libraries

How Libraries Are Fighting Fake News

Fake news is as old as Bigfoot. But social media and the president have fueled its recent proliferation.
BY  | FEBRUARY 28, 2017

Less than seven miles from the White House, where President Trump has popularized the term "fake news," residents in a suburban Maryland library gathered recently to learn how to not be duped themselves.

“Social media is a common theme here because you see things being shared over and over again,” Ryan O’Grady, media producer and director of the Maryland State Library Resource Center, told the audience. “Just because something is popular doesn’t make it true.”

The program, which O’Grady is running at several libraries in Maryland’s Montgomery County, is in response to the recent explosion of unverified, unsourced and sometimes untrue information that purports itself as news. The program aims to educate residents about how to spot fake news.

While it's not a recent phenomenon -- the Bigfoot myth goes back centuries, and fabricated stories abounded when emailing was new, for example -- fake news played a prominent role in the 2016 presidential election and continues to do so in the new administration. Sites like Facebook and Twitter give fake news outlets a platform to reach more people than they would otherwise be able to. Once the misinformation is out there, it can spread quickly, often before users even read or verify a story

New Library in Seattle Tries a Novel Idea: Books

In Seattle, a new private library -- the first of its kind in a century -- is based on the throwback idea of having a quiet place to read.
BY  | FEBRUARY 2016

These days, public libraries are as likely to have video production studios and 3-D printers as they are shelves of books. One library in San Diego is pushing things even further, with a new biotech lab, where patrons can examine cells under microscopes and even extract and copy DNA.

But in Seattle, a new private library is offering a surprising old-fashioned amenity: a quiet place to sit and read a book.

Called Folio, the nonprofit membership library opened last month, just a block from the city’s Rem Koolhaas-designed public library, with about 300 members. Well-established “athenaeum” libraries -- institutions devoted to literary or scientific study, like the libraries in Boston; Providence, R.I.; and elsewhere -- can boast 200-year-old collections and cultivate somewhat of an elite status.

But Folio, which bills itself as the first new athenaeum library in more than a century, has memberships as low as $10 a month, and its chief aim is to be a place where book lovers and writers can congregate -- albeit quietly.