Category «Libraries»

The Library of Congress at a Crossroads: Executive Overreach and the Future of Public Knowledge

Street, Leslie and Runyon, Amanda, The Library of Congress at a Crossroads: Executive Overreach and the Future of Public Knowledge (January 25, 2026). U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 26-07, Seattle University Law Review Online & Seattle Journal of Technology, Environment, & Innovation Law, forthcoming, 2026, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6155010 or …

Subjects: Congress, Copyright, Courts, Education, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation, Libraries

Ten years of a ‘quiet culture war’: where does it stand now?

Via LLRX – Ten years of a ‘quiet culture war’: where does it stand now? – In 2014, Rick Anderson wrote A quiet culture war in research libraries – and what it means for librarians, researchers and publishers’, arguing that there existed an ongoing conflict within the academic library profession over whether the library’s most important role …

Subjects: Education, Knowledge Management, Libraries

Microsoft is closing its employee library and cutting back on subscriptions

The Verge [no paywall]: “Microsoft’s library of books is so heavy that it once caused a campus building to sink, according to an unproven legend among employees. Now those physical books, journals, and reports, and many of Microsoft’s digital subscriptions to leading US newspapers, are disappearing in a shift described inside Microsoft as an “AI-powered …

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

150,000 Botanical and Animal Illustrations Available for Free Download from Biodiversity Heritage Library

Colossal: “Billed as the world’s largest open access digital archive dedicated to life on Earth, the Biodiversity Heritage Library is comprised of animal sketches, historical diagrams, botanical studies, and various scientific research collected from hundreds of thousands of journals and libraries around the globe. In an effort to share information and promote collaboration to combat …

Subjects: Energy, Knowledge Management, Libraries

How to Spot AI Hallucinations Like a Reference Librarian

Via LLRX – How to Spot AI Hallucinations Like a Reference Librarian – AI has flooded the zone, overwhelming one on one human knowledge sharing. In this article Hana Lee Goldin returns the focus to the art of the reference interview. When someone has a research or information based request, librarians are trained to figure …

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

The Librarian as a Trusted (Human) Assistant

Via LLRX – The Librarian as a Trusted (Human) Assistant – Jennifer Chapman concisely conveys the importance of identifying for patrons that AI’s confidence doesn’t equal competence. Chapman states that as law librarians we are naturally skeptical of certainty. The law teaches us to question everything, and library school teaches us how to verify everything. We, not …

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

Some Audiobooks Are Outselling Hardcovers

Wall Street Journal and free via MSN: “During what has been a challenging year for publishers, audiobooks remain a relative bright spot. In some cases, the success of the audio version is about audiences getting to hear the story straight from its celebrity author. In others, it is about the drama and suspense of a …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Libraries

How to Spot AI Hallucinations Like a Reference Librarian

Card Catalog – Hana Lee Goldin: “The verification tricks that would make fact-checkers weep with joy. Last Tuesday, a client sent me their “thoroughly researched” white paper on workplace automation. It had 47 citations. Looked bulletproof. Every claim backed by a study, every statistic sourced to a journal. I was impressed for exactly three minutes. …

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

LLMs’ impact on science: Booming publications, stagnating quality

Ars Technica: “There have been a number of high-profile cases where scientific papers have had to be retracted because they were filled with AI-generated slop—the most recent coming just two weeks ago. These instances raise serious questions about the quality of peer review in some journals—how could anyone let a figure with terms like “runctitional,” …

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