Monthly Archive for January, 2019

The 10-Minute Library Advocate: #2 Think of Five Words Your Users Would Use to Describe Your Library

Advocacy is all about changing mindsets. You need the people who take decisions about you library – and the people who influence them – to understand what you do, to support it, and to be ready to act on your interest. Of course talking about change implies a starting point. […]

Read full post…

Trends in copyright for libraries: what’s coming up this year? (Part 2)

We started Copyright Week 2019 with a blog post on Monday about specific copyright reforms that are ongoing and upcoming in 2019. These copyright reforms show some common trends, so today we are closing the week by looking into that. In the framework of Copyright Week 2019, we also explored […]

Read full post…

The 10-Minute Library Advocate: #1 Think of Three Things Your Library Does that Improve People’s Lives

Politicians and advertisers know that the promise of a better life is one of the most powerful tools in getting people’s attention and changing their minds. Libraries deliver this, but don’t always explain it clearly or convincingly. To be a good advocate, you need to be able to say quickly […]

Read full post…

Copyright Week Day 4: Save the Messenger! Why Libraries Should Care about Safe Harbour

Discussion about questions of free speech and access to information is traditionally based around a divide between creators and users – or authors and readers in the case of books. When something goes wrong – an author goes beyond the limits of acceptable free speech or plagiarises, or a reader […]

Read full post…

Copyright Week Day 3: Public Domain, Privatised Knowledge, and Libraries

1 January 2019 saw a greater than usual focus on the importance of the public domain. For the first time in 20 years, new works started to go out of copyright in the United States, following a 20 year hiatus. There was a lot of celebration – and performances of […]

Read full post…

10 Reasons to Engage with Wikipedia: Revisiting the Opportunities Papers

#1Lib1Ref has just begun. Around the world, for the next three weeks, librarians will be doing the thing they do best – helping people regardless of background to access quality information – by adding references and improving articles on Wikipedia. Through this, the power of the library field, with its […]

Read full post…

Out of Hand? Libraries, eBook ownership and Lending

The rise of eBooks has led to some significant changes in the world of publishing. While they are clearly a long way from replacing their physical equivalents, eBooks do now enjoy a significant share of the market, and have allowed a lot of independent and self-published authors to emerge. They […]

Read full post…