Notices by John Mark Ockerbloom (jmarkockerbloom@mastodon.social)

@nemobis @ntnsndr Yeah, talk to cataloging librarians, and you'll hear some stories.

I don't know your criteria for co-ops (I haven't read all you've published on them) but I generally assume that a requirement for a true co-op is that members choose the governing officials, or at least a controlling share of them. That's not the case with OCLC. (There's a council chosen by libraries, but it's subordinate to the board of directors, where the majority of seats are *not* electable by council.)

@ntnsndr I read your last question as a cautionary check on what precedes it, since while what you proposed sounds appealing in some ways, it does *not* describe OCLC as it exists (though it might describe it as some would like or had hoped it would be).

From LB: "In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike....

The Foundation has spent twenty years telling donors it is not like other tech companies. The union drive is the moment when that claim either becomes true or admits it was always marketing." https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-is-doing-the-capitalist-thing-56a393232943

@Gargron Thanks! I'll take your word that that's what it's meant to do, but do you know why I seem to be seeing different behavior?

("Trending now" doesn't appear in my lower right corner regardless of whether I have it checked. I'm using the web interface in Firefox on a Mac laptop, which may have less vertical real estate than some other displays. "Trending" does appear near upper right in either case. And I was seeing unsolcited trending posts in my main timeline until I unchecked.)

If you're getting more posts in your timeline than you're used to, and wondering why some don't seem to be from or via people or hashtags you follow, check your preferences to see if "Show today's trends" is checked. You can uncheck it to make those posts go away.

(Some folks have this checked when they're not yet seeing much from folks they follow. Unchecking it doesn't get rid of the 'Trending" link you can click on in the right column, but it does stop adding them to your default timeline.)

"Amid occasional applause from passersby, as National Parks workers restored the panels, an unnamed employee said, 'It’s our honor.'"

The slavery exhibit is going back up at the President's House at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia: https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-presidents-house-slavery-exhibit-restored/. (The Trump administration is also appealing the judge's order to restore it.)

"Florida A&M University says banning the word Black from a law student’s Black History Month flyer was a mistake, the result of an 'overly cautious interpretation' of a Florida law that prohibits DEI initiatives in higher education."

According to the story, Florida A&M is "the state’s sole public historically Black university".

https://www.daytonatimes.com/news/famu-banning-black-from-black-history-month-flyer-was-a-mistake/article_8a4e8ccd-7bef-4317-8937-26ef8790793c.html

#USPol #HigherEd #BlackHistoryMonth

@mike @acdha But it he's really defending a "philosophy" and not a "philosopher", then why does his headline, and much of his article, focus on the "philosopher"? Why can't the "philosophy", which as far as I can tell has no defendable reason to be dependent on any particular person, be championed and defended in its own right? (And if it can't, or hasn't, is the philosophy really as sound as claimed?)

@inthehands Though it's worth noting that in Philadelphia the office of sheriff is *not* in charge of law enforcement generally (that's the job of the police commissioner, appointed by the mayor). The sheriff handles things like tax sales, court security, and warrant management.

It's an elected office that hasn't had the best reputation lately (due to recurring corruption). I'm not surprised our current sheriff would be more willing to take a locally popular stand against ICE than our police.

"Last week, the Library sent its staff a newsletter acknowledging the precarious financial situtuation faced by many of its workers - not to offer support, but to encourage workers to forego Christmas presents this year."

Grace Blakely reports on striking workers at the British Library, who are "no longer willing to accept payment in 'prestige'." https://graceblakeley.substack.com/p/you-should-be-honoured-to-work-here

Google stopped letting owners of early Nest themostats remotely control their devices last month. But it's still remotely collecting extensive surveillance data from them: https://www.theverge.com/news/820600/google-nest-learning-thermostat-downgraded-data-collection #privacy

As of now, all 76 replies on Mozilla's AI feature announcement on its own forum are "don't do this" (the majority) or at the very least "don't force users into it": https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/building-ai-the-firefox-way-shaping-what-s-next-together/td-p/109922

The response at Hacker News is more mixed, though it's not clear how many pro-AI folks there use Firefox as their primary browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45926779

I'm not sure why Mozilla persists with what its user base doesn't want, but they'll alienate much of it if they make AI hard to avoid.

Info on tomorrow's #NoKings rally in Center City Philadelphia: https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/no-kings-protest-philadelphia-road-closures-start-time-location-20251017.html Plan your trip there keeping in mind there's also a bike ride closing streets in the morning, and that SEPTA Regional Rail can't handle big weekend crowds even when they have all their railcars online.

There's also a rally in Mount Airy and elsewhere in NW Philly, and others in Philly suburbs.

There are many more across the US. Look here to find one near you: https://www.nokings.org/

The ADL took down its glossary of extremism after Trump-aligned figures objected to its description of Turning Point USA: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/adl-deletes-extremism-database-after-receiving-backlash-for-including-charlie-kirks-turning-point-usa/

The Wayback Machine has a partial copy of the glossary, at least for now. It doesn't look like they crawled everything (and the search doesn't work): https://web.archive.org/web/20250403100909/https://extremismterms.adl.org/search

The ADL's description of TPUSA elsewhere has also changed significantly. Compare
present version: https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/turning-point-usa with a December version: https://web.archive.org/web/20250121192850/https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/turning-point-usa

Update: Delaware, Maryland and Vermont have now also joined the Northeast Public Health Collaborative, announced earlier today. There's already a Wikipedia page for it, which is keeping track of which states are in, with references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Public_Health_Collaborative (There's also a page for the West Coast Health alliance, a similar organization of the 3 contiguous-US Pacific coast states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Health_Alliance )

Today's press release announcing the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. "The group’s shared goal is to protect the health, safety and well-being of all residents by providing information based on science, data, and evidence, while working to ensure equitable access to vaccines, medications and services." https://www.mass.gov/news/several-northeastern-states-and-americas-largest-city-announce-the-northeast-public-health-collaborative.

It includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as the NYC health department.

The White House's "Make America Healthy Again" report cites papers that appear not to exist:

"Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed... as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her... she was surprised to hear of the citation. She does study mental health and substance use, she said. But she didn’t write the paper listed."

NOTUS couldn't find the paper in the cited journal, and I've verified the claimed DOI doesn't resolve: https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-again-report-citation-errors

While I can't say for sure at this point how the report was written, the fabrication of nonexistent papers (as well as the citation of actual papers for claims they don't support) is a common behavior of "AI" large language model-based text generators. (Such applications can be very good at outputting convincing-sounding text, but cannot be considered reliable or scientifically supportable.)

Nearly 1000 Yale faculty so far have signed a letter to the university's administration urging it to stand firm against "extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom". The last of the 6 actions urged in the letter is to "work purposefully and proactively with other colleges and universities in collective defense". https://sites.google.com/view/yalefacultyletter2025/home #HigherEd #USPol

Our library has access to a book published by Springer, _Advanced Nanovaccines for Cancer Immunotherapy: Harnessing Nanotechnology for Anti-Cancer Immunity_. Credited to Nanasaheb Thorat, it sells for $160 in hardcover: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-86185-7

From page 25: "It is important to note that as an AI language model, I can provide a general perspective, but you should consult with medical professionals for personalized advice..."

None of this book can be considered trustworthy.

(h/t @peterpur )