NEW software at Langsdale

Just in time for spring, Langsdale's iMacs now have Office 2016 and Adobe Creative Cloud installed on them.  Adobe Creative Cloud is a suite of Adobe programs, including InDesign and Photoshop.  Our 13 lab iMacs also recently got upgraded to MacOS Sierra.  Stop by the 4th floor in Langsdale Library to check them out!  

Dragon Naturally Speaking, a program which turns your spoken words into type, is available on the PC in study room LC430.  Feel free to try it out.  Stop by the main desk for a microphone headset, spend a few minutes training the software to get familiar with your voice, and you'll be all set to speak your next paper!

If you have suggestions or ideas for technology we could offer at Langsdale Library, please leave a comment below or email kbreneman@ubalt.edu.  

Free Fall Baltimore!

Every year one of the greatest things about Baltimore City, Free Fall Baltimore, sneaks up on me before I know it.  Free Fall offers you a chance to attend hundreds of FREE events throughout Baltimore city.  Arts, music, and theater events abound, along with workshops.  You can even join Langsdale Library's Special Collections department for a "Community Archives Workshop" on how to archive and preserve documents and photos on October 7, 14, or 28.  Many events require an RSVP, so make sure you check out the website before just showing up. 

Free textbooks! What's not to like?

As every college student knows, textbooks are expensive!  The game is rigged: publishers are constantly releasing new editions of textbooks with only slight changes to the material, but if you don't buy the overpriced textbook, you're going to have a hard time passing the class.

Wouldn't it be great if textbooks were free and high-quality?  That's the premise behind the open textbook movement.  The Open Textbook Network, a large collection of colleges and universities including Ohio State and Penn State, is at the forefront in promoting the creation and use of open textbooks.  You can browse available textbooks in their Open Textbook Library.  Can't find a textbook that matches up with your class?  If you're a student, ask your professor to consider writing an open textbook for the class.  If you're a professor, consider writing an open textbook for your subject area.  Lots of students will thank you.

How well does Facebook know you?

We've all had that moment when, looking at Facebook, we wonder, "Why am I seeing an ad for that?" Its not often that we get to peek behind the curtain of online advertising and get a glimpse of how companies decide what ads they show us, but this Chrome add-on lets you see what Facebook thinks it knows about you.  Here you'll find a list of preferences and interests that Facebook uses to target ads to you.  If one of the labels doesn't accurately describe you, you can easily delete it from the list.

ProPublica, an online journalism site, put together this Chrome extension as part of a larger series about how online algorithms and big data shape our lives.  Algorithms and big data increasingly affect all of our lives, often insidiously, such as profiling potential criminals or changing online prices based on the buyer's income level, geographic location, or perceived race.  Librarians believe that your privacy is critically important and that you deserve to know what information companies are gathering about you and how that information is being used. Take a moment to use this Chrome add-on and see what Facebook thinks it knows about you!

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Google Books Case

Just this past Monday, April 18, the Supreme Court decided not to take up the case of a long-running lawsuit against Google Books.  The court's decision is a win for Google, bringing an end to a decade-long court battle.  The Google Books project makes digital scans of millions of books available to the world.  In order to build such an impressive and (of course!) searchable digital library, Google partnered with major libraries, including those of the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and Harvard University, to scan their entire book collections. 

Back in 2005, the Authors’ Guild sued Google over its Google Books project.  The Authors’ Guild claimed that Google infringed on copyright by its wholescale scanning of complete books, done without the permission of authors or publishers.  The lawsuit has taken many twists and turns over the past decade but, again and again, the courts found in favor of Google, declaring Google Books to be both a “fair use” of the texts in question, as well as a transformative use.  Google’s book-scanning endeavor is seen as transformative because, for the first time ever, it allows for the full-text searching and text-mining of millions of works.  Now that the Supreme Court has declined the Google Books case, Google Books fans can rest easy, knowing that the fate of this revolutionary project no longer stands at the mercy of a judge.

Do you use Langsdale's resources on your phone/tablet?

At the beginning of this spring semester, Langsdale Library's homepage got a facelift.  If you visit our website on a mobile device, you will notice that the layout of our site changes to better fit your screen.  Both the desktop and mobile layouts offer access to the same content and services. 

We're interested in hearing from you about how you use Langsdale’s resources on your mobile device!  What are you looking for when you visit Langsdale Library’s website on your phone or tablet?  What do you love about our mobile layout?  What do you hate about it?  What features are missing from our website that you wish we had?

Please take a brief, 4 question survey and let us know your thoughts about our mobile website layout.  Thank you!

Hands Off!

Believe it or not, decisions made by the Librarian of Congress impact your day-to-day life. 

Every 3 years, the Librarian of Congress gets to decide on exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  The DMCA is a law passed in 2000 that harshly penalizes the circumvention of “technological protection measures,” often known as DRM, or Digital Restrictions Management.  In other words, under the DMCA, you could face hefty fines or jail time if you jailbreak your smartphone or attempt to modify the software that powers your car.

On October 27, the Library of Congress handed down its latest list of exemptions to the DMCA.  Among other exemptions, owners of motor vehicles and farm equipment are now legally free to modify the software embedded in these vehicles.  Last spring, as the Library of Congress’s Copyright Office heard arguments for exemptions to the DMCA, the companies General Motors and John Deere both argued that, on some level, car and tractor owners don’t actually own the underlying software that’s built into their machines.  The companies claim that they retain ownership of the software, simply granting a license for its use to the end user and that, as such, the “owner” of the vehicle is not entitled to make any changes to the software.

While we can be thankful that the latest DMCA exemptions have dealt a blow to the clouded corporate logic of GM and John Deere, the unfortunate fact remains that these exemptions only last 3 years.  Every 3 years, everything is up for grabs again; even past exemptions must be newly argued for!  The Free Software Foundation points out numerous problems with the current law.  Hopefully Congress will act soon to reform the DMCA, a law which, in the name of protecting copyright, keeps people from being able to make full use of their own technology.

Open Access Week

The “open access” movement is defined by the belief that scholarly research, like journal articles and research studies, ought to be freely accessible to the greatest number of people in order to have maximum possible positive impact. 

Every day, research is being done that could save or dramatically improve the lives of millions of people around the world, yet gaining access to this research continues to be the exclusive privilege of relatively wealthy people in wealthy countries.  In order to read most published scholarly research, you need to either 1) be connected to a college, university, or other research institution that pays for access to databases where you can search for and read scholarly research, or 2) be willing and able to pay upwards of $30 for a single article.

There is a growing consensus that the economics governing how scholarly research is published are just wrongheaded: researchers, supported by colleges, universities, and sometimes government grants (NIH, NSF, etc.), conduct and publish research which is then sold back, in the form of journal subscriptions at exorbitant prices, to those very same colleges and universities, and the government.  Who profits here?  The publishers.

What can you do to support open access?  If you’re a scholar or researcher, consider publishing your work in open access journals.  Find out more about your publisher’s copyright policies before signing off on a publication agreement.  Consider what rights you may be giving away to the publisher, and whether or not you want to include an addendum to the agreement.  Finally, look for places like arxiv.org, the Social Science Research Network, or the University of Baltimore’s institutional repository, where you can upload your work to achieve a wider impact.