Library workers at Western University's Graduate Resource Centre in London, Ontario, had a workshop from Alison Macrina, the library organiser whose Library Freedom Project won a battle with the US DHS over a library in New Hampshire that was offering a Tor exit node as part of a global network that delivers privacy, censorship resistance, and anonymity to all comers. Read the rest
Ian Clark's long academic paper in the Journal of Radical Librarianship takes a while to get to the point, but when it arrives, it's a very, very good one: in the post-Snowden era, we can no longer address the "digital divide" just by providing access -- we also have to teach people how their online usage is spied on, how that will harm them, and what to do about it. Read the rest
The New York Public Library's spectacular Digital Public Library challenged designers to create new covers for some of the public domain's greatest books, which had been previously doomed to an undeserved dullness thanks to the auto-generated covers that book-scanning projects stuck them with. Read the rest
The Book Fair Game is a new open/free title from Matt Finch, a game designer with a residency at the State Library of Queensland, Australia. Read the rest
The outgoing Librarian of Congress was a technophobe who refused all gadgets more advanced than a fax machine; he was in charge of the nation's copyright, and hence its IT policy. Read the rest
Inspired by the Library Freedom Project's uncompromising bravery in the face of a DHS threat against a town library in Kilton, NH, that was running a Tor exit node to facilitate private, anonymous communication, the New Hampshire legislature is now considering a bill that would explicitly permit public libraries to "allow the installation and use of cryptographic privacy platforms on public library computers for library patrons use." Read the rest
The New York Public Library is aggressively digitizing the public domain works in its collections, adding high-quality machine-readable metadata to each of the hundreds of thousands of assets, providing an API, offering residencies to remixers who do interesting things with the collection, and offering all those assets in high-rez with "No permission required. No restrictions on use." Read the rest
Here's your chance to give back to the Internet's library of everything, home of the Wayback Machine, and friend to all Internet people, everywhere. They're livestreaming until 12h Pacific today. If you're in San Francisco, you can also drop by 300 Funston and join the audience. Read the rest
“It gets them excited about being in biology class,” South Anchorage High School science teacher Chris Backstrum told the Alaska Dispatch News. “It starts the year off on a good foot."
"Need a wolf fur? A puffin pelt? All you need is a library card and a visit to the ARLIS library" (ADN)
"Something Preserved" (Great Big Story)
(photos by Marc Lester/ADN) Read the rest
Bobby Glushko writes, "Something's going on at the University of Toronto's Robarts Library. A concerned group of citizens is investigating a conspiracy hiding facts about the mysterious and controversial past of this masterpiece of brutalist architecture. At the same time a noble, if shadowy, society is working to keep its secrets hidden." Read the rest
When the wonderful science fiction writer Ellen Klages (previously) tells a fantastic tale about a shuttered library where seven eternal librarians tend the shelves, it doesn't come out reminiscent of Borges's library, nor Pratchett's -- rather, like all of Klages's work, it becomes a story about human affection and destiny. Read the rest
Peter from the National Coalition Against Censorship writes, "Some say book banning isn't even a problem anymore, so we should ditch Banned Books Week altogether. That's a terrible idea." Read the rest
The idea of Fun Palaces has been incubating among radical librarians for more than half a century, and now it's bursting open as a full-fledged movement. Every library in the Lambeth Borough of London will be a Fun Palace this Saturday, with a wide range of participatory activities ranging from zine and science workshops to participatory theater to kids' games from the amazing Code Club. Read the rest
Jen is the incredible artist who adapted my short story "Anda's Game" for last year's middle-grades graphic novel In Real Life. Read the rest
Edd writes, "I am a professor at Ithaca College in New York. Recently for a research study I tracked almost every Role Playing Game Book circulating in every public and academic library in the world." Read the rest
The Canadian Conservative government's war on science, statistics and evidence have been a great boon to its ability to create policy that helps its friends and destroys the country, but the deep and arbitrary cuts to science and statistics have eroded Canada's ability to know what is happening in the country to a terrifying extent. Read the rest
Kilton, New Hampshire's public library was the first library in the USA to offer an Tor node on its computers, giving its patrons a technological assist in maintaining their privacy and anonymity -- until the DHS sent them a letter demanding that they switch it off.
Now, ninja librarian Alison Macrina has tweeted the good news: "WE'VE DONE IT. THE KILTON LIBRARY WILL TURN THEIR #TOR RELAY BACK ON!!!"
#KiltonLibrary WE'VE DONE IT. THE KILTON LIBRARY WILL TURN THEIR #TOR RELAY BACK ON!!!
— Alison Macrina (@flexlibris) September 15, 2015(Image: Tor Project) Read the rest
