Category «Libraries»

Project 2025 Tracker – many goals and objectives met quickly

“Project 2025 Tracker began as a humble spreadsheet created by /u/rusticgorilla, combined with /u/mollynaquafina‘s vision for making this information accessible to everyone through a dedicated website. What started as a passion project by two Redditors has grown into a community-driven resource, powered by people like you who believe in the importance of transparent, detailed analysis.” …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

Few Americans pay for news when they encounter paywalls

“Newspaper revenue has been in decline for decades, and most Americans now prefer to get news from digital devices. In this environment, many news organizations – and not just newspapers – put paywalls on their websites or apps, blocking access to articles or other content unless news consumers pay or subscribe. The vast majority of …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

Copyrighted books to train AI? Fair. Storing them? Not so much.

Simon Willison’s Weblog – Anthropic wins a major fair use victory for AI — but it’s still in trouble for stealing books. Major USA legal news for the AI industry today. Judge William Alsup released a “summary judgement” (a legal decision that results in some parts of a case skipping a trial) in a lawsuit …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, Courts, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

House Bill Would Lay Waste to Congress’s Watchdogs and Information Experts

First Branch Forecast – “The House of Representatives is poised to inflict catastrophic damage on its own institutional capacity. Today, the House Appropriations Committee released its proposed funding levels for the Legislative Branch, which would slash the Government Accountability Office’s budget by 50 percent and the Library of Congress by 12 percent from FY 2024 …

Subjects: Congress, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation, Libraries

AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums

404 Media: “This is a moment where that community feels collectively under threat and isn’t sure what the process is for solving the problem.” “Popular Information AI bots that scrape the internet for training data are hammering the servers of libraries, archives, museums, and galleries, and are in some cases knocking their collections offline, according …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, Digital Rights, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

How a Single Court Case Could Determine the Future of Book Banning in America

Lit Hub: “Only one library book ban case has ever been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court: Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico (1982). In 1975, the Island Trees school board in Nassau County, New York removed nearly a dozen books from the high school and junior high …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Courts, Economy, Government Documents, Legal Research, Libraries

School Librarians Are the First and Perhaps Only Line of Defense in a School for Students’ First Amendment Rights”

Book Riot: “How South Carolina school librarians are rising to the challenge of statewide book bans and why they retain hope in these challenging times. Three U.S. states have provisions in their state law that allow for removal of books from all public schools under certain circumstances. These are South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. Tennessee …

Subjects: Censorship, Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation, Libraries

Introducing MiniGladys for Fast Wikipedia-Based Search and Research

Tara Calishain – “As you might imagine, I do a lot of web search in the course of my day. Often these queries are quick reference lookups; I need to find a company’s social media, for example, or I want to see how to spell someone’s name. Unfortunately these kinds of searches on Google are …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries, Search Engines

Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics?

Vox via MSN: “…Americans still consume plenty of text. Social media platforms teem with words — even video-based apps like TikTok are replete with captions and comments. And on average, we spend more than two hours scrolling through such platforms each day. But not all reading is created equal. The mind can skim over the …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries, Social Media

How long would it take to read the greatest books of all time?

The Economist no paywall: “The Economist consulted bibliophile data scientists to bring you the answer. precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short,” wrote Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher of the 19th century. People are living longer than they did in Schopenhauer’s day, but the number of books has …

Subjects: Knowledge Management, Libraries, Search Engines