Wikipedia | Internet Archive | Open Access

Weaving Books into the Web—Starting with Wikipedia

Posted on October 29, 2019 by Brewster Kahle

[announcement video, Wired]

The Internet Archive has transformed 130,000 references to books in Wikipedia into live links to 50,000 digitized Internet Archive books in several Wikipedia language editions including English, Greek, and Arabic. And we are just getting started. By working with Wikipedia communities and scanning more books, both users and robots will link many more book references directly into Internet Archive books. In these cases, diving deeper into a subject will be a single click.  Read more...

—Moriel Schottlender, Senior Software Engineer, Wikimedia Foundation, speech announcing this program

Side Hustles and Ways to Make Money at Home [the Cut]

Employment | Tutoring |Book dealing | Podcasting | Career advice | Gig economy

MONEY | May 17, 2019

by Jessica Levine

SLG: Some very useful ideas for library students, recent grads and librarians in transition.

Straight from your couch. Photo-Illustration: by Stevie Remsberg; Photo by Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images

According to a 2018 survey conducted by Bankrate, more than half of millennials are figuring out how to make money at home by embracing a side hustle — also known as extra cash to help pay off debt.

If you’ve got a flexible schedule, “side hustles can be a great way to achieve a financial goal,” says Shannah Compton Game, MBA, a certified financial planner and host of the Millennial Money podcast. Whether you’re trying to pay off student loans, save for a house, or just make rent, she recommends determining exactly where your additional income will go before you start getting it.

go before you start getting it.

But don’t sell yourself short. The Bankrate survey found that men are making nearly three times more than women from their side hustles. While men were found to have side jobs more frequently than women, Game says women also tend to be more conservative when setting a price point. “We tend to undervalue our talents, and men can be better at saying this is my value and this is the price.” To close the pay gap, she recommends women do plenty of research on the market value of a given service or product they’re interested in offering before jumping in. Here are a few ways to start making some extra cash on the side.

Get some voice work. People get paid to read voice-over scripts for videos, advertisements, and audiobooks from home. Register on a site like Fiverr or Upwork to get started.

Buy and sell used books. If you’re willing to do a little legwork — going to estate sales, thrift stores, library sales — you can find underpriced used books and resell them online. The Amazon Barcode Scanner app can help determine whether a book is worth buying to take home and resell or not.

7 unexpected things that libraries offer besides books

Public libraries | Services | Access | Advocacy

 

April 1, 2019 | the conversation 

by Mila Gascó-Hernández

Research Associate Professor and Associate Research Director for the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York

Disclosure statement

Mila Gascó-Hernández receives funding from The Institute of Museums and Library Services. This article is the result of the IMLS-funded project " Enabling Smart, Inclusive, and Connected Communities: The Role of Public Libraries", where she serves as the PI.

Local libraries are often thought of as places to check out books or engage in some silent reading. But libraries offer so much more than just what can be found on their shelves or done in hushed tones.
And, in some instances, libraries have become places to make some noise.

From laptops and 3D laser printers, libraries today are providing the public with access to new technologies and education. In our research project on public libraries in smart communities, in which I serve as the principal investigator, we found that a public library serves as an anchor institution for these communities. It is a role libraries can be expected to fullfil even more in the future as technology continues to evolve in new and fascinating ways.

Here are seven examples from throughout the country of libraries offering more than books.

Robots

The Westport Free Library in Westport, Connecticut – population of roughly 28,000 – has a Robot Open Lab where the public can learn how to program robots to respond to simple commands, catch and kick a small soccer ball and even dance. The library’s two robots, Vincent and Nancy, autonomous, programmable humanoid robots, arrived in September 2014. Since then, more than 2,000 people have learned how to program them. Read more...

 

Members of a band record music at a Chattanooga public library. Author provided.

Leaders Keep Learning | Leading from the Library

Leadership | Continuing Education | Academic Librarianship

 

by Steven Bell
Mar 20, 2019 | Filed in Opinion

If leadership is mostly learned rather than an innate ability, then continuous learning is a vital contributor to leadership growth. “Never stop learning” is good advice, but it is one of those tasks that’s easier said than done.

This column is predicated on the idea that no library leader is fully formed, possessing all the skills required for success. Rather, the path to leadership is one of continuous learning. I routinely see library literature and social media posts about low library worker morale and toxic leaders, leading me to question how it is that our profession has so many awful leaders. We have an abundance of leadership development programs. Many academic institutions have internal management and leadership programs. There is no dearth of opportunities to develop and improve as a leader. Possible causes for this failure are many, from library leaders simply not giving a damn to a total absence of self-awareness. For those leaders who do care about staff morale and strive for a workplace where staff want to be, constant learning is a must. So allow me to share some ideas that I’ve recently come across for making a stronger commitment to learning to be a better leader.

WHO HAS TIME?

Who has time for continuous learning? What are the best sources among an avalanche of leadership blogs and development opportunities? According to research conducted by Josh Bersin and Marc Zao-Sanders, a leader’s first priority should simply be to commit to making learning an everyday activity. They call their approach “learning in the flow of work,” and it’s hardly a radical idea. It’s based on the way leaders already work. Bersin and Zao-Sanders found that leaders spend 6.5 hours a day in front of a screen and 61 percent of that time is on communication activity. The idea is to integrate continuous learning into the flow of everyday work. Among their recommendations, I find two of particular value:

• Maintain a “to learn” list. As a leader you bring many strengths to your work, but all leaders need to recognize their skill areas that need improvement. It may be becoming a better listener, working on better self-awareness, or holding more effective meetings. Put those items on the “to learn” list and be highly selective in identifying resources to help build strength in those areas.
• Calendarize dedicated time into your work schedule. Whether it’s writing, meditation, exercise, or some other purposeful activity, accomplishing it is easier as a routine behavior. To support professional development, carve out a designated time of the day and make it a regular activity. If your schedule is so hectic and unpredictable as to make that difficult, at least aim for some time during morning, afternoon, or night.

Read more...

Automation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Automation | Employment | Trends

Get a job! [Caitlin Williams | ALA Dewey Decibel Podcast

Career advice | Mentoring  |Professional development | Leadership | Trends

Looking for a job can be arduous and anxiety-inducing. It's not surprising: The end results can be life changing. And organizations looking to hire new employees face challenges, as finding the right candidate for a job can be difficult if the search isn’t conducted correctly. What can job seekers and employers do to improve the process to everyone’s benefit? In Episode 32, we find out.

First, ALA Editions acquisitions editor and Dewey Decibel contributor Jamie Santoro speaks with Caitlin Williams, author of Be Opportunity-Minded: Start Growing Your Career Now (ALA Editions, 2019), about tips for those on the job hunt and job market trends.

Next, Dewey Decibel host and American Libraries associate editor Phil Morehart talks with David Connolly, recruitment ad sales manager for the American Library Association’s JobLIST, about what job hunters should be doing to find the right fit and what employers should be doing to find the right candidates.

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship (CC BY 4.0)

Open Access | Paywall  |Scholarly Communication | Publishing | Academic Libraries

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship, produced by Jason Schmitt, provides focus on the need for open access to research and science, questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion a year that flows into for-profit academic publishers, examines the 35-40% profit margin associated with the top academic publisher Elsevier and looks at how that profit margin is often greater than some of the most profitable tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google. This film is free to view both in personal and public venues. For more information please visit: Paywallthemovie.comPaywallthemovie.com

ACRL Membership Webcast: So You Want to be an Academic Librarian: Academic Librarianship and the Hiring Process

Mentoring | Career advice | Academic Librarians  |Professional Development  |Interviewing

ACRL Membership Webcast: So You Want to be an Academic Librarian: Academic Librarianship and the Hiring Process: Join ACRL on Thursday, February 21, for a free webcast So You Want to be an Academic Librarian: Academic Librarianship and the Hiring Process. The webcast will be held from 12:00  - 1:00 PM (Eastern) | 11:00 AM-12:00 PM (Central) | 10:00 AM-11:00 AM (Mountain) | 9:00 AM-10:00 PM (Pacific).

The AC

Internet Archive's ebook loans face UK copyright challenge

Internet Archive | E-books | Copyright | Open Access

The Society of Authors has called on the website’s Open Library to stop making scanned books ‘unlawfully’ available to British readers

by Alison Flood | Tue 22 Jan 2019

The Society of Authors has called on the Internet Archive ‘to cease making available to UK users the unauthorised lending of scanned books’. Photograph: Model-la/Getty Images/iStockphoto

The Society of Authors (SoA) is threatening legal action against the Internet Archive unless it stops what the writers’ body claimed is the unauthorised lending of books unlawfully scanned for its Open Library.

Set up in San Francisco 1996 to preserve pages published on the internet, the Internet Archive also collects digital books, offering borrowers access to hundreds of thousands of titles through its Open Library arm. Some are out of copyright, but the collection includes books from authors including AS Byatt, Kate Atkinson, Hilary Mantel, William Boyd, Philip Pullman and Iain Banks that are still in copyright and currently available to be borrowed in the UK.

According to its website, the organisation began digitising books in 2005, because “not everyone has access to a public or academic library with a good collection, so to provide universal access we need to provide digital versions of books”. Today the archive scans 1,000 books a day in 28 locations around the world, through its book scanning and book drive programmes – with the “ultimate goal of [making] all the published works of humankind available to everyone in the world”. Users can borrow up to five books at a time, with each loan expiring after two weeks. Read more...

Ask The Chefs: The Future Form Of Scholarly Communication

Scholarly communication | Academic publishing | Knowledge exchange

by Ann Michael | January 24, 2019

It’s always a good time to think about the future, but somehow the beginning of the year seems an especially appropriate time. With the changes afoot in scholarly communication practices, sentiment, and business models, this

For the moment, let’s put business models aside and think about the form and flow of research and discovery. Is the article (pre- or post-publication), book, journal, etc — our current containers — and the byproducts that surround them the best we can do?

This month we asked the Chefs: What form might scholarly communications take in the future?

 Joe Esposito: As Bill Clinton said, It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is. What do we mean by “the article”? If the article is a report on a specific research topic, then the article will be with us for a long time, as (barring witchcraft) we will always have research and a need to communicate results. The article will differ from what we mostly see today in that it will be integrated into a broad suite of services, from discovery to analytics, as the act of publication will be the equivalent of plugging into a network; the principal audience will be machines. From such small contributions great things will come. The standards for plugging in will be proprietary, as the not-for-profit sector cannot compete with the narrowly focused aims of someone bent on making money. There will be at most 2-3 such networks of information in every broad discipline, and perhaps only 2-3 overall. The key policy question of this future will not be access but antitrust. Silicon Valley witticism: A standard is a good thing; everybody should have one. Read more...

7 statements library professionals should rethink in 2019

Public libraries | Library services | Library advocacy | Best practices | Access

by Jane Cowell and Ian Anstice | Princh

 

Another year has ended and now it is a great time for library professionals to look back at their activity and plan for 2019 with a fresh view.

Another year has ended and now it is a great time for #library professionals to look back at their activity and plan for 2019 with a fresh view. Click To Tweet

  There are many things that libraries got attached to in their long history such as fines, the library card, the Dewey classification and many other things that librarians have tested: the switch of focus from books to other activities, the removal of quiet zones and more. Some of them are not that successful anymore or still need more time to see the actual results.

To get more insights about a few statements library professionals should rethink in 2019, we have talked with two library experts for their insights and advice: Ian Anstice, editor of Public Libraries News (United Kingdom) and Jane Cowell, Chief Executive Officer at Yarra Plenty Regional Library (Australia). Here is what they said: Read more...