Starting Alabama Online SLIS In Fall 2018!

Warning: Potential spoilers

Title: Library Card!

Editor: Katherine Perrin

Song: Library Card

Audio Source: Arthur (cartoon)

Anime: Princess Tutu, Mahou Sensei Negima!, Yes! Pretty Cure 5, Magic Tree House (film), Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon, Ascendance of a Bookworm, Sailor Moon S, Lucky Star

Fanworks are not illegal. Most all fanart and fanfic are “transformative works,” which fall under the protection of Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law, the statute of fair use. Fair Use allows you to use sections and elements of copyrighted material to critique, expound on, or create using that material as long as you’re creating something new. You can read about fair use here: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/. And learn about how to decide if something is fair use using this simple guide of the four factors of fair use: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/.

Why is AO3 built by the Organization for TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS???? Because it stands by fair use and creators of new, unique fanworks.

Common law countries like the US make this more difficult through the vagaries of a system based on precedent and pontification by judges; civil law countries make this more difficult through judges being biased and on power-trips and refusing to read statutory law in the abstract way it is meant to be read, that is: applied to real life at this moment in time, not in their heads, or a distant past.

(Ya, judges. Can’t live with them; can’t live without ‘em.)

Also to be clear: we had warnings on our fic WELL before that (edited to add: I mean the “not mine, no profit made” type warnings). We did that as common courtesy in the fanfic world at the time. And long as I’m going down memory lane and spilling tea along the way, I’m gonna point out that many of us who got those C&Ds also worked hand in hand with Anne, her publisher, and her family business to promote her books and business dealings purely for the love of the fandom. I, personally, left a part-time job at a web company when they asked me to do what amounted to allowing them to profit off of Vampire Chronicles fanfic. When I told them that legally and ethically I could do no such thing they said I could do it or they’d find someone else. I said see ya. (AFAIK they never found someone else).

So the amount of respect those of us in fandom had for Anne’s work and right to profit off of her material was large. What changed in our case was when 1) Anne got some of the rights back to her characters which meant she could profit off of them in ways she couldn’t before and 2) she realized us fans and our fanworks made for GREAT free market research into what her personal company could try to profit off of. The most perfect example of this, and how Anne’s greed ruined so much, was the Talismanic Tour company which was created by fans, worked with Anne and her official biographer to come up with walking tours of New Orleans based on things from Anne’s life and books, fully had Anne’s blessing, then, once it proved successful, Anne gave THEM a C&D and created her own tours at ridiculously jacked up prices.

Karma being what it is, nobody wanted to pay for that bullshit and Anne’s tours ultimately failed. But since she used her lawyers to scare the fan business out of running this then became another example of why Anne is the reason the fandom can’t have nice things.

(Can you tell I have so much tea from the VampChron days? Oh Anne. Bless your fandom-destroying black heart.)

Making this more fandom general, the points to take away here are a few:

Sometimes it’s not about law, or what the law “should” be. If a well known author, or TPTB from a TV show or a movie studio sent you, personally, a C&D letter for your fanworks, would YOU have the ability to thumb your nose at it? Do you have the resources for that lawyer battle and possible court case? Or are you like us Anne Rice fans were, living meager paycheck to paycheck, and not having it in you to even put up the fight with your ISP, let alone a millionaire’s legal team?

The blessing of the original creators means nothing. They love us until they don’t. Relying on their goodwill to keep fanworks safe is like relying on the skills of the person driving you around to keep you out of an accident: sure it’s possible, but you wanna put that seatbelt on and hope the car has airbags just in case.

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real: Nature.com

So piracy is at worst not even a problem, and at best it's free advertisement.

Source: (the link to the actual study is in the article)

yeah ill give you that one

I don't need an inernet connection to access any files I already have on my device, or even to transfer them between devices

you don't have to Lend digital media, you can outright give it to as many people you care to anywhere on the planet with the click of a button, and never have to worry about getting it back

yeah ill give you that one

i can not stress enough how no corporation on the planet has the ability to revoke my access to any of the digital media i own because it's files on my hard drive and not something i am purchasing or accessing via proprietary platforms with drm

i dont need to buy anything half price secondhand because im not paying for most of this stuff, and anything i am paying for im paying for specifically to put money in the pockets of the people who made it

shabby-alonso asked: for classic novels, i would recommend Dream of Red Chamber, i think it might align with your tastes well!

Anonymous asked: have you read notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin? its a taiwanese classic

shmuel-ben-sarah-kcd2 asked: Yentl the Yeshiva Boy by I. B. Singer More queer Yiddish literature, I do love the movie too but the movie doesn’t fully convey the utter transness of Anshel.

