September was abuzz with news from our deceased pop culture royalty, court case rulings very germane to the business of ebooks in libraries, the dividends of newspaper research, and useful advice in a small business-newspaper crossover event. Read on to get a glimpse of what librarians on the 5th floor of the Main Library were reading in September.
__________________________________
The Prince We Never Knew
New York Times Magazine, Sept. 8, 2024
NYT Mag journalist Sasha Weiss spent a year and a half reporting on a documentary of Prince that will probably never be released. Weiss, as one of the few people who have seen it, dispatches the intensity of the documentary, which can be summed up by the following quotes from director Ezra Edelman: “How can you tell the truth about someone who, when you’re talking to
people, they all had different things to say?... How can
you tell the truth about someone who never told the truth about
himself?”
__________________________________
Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries
MIT Technology Review, Sept. 11, 2024
The Internet Archive received a harsh blow to its mission of making books digitally available the way a brick-and-mortar library would lend books this month when "the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reaffirmed that decision with some alterations to the underlying reasoning," according to this opinion piece by Chris Lewis. The crisis highlights the stranglehold book publishers have over libraries wanting to buy titles in ebook formats, which are priced at up to 300% of the consumer price, and have DRM, or digital rights management, installed on them, causing the books to "self-destruct" once a loan or purchase period ends. *N.B. while SFPL offers the MIT Technology Review in many formats, including on Flipster, this article is an online-only piece and was not published in the print magazine.
__________________________________
A boy snatched from a California park in 1951 is found living on the East Coast
NPR, Sept. 24, 2024
Archival newspaper research can literally reunite families and solve mysteries! The family of a man kidnapped as a child from a park in Oakland conducted newspaper research at the Oakland Public Library in addition to other approaches to find their long-lost uncle. Now we wonder if our newspaper collections at SFPL have ever helped a cause so noble.
__________________________________
How to open a bakery in 61 easy steps
San Francisco Business Times, Sept. 19, 2024
While the title of this piece reads more like a satire from the Onion, the many convoluted steps to opening a business in San Francisco are real. The good news for aspiring entrepreneurs is that the San Francisco Business Times has you covered, starting with offering this in-depth list of necessary steps one must take. SFPL's Business Center will take you the rest of the way. *N.B.: SFPL offers the San Francisco Business Times full text for free through our eNews site and on the Articles and Databases site.
No comments:
Post a Comment