Presented to the Yeshiva University Library Staff and AJL-NYMA members on Zoom, Thursday, 15th October, 2020.

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January 12, 2021

Posted by Larry M. Elkin, CPA, CFP®

photo by Pixabay user LoboStudioHamburg

If the opinion editors at The New York Times decline to publish your cogent and insightful essay on a matter of great public importance, are they practicing censorship?

No. They are exercising editorial judgment, or maybe mere business judgment, depending on the pressures they feel nowadays to get audiences to engage with their content. It may be good judgment or bad judgment, but it is not censorship. Censorship occurs when the government restricts or compels expression under threat of penalties, which may be administrative, judicial or extrajudicial, such as directing a mob to your home. The New York Times is a privately owned, privately run platform, which its proprietors may offer to or withhold from contributors as they see fit. To demand they do otherwise would run afoul of the First Amendment’s press and speech freedom guarantees.

Read article: https://www.palisadeshudson.com/2021/01/defining-censorship-before-denouncing-it/

#censorship #freedomofspeech #socialmedia

Brad Esposito January 26, 2023 (Very Fine Day)

A few years ago, somewhere in the free-flowing and seemingly endless spiral of 2016 American Politics, a particular quote was rolled out endlessly: Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, it is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It was credited to a range of figures of different inspirational beats: Nelson Mandela, JFK, Martin Luther King Jr, and most would also know it from the film Coach Carter, where the entire passage was lifted entirely (without credit).

Of course, it was none of these people who first decided to put all of those words down on paper. Instead, those are the words of self-help guru, writer, poet, and one-time attempted Democratic nominee for President, Marianne Williamson. Which is funny. And there are countless examples of similar quotes with similar ideas all attributed to similar people, and without much of a critical lens from the general public on who said it first or came up with it before anyone else. Which is not to say that Marianne Williamson should not be appreciated for creating something that has clearly touched so many people, but it is a moment that I have found myself thinking about, regularly, as the news cycle begins to reckon with the reality of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on the media industry at large.

Mostly, though, it has me thinking about plagiarism, and how something can be so clearly wrong and unethical and against the exploration of creative fields and intelligence, while also being something that – perhaps – many people simply do not care about.

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From Harvard Business review | Anthony K. Tjan

Mentorship comes in many flavors. It doesn’t always work unless leaders bear in mind a few common principles.

Mentorship comes in many flavors. It doesn’t always work unless leaders bear in mind a few common principles.

Over the past few years, as part of my book, I’ve been researching how leaders can better judge and develop their talent in light of a changing, more purpose-driven, more tech-enabled work environment. Having interviewed close to 100 of the most admired leaders across business, culture, arts, and government, one important characteristic stands out: They do everything they can to imprint their “goodness” onto others in ways that make others feel like fuller versions of themselves. Put another way, the best leaders practice a form of leadership that is less about creating followers and more about creating other leaders. How do they do that? I’ve noticed four things the best mentors do:

Put the relationship before the mentorship. All too often, mentorship can evolve into a “check the box” procedure instead of something authentic and relationship-based. For real mentorship to succeed, there needs to be a baseline chemistry between a mentor and a mentee. Studies show that even the best-designed mentoring programs are no substitute for a genuine, intercollegial relationship between mentor and mentee. One piece of research, conducted by Belle Rose Ragins, a mentoring expert and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, demonstrated that unless mentees have a basic relationship with their mentors, there is no discernable difference between mentees and those not mentored. All this is to say that mentoring requires rapport. At best, it propels people to break from their formal roles and titles (boss versus employee) and find common ground as people.

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The Marginalian | Maria Popova

“If you write what you yourself sincerely think and feel and are interested in,” the great marine biologist and author Rachel Carson advised a blind girl aspiring to be a writer, “you will interest other people.” Six years earlier, around Valentine’s Day of 1952, a sixteen-year-old self-described “aspiring Young Writer” by the name of Alice Quinn reached out to T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) — by that point one of the most famous writers in the world — hoping he might answer several questions about the creative process, what it takes to be a writer, and how he himself developed his creative faculties.

Unlike Carson and unlike Albert Einstein, who also frequently replied to fan letters, particularly those from young people, Eliot rarely did. But something about the young woman’s earnest inquiry touched him. His response — thoroughly warm and just the right amount of wry, full of simply worded wisdom — may be his most direct statement of advice on writing. It was only ever published in Hockney’s Alphabet (public library) — that wonderful, forgotten 1991 charity project raising funds for AIDS research through short essays by famous writers about the letters of the alphabet, each illustrated by artist David Hockney. Provided by his Eliot’s, Valerie, his response to Alice Quinn — the only posthumous contribution to the volume — appears under the letter Q. Read more….

by Andrew Bauld | Medium

February 13, 2023

A court decision could limit how you access e-books from the library

When the pandemic began and schools and libraries around the country were forced to close their doors, teachers and librarians were at a loss over how to get digital books into the hands of young readers and their families.

The problem was so drastic that the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit digital library, declared a National Emergency Library (NEL) lending program. With more than a million digital books in its Open Library collection, the IA temporarily suspended its usual limit on lending digital copies one at a time during this unprecedented period.