Anonymous asked: For Argentinian classics I'd recommend Jorge Luis Borges! I recently finished one of his most well known collection "Ficciones" and enjoyed it :)

Anonymous asked: have you gotten to read brazilian classic lit yet? The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis is one that defined our literature. i recommend The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa as well.

jarenka asked: I recommend My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola for Nigerian lit. Utterly bizarre prose, 12/10.

kotitontunmanaaja asked: Sonewhat western book rec depending on your definition, but 'My Cat Yugoslavia' is definitely a modern Finnish classic by Finnish Kosovan author Pajtim Statovci - queer themes, some nice surreal imagery with and a nice layered structure of dual timelines in one family, questions about belonging, intergenerational trauma and refugee life and such. One of the books that got me reading again after a long time!

fatalwa asked: For book recs - I will double the author and the name in the original Ukrainian so you would have better chances of finding them: • The Yellow Prince (Жовтий князь) by Vasyl Barka (Василь Барка) • Do oxen low when mangers are full? (Чи ревуть воли як ясла повні?) by Ivan Bilyk and Panas Myrnyi (Іван Білик, Панас Мирний) • Clouds (Хмари) by Ivan Nechui-Levytskyi (Іван Нечуй-Левицький) • Я (Романтика) / I (Romantic) by Mykola Khvylovyi (Микола Хвильовий) • Enchanted Desna (Зачарована Десна) by Oleksandr Dovzhenko (Олександр Довженко) I don't really know what kind of literature you prefer so I decided to give 5 different recommendations for you to choose from.

Anonymous asked: Since you like Hesse, I'd definitely recommend Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight (Hungarian classic)

Anonymous asked: Since someone already mentioned Machado de Assis, i'll recommend then Os Sertões by Euclides da Cunha, i have never read it fully but it is sure considered a brazilian classic

inferubim asked: Check out "Blindness", by Portuguese author José Saramago!

Anonymous asked: Brazilian here! About reading a classic from every country, I'd heavily recommend Alexandre e Outros Heróis by Graciliano Ramos! It's one of his lesser known books but it is excellent. He is one of the best writers in the history of my country. It's also, in my opinion, his best book!

🌈 Queer Books Coming Out in October 2025 🌈

Good afternoon, my bookish bats! Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books coming out in October that you can add to your TBR. Happy reading! 🌈

What was the last queer book you read? ❓

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

Student: I can’t find any scholarly articles on this subject!

Me: Okay, what’s the subject?

Student: Creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies.

Me: Alright, and what/where have you tried searching?

Student: I searched “creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies” on the library website!

Me:

And don’t say “they should have learned in [previous level of university education].” Do you think every person continues education within a few years of their first degree? THEY DON’T. Even if they did get a then-good introduction to research, you think nothing changed between 2008 and 2018? How about the doctoral student I met today whose last degree–and last experience with academic libraries–was in 1996? How about the guy in my master’s cohort who got his bachelor’s degree in 1987?

Because look. See that very specific topic the student wanted? There may or may not be actual scholarly articles about it. But here are a few things you can do:

First, zoom out. Start broad. Pick a few phrases or keywords, like “tech companies” and “culture.” See what comes up.

Actually, back up. First, does your library’s website search include articles, or do you have to go into a database? My library’s website searches some of our 200+ databases, but not all. And you’ll need to find (in advance search or adjustable limiters that pop up after your initial search) how to limit your search to scholarly and/or peer-reviewed articles.

What other keywords are related or relevant? For the search above, you could use a combination of “silicon valley,” “company/ies” or “organization/s,” “sharing,” “collaborative,” “workplace culture,” “social culture,” “organizational culture,” and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

Did you find something that looks promising? Great! What kind of subjects/keywords are attached (usually to the abstract, sometimes in the description section of the online listing)? Those can give you more ideas of what to search. Does it cite any articles? Look at those! Some databases (ilu ProQuest) will also show you a selection of related/similar articles.

If you’re researching a very specific topic, you may not find any/many articles specifically about your subject. You may, for example, have to make do with some articles about west-coast tech companies’ work cultures, and different articles about creating sharing/collaborative environments.

And here’s what I’ve got to add:  

Ask a Librarian

Seriously guys librarians are here to help. We would love to help you find the right resource for your particular informational need and we’ve been trained to do so as efficiently and effectively as possible. Nowadays you don’t even have to go to the library in person as many libraries offer online chat services as well as the option to contact via email. Further, and I think very importantly we are dedicated to our patrons rights to privacy. To quote the American Library Association the “rights of privacy are necessary for intellectual freedom and are fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship.”  

Search the Stacks

This is one of my favorite ways  to immerse myself in an area of study. While a good subject or keyword search will lead you to some good results sometimes is just as fruitful to go the library and plunk yourself down in section and browse all the books in a topic area. Libraries will label the (book)stacks based on whichever classification system they use and you can use the links below to figure out which area of the stacks you’ll want to look through.

Dewey: used in public libraries

LOC /Library of Congress: classification system used in university libraries

http://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit03/libraries03_04.phtml

Online Books

Some websites like gutenberg project are dedicated to making public domain books accessible to the public. Using the search term public domain books is a good way to go about looking for more sources of them. Open sourced is another good term to use when trying to find freely accessible books online and that’s not just limited to fiction books but textbooks are also offered by various sites.

Project Gutenberg is an online archive of tens of thousands of  books that have enter the public domain that can be freely accessed.

Openstax is one website that provides access to Higher Ed and AP open sourced textbooks.

Libguides and Pathfinders

As stated above librarians are in the business of connecting people to resources. If we can’t do so in person then we also do so by creating guides that can be found and used when we aren’t around. These guides are filled with search terms, books, articles, reviews, lists, links, and anything else we think would be helpful for patrons trying to explore a particular topic area. 

Pathfinder is a particular term used for these guides. Libguides is a particular platform which to host these guides. Using either word at the end of your search terms online will bring up guides that have been created in that particular subject area. Or you can explore libguides directly with your search terms to find what guides librarians across the country have created.

Note: Using pathfinder in your search terms may pull up resources about Paizo Publishing’s same titled tabletop RPG series and while dragons are cool you can modify your search to library pathfinder to exclude these resources.

Other than using a search engine or libguides directly I find a great many pathfinders on university library sites. Usually what I do is find a university’s library webpage, find their pathfinder/research guides/guides section, and then browse through their lists of guides. These are generally organized by field of study so just pick the one you are interested in and look through the resources they have listed.

Some of the resources will be accessible for anyone while some might be locked for students of the particular university.  If the article, book, or resource is locked by a school portal you can either search for it online outside of the university portal or you can go to your own university/public library to see if they have access to the resource there. Even if they don’t have it currently in their collection libraries are often connected with other branches and may be able to request an interlibrary loan of what you need.

Online Reference Resources

Sometimes the problem isn’t finding information but finding good information. Below are two sites that I use regularly to help me with this issue when searching online for resources.

The Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association gives a list of the best free reference sites on the internet

The Ipl2 is a good authoritative source to find general information on a variety of topics. Even though the website is no longer updating there are still a plethora of subject guides that can be explored.

Open Sourced Journals and Articles

Just as there are open sourced books and textbooks so too are there open sourced journals and articles available. Again  you can add the term open sourced when searching for these resources.

DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals and you can search through here to find both articles and journals freely available to access.

Journal Article Tips

Finally whenever I’m searching through journal articles there are a few things I always like to keep in mind.

Build context. Once you find an article that is relevant to your search you can do this by exploring the citations. Both those that the article you are using references in its bibliography and those that reference the article itself. 

Every database is going to do this differently but generally with a few clicks you can find out who has cited an article that you have read. If nothing else try popping the title of your article into google scholar and you’ll see a blue ‘Cited by’ below the description. Also in some cases you can click on the author directly in a database to see what else they have written in the subject. Totally ask your librarian for help navigating the particular database you are using again they will be stoked to do so. 

Building this context of literature by finding and reading these extra articles is important to building a critical understanding of your topic and will allow you to build the best possible defense of your arguments. This will also allow you to see if the article you’ve initially selected is in itself a viable position or if it is an outlier of its field.

In an average day, I see seven to eight students. Half of them are there, having booked a full hour, for what they think will be this monumental task. It takes me maybe fifteen minutes to teach them how to use key words, what and where the databases are, and the differences between the types.

I wish it were just the freshies, but it’s not. I’ve had students in grad programs coming in for help because their professors won’t allow them to Google sources. I’ve started making a point to run through how to use the databases during my class visits to let students know about tutoring services. And don’t get me started on how many students think ASKING OUR RESEARCH LIBRARIANS FOR HELP IS JUST A VEILED WAY TO SAY “GO BOTHER THEM”.

I’m halfway to my wit’s end with it. Why my university doesn’t have a required research lit class, particularly since they’re trying to be an up-and-coming research university, is beyond me.

PS: @commasameleon It’s not taught in American Universities or Colleges because there’s a general assumption that they learned how to do all of this in high school.