Libfocus Link-out for April, 2023

Welcome to this month’s edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

US Library Survey 2022 Navigating the New Normal.
Since 2010, Ithaka S+R has conducted the Library Survey on a triennial basis with the overarching goal of tracking the perspectives, priorities, and leadership strategies of library deans and directors at four-year academic institutions. The results of their latest survey are now out.

How to get people to come to your library events.
We've all been there. We've spent a lot of time and energy organising our event, our workshop, our training session. And nobody or virtually nobody turns up. This great short video from Angela Hursh offers some simple advice to make sure this doesn't happen to you again.

In the latest episode of the podcast, Noelle Knows Nothing, titled 'Yes, please touch the 500-year-old book, Noelle speaks to John Overholt, Curator of the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson and Early Books and Manuscripts about life as a rare books librarian at Harvard Library.

In The Librarians are Not Okay, Xochitl Gonzalez speaks to librarians in the United States about new laws that challenge what books librarians can buy and put on shelves, for fear of facing personal litigation.

AI in Higher Education: The Librarians’ Perspectives.
An interesting survey of 125 academic librarians exploring attitudes to the growing development of Artificial Intelligence Technologies; whether to embrace or ban them and the effect they may have on students' ability to think critically. Using ChatGPT to help write a paper and reference software to automate citations, is this the new norm?

ChatGPT: Implications for academic libraries.
A brief study of the implications of AI tools for academic libraries. We learn the rise of AI tools might lead us to an arms race as Google and Microsoft add ChatGPT into their tools. Will academic discovery tools do the same? An interesting thought is introduced – perhaps ChatGPT could help speed up the development of OER textbooks and reduce the cost of education for students?

 A bibliophile’s paradise: the National Library of France in a classic documentary from 1956.
The 21-minute documentary Toute la mémoire du monde (All the Memory in the World), made by French filmmaker Alain Resnais in 1956, is an astounding tour of the la Bibliothèque nationale de France (the National Library of France) before digitisation, when the world’s largest well of information wasn’t at our fingertips, but fastidiously collected and sorted behind library walls.

 Libraries Need More Freedom to Distribute Digital Books. But publishers are working hard to prevent that, wherein Dan Cohen writes about how a district court judge in New York recently ruled on Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive, a case that is likely to shape how we read books on smartphones, tablets, and computers in the future.

 Europeana re-use - be inspired.
This article highlights the creative ways artists, poets, educators and researchers reuse Europeana’s digital cultural heritage. The material on Europeana's site has inspired everything from educational videos, problem-solving challenges created through the gamification of digital material, robotic sea monster designs, poetic responses to artwork to collages for greeting cards.

 Building the future intelligent campus.
This guide from JISC looks at how many universities are developing intelligent campuses in an effort to use data collection to improve the student experience, business efficiencies and environmental performance. It explores the benefits of this development, looking at how it is helping the third-level education sector make better use of resources and facilities, deliver more personalised services to students and improve their campus experience. The guide also looks at the ethical concerns around data collection and the questions that have and should be asked about how the data might be used.