While the move was heralded by many readers, schools, and libraries, others weren’t so happy. Several well-known authors blasted the program as “piracy.” Then, two months after it began, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and John Wiley & Sons sued the IA, alleging “willful mass copyright infringement.”

Now over two-and-a-half years later, arguments have been fully briefed in the district court, but what began as a dispute over the NEL has grown into a much more complex fight over copyright law, the lending of digital books, and the future of libraries.

Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries.

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Stephanie Stacey

Feb 25, 2023, 12:00 PM

Stephanie Stacey

Feb 25, 2023, 12:00 PM

• Sales at Barnes & Noble are rising because staff are it’s not trying to make stores “homogenous,” its CEO said.
• James Daunt started running the chain, which has 600 stores across the US, in 2019.
• “Sensible retailing principles” equal “terrible bookstores,” Daunt told the Business Studies podcast.

The CEO of Barnes & Noble said the retailer has prospered because it rejected the “sensible retailing principles” that made other chain bookstores “inherently boring.”

James Daunt told the podcast Business Studies that Barnes & Noble’s bookstores succeed when they’re unique and adaptable, and not “consistent” and “homogenous.”

The British business figure has been credited with saving Britain’s biggest bookstore chain, Waterstones, which he started running in 2011 when it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

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Kate Duffy

Mar 13, 2023, 6:09 AM

• The phone-obsessed Gen Z is surprisingly a sucker for paperback books.
• Three Gen Zers gave their reasons for preferring printed editions over e-books.
• One Oxford University student said real books strained his eyes less and allowed him to focus more.

There’s no doubt that Gen Z loves to read. 

This generation, defined as people born between 1997 and 2015, is often considered phone-obsessed and addicted to technology. But when it comes to reading, Gen Zers say they prefer to pick up a printed book over an e-book.

Book sales in the US and the UK have boomed in the past two years, the management consultancy McKinsey found. Sales in the US hit a record of more than 843 million units in 2021, while last year had the second-highest number sales, at almost 789 million. This increasing popularity was partly because of Gen Z and its social-media trends, including the hashtag #BookTok on TikTok, McKinsey said.

Perhaps the most surprising trend is not Gen Zers’ love of books but the way they consume them. While their pastimes usually involve a screen, data and interviews with Insider suggest this doesn’t apply to books. They’re choosing to ditch digital formats and opt for the timeless paperback book.

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By Andrew Albanese |

Mar 25, 2023

In a Swift Decision, Judge Eviscerates Internet Archive’s Scanning and Lending Program

By Andrew Albanese |

Mar 25, 2023

In an emphatic 47-page opinion, federal judge John G. Koeltl found the Internet Archive infringed the copyrights of four plaintiff publishers by scanning and lending their books under a legally contested practice known as CDL (controlled digital lending). And after three years of contentious legal wrangling, the case wasn’t even close.

“At bottom, IA’s fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book,” Koeltl wrote in a March 24 opinion granting the publisher plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and denying the Internet Archive’s cross-motion. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.”

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Lauren Aratani in New YorkSat 15 Apr 2023 00.00 EDT

James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, on the first floor of the massive bookstore, the second largest in the country, at Union Square in Manhattan, New York. Photograph: José A Alvarado Jr./The Guardian

The Observer Barnes & Noble

‘Amazon doesn’t care about books’: how Barnes & Noble bounced back

Barnes & Noble is the US’s largest remaining book chain but, under James Daunt, each of the 600 stores is meant to run like an independent bookstore

Lauren Aratani in New YorkSat 15 Apr 2023 00.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 15 Apr 2023 12.11 EDT

Walking into the big Barnes & Noble store in New York’s Union Square a few years ago, a book lover might have been surprised by what they found: an absence of books. Barnes & Noble shops were once full of other things: Lego sets, calendars, Funko Pop figurines, puzzles, chocolates – all with their own display shelves. The books were mainly upstairs.

Not any more. Now, “you’re not seeing much beyond books”, says James Daunt, Barnes & Noble’s British chief executive, standing on the first floor of the giant bookstore, the second-largest in the US. “I mean, there are other things, but it’s unequivocally book-driven.”

On a spring afternoon, the books seem to be successfully drawing a stream of browsers to the four-storey shop. People popping in from a run flip through mysteries and romance paperbacks near the front, while backpack-wearing teens giggle excitedly in the young adult section on the second floor. They pay little attention to the soft-spoken man walking through the store in a grey suit. “I’m not wearing my bookseller threads,” Daunt says with a laugh. “This is not what a bookseller looks like.”

Barnes & Noble is the US’s largest remaining book chain but, under Daunt, each of the chain’s approximately 600 stores is meant to operate like an independent bookstore – unique and highly curated to fit a local community. The aim is to offer something completely different from Amazon, where about half of all print books sold in the US are bought.

“Amazon doesn’t care about books … a book is just another thing in a warehouse,” Daunt says. “Whereas bookstores are places of discovery. They’re just really nice spaces.”

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