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Book Review: Copyright and Course Reserves: Legal Issues and Best Practices for Academic Libraries
No full textFrom the creation of the first US federal copyright law in 1790 to the present, those charged with interpreting its meaning have faced a daunting task. Mark Twain joked near the turn of the twentieth century, “Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” Anticipating the passage of the 1976 Copyright Act, The New York Times predicted, “no bells are likely to ring [in celebration].” Why? “The matter is simply too technical, complicated and cumbersome for anyone but specialists to get very excited.
Cracking the Code on Acquisitions: Transitions From Voyager to Alma
No full textFor decades the University of Illinois at Chicago Library relied on the Voyager integrated library system for acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, and other applications. By 2020, a wide range of stakeholders throughout the Library system had established their processes around its functionality. In the summer of 2020 the Library, along with ninety other members of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois, went live in the final phase of a consortial migration to the Alma Library Services Platform. The absence of a “reporting funds” level in the ledger hierarchy in Alma threatened a fundamental premise of our long-established acquisitions processes through which Acquisitions staff translated transactions between a librarian-facing ledger and totally different University financial categories. A creative solution using Alma’s “Reporting Codes” feature was discovered after interviews with stakeholders, which prevented significant confusion throughout the Library and preserved all our processes. This case study describes the history of our acquisitions practices, the fundamental problem raised by the ledger structure in Alma as compared to Voyager, and the solution designed utilizing Alma’s “Reporting Codes” feature
Editorial: Around the Sun
No full textThe previous issue of LRTS marked an important milestone, as it was the first to be published fully open access. While being the “second fully OA issue” is not necessarily noteworthy, this issue is something of a personal milestone for the current editorial team, as it marks the first full year since we have taken over the reins at LRTS. Much of that first year involved getting acclimated to the various administration and backend processes here and meeting regularly with the editorial board, in addition to preparing for the move to OA in 2023. Now that the current editorial team has a year’s worth of issues under our belts, we felt it was a good opportunity to use this space to comment on our process, with a focus on my role as assistant editor
Finding Ezra Jack Keats: In Search of a Children’s Book Icon
No full textOn a mission, I entered the Ezra Jack Keats archives in the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in early 2011.Chosen by the Keats Foundation Executive Director Deborah Pope and the de Grummond Curator Ellen Ruffin to do research for things to include in Viking’s fiftieth anniversary edition of Keats’ iconic The Snowy Day, I searched for items that would be meaningful for an extra eight-page supplement. Soon I found myself yearning to have had the information I was finding when I had taught Keats’ books in kindergarten and second grade. So much of his childhood and life presaged the stories he would tell and the art he would create in his picture books. On a deadline, I could not dwell on those treasures. I determined to come back and write a biography for those who still teach and read his classic books
Everyday Obstacles: Cultural Humility in Children’s Library Services
No full textTwenty years ago, David (one of the authors of this article) was the director of a community college library in a town with no public library. The college’s teacher education program was excuse enough to maintain a strong children’s collection, and kids from the nearby elementary school would often spend the afternoon in the library. Two in particular stand out: a sister and brother who were in the library nearly every day. They were shy with the library staff, but their enthusiasm was palpable as they excitedly showed books to each other and sat reading together for hours at a time, from when school got out to when their parents got off work. Their love for the library made the work seem worth it.And then, suddenly, they stopped coming
Passing Early Literacy Skills on to Others
No full textWhile working for the Redwood City (CA) Public Library in the 1980s, I became a new mother. I sang songs, chanted Mother Goose rhymes, and recited short poems to my daughter while changing her diaper, nursing and burping her, and waiting in line at the store, knowing these were keys to enjoying the rhythm and rhyme of words, to build vocabulary, and to begin her love of reading
Fighting Book Bans across the US
No full textOrganizations such as the American Library Association (ALA), EveryLibrary, and PEN America have been tracking the sharp escalation of book challenges since 2021. These challenges have centered on school and public libraries across the United States; the number of challenges and bans is higher than it’s been in more than twenty years.Often, books and materials with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) authors, themes, and protagonists are targeted for removal or restriction. Likewise, books that contain themes of social justice or institutional racial injustice (frequently written by or featuring Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color or BIPOC) are common targets
The Limits of Community: Wendell Berry, Books Bans, and Intellectual Freedom as an Individual Right
No full textBeginning with a broad overview of community-oriented arguments for or against intellectual freedom (exemplified, in one case, by the writer and activist Wendell Berry), this chapter defines two forms of community: one active, the other passive. But do appeals to community make sense in environments increasingly hostile to intellectual freedom? In what ways have both of these forms already been weaponized by right-wing actors? It can certainly be argued that intellectual freedom benefits communities, but what if a community rejects intellectual freedom altogether? After detailing a recent case involving Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project as well as subsequent efforts to ban the project in school classrooms across the United States, this chapter comes back to Berry, using his writings on gay marriage as a framework from which to (re)cast intellectual freedom as an individual—not a communitarian—right
For the Record
No full textNationwide, Connecticut, Florida, Missouri, Texas, Seminole County, Florida, Forest Hills, Ohio, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Bedford County, Virgini
