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Big Ten Academic Alliance Plans BIG Collection Across 15 Libraries
By Lisa Peet
For more than 60 years, Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) member schools have combined purchasing power and shared software licenses, aggregated course sharing and information technology services, and maintained an extensive faculty community. In mid-January, the library deans and directors of the BTAA announced the next step in the consortium’s collaboration: the BIG Collection, which will manage the institutions’ separate library collections as a single entity. |
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Books and Authors to Know: Titles to Watch 2021
By Barbara Hoffert
This year’s edition of Titles To Watch includes nearly 300 key works in fiction and nonfiction, reflecting current concerns with politics, the pandemic, and #ownvoices authors and the desire to plumb personal relationships and experiences. |
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SPONSORED BY RATIO DESIGN Need Help Reconnecting With Your Community?
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Author Gerry Smyth on Why Sea Shanties Are Sweeping TikTok
By Lisa Henry
If timing is everything, then singer, shanty band leader, and author Gerry Smyth (Music and Sound in the Life and Literature of James Joyce) has it all. The subject of his most recent book, Sailor Song: The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas (Univ. of Washington), just happens to be the biggest current craze on social media: the beloved sea shanty, which Smyth defines as “a work song developed on vessels…to make more efficient jobs dependent on muscle power.” |
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Dear President Biden | Editorial
By Meredith Schwartz
Congratulations on your inauguration. I know you face urgent challenges and must take decisive action at scale. I write to urge you to keep libraries in mind as you design structural remedies to ameliorate the immediate crises and prevent the next. |
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ALA’s Ongoing Transformation | ALA Midwinter 2021
By Meredith Schwartz
At the American Library Association (ALA) virtual Midwinter Meeting, the association continued its ambitious three-pronged strategy of self-reinvention. The Forward Together plan, which for several years has pursued a streamlined and less siloed governance structure, is joined by a revision-in-progress of the 30-year-old Operating Agreement, which defines the relationship of the association to its divisions and roundtables, and the Pivot Strategy, which addresses how association management and staff do the work. |
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The Future of Digital Equity | ALA Midwinter 2021
By Stephanie Sendaula
On Sunday, Jan. 24, during the American Library Association (ALA) Virtual Midwinter Meeting, over 1,000 eager attendees listened along as a panel of experts spoke about digital equity, or ensuring individuals and communities have the technological capabilities to fully participate in society. |
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Surveillance, Privacy, and the Troublesome Tech Landscape | ALA Midwinter 2021
By Matt Enis
“The troublesome tech landscape is a vast and ever-evolving place,” said Callan Bignoli, library director of Olin College of Engineering. Needham, MA, kicking off an hour-long presentation on technology and surveillance—including the recent impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic surveillance—at the American Library Association's 2021 Midwinter Virtual Meeting. |
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Deepfakes and the Evolving Misinformation Ecosystem | ALA Midwinter 2021
By Matt Enis
Deepfakes, a portmanteau of “deep learning” artificial intelligence (AI) and “fake media,” are becoming more common, and a better understanding of what they are and how they work “is vital in the current information landscape,” said John Mack Freeman, Suwanee branch manager for Gwinnett County Public Library, GA, in an hour-long presentation as part of this year’s Core Top Tech Trends panel at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Virtual Meeting. |
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Librarians Uniquely Equipped To Address the Tenor of the Times
By Kara Yorio
As Kathy Carroll watched the January 6 attack on the Capitol “in total disbelief,” the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) president knew she needed to say something, that she wanted to say something, and carefully crafted a tweet to the organization’s members: “We as professionals have to be brave in our convictions. We are the curators of accurate unbiased information. Don’t be afraid to have hard conversations or to stand behind truth and facts. Our students are counting on us! #TruthWins #FactsMatter.” |
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SPONSORED BY SOURCEBOOKS Sourcebooks Spring Preview 2021: Women Take Center Stage
Sourcebooks’s coming releases have a strong focus on women, which seems fitting coming from North America’s largest woman-owned trade book publisher. The lineup this season includes historical tales of interesting and heroic women, woman-centric thrillers, as well as books tackling racism and sexism from a woman’s perspective.
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The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah Tops Holds Lists | Book Pulse
By Mary Bakija
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah leads holds this week. Other titles in high demand include The Survivors by Jane Harper, Serpentine by Jonathan Kellerman, Girl A by Abigail Dean, and more. PopSugar picks The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson for its February book club, and Luster by Raven Leilani is Vox's February book club selection. |
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Cicely Tyson Dies Days After Her Memoir Is Published | Book Pulse
By Mary Bakija
Actress Cicely Tyson, whose memoir Just as I Am was released this week, died yesterday at age 96. With massive demand following her reading at Joe Biden's inauguration, poet Amanda Gorman's three unreleased books will see a print run of one million copies each. Entertainment Weekly has an excerpt from Billy Summers by Stephen King, which is due out Aug. 3. |
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Starred Reviews WEB-FIRST REVIEWS OF BOOKS AND MEDIA Margaret Kimball's starred graphic novel, And Now I Spill the Family Secrets: An Illustrated Memoir, is "an empathetic, uncommonly nuanced, and thoroughly brilliant family saga presented with real daring and true artistry." Also in graphic novels, Naoki Urasawa's starred selection Asadora!, Vol. 1 "is largely devoted to worldbuilding and character development, [but] Urasawa’s masterful storytelling, idiosyncratic plotting, and richly complex, empathetic characters combine for a thoroughly entertaining and intriguing introduction to what promises to be an epic story." The Grande Odalisque, by Jerome Mulot and others, is another starred graphic novel. "Readers will devour this action-packed, wildly sexy, witty, and ultra-cool crime story built around the complicated relationship between three charismatic women and rejoice to discover a note at the end promising they’ll return for further adventures in future volumes." And Adler, written by Lavie Tidhar, with illustrations by Paul McCaffrey, is another starred graphic novel. "Tidhar propels an ensemble of historical figures and literary characters through a knotty and thrilling plot packed with intrigue and visceral action, illustrated with a keen eye for historical detail by McCaffrey."
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Texas A&M University Libraries seeks a University Archivist |
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