NEWS
Atlas of different search results
A NEW tool being developed by academics shows how Google would display search results in different countries. It returns three, rather than one, column of results from over 100 local versions of Google. Rodrigo Ochigame, a co-creator of the atlas, told Wired that: “Any attempt to quantify relevance necessarily encodes moral and political priorities.” Katherine Ye, co-creator, said: “People ask search engines things they would never ask a person, and the things they happen to see in Google’s results can change their lives.” For more visit
https://searchatlas.org/
NZ culled books for
Internet Archive THE National Library of New Zealand is donating more than 600,000 books to the Internet Archive to free up storage space. The books were due to be removed from its overseas collection after a controversial review which was opposed by a number of academics – 50,000 books have already been culled.
The IA has agreed to pay for the books to be physically shipped to the USA for long-term storage, via a digitisation facility in the Philippines.
Half-a-century on for ebooks
ON 4 July 1971, a computer scientist at the University of Illinois, posted a copy of the US Declaration of Independence onto the university’s computer network and the ARPANET.
Michael S. Hart had originally intended to email it but was prevented from doing so by the system and his solution is seen as the first eBook and launched what was to become Project Gutenberg. Although other material had been posted for sharing on networks before, “sharing content that most people could easily get access to in print form, wasn’t perceived as a valua- ble activity to anyone other than Hart,” according to Scholarly Kitchen.
Suffolk County Council launch safe spaces campaign. 12 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL July-August 2021
Detailed Covid costs and impact revealed
THE organisation responsible for managing Nottinghamshire County Council’s library service has pub- lished estimates of the losses caused by the pandemic. Inspire, which operates Nottingham- shire’s libraries, put the cost at around £1,636,000 saying this includes a slump in income of around £780,000. The services that these income losses come from include libraries and archives, music teaching, education library services and adult learning fees.
It said it had incurred a further £334,000
in additional Covid-related costs including making buildings Covid-secure and upgrad- ing ICT to enable working from home. However, it said despite this, Govern- ment support meant it had only been hit with losses of around £95,000 since
March last year. It said it has received £506,000 from
the job retention (furlough) scheme and has kept its 688 staff and more than £1m in Government business grants spread across its libraries and community arts centres, supporting with implementing Covid safety measures. Peter Gaw, Chief Executive of Inspire described the pandemic as a “perfect storm” of lost income and extra costs. He said: “We have quickly remodelled our budget to look at what the impact of Covid is on our finances… we took advantage of Government retail and l eisure grants, the business rates hol- idays and the job retention scheme… It’s a perfect storm of income reduction and extra costs. We were careful and our board have been focused on balancing out.”
Library safe spaces
A CAMPAIGN has been launched by Suffolk Libraries and Suffolk County Council to ensure that anyone affected by domestic abuse in Suffolk knows that the library is a safe space. In the 12 months to the end of March
2021 Suffolk Police recorded 9,358 domes- tic abuse related crimes. This project ensures library staff know how to respond if someone who is suffer-
ing from domestic abuse asks for help, or if they are worried about someone else. Councillor Matthew Hicks, Leader of Suffolk County Council, said: “Libraries play such an important role in our com- munities and by providing staff with the necessary training, we can ensure that those seeking support can access it safely and will be treated with kindness, under- standing and respect.”
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