Although Audible said Captions was “designed primarily to fill an unmet need in education” by allowing students listening to a book to engage more fully with the work, publishers feel the intention of the program is moot and that providing the text violates their copyrights. – Publishers Weekly
Category: words
Social Workers Are Joining The Staffs Of Some U.S. Public Libraries
With public libraries open to the entire public, librarians in recent years have been seeing needs for services that their MLS programs didn’t train them to provide — from aiding job seekers to assisting growing numbers of people experiencing homelessness to treating drug overdoses. So some library systems have begun hiring resident social workers, who say that the lack of any stigma around going to a library makes it easier for people who need their help to ask for it. – NPR
The Algonquin Round Table Crew Was Famously Witty. But They Made Little Lasting Impact
“The Algonquin Hotel became a city landmark in 1987, in large part because of the vicious circle’s outsize fame. This is a fine way of acknowledging a tourist destination, but it shouldn’t be mistaken as an endorsement of the group’s larger intellectual significance — because in the end, there isn’t much of one.” – The New York Times
Britons Are Not Happy With Unstaffed, Self-Service Scanner Libraries
In some locations, local councils – whose library budgets have been slashed for years by the conservative government – are paying for security guards instead of library staff. “‘It’s a folly … it is dishonest to represent this as a library service when taxpayers have paid for a quality service with a librarian,’ said Nick Poole, chief executive of the UK Library Association.” – The Observer (UK)
The Deep Literary Allure Of Outer Space
Poet Gale Marie Thompson: “I think it’s the job of a writer (or poet!) to come up against the ineffable, time and time again. We compulsively work to make meaning out of something that can never completely have meaning, to put words to things that can’t be verbalized. Space is full of things that we know exist, some of which we can see from far away, but we can’t touch them or actually be in their presence.” – LitHub
Movie-Credit Style Book Credits For All Of The People Who Make That Book Happen?
Yes, writing can be lonely – but producing a published book is a community affair. – The Guardian (UK)
What ‘The Vicious Circle’ Of Writers Did For The United States
The “lunchtime battle of wits” at the Algonquin Hotel prepared a generation of socially conscious writers (especially the most famous of them all, Dorothy Parker) to take on the forces of isolationism, sexism, and anti-radical prejudice. – The New York Times
What Is That Odd Ungrammatical Language People Are Using On The Internet?
Today, thanks to the development of autocorrect, we could all easily write “correctly,” and yet, as Gretchen McCulloch notes, we don’t. We override automatic capitalization when our phones provide it, if it doesn’t suit our purposes. We purposely “misspell” and “misuse” words, ignore and overuse punctuation marks, and modify the basic rules of grammar. Hell, we even retype a keyboard smash (like “asdjhfksaskd,” which I just typed three times) if it appears insufficiently smashy. – The Baffler
Books That Can Take You Deep Into Travel
“As much as I’d like to dissolve the beach read label entirely, I must also admit I have a type: I want a meaty, absorbing book that takes me further into a vacation by connecting with the cultures that produced it. I want a book that can’t be disposed of, one that will take me somewhere entirely new.” – The Conversation
A Fierce (And Weird) Battle Over Who Gets To Be New Hampshire’s Poet Laureate
“At issue is a controversial nominee for state laureate, private negotiations with a governor who says he’s ‘not a poetry expert,’ and a bit of verse that an elected official described to me as ‘a misogynistic poem about sex with Condoleezza Rice on Air Force One.'” – Slate