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Donations of Personal Papers and the Law
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by George H. Pike
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There is an old Doonesbury comic strip in which the laid-back hippie Zonker Harris is confronting the tax consequences of his first actual job. Zonker proposes to his friends that he will donate his personal papers to the fictional Walden College—"some random comic books, a couple of draft notices"—and estimates their value at $2 million. "Easily." The punch line in the strip harkens back to when Richard Nixon was able to estimate a "collectable" value of his prepresidential personal papers and claim a charitable donation for a $500,000 deduction off of his tax bill.
Congress changed the law so that the only deductions allowed are for the actual value of donated papers (literally the cost of the paper, ink, toner, etc.), but that hasn't ended the legal and other challenges that archives, libraries, and museums face when they accept donations of personal or other papers.
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Organizations Team With ALA for the Unite Against Book Bans Campaign
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ALA recruited a coalition of 25-plus groups that aims "to empower individuals and communities to fight censorship and protect the freedom to read."
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'Thomson Reuters to Review Human Rights Impact of Its Data Collection for ICE' by Bill Budington
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Bill Budington writes the following for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): "EFF, along with many other organizations, has loudly sounded the alarm about data brokers and the myriad ways they can collect data on unsuspecting users, as well as the numerous dangers of public-private surveillance partnerships."
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The Scholarly Kitchen Looks at the Future of Academic Conferences
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Marco Marabelli writes the following for The Scholarly Kitchen: "Healthcare, I believe, taught us a very important lesson during COVID, as it served as a natural experiment in how current technologies were being underused before an impelling need required their adoption. And a similar consideration should apply to conferences."
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'Conservative Parents Take Aim at Library Apps Meant to Expand Access to Books' by David Ingram
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David Ingram writes the following for NBC News: "In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets and laptops."
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'Biden Announces Program Offering Discounted Internet Service' by Aamer Madhani and Will Weissert
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Aamer Madhani and Will Weissert write the following for the Associated Press (AP): "President Joe Biden announced [May 9] that 20 internet companies have agreed to provide discounted service to people with low incomes, a program that could effectively make tens of millions of households eligible for free service through an already existing federal subsidy."
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EDI Perspectives, Part 2
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by Gwen M. Gregory
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Gwen M. Gregory, associate dean for collections management at Northern Illinois University's Founders Memorial Library, writes a column for Information Today that explores issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI, sometimes referred to as DEI) in the information industry. Here's a look at her columns from September 2021 to March 2022.
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