databases

Responding to Database Challenges

Most librarians are aware of books that get challenged and the tools needed to protect their library against censorship, but censorship can also affect our digital content, whether it’s databases, e-books, streaming content, apps or electronic tools. Be aware of the current trend in challenges to these materials and how ALA is working with librarians and vendors to protect access to these great resources.

Social networking, conceptual image. Photograph. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016. quest.eb.com/search/132_1354361/1/132_1354361/cite. Accessed 31 Oct 2017.

Twitter in a Tempest

We have an obligation to understand the inherent weaknesses of social media environments and actively educate about them. It might serve us to remember that at one point the implantation of OPACs’, or the migration of journals into databases, or the growth of digital archives as dynamic new platforms of publishing and dissemination also seemed foreign to our mission. Our profession is constantly evolving and social media has become a maelstrom.

Kendi, I., & Nation Books, I. [Author Photo]. Retrieved August 7, 2017, from https://www.ibramxkendi.com

The Interview Project: A Conversation with Historian Ibram X. Kendi

One of the benefits of writing for the Office of Intellectual Freedom, this past year, has been to recognize the amazing work done by a variety of people who continually promote and protect the right of free expression in this country. The work of advocating, facilitating and protecting intellectual freedoms is important activity, and is often carried out by everyday people. I thought it would be useful to speak with those whose work is dependent on intellectual freedom, and how libraries impact who they are and what they do.

Group of multi-ethnic teenagers in school hallway. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.

Origins

On June 26, 2017, hearings began in the U.S. District Court for Arizona to decide the fate of Tucson’s Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program. It has been seven years for this educational program to get its day in court. That’s at least two generations of high-school students, who because of narrow minded political concerns, were denied the right to study their own origins.