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Category Archives: Education

Publishers’ reply brief in Hachette v. Internet Archive: First Impressions

Dave Hansen and Kyle K. Courtney jointly authored this post. They are also the authors of a White Paper on Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books. We are not, as the Publishers claim in their brief on page 13, a “cadre of boosters.” We wrote the paper independently as part of our combined decades of work on libraries access to knowledge. [On March 15, 2024] the publishers (Hachette, Harper Collins, John Wiley, and Penguin Random House) filed their reply brief on appeal in their  long-running lawsuit against Internet Archive, which challenges (among other things) the practice of controlled digital lending. For the months after the decision, we had been observing all the hot takes, cheers, jeers, and awkward declarations about the case, the Internet Archive itself, and Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) This post is not part of that fanfare. Here, we want to identify a few critical issues that the publishers focus on in their brief, including some questionable fair use analysis that they repeat from the district court below. Much of the brief is framed in heated rhetoric that may cause alarm, but much like publishers’ announcements about interlibrary loan, e-reserves, or document delivery, we believe controlled digital lending is here to stay, regardless of the lower court’s poor copyright analysis and current publisher’s brief…”

Fact-opinion differentiation

Misinformation Review – paper by Matthew Mettler & Jeffery J. Mondak: “Statements of fact can be proved or disproved with objective evidence, whereas statements of opinion depend on personal values and preferences. Distinguishing between these types of statements contributes to information competence. Conversely, failure at fact-opinion differentiation potentially brings resistance to corrections of misinformation and… Continue Reading

Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool

“The National Cancer Institute Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool (BCRAT), also known as The Gail Model, allows health professionals to estimate a woman’s risk of developing invasive breast cancer over the next five years and up to age 90 (lifetime risk). The tool uses a woman’s personal medical and reproductive history and the history of… Continue Reading

Public Libraries Saw 92 Percent Increase In Number of Titles Targeted for Censorship Over 2022

“The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA). The new numbers released today show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles* in schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022, when 2,571 unique titles… Continue Reading

The Dark World of Citation Cartels

The Chronicle of Higher Education [unpaywalled]: “In the complex landscape of modern academe, the maxim “publish or perish” has been gradually evolving into a different mantra: “Get cited or your career gets blighted.” Citations are the new academic currency, and careers now firmly depend on this form of scholarly recognition. In fact, citation has become… Continue Reading

What impact does exposure to workplace technologies have on workers’ quality of life?

“This briefing outlines new work that has been done for the Pissarides Review to improve our understanding of the effect that exposure to new workplace technologies is having on workers’ quality of life. Based on a survey of nearly 5000 UK workers, it has, for the first time, been done with reference to the most… Continue Reading

AI news that’s fit to print

“I just gave this talk at SXSW. It was my first public presentation since starting my new job at The New York Times…this time the topic was AI for journalism. What follows are my slides, script, and references from the talk. Hi, I’m Zach Seward, the editorial director of AI initiatives at The New York… Continue Reading

New Study Unveils Strategies to Combat Disinformation Wars on Social Media

Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets working paper. (Dis)information wars. Adrian Casillas, Maryam Farboodi, Layla Hashemi, Maryam Saeedi, and Steven Wilson.February 29, 2024. “With the unprecedented rise of internet access across the globe, social media platforms have emerged as prominent vehicles for displaying dissent. In response, numerous entities engage in spreading fake news on these platforms.… Continue Reading

Video: 3D images of over 13,000 museum specimens now free to everyone

New Atlas: “The completion of the openVertebrate (oVert) project is a significant milestone for natural history museums, as well as researchers, educators, students, and the public. The digital library is the first to offer free access to incredibly detailed – and, frankly, beautiful – 3D images of over 13,000 vertebrates. More than a research project,… Continue Reading

OpenAI’s GPT Is a Recruiter’s Dream Tool. Tests Show There’s Racial Bias

Bloomberg [unpaywalled] – “Recruiters are eager to use generative AI, but a Bloomberg experiment found bias against job candidates based on their names alone, Companies tend to hire the most at the start of the year, mainly because of hiring budgets that have been set and go into effect in the first quarter. “Everybody came… Continue Reading

How to Type in Multiple Languages in a Word Document

How to Geek: “Key Takeaways Use Microsoft Word’s styles to effectively change the language and prevent frustrations with the default language. Define your Normal style before applying the language, and modify the Heading styles for titles. Create and modify language styles for each language you want to use in your document, and easily change styles… Continue Reading

Study finds that we could lose science if publishers go bankrupt

Ars Technica: “Back when scientific publications came in paper form, libraries played a key role in ensuring that knowledge didn’t disappear. Copies went out to so many libraries that any failure—a publisher going bankrupt, a library getting closed—wouldn’t put us at risk of losing information. But, as with anything else, scientific content has gone digital,… Continue Reading