West Coast Librarian

Statement From the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR): Navigating the Uneasy Interdependence of #AI and Open Science coar-repositories.org/news-updates... #GenAI #oa #openscience @coar-repositories.bsky.social

Libraries Collaborate on Mass Book Digitization Pilot Project – UC Davis Library https://library.ucdavis.edu/news/libraries-collaborate-on-mass-book-digitization-pilot-project/

Airport Libraries Take Off | American Libraries Magazine Airport libraries, where travelers can pick up books before they board their flights. are becoming regular fixtures in US airports.

Airport Libraries Take Off 📚
americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2026/03/02/a...

Hearing about Howard University's Black Press Archives in the #c4l26 opening keynote. They have over 2000 African American newspaper titles, and a portion of the archives have now been digitized, with selected titles having issues readable online: https://dh.howard.edu/bpa_archives/

Library of Congress Opens Search for Next Innovator in Residence (via @librarycongress.bsky.social) newsroom.loc.gov/news/library... #libraries #innovation

Listening to library leaders: Surveys capture real-time perspectives shaping decisions across the field
hangingtogether.org/listening-to...

I am working with so many physical books these days and I honestly cannot get over how much better they are than ebooks. Convenience and searchability are nice features but there’s nothing like a words on paper book

What privacy? Meta's smart glasses are filming unwitting naked people Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses are a privacy nightmare, with footage of naked people, sensitive information, and violent acts captured and seen by Meta's AI and an army of employees.

Buried lede: Meta sends all your nudes to Kenya where humans annotate it and feed it to AI

Libraries for Children: Dynamism, Flexibility, and Adaptability in Interiors What is the vision of a 21st century library? How can architects encourage the interest of new and future generations in reading?

“The design of a children's space is not a detail. It's cognitive stimulus, sensory invitation, and learning experience in formation.” #libraries

Tortilla Pie This recipe for an easy, throw-it-all-together weekday supper or bolstering weekend breakfast comes from my long-time kitchen companion, Hettie Potter, and very grateful I am, too. Think of this as a...

#RecipeOfTheDay is Tortilla Pie! Well, I say pie, but what I mean is this: you get two soft tortillas, line a round ovenproof dish with one, cover with cheese and ham, crack in an egg, top with the other tortilla, add a squiggle of hot sauce, bake — then devour! www.nigella.com/recipes/egg-...

The distinctions we draw in library science between data, information, knowledge, and understanding are real. Like, life vs. death real.

OverDrive’s Long Testimony Misses the Point: Libraries Need Fair eBook Contracts, Not a Fear-Based Marketing Pitch New State Bills Aim to Improve Access to eBooks for Libraries

OverDrive’s Long Testimony Misses the Point: Libraries Need Fair eBook Contracts, Not a Fear-Based Marketing Pitch
www.ebookstudygroup.org/overdrive_te...

Scientists Discover Plant Compound That Forces Aggressive Breast Cancer Cells Into Self-Destruction A newly discovered plant-derived molecule disrupts a critical cancer enzyme in an unconventional way.

Scientists Discover Plant Compound That Forces Aggressive Breast Cancer Cells Into Self-Destruction - SciTechDaily scitechdaily.com/scientists-d...

Firefighters in Sicily rescue 400 rare books from library after landslide Landslide in Niscemi in January tore away entire slope of town and carved 4km chasm Firefighters in Sicily have rescued about 400 rare books from a library in Niscemi that hangs on the edge of a mudflow, after a devastating landslide in January tore away an entire slope of the town and carved a 4km chasm. The library stands on the lip of the precipice gouged out by the landslide, with part of the building in effect hanging in mid-air. The recovery operation, which began on Monday, was preceded by a detailed study of floor plans and interior photographs to map the position of the books. Continue reading...

Firefighters in Sicily rescue 400 rare books from library after landslide

You deserve happiness and nice things.
You deserve a huge library with one of those rolling ladders.
You deserve a secret library hidden within that library, filled with ancient texts of magic and maps showing the way back to the realm of faerie, where you truly belong.

Presented virtually to the BIBFRAME workshop in Europe earlier this week: repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.50... excited to see how students engage in this kind of library discovery system. Hope it improves the way they learn and explore!

Why much of Canada's national art collection isn't online | CBC News https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-public-art-collection-online-9.7107292?cmp=rss

ICYMI #AI Challenges Core Assumptions in #Education (via @stanfordhai.bsky.social) Event Report hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-chal... ||| Video Recordings www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... #ailiteracy

YouTube video by Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow Burning the Books: knowledge under attack from Ancient Assyria to the age of AI - October 2 2024

If you have just over an hour to spare, it's well worth watching this talk from Richard Ovenden @richove.bsky.social of the Bodleian Library.

Burning the Books: knowledge under attack from Ancient Assyria to the age of AI. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c_A...

A Scholar Recognized the Inscriptions in the Margins of This Manuscript. The Scribbles Turned Out to Be Galileo's Handwritten Notes Found in a 16th-century copy of an ancient astronomy treatise, the annotations suggest that the trailblazing scientist studied Earth-centric models before lending his support to heliocentrism

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/s...

Gleeson Library AI Taskforce Final Report 📚https://repository.usfca.edu/gli/1/

Repair x Share Summit 2026: Building a Care Economy

The Repair x Share Summit is coming March 19 and 20 online. "Building a care economy" is free though registration is required. See their website to register and for more information. events.zoom.us/ev/AgQpuMyzz...

AI’s ‘memorisation’ problem: the novels it can’t forget Research that shows LLMs memorise more training data than previously thought raises questions about copyright infringement

‘The world’s top AI models can be prompted to generate near-verbatim copies of bestselling novels, raising fresh questions about the industry’s claim that its systems do not store copyrighted works.’
www.ft.com/content/e4b7...

Du, J. T., Partridge, H., Howard, K., & Xie, Z. (2026). Public Libraries and Social Capital: A Scoping Review. Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 1–20. doi.org/10.1080/2475... #libraries

Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here's How to Use It. 40 Google features to find exactly what you need, the alternative search engines that do things Google won't, and the reference desk framework underneath all of it.

Great reminder of what Google search can do for you when you know how...

Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here's How to Use It.
open.substack.com/pub/cardcata...

Data centres could store information in glass for thousands of years Microsoft researchers have developed a technology that writes data into glass with lasers, raising the prospect of robotic libraries full of glass tablets packed with data

Microsoft researchers have developed a technology that writes data into glass with lasers, raising the prospect of robotic libraries full of glass tablets packed with data

AI Is Taking Over Social Media, but Only 44% of People Are Confident They Can Spot It, CNET Finds Half of social media users said they want better labels on AI-generated and edited posts.

Half of social media users said they want better labels on AI-generated and edited posts.

The New York Public Library Announces the Return of Lunch Dances
www.nypl.org/press/new-yo...

i’m tired of every paper (even critical ones) on societal impact of AI starting by both-siding the “benefits” and risks/harms of AI

in academia, i would like us to arrive at a collective reckoning that we don’t need to play both sides. it's totally legit to clearly state just the harms. period

Not a huge fan of using literacy/reading level as a gauge of how intelligent someone is. I work in a library bro. There’s adults that weren’t taught properly. Learning disabilities exist. Some kids don’t enjoy reading. None of this means they’re not smart.