In preparation for a presentation about race and academic libraries, Curtis Kendrick, formerly Dean and currently Binghamton University Libraries Faculty and Staff mentor, tried ChatGPT (Jan 9 version) to see what it (they?) had to say. He was curious about how it worked and how accurately it responded to queries. For our consideration, Kendrick offers his analysis of this interaction.
Stuart Kells, Adjunct Professor, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University explains why for technological, ethical and political reasons, the world’s archivists are suddenly very busy. Advances in digital imaging and communications are feeding an already intense interest in provenance, authorship and material culture. Two recent discoveries – a woman’s name scratched in the margins of an 8th-century manuscript, and John Milton’s annotations in a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio held in the Free Library of Philadelphia – are examples of how new tools are revealing new evidence, and how distant scholars are making fascinating connections. At the same time, and even more importantly, the holdings of archives, libraries and museums – “memory institutions” – are being scrutinised as the world grapples with legacies of racism, imperialism, slavery and oppression. Some of the holdings speak to heinous episodes and indefensible values. And some of them were flat-out stolen.
David H. Rothman may have identified one reason why the Kindle Scribe has gone on sale. For $400, Lenovo later this year is to sell a Scribe rival able to record lectures with two built-in mikes and turn handwritten notes into searchable text. Handily, you can sync the audio recordings with notes. Perhaps a tool for journalists, too, not just students?
I, Lemba Adula, happen to be the hero of Drone Child: A Novel of War, Family, and Survival. So here I am, a Congolese villager turned self-taught hacker turned child soldier turned military drone expert turned sea-going pirate turned university student turned entrepreneur turned major industrialist. Just why did David Rothman write what he says is my fictional war memoir? Rather presumptuous, if you ask me. But here’s Monsieur Rothman’s side of the story about that detail and a few others.
David H. Rothman has been writing about the issues inherent in publisher control of e-books and e-readers and the impact of digital rights management for many years. Whether you use personal devices or institutional devices, the issues Rothman raises here will impact you.
David H. Rothman is a former poverty beat reporter, founder of TeleRead.org ebook site, veteran tech writer, a staunch library advocate and an accomplished young adult book author. In this brief article he shares his thoughts on age appropriate reading in the content of a war novel and contemporaneous global events.
Christine Park, Adjunct Professsor of Law, Fordham Law Library highlights risks of and legal restrictions related to digital rights management. LLRX welcomes further discussion of efforts to implement solutions, “before it’s too late.” See also David H. Rothman’s article Will Amazon’s new ePub capability help the anti-DRM movement?
The Internet Archive (IA) “is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies & music, as well as 624 billion archived web pages.” The IA offers users unrestricted access to its expansive ecosystem of knowledge and educational resources from the public domain. Andy Oram, prolific author, editor, publisher, and technical expert on all aspects of computing, undertook an extensive examination of a game changing case, Hachette v. Internet Archive, that may dismantle this unique, invaluable digital library. In this article Oram examines what the publishers are trying to protect and why they have to wield a large and heavy cudgel to protect it. His inquiry leads to a look at how culture has been privatized as it has become digitized—an effect quite opposed to the hopes of most public advocates who maintain the view that the Internet and the World Wide Web should remain focused on public access, not private sector monetization.
Librarian and tech expert Karen Coyle provides insight into the evolving conflict that caused OCLC to file suit against the company Clarivate which owns Proquest and ExLibris. The suit focuses on a metadata service proposed by Ex Libris called “MetaDoor.” MetaDoor isn’t a bibliographic database à la WorldCat, it is a peer-to-peer service that allows its users to find quality records in the catalog systems of other libraries.
Ksenya Kiebuzinski, Slavic Resources Coordinator, and Head, Petro Jacyk Resource Centre, University of Toronto Libraries, University of Toronto informs us about the critical work of 1,000 volunteers, in partnership with universities in Canada and the United States, who are participating in the crowd-sourced project called Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) to preserve and secure digitized manuscripts, music, photographs, 3D architectural models and other publications. So far, the team has captured 15,000 files, which are accessible via the Internet Archive.