every damn time

#libraries

get library cards and use them often (online e-book and audiobook rentals count!). sign up to volunteer at your local library. donate money to your library’s general fund. run for a spot on the library board.

join and participate in your local “friends of the library” group. donate books (if your library accepts book donations). set up your own little free library. vote for library funding when it’s on your local ballot.

#libraries

As you will know I'm no stranger to typos, so this cartoon goes out to anyone who sent me a massage about a typo in a post (as always thanks for your help, much appreciated) bit also to my Mastodon friend @h4890 who will appreciate this on a Saturday morning.

#Libraries #libertarianism #reading #books

Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations

"...court records reveal that the social media company used pirated torrents to download 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen. It then used this information to train its AI models."

#tech #news #Meta #AI #books #bookstodon #writers #libraries #media

tomshardware.com/tech-industry…

Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations

Did they think they could get away with it?

^{Jowi Morales (Tom's Hardware)}

* "When the Patriot Act was passed, libraries got requests for patrons' borrowing history. We were prohibited from disclosing those requests.

* We deleted and shredded those records and stopped tracking reading history for that reason."

#Libraries #Librarians #Rwsist #Politics #Anarchist
1/6

This is very welcome news in the face of Trumpist depredations of US public data.
lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/…

"In recent months the Harvard Law School [@harvard_law] Library Innovation Lab [@harvardlil] has created a data vault to download, sign as authentic, and make available copies of public government data that is most valuable to researchers, scholars, civil society and the public at large across every field. To begin, we have collected major portions of the datasets tracked by data.gov, federal #Github repositories, and #PubMed...."

#DataGov #Libraries #OpenData #Preservation #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Preserving Public U.S. Federal Data | Library Innovation Lab

^{lil.law.harvard.edu}

I know it's twee to romanticise libraries, but it will never not amaze me that we can ask for a book they don't have and a librarian in a local library on the far side of the country will walk over to pick it off a shelf and send it to a librarian in my local library who will walk over to put it on a shelf, reserved for me, just for me, for free.

#Libraries
#HappyTaxpayer

Update. "[University] #libraries across the country, from Carnegie Mellon…to the U of California system, turned to what’s known as [#ControlledDigitalLending, #CDL] in 2020, which gave students a way to borrow books that weren’t otherwise available. Those programs are small in scale and largely experimental but part of a broader shift in modernizing the university library. But the appeals court ruling could upend those programs."
insidehighered.com/news/tech-i…

#Academia
@academicchatter

Update. I recommend @mmasnick's good take on the ruling against the @internetarchive and #CDL.
techdirt.com/2024/09/05/second…

"What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn’t bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library? You’d probably think they were delusional. Yet that argument has now carried the day."

#Copyright #InternetArchive #Libraries

Update. Here's the court opinion itself.
ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions…

Most notable to me:
* The court ruled against controlled digital lending (#CDL), not just the short-lived and less-controlled National Emergency Library (#NEL).
* The court found "market harm" to #publishers even tho pubs submitted no data on that harm.
* The court recognized the right of conventional lending by print #libraries but (IMHO) waffled when trying to square its rationale with that right.

#Copyright
@internetarchive

I just signed this petition from the #InternetArchive (@internetarchive) and hope you will too.
change.org/p/let-readers-read-…

Background from IA:
"We are disappointed in today’s opinion about the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of #libraries to own, lend, and preserve books."
blog.archive.org/2024/09/04/in…

#Books #CDL #Petitions #Publishers

#Quotes #Libraries #Ignorance #WakterCronkite

He'd be pissed that some libraries are being made to remove books.

"The majority of ALL book bans in the US were initiated by just 11 people…Book banning is NOT a movement…In most [states] it only takes a single complaint to have a strip a book from the library. Just one…Look at what is happening in St. James, FL where ONE person got twenty three books removed. Or in Clay County District schools where ONE person forced almost thirty books off shelves."
action.everylibrary.org/books_…

I just signed this petition and hope you will too.

#BookBans #Censorship #Libraries

Hundreds of books are usually banned by just ONE person in a community

It only takes a single complaint to strip a book from the library. Just one. That’s it.

^{EveryLibrary Action}

“As librarians, we’re not here to judge, we’re here to help.”

#libraries, #care, #humanity, #HelpEachOther, #GoodNews, #ToughTopics

Defend our #libraries

(from @tomgauld)

@bookstodon

I found some more traveling libraries! These are from the Finnish Seafarers' Union from the 1920s and are, I believe, to be brought aboard boats. From (yes I am at work today) Flickr Commons. #libraries #books #finland

flickr.com/photos/valokuvatait…

These two paragraphs from Wil Wheaton's latest blog post really sum up how I feel about #BannedBooks and #libraries. It’s a lengthy post, but really quite worth the time.

wilwheaton.net/2023/03/the-lib…

Boosting this with alt-text because #librarians rule! 💪

I love the last panel. 😊

#Libraries #NoLimits #Books #Reading