Category: Library News & Current Events

News and current events from the library and archives world

Manhattan’s Forgotten Graveyards

An article from the Huffington Post on Manhattan’s historical graveyards and cemeteries. Manhattan’s Forgotten Graveyards, Under Public Parks, Famous Hotels and Supermarkets | Greg Young. The website New York City Cemetery Project also has interesting historical information about cemeteries in New York.  

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What Middletown Read: database of historic public library circulation statistics

Ever wondered what people in the 1890s were checking out and reading from their local public libraries? Well thanks to the What Middletown Read project, you can now go online and find out who was visiting the Muncie, Indiana Public Library and what they were reading in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During Muncie Public Library’s 2003 renovation of…

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LA Times: Shepard Fairey, et al, brighten West Hollywood Public Library

A little bit of good news about public libraries coming out of West Hollywood today. WH will be opening a new public library in October this year and a group of artists are creating street art-style murals for the building. The artists include Shepard Fairey–he of the Obama “Hope” poster and the ubiquitous Andre the Giant “Obey” stickers– and Retna…

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Eygpt goes off the Internet grid

As of January 28, 2011, Egypt has a near 100% Internet blackout. This graphic to the left–courtesy of Renesys, which has ongoing analysis of the Internet  situation during Egypt’s major protests–shows how the country’s major ISPs have systematically taken down the country’s available Internet networks. Writing on the Renesys blog, James Crowie (the company’s CTO and Co-Founder) notes, “our new…

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NY Times: For Bentham and Others, Scholars Enlist Public to Transcribe Papers

The New York Times has an on-going “Humanities 2.0” series in which they examine how new digital tools and technologies are changing the nature of scholarship in history, literature, and the arts. The latest article in the series discusses how researchers at the University College London (UCL) are utilizing new Web 2.0 tools to process Jeremey Bentham’s collection of unpublished…

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NY Times: U.S. National Archives Asks Whether Politicians Tweets and Blogs Are Official Government Records

U.S. National Archives Asks Whether Politicians Tweets and Blogs Are Official Government Records – NYTimes.com. The New York Times today asks if social media information objects from politicians are considered federal records. David Ferreiro, Archivist of the United States, says they are and that federal agencies should should follow regular records management practices in regards to social media objects. Though,…

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NY Times: Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries

NYTimes.com: As L.S.S.I. Takes Over Libraries, Patrons Can’t Keep Quiet. This is an interesting article from the New York Times about a private company from Maryland that has slowly taken over several public library systems in California, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas. The article discusses how the Santa Clarita, California City Council recently voted to allow Library Systems & Services (LSSI) to…

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Information Visualization of the New York Times’ “War Logs”

This video appeared in the New York Times’ Technology section today and shows time-lapse visualization of the war in Afghanistan based on leaked documents from the Wikileaks organization. The video appears on Mike Dewar’s Vimeo page and it is explained as a “visualization of activity in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2009 based on the Wikileaks data set.” The color on…

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Study like a scholar…

Here’s a humorous library-themed twist on the popular viral Old Spice commercials. I have to say, it’s an impressive attempt to recreate the style of those commercials, and it’s a funny, slick piece of marketing in support of libraries and library services. I definitely think there needs to be more of this type of public service-oriented marketing to really illustrate…

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What’s Information Done For You Lately?

How about expose giant pink bunnies and discover the lost city of Atlantis! Well, maybe Atlantis. A recent article in the New York Times highlights some of the accidental discoveries that have occurred with Google Earth. One person recently discovered a “mysterious grid of undersea lines” near the African coast that they believe could be the lost city of Atlantis….

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Personal Papers and Archives of a Nazi War Criminal

The New York Times is featuring an interesting segment called “From the Briefcase of Dr. Aribert Heim.” This segment features the personal papers and archives of Dr. Heim, “the most wanted Nazi war criminal.” This link is the header link which directs you to other segments such as “In His Own Words” which are personal rebuttals written by Heim to…

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