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Newsroom
6 days ago
- Business
- Newsroom
How to destroy 500,000 books
The trucks and the industrial strength paper shredders with rows of 330 sharp-toothed knives on spherical roller bearings operated by hydraulic drives are set to roll out this week and destroy 500,000 books from the National Library—an end point in a long, controversial policy which will forever be regarded by many critics with despair and disgust. Objections to the massive cull managed to prevent the shipping of the books to the Internet Archive. Instead, the books will be destroyed on New Zealand soil. The library announced on Wednesday, 'We have decided to securely dispose of the remaining items, starting immediately.' The speed of it came too fast for any further challenges from Book Guardians Aotearoa (BGA), which gained the support of Helen Clark and Chris Finlayson in its various attempts over the years to keep the books intact. 'They're trying to make it a fait accompli – people who are honest and honourable don't have to rush at things like this sneakily, they know they are doing wrong,' said Warwick Jordan, owner of the secondhand bookstores Hard to Find. He offered to buy the original consignment of 600,000 unwanted books for $160,000 (plus GST). He wrote to the Library in 2020 to outline his proposal. 'They never ever showed any interest in even discussing it.' ReadingRoom spoke with Mark Crookston, the National Library's director of content services, on Friday afternoon. The only object of the interview was to determine the physical intimacies of shredding or destroying 500,000 books, the largest number of culled books in the history of the government's archive library. He said: 'Things are ready to go.' Commercial providers are set to collect 200,000 books from the Wellington premises, and the remaining 300,000 from Whanganui, held in a former police facility. BGA and its allies have tried to stop this happening for six years. In an email, BGA spokesperson Michael Pringle said, 'We suspect that the books will be burnt or, more likely, end up in landfill, as they cannot be recycled as the covers would have to be ripped off. A most symbolic end for them: rotting in a hole in the ground, like so much intellectual life in New Zealand.' Mark Crookston from the National Library said, 'My understanding is that there's recycling at the end of the process.' Industrial shredders include the Twin Shaft Shredder Genox M Series-M300-1200. Its strong blades manufactured from high quality steels are suitable for shredding tough materials. 'Successive governments (both National and Labour-led) have supported this appalling decision all the way to the final destruction of the books,' said Michael Pringle. 'BGA is very sad that it has come to this, and sees it as a severe blow to our national culture and heritage, and to independent scholarship and research. It's not what national and state libraries in the other democratic countries of the world are doing – they are increasing not decreasing their collections – and it exemplifies the lack of interest in and support for arts, heritage, culture and independent research which has been typical of every New Zealand government in the 21st century.' Mark Crookston was asked about the readiness of the 500,000 books to be destroyed. He said, 'Some will be in boxes, some will still be shelves near the loading docks. Some may have already started going. And the providers will take them to where their machinery is. It's a secure document destruction certified process.' Warwick Jordan from Hard to Find claimed, 'They are NOT recycling them. They are going to landfill. Recycling requires all plastic covers to be removed and treated separately – I guarantee no-one is doing that. The whole thing's a lie. Got anyone with a camera who can follow the trucks? They will be going to landfill.' The identity of the commercial firm which will destroy the 500,000 books is confidential. They may have access to a machine such as the Wiema ZM 40 four-shaft shredder. Its cutting configuration comes with two cutting shafts. The shafts can be configured according to the desired particle size, and the width of cutting discs can be variably adapted. Pringle from BGA said, 'The collections of the National Library were built up over successive generations by such great librarians as Geoffrey Alley. To see their destruction now at the hands of those who understand so little of our culture, heritage and history is a grievous act of cultural vandalism, which future generations of New Zealanders will lament.' Crookston from the National Library said, 'It's not something we've taken undertaken lightly but that message has been quite hard to sort of get across.' The library dumped a tranche of 50,000 books at a Lions Club sale in Trentham in 2020. Jordan flew down and bought 50 boxes, stored in two shipping containers at the back of his Auckland store. He told the National Library that year, 'About two thirds of them are useful to us which indicates that about 400,000 of the 600,000 books you want to destroy would likely be useful too.' He estimated the total retail value was 'in the millions', although it would take a long, long time to achieve that. He wrote to the National Library in 2020, 'Just housing 600,000 books would be a big ask for us but it feels like my duty to try and find a way, and if you are serious about them getting to the most homes and being preserved for future generations we are probably the only real option.' The process of shredding books is called hogging. Books go up a conveyor belt and into a chute, where they come out ground. Then the shredded books are baled and sold to paper mills to be turned into other types of paper products. 'Once destroyed,' said Pringle from BGA, 'this taonga collection can never be put back together. It is lost to New Zealand forever.' The National Library's Crookston sounded quite wan in his interview on Friday afternoon. He was asked, 'How are you feeling? Are you OK? You sound kind of tired.' 'It's been a long week,' he said. 'Has it been full-on getting the books ready to destroy?' 'It's more–I'd just rather not say. It's just–I've just had to talk to a lot of people about this process and a lot of people have been really upset about it.' 'Thank God it's Friday, eh?' 'Indeed.'
Engadget
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
The Internet Archive modernizes its GeoCities GIF search engine
The Internet Archive made it easier to search for '90s-era GIFs. GifCities contains millions of animations from the decade of flannel shirts and Soup Nazis. The GIFs were pulled from old GeoCities webpages, which (mostly) bit the dust in 2009. The new version of GifCities is much easier to search. You can now search semantically, based on the animation's content. In other words, it's much more likely to bring up the topic or scene you're looking for by describing it. In GifCities' old version, you could only search by file name. (If you're feeling masochistic, you can still access that version under a "Special search" tab.) The updated GifCities also now uses pagination. That's a good thing, as the old version's infinite scrolling could make for slow browsing. You can also create and share "GifGrams." As the name suggests, these are custom e-greetings made from those ancient GIFs. The Internet Archive launched GifCities in 2016 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. If you're too young to know, GeoCities was the quintessential early internet web-hosting service. A precursor to social media, it was full of embarrassing fan pages, personal photo albums and "Under construction" GIFs. (You'll find plenty of the latter in this search engine.) Yahoo pulled the plug on most of GeoCities in 2009. (Disclosure: That's Engadget's parent company.) However, the Japanese version survived for another decade. If you're of a certain age, you'll likely enjoy browsing the archive. (Or, learn what passed for internet humor before you were born!) Just note that many results are NSFW. I made the mistake of searching for "Mr. T," and I will now leave you to douse my eyes with bleach.
1News
12-06-2025
- Politics
- 1News
National Library to dispose of 500,000 books from overseas collection
The National Library is set to dispose of half a million books from its foreign books collection to make room for more items about New Zealand. The initial decision - made over six years ago - was met with public backlash. While a fraction of the books were saved, the rest will be pulped from today. 'There are compelling reasons to remove them,' National Library's Mark Crookston told Breakfast. 'It's a decision not taking lightly, they come from a lending collection, which is no longer being lent. 'Only 1% of the items were being lent in the years leading up to the decision in 2018. Over 80% have not been lent for 20 years.' ADVERTISEMENT But author Harry Ricketts, who's been fighting against the cull, says he's 'miffed' at the decision. 'It's partly a generational thing, someone like me comes from a generation in which [believes] - like the character in Ian Forster's Howards End – 'books', said Margaret, 'move by the holy word'. 'The physical object of a book is particularly important. 'The idea that somehow only 'our' books – what are 'our' books? – should be preserved – seems a rather dodgy criteria.' Crookston said it was just 'good collection management' to not retain lending collection items much longer than they are required to be lent. 'This is just basic library practice that we learn in library school collection management 101.' 'They're just taking up space and taking up resources that can be better utilised for collections that are wanted.' ADVERTISEMENT The books are currently being stored in number of locations in Wellington and Whanganui. Crookston estimated the volume of items would take up 'the square metreage of approximately a third of a rugby field.' Internet Archive agreement scrapped In December 2018, the then Minister of Internal Affairs approved the National Library's request to remove the items under the National Library of New Zealand Act. An agreement was then made with the Internet Archive to export the remaining items to their offshore digitisation base, to provide online access as well as retain physical copies. However, Crookston said the library has now withdrawn from this agreement. "Responding to subsequent concerns about copyright issues, the National Library paused this project and now have withdrawn from this agreement." ADVERTISEMENT The remaining disposal options included transfer, sale, donation and destruction. 'While 15,000 collection titles have been transferred to other libraries, the experience with donating approximately 50,000 titles to book fairs in 2020 resulted in a modest pick-up from the public which reinforced the purpose of disposal in the first place.' The National Library said from 2017 to 2020, less than 1% of the items involved were borrowed. "Most of the titles have not been issued for the last 20 to 30 years," it said.
Eyewitness News
06-06-2025
- General
- Eyewitness News
US cuts food aid to 36,000 children in Lesotho
It is 8:23am in the highlands of Semonkong. Learners line up at Ha Samuel Primary School for their morning porridge. Many of them would not have had breakfast were it not for the school's food scheme. Over 20% of the Lesotho population is at risk of not having enough food. Rates of childhood stunting due to malnutrition are high. Many children are from child-headed households. 'For some of them, lunch at school is the last meal of the day,' said one teacher. Ha Samuel is among 200 schools fed by Bokamoso Ba Bana, a programme funded for $28.5-million (M511.2-million) over five years by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). (One loti (M) is equal to one South African Rand.) Run by Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a US-based humanitarian organisation, the programme was designed to support more than 36,000 children from 2022 until 2027. Minister of Education Ntoi Rapapa has estimated that the project feeds 17% of primary school learners in Lesotho. But GroundUp has learned that the USDA has abruptly cut its funding of the programme. CRS issued a global announcement (removed from their website following GroundUp questions, but still on the Internet Archive) on 21 May that more than 780,000 children in 11 countries will be affected by the cuts to their food programmes. But schools in Lesotho say they have not been formally told the programme will end. We spoke to seven teachers at three schools — Ha Samuel, St Leonard Primary School in Semonkong, and Senqu Anglican in Mokhotlong. They had heard rumours that the programme might end, but no official confirmation. Matlhokomelo Liporo, who manages feeding at Ha Samuel, said she was told by a CRS staff member that 'they might not come back after winter break because of President Trump's aid cuts'. A teacher at St Leonard Primary, Mojapela Ramothibe, said the school's 630 students relied heavily on these meals. 'Now they are full, attentive, and participate more in class without worrying about hunger,' he said. 'CRS never lets the storerooms run dry.' His colleague, 'Mampho Ntlhanngoe, noted that CRS also trained schools to grow their own vegetables and provided seeds to the school. 'We improved on self-reliance,' she said. But other foodstuffs that they cannot grow are still needed. CRS Country Representative Kris Ozar confirmed that the programme will end, but said they are 'still trying to understand the implications and next steps' and are working to communicate with their partners. The cuts to the food programme are among a raft of drastic measures taken by the US government in recent months, decimating Lesotho's health sector, particularly the HIV response. Last week, a US Congressional delegation led by Katherine Bowles from the Senate Appropriations Committee visited the country to assess the broader impact of American aid in the country and 'inform decisions by the US Senate'. MORE THAN JUST MEALS Beyond providing meals, CRS also partnered with the Lesotho College of Education to offer 25 annual scholarships between 2024 and 2026 to preschool teachers from the targeted districts to study for Early Childhood Education certificates at the college. The project also aimed to invest in the local economy. Over its five-year lifecycle, it would procure 3,050 tonnes of food including beans, leafy greens, and eggs from regional and local farmers, in addition to the 6,950 tonnes of US-donated staples like maize meal. School infrastructure was also improved under the project. Ha Samuel previously had no toilets, forcing students and teachers to use the surrounding bushes. But CRS built proper sanitation facilities and provided sanitary pads, enabling girls to attend school during their periods. 'They even trained boys about menstruation,' Liporo said. 'Now, a boy will come asking for a pad to help a classmate whose dress got blotted. That confidence and empathy didn't exist before.' With the programme now cut, teachers worry they will have to rely once again on the under-resourced and poorly managed government feeding scheme. 'We will go back to our old problems,' said 'Mammenyane Thatho of St Leonard. 'Many kids come to school hungry, expecting their first meal here.' 'Mabafokeng Mothibi, in Semonkong, who works with a cooperative of other farmers to supply 46 schools in the area, said the programme's termination spells disaster for local farmers. 'Almost every vegetable farmer here was involved in the project supply chain,' she said. She says she helped resource-poor farmers in the area with seedlings and would later split sales revenue with them. From other farmers she would buy vegetables at M10 per kilogram. In total, Mothibi and her colleagues supplied almost a tonne of green vegetables to different schools every month. 'Many farmers expanded production in anticipation of supplying schools under the CRS project. Now they will be stuck with unsold crops on their fields if the project does not continue,' she said. Cooks are also worried about their livelihoods. Under CRS, cooks earned about M3,200 per month, more than double the M1,500 they were paid under the government feeding programme in the past. GOVERNMENT ASSURES CONTINUITY Lesotho's Principal Secretary for Education Ratšiu Majara insists the government can absorb the loss and continue with the programme. 'We are aware of the termination,' he told GroundUp. 'But the school feeding programme existed before, and I guarantee that children in Semonkong, Thaba-Tseka, and Mokhotlong will continue to get their meals.' The government allocates about M240-million annually for school feeding and receives additional support from the World Food Programme (WFP). In 2024, WFP received €600,000 (M11,936.486) from Monaco and about M25-million from Japan to boost Lesotho's school feeding programme. But teachers and feeding managers at primary schools are sceptical. They say that when they were previously under the government programme, they frequently ran out of food. 'Attendance would drop,' Ramothibe recalled. 'Some kids only came to school to eat.' Liporo said many children walked for up to two hours to get to school at Ha Samuel on an empty stomach, only to find no food upon arrival. This article first appeared on GroundUp. Read the original article here.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ohio universities are closing their LGBTQ+ centers to comply with a state DEI ban
Multiple universities in Ohio have announced that they will be closing their LGBTQ+ student centers to comply with a state ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Keep up with the latest in + news and politics. Senate Bill 1, which is set to go into effect on June 27, doesn't just impose a sweeping DEI ban on state universities, but also restricts their ability to "