LIBRARY USERS OF TUMBLR who are age 35 or younger, are you able to help out a grad student by taking a survey? Your prize will be my eternal gratitude 😔
EDIT: You all are incredible! I have SO MUCH DATA to work with!! ❤️📚❤️ Survey is now closed
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LIBRARY USERS OF TUMBLR who are age 35 or younger, are you able to help out a grad student by taking a survey? Your prize will be my eternal gratitude 😔
EDIT: You all are incredible! I have SO MUCH DATA to work with!! ❤️📚❤️ Survey is now closed
I've been annotating some of the Dear Data book with the idea of adapting the project for teens (or anybody without a background in data science). It's both a heartwarming data story about two friends and an amazing display of just how much day to day data can be produced and collected about a person, which is important to understand in a time where our data is very actively being collected all the time!
“This online archive is LIBERATING KNOWLEDGE” public libraries already do this
“This website sharing PDFs of books is MAKING READING ACCESSIBLE” public libraries already do this, and in multiple formats that are actually accessible for people with disabilities or who need reading support as well
“This website lets me access things I ACTUALLY WANT TO READ FOR FREE” public libraries already do this, and if they don’t have what you’re looking for you can request that they buy it. You just need to have some patience
It’s fine to not know how libraries work, but making claims about libraries that are fundamentally incorrect is just wilful ignorance and actually serves the people who are actively trying to stop libraries from existing.
It’s also fine to not understand how the book industry works in terms of how authors are paid and how libraries factor in to that, but if you don’t know you can always ask for an explanation. Pirating books does actively hurt living writers, and also does actively impact what is getting written and published. If you want to see something continue, you have to actually support it.
Hice este dibujin para la Bibliotequita Embrujada: Mapachills que se encuentra en mi ciudad de Tijuana <3 Es una biblioteca privada dedicada a literatura de terror/horror y esta ilustración va a estar en la nueva credencial para préstamo de libros :D
On top of dealing with the migraine from hell, I've been trying to help this bird that somehow snuck into the library. Finally got the poor thing in a study room and made this sign for the door. I taped it up and thought, "Huh, this feels familiar..."
On libraries, AI, and modern dependence on technology
I just started my last year of my MLIS (master of library and information science), and one thing that stuck out to me was the AI of it all. This website has had conversations about AI before, specifically in academia, most of which I agree with, but I also wanted to toss in this because…yikes.
So, in first semester, we covered a lot of basics. The history of librarianship and reference, helping and serving our community, etc. etc. however, I also took a class surrounding information technology for educators (see: using technology like Google classroom and captioning and green screens for educational purposes), and holy SHIT was the AI rampant. Even beyond this, which was using mostly educational AI to see HOW to use it to help our students, my other classes were just as AI filled. We talked at length about the possibility of AI taking our jobs, how we can combat it, and any tricks to use AI to our advantage.
Second semester and onward (this present day), I got a job working in the library of a nearby medical school. I love my job, but the one thing that stuck with me the most thus far is how lenient they are with AI usage. Our library system (Alma, it's often used in academic libraries) has an AI research assistant, which--shocker--doesn't fucking work. I took an entire class in my second semester about information management, and we spent a three hour class time talking about how AI doesn't work. This semester, I'm taking a reading comprehension for youths course, and the professor regularly says we can look in Chat GPT for answers. In a reading comprehension course. With a program that does not provide basic accurate comprehension.
Libraries are not going to be overtaken by AI, but we will be hindered by it. Every time a AI search companion accidentally imagines a document, or an article, or a resource, libraries will be the ones to take the fall. AI is killing how we do research, and how we provide reference work, and even how we comprehend things. Yes, libraries are more than just books and reference, but that is still a large part of what we do. A lot of the people I interact with don't want to do the searching for texts or materials, they just want to let AI search for them. The longer we continue feeding AI and giving it every query we can think of, the more we're bound to be a population without basic research or comprehension skills.
When you give librarians a little free time...
got a proper jump scare at work when I glanced up from the shelf and saw this