The demand and price for e-books is up — and it’s busting the D.C. Public Library budget.
For The People
We all love libraries, and we all love reading - but that’s not enough. It’s essential that more leftists become involved in their local libraries. We’re being out-organized by a right-wing movement that’s focused on taking over public institutions to privatize & weaken them.
What Libraries Actually Do – Libraries as Epistemic Institutions
One of the biggest challenges for libraries telling their story is that the library means something different depending on who’s in the room. For a student, it’s a place to study and a staff full of people who want them to succeed. For a faculty member, it might be the invisible infrastructure that delivers electronic articles or the subject liaison who visits their class each year. For a graduate student, it’s often something more: a research partner, a data collaborator, a guide through the methodological expectations of a discipline. And that’s before accounting for the larger information environment that those users are already swimming in, where disciplines publish at high rates; trade publications and newsletters and Substacks produce sense-making content daily; and social media, messaging apps, and community channels add still more. The information environment is a flood around us, and the library is one stream of that flow.
Mayberry, a self-hosted public library branch
Host your own public library branch from your computer. Curate an ebook shelf visitors can browse from any e-reader, with no accounts and no tracking.
Consumers Are Worried About the Loss of Physical Media Ownership. Libraries Are Leading the Conversation. — Association of Research Libraries
Sally Sax is head, Collection Strategy and Partnerships, MacOdrum Library, Carleton University. In a recent Atlantic Monthly article about Sony’s plan to end physical sales of PlayStation console games, Will...
science funding and the cherry picking problem
Science publishing–like all of science–requires money. There’s no getting around it, even with the open science movement. What appears free to many authors and readers still requires money and infr…
Library of Congress Free to Use and Reuse | Library of Congress
More than 100 sets of rights-free images are ready for you to explore and add to your own projects. The topics range widely--from Classic Children’s Books and Disability Awareness to Dragons, Football, Jazz, and Shoes. With 25 to 50 historical photographs, posters, maps, and movies in each set. Enjoy!
Scientific Publishing: Enough is Enough
Why we're no longer funding journal publications
Scientific Publishing: Enough is Enough
Why we're no longer funding journal publications
Academia: What Was "Digital Literacy"?
Short Shelf Lives Make For Bad Curricular Planning
Xteink’s tiny e-readers are getting access to free books through Libby
It’s getting a lot easier to source ebooks for Xteink’s tiny e-readers.
Not just books - how renting a sewing machine from the library can improve democracy
Finland's libraries are increasingly being valued not by how many books they lend, but how they help societies function.
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”
Home - EveryLibrary Action (NEW)
Take a moment and add your name to the growing list of library supporters in the United States.
Why the Gates Foundation Abandoned Article Processing Charges (and What They’re Doing Instead)
In 2024, the Gates Foundation updated their Open Access Policy to redirect funds from APCs to support more equitable models. Ashley Farley explains their thinking and vision for the future.
Libby
All over the world, local libraries offer millions of ebooks and audiobooks. You can borrow them — for free, instantly — with a library card and Libby: the award-winning, much-loved app for libraries.