thinking across the U.S.

Rebekkah Smith Aldrich also published Resilience this year.  According to Amazon, "Resilience is the second volume in a new series which focuses on emerging trends in the profession, provoking discussion on how to shape the future by sharing ideas and exploring joint solutions to the challenges facing libraries and society."

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Tuesday, July 24, 2018

CNI Video: Privacy in Cross-Border Preservation-based Partnerships

CNI has released this video from its 2018 spring membership meeting.  Its email announcement said:
In Privacy in Cross-Border Preservation-based Partnerships, Erin Tripp of DuraSpace shares the research and consultation outcomes resulting from the pursuit of an international partnership program to increase adoption of DuraCloud. The initiative prompted questions about information transfer, privacy, and legal jurisdiction.

This video is available through Vimeo and YouTube:

Monday, July 23, 2018

CNI Video: Text Data Mining (TDM) Research Using Copyrighted and Use-Limited Text Data Sets: Developing an Agenda to Support Scholarly Use

CNI released this video from its spring 2018 membership meeting.  As CNI's email announcement said:
Copyright and license agreements can complicate a researcher’s efforts to access texts and perform computational analysis. Increasingly, libraries are getting engaged as intermediaries between content providers and scholars to facilitate access to text datasets. Text Data Mining (TDM) Research Using Copyrighted and Use-Limited Text Data Sets: Developing an Agenda to Support Scholarly Use, by Beth Sandore Namachchivaya of the University of Waterloo, provides an update on research funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to hold a national forum with key stakeholders to develop a research and implementation agenda for libraries that work with scholars and content providers to enable streamlined access to copyrighted and licensed texts for data mining research.
 The video is available through YouTube and Vimeo:

Monday, July 16, 2018

Book: Open Licensing for Cultural Heritage

https://www.amazon.com/Open-Licensing-Cultural-Heritage-Hamilton/dp/1783301856/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531525914&sr=1-1&keywords=Open+Licensing+for+Cultural+Heritage&linkCode=ll1&tag=digitization1-20&linkId=a5d4df65fa6d1ae8986286f147a6997b I have highlighted several books this year and here is one more.

Published in 2017, Open Licensing for Culture Heritage is by Gill Hamilton and Fred Saunderson.  According to the publisher:
Open Licensing for Cultural Heritage digs into the concept of ‘open’ in relation to intellectual property, providing context through the development of different fields, including open education, open source, open data, and open government. It explores the organizational benefits of open licensing and the open movement, including the importance of content discoverability, arguments for wider collections impact and access, the practical benefits of simplicity and scalability, and more ethical and principled arguments related to protection of public content and the public domain.
This book is available only in paperback. 


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IMLS report on Positioning Library and Information Science Graduate Programs for 21st Century Practice

In November 2017, IMLS hosted a meeting on "Positioning Library and Information Science Graduate Programs for 21st Century Practice." The 40-page report from that one-day event is now available.  The three overarching themes, and places for continued work, were:
  • Recruiting Students 
  • Educating Students
  • Recruiting, Hiring and Retaining LIS Professionals
It is important for us to remember that the diversity in our profession does not match the diversity in the U.S. For example, the U.S. is approximately 18% Hispanic/LatinX, while only 3% of our credentialed librarians are Hispanic/LatinX. The report includes tables on race/ethnicity on page 31, which use the ALA Diversity Counts statistics. 

I expect all of the ALA accredited MSLIS programs will be reviewing this report. It will be interesting to see how this influences their future.

Friday, July 13, 2018

#NDPthree report published: National Digital Infrastructures and Initiatives: A Report on the 2017 National Digital Platform at Three Forum

IMLS has published the report from its #NDPthree event in October 2017.  the one-day event reviewed work done as part of the digital library infrastructures and initiatives portfolio of the National Leadership Grants for Libraries Program and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. The report - National Digital Infrastructures and Initiatives: A Report on the 2017 National Digital Platform at Three Forum - is 22 pages and provides summaries of the panel sessions and information on the overarching themes.  In the report, the themes for future work are (in alphabetical order):
  • Access
  • Collaboration
  • Community
  • Continuing Education
  • Digital Equity
  • Infrastructure
  • Preservation
  • Sustainability
I'm very pleased that I was able to attend #NDPthree and I'm glad this report has finally been released.  My six blog posts from the event may provide more detail or just give you another point of view. Below is a link to the YouTube recording of the event.






As you may know, IMLS has been under threat of elimination.  Its ability to pull together a broad range of people to think about topics like this and its role in providing funding to libraries and museums needs to be remembered, heralded, and protected.  If you find this report useful, let your voice be heard on why IMLS needs to survive.

Monday, July 09, 2018

Smithsonian Mass Digitization: Smithsonian Gardens: Orchid Collection

Since it is summer in the northern hemisphere, this seems like a "feel good" one-minute video worth sharing from the Smithsonian Institution.




Tuesday, July 03, 2018

Proposed EU copyright legislation to be voted on July 5 (updated)

I don't follow EU copyright legislation closely, so these proposed rule changes have snuck up on me.  According to IPPro The Internet:
Article 11 brings a so-called ‘link tax’ that would allow publishers to secure licence fees from search engines and other intermediaries who use their content for up to 20 years from publication.

Article 13 shifts the burden of responsibility for copyright infringement to the platforms, forcing them to readjust their content protection mechanisms and take down user content at the request of rights owners.
From what I'm reading, Article 13 could case platforms to review content and automatically delete content they think is a duplicate. Since the review would be done by machines, content that is legal could be automatically deleted.  That review process could also slow down the sharing of content.  One place, where I could see that being a problem, is at a live event, where many people are sharing photos online. 

The European Parliament will vote on these on 5 July.  People in Europe are encouraged to contact their Members of European Parliament (MEPs) to express their concern.


Update (July 5): The BBC has reported that the MEPs have rejected Article 13 and they will take up this issue again in September. (The vote was 318 votes to 278, with 31 abstentions.) News reports framed this as a battle between creatives/artists and the technology industry, with each side making impassioned pleas.