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Weekly News Digest
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January 25, 2024 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Wiley Studies the Rise in Mental Health Issues Since the Pandemic
At the end of 2023, Wiley released the results of a survey in the report, “The Psychology Practitioner: Navigating High Demand, Burnout, and Telemedicine,” which finds that “[m]ental health practitioners are seeing an increasing number of patients since the pandemic, leading them to struggle with burnout and managing their own emotional health,” and thus “some patients may not be receiving the amount of care they need.” Wiley states, “Overall, 73% of practitioners surveyed noted an increase in their number of clients since the pandemic, and 55% said they are seeing a rise in clients requiring medication.”Wiley continues, “Practitioners don’t foresee these problems ending anytime soon; in fact, they believe the situation will worsen. Most (83%) feel that the number of people seeking mental/emotional health services will increase five years from now.” Practitioners are generally positive about using AI to help in their practice (82% say so), and 55% have used AI tools at work. For more information, read the press release.
Kudos Adds Publisher Partners for Its Sustainable Development Initiatives
Wiley, BMJ, Brill, Cabells, and Crossref have agreed to contribute to Kudos’ sustainable development initiatives, including its Sustainable Development Knowledge Cooperative. “Kudos helps the publishing sector act on and accelerate the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, in two [ways]. Firstly, Kudos helps publishers to identify, explain, showcase and promote research that is relevant to the Goals. Secondly, the company is launching a landmark piece of market research to explore the research sector’s needs in relation to SDG research and publications,” Kudos states.The existing publisher partners include Springer Nature, Sage, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Chemical Society, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. For more information, read the blog post/press release.
Gale Unveils New Archive on Three Centuries of Social Movements and Counterculture
Gale, part of Cengage Group, introduced Power to the People: Counterculture, Social Movements, and the Alternative Press, Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century, “a new digital archive that brings together materials that document the movements, events, individuals and grassroots organizations that worked to effect change in cultures and societies around the world. This unique collection offers a comprehensive view of the struggles and triumphs of activism over time, enabling users to make key connections and comparisons between past movements and the challenges humanity faces today.”The archive features primary sources such as pamphlets, magazines, newsletters, newspapers, leaflets, broadsides, manuscripts, and posters from periods of activism, including the civil rights movement, women’s suffrage, LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalism, and anti-war movements. For more information, read the press release.
The EveryLibrary Institute and Book Riot Publish Data on Libraries and Censorship
The EveryLibrary Institute and Book Riot issued their final report from the parent survey series they conducted in 2023 that “gathered insights from 3,206 parents and guardians with children under 18 across three surveys between September and November 2023. The surveys asked parents and guardians about their perception of librarians’ trustworthiness as professionals and curators of a library collection and their attitudes toward books and book bans.” The report is designed to “inform librarians about curating content and creating policies that align with community values and expectations, as well as inform policymakers and educators about making decisions that reflect the actual views of parents rather than those of special interest groups.”The EveryLibrary Institute also published a white paper, “Demographics of Book Bans” (download required), which “analyzes the characteristics of towns, cities, counties, and school districts experiencing high instances of book ban and censorship activity in public libraries or school libraries.” The white paper “shows that efforts to ban books and censor content in school libraries and public libraries are predominantly found in more privileged areas—white, wealthy, educated, and employed—and driven by fear of societal changes and loss of traditional privileges.” For more information, read the news item.
The Library of Congress Calls for Oral Histories of the Pandemic
In partnership with StoryCorps, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress is building an audio archive about people’s experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The public is encouraged to record their story or interview someone else by following the instructions and reviewing the tips on the Archive Activation website.“By creating a tool to collect and preserve Americans’ pandemic experiences, the Library of Congress is honoring those who lost loved ones to COVID-19, those who worked on the frontlines of the pandemic, and those who were, and continue to be, impacted during this unprecedented time in American history,” the Library of Congress states. This archive is part of the COVID-19 American History Project, “a Congressionally mandated initiative to document and archive Americans’ experiences with the pandemic.” For more information, read the press release.
MIT Technology Review Shares Its Top Tech for 2024
MIT Technology Review rounded up “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024,” stating, “Every year, we look for promising technologies poised to have a real impact on the world. Here are the advances that we think matter most right now.” They include more efficient solar panels, Apple’s Vision Pro headset, and gene-editing treatments.For more information, read the article.
The Scholarly Kitchen Blog Explores Racial Battle Fatigue
Maribel Gomez, a graduate student at George Washington University, writes the following in a guest post—“Mental Health Awareness: What Is Racial Battle Fatigue?”—for The Scholarly Kitchen blog:Racial battle fatigue (RBF) is the cumulative outcome of a natural stress response related to race, triggered by distressing mental and emotional conditions. These conditions arise from consistently encountering dismissive, demeaning, insensitive, and/or hostile racial environments or individuals. Coined by William Smith in 2004, the term was initially associated with African American men, but has since been extended to encompass racially marginalized groups more broadly. The daily experience of micro and macro aggressions in various settings inflicts race-targeted stress on people of color. … The distress arises from the paradox of working diligently to overcome systemic barriers while simultaneously bearing the burden of heightened expectations. Individuals frequently navigate a delicate balance, investing additional effort to meet the demands of work or other domains. Unfortunately, this pursuit often takes a toll on their well-being and mental health. For more information, read the blog post.
OverDrive Launches Big Movie Watch, a Kanopy Film Club
OverDrive is expanding on its Big Library Read ebook club to create Big Movie Watch, wherein libraries in the U.S. and Canada that offer Kanopy can provide patrons with access to a new film club. The first one runs Feb. 5–19, 2024, and features the 2022 movie What’s Love Got to Do With It? starring Lily James. OverDrive created a page with marketing materials for libraries, including a programming guide and social media graphics, and the company suggests hosting a screening followed by a discussion group or holding a cooking class to prepare a dinner to eat while watching the movie, especially if the events tie into the movie’s emphasis on Pakistani culture.For more information, read the blog post.
Access Partnership Provides Predictions About the Use of AI at Work
Marcus Ng writes the following in “Tech Policy Trends 2024: Generative AI’s Impact on the Workforce” for Access Partnership:Generative AI’s potential will continue to appeal to businesses, governments, and investors. Despite early moves by some policymakers, the AI governance debate continues. Against this background, what impact will it have on the workforce? … There will continue to be a rise in demand for custom generative AI applications that are language- and enterprise-specific and can support knowledge-intensive activities in expert domains, such as healthcare and finance. … The use of generative AI as a creative and problem-solving tool will grow significantly, throughout the innovation process and across all industry use cases. For more information, read the article.
Updates for European Union-Based Meta Users From The Verge
Jon Porter writes the following in “Meta Will Let EU Users Unlink Their Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger Info Ahead of DMA” for The Verge:EU [European Union] users will be able to unlink their Instagram and Facebook accounts, as well as other Meta services ahead of the bloc’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA) coming into force in March, the company has announced. … The changes mean that EU users will be able to use many of Meta’s services without their information being shared between them. People will be able to use Facebook Messenger as a stand-alone service without a Facebook account, for example, and if they’ve previously linked their Facebook and Instagram accounts they’ll be able to unlink them. … Meta’s news follows a similar announcement from Google, which said earlier this month that it would let users stop the sharing of data between services like Search, Youtube, Google Maps, and Chrome. In both cases the changes are the result of the DMA, which fully takes effect on March 6th. Meta and Google’s holding company Alphabet were among the list of six companies designated as ‘gatekeepers’ under the DMA last September. For more information, read the article.
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Brandi Scardilli
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