The Library for the People

One of President Obama’s final appointments was the new Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden. The first person of color and the first woman to lead the Library of Congress, she is also the first actual librarian to lead it since 1974. Dr. James Billington was her predecessor, and though he was beloved for his intellect,…

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New State Archivist Hired

A new state archivist has been hired to oversee records management services for state and local governments in Kentucky. Beth Shields will assume the position after the previous employee retired after 32 years at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA). Shields has worked for the libraries and archives department for seven years. This news came…

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Challenging Yourself, Literally

By now everyone has likely read or heard about the 4-year old girl from Gainesville, Georgia who has read more than 1,000 books already in her young life. This is outstanding, especially when you compare it to a typical American will read about four books in one year. Even more serious readers only make it to…

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Returning Control to Librarians

A new independent provider of cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solutions has launched an online resource access management tool for libraries. Knowledgespeak brought this interesting news to our attention in their article, “LibLynx to launch LibLynx Gateway – a new e-resource access solution for Libraries.” LibLynx Gateway uniquely combines an access and authentication infrastructure…

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New Digitization Project Increases Access

Northern Illinois University recently announced a new digitization project in their release,”University Libraries awarded more than $448,000 for digitization project.” The Council on Library and Information Resources has awarded the University Libraries, in collaboration with the Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University, with a Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant for $448,893 to digitize…

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Highlights of University Presses

It is easy to think of university presses as focused primarily on humanities and social science. While that may apply to many, there are some that include important critiques that contribute to and shape the academic publishing world. The writers at The Scholarly Kitchen shared some of their favorites in their post, “University Press Books We Loved…

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Archiving the Past for the Future

1.2 million volunteers worldwide contribute to the FamilySearch indexing program, which brings billions of historical records to life. NewsOK out of Oklahoma brought this information to our attention in their article, “Indexing projects make family records more accessible.” FamilySearch is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its web-based, volunteer-driven indexing initiative. Every week, FamilySearch publishes millions of…

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The Original Source

Over the centuries, library services and collections have been mediated by humans, and therefore the content has been tailored to and by people who used libraries and the space they provide. I know you are wondering where I am going with this. Hang in there with me. Libraries are about more than just the content they…

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Portable Peer Review

The process of peer review is a cornerstone of scientific integrity. It guarantees the quality in a scientific research paper. When a researcher accomplishes something, the concluding step is to publish the results in the scientific literature. To get there, the paper must undergo peer review. The Scholarly Kitchen brought this information to us in their…

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