Monthly Archive for March, 2019

Getting the Right Measures: How Copyright Exceptions and Limitations are an Essential Ingredient for Successful Library Systems

In any recipe, you cannot just substitute one ingredient with more of another. If you try to make a cake only with flour and milk, you get wallpaper paste. One made only of egg is a soufflé. The same goes libraries and their work to support education, innovation and culture. […]

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The 10-Minute Library Advocate #11: Sign Up to a Blog or Newsletter About Library-Related Issues

Advocacy is about seeing the bigger picture. To convince others of the value and importance of your work, you need to understand the context in which they work. What are the major issues, the major trends, the hot topics? If you know these, you can make your arguments more relevant. […]

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Leave It Out: How a Copyright Directive Without Article 13 Benefits Everyone

The arguments for Article 13 (now renumbered to Article 17 in the consolidated text) of the EU’s draft Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market are not strong. Despite protestations that it does not imply that platforms will have to filter content uploaded by users, it is hard to […]

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The 10-Minute Library Advocate #10: Take a Great Photo of Your Library at Work

Pictures are powerful. They can both illustrate and support text, but also help make things real. This certainly goes for libraries. They can show activity, a pleasant space, great resources, and help people you’re talking with imagine themselves there. They are an important tool for advocacy, even more so with […]

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Bad Maths in the European Copyright Reform, or How 9A Doesn’t Fit into 13

While IFLA has focused most of its efforts throughout the European copyright reform process on those provisions that are most relevant to libraries, it is clear that for many, Article 13 is where it’s at. This makes sense. Article 13 is a big deal, threatening to overturn one of the […]

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The 10-Minute Library Advocate #9: Learn a Great Library Story

Our latest 10 Minute Library Advocate idea comes thanks to Sue McKerragher of the Australian Library and Information Association. Thank you Sue! Statistics are powerful, but so too are stories. This is because the people you are trying to influence do not always think in the same way. Some are […]

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What has the Web Ever Done for Us? Five Reasons for Libraries to Celebrate the 30th Birthday of the World Wide Web

Today marks the 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web. As opposed to the internet – physical networks of computers stretching to around half of the world’s population, the web is an ‘information space’ – a collection of documents and resources linked together by hyperlinks. It is what means that, […]

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