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Author Archives: James R. Jacobs
Thoughts on the connection between collection development and research/information need
A friend just posted this really interesting Atlantic article on Facebook about “redlining” and a project called T-RACES, or Testbed for for the Redlining Archives of California’s Exclusionary Spaces that brought me back to my first year as a govt documents librarian in 2002. “The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood.” Alexis C. Madrigal. […]
John Oliver shows the incredible hypocrisy of voter ID laws
Voting is one of our basic rights in the US — though you might not know it from the tragically low turnouts in US elections. Some of that can be blamed on voter apathy, but much can also be blamed on voter ID laws put in place to suppress voter turnout of especially African American […]
Do libraries need more shelving? Isn’t everything digital?
We here at FGI have been making the argument against the destruction of physical collections in connection with digitization efforts for a long time (see e.g., Wait! Don’t Digitize and Discard! A White Paper on ALA COL Discussion Issue #1a and What You Need to Know about the New Discard Policy). So it’s nice to […]
NARA releases a coloring book of weird and wonderful patents
The National Archives (NARA) has just put out a coloring book of patents from their archives. And they’re pretty awesome! I would totally buy the public transit hammock! It’s a reminder that most patents are either contraptions for supremely lazy people (the saluting device!) or for inventions of the unnecessary (eye protectors for chickens?!). Check […]
USGS releases plan to increase public access to scientific research
This is welcome news indeed! According to a press release yesterday, the US Geological Service (USGS) has just released its plan “Public Access to Results of Federally Funded Research at the U.S. Geological Survey: Scholarly Publications and Digital Data.” The USGS open access plan is in response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy […]
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