TILT #88 — Tired, just in time for hibernation season

Hello and thanks for reading. It’s been a month. I’ve been outlasting the blues by learning new Wikipedia skills, playing the is-this-COVID-or-flu-shot-side-effects game, and trying to help with morale for people who have it rougher than me. But I won’t lie, it’s tiring. We’ve had a few 30°-ish nights here and that’s my cue to get the sweaters out, stock up on root vegetables, and get the full-spectrum light out of the closet. If you like short fiction, might I suggest The Sleep by Caitlin Horrocks, about an entire town that decides to hibernate through winter? Here’s the view from my window.

Highlight of this month may have been going INSIDE my library for the first time since March. I was returning some books, and knocked on the door thinking it was a day they were open. It was not, but they let me in anyhow. Just having a chance to pick out a book in person, to look at the new books on the shelves, to talk to the librarian about librarian things, it was a big deal. I also got to learn that many Vermont libraries lend firewood moisture meters.

I know many libraries are not in a place where this is a safe thing to do. I know many libraries have to be open anyhow. If you need some other librarians to talk to and to organize with, consider checking out the #LIBREV Discourse group.

This week marks the beginning of both Banned Books Week and Fat Bear Week.

Tech corner! I’ve been doing a few talks virtually, a lightning talk on Remote Tech Support Challenges for Computers in Libraries and one on why Wikipedia and libraries go together as part of the News on Wiki project which is trying to get more articles about newspapers, Black-owned newspapers in particular, on Wikipedia. Did you know that Zoom now lets you present slides as your virtual background? I am mostly sticking with my Studio Ghibli backgrounds, they’ve created 400 of them from some of their iconic movies.

If you are looking for accessible and open access talks on the subjects of tech, media, and art presentations, Open Transcripts has got them.

Here’s UC Riverside’s librarian Steve Mandeville-Gamble discussing how they shifted the library to completely-remote mode in 55 hours this March. And on the subject of remote learning, here’s an article on copyright life hacks for librarians about how to make copyright training accessible and engaging.

I enjoyed learning about this other work done by archivists working remotely: locating 1200+ finding aids in which women were called by their husbands’ name and adding the woman’s name to them.

I changed a file titled “Dr. and Mrs. McIntosh” to “Drs. Rustin and Millicent Carey McIntosh,” as both spouses held terminal degrees, and Millicent Carey McIntosh was dean and the first president of Barnard College. Few researchers are likely to think of her as “Mrs. Rustin McIntosh.”

In big government news, there is a new Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter (hey I wrote that article!) and a new Copyright Office Warehouse.

I’ve also been enjoying a new project from LOC Labs, Newspaper Navigator, which lets you search for images from their digitized newspaper collection from 1900–1960. All the code and the data are freely available and the author of the project is responsive on twitter. I noticed, for example, that a search for tree would return results for street and asked the developer about it and got a speedy answer. The tool does highlight some of the poor scan quality and OCR of the digital newspaper project, alas.

In big corporation news the Kindle Owners Lending Library, a benefit of Prime membership, appears to be getting quietly phased out. You may remember Tim Bray as the technologist and corporate VP who quit working for Amazon because he was appalled at how they treated whistleblowers. He’s got a good blog. Its latest installment is about subscription fatigue trying to determine the inscrutable pricing model of digital subscription models for magazines and newspapers.

Their arithmetic didn’t consider their chance of getting me to click on “Subscribe.” In my particular case, that chance is almost exactly Zero. I subscribe to enough things and I am acutely reluctant to give anyone else the ability to make regular withdrawals from my bank account. I don’t think I’m unusual.

See you later John Sargent (archived link), Macmillan CEO and general anti-library grouch!

Black Lives Matter. I am looking forward to giving a short presentation to the Vermont Library Association about ALA’s last segregated conference (Richmond, VA, 1936) and the thirty-odd years of ugly wrangling before state library associations became fully integrated. Here is an excellent LibGuide by Twanna Hodge on Using LibGuides to support racial justice & create inclusive communities.

Netflix launched Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices (Netflix link), a set of small episodes of Black celebrities and authors reading books by Black authors about the Black Experience. Here’s Tiffany Hadish reading from I Love My Hair.

Get some of these books! And get them from this list of Black-owned bookstores.

I definitely self medicate with bibliotherapy; I’ve been reading the Bruno Chief of Police novels, more for the food narratives than anything to do with policing. Full booklist here, or you can follow my ongoing book thread on Twitter.

Today in Librarian Tabs is written irregularly by Jessamyn West who also maintains librarian.net. It’s available in more-accessible format your inbox via TinyLetter. Thanks for reading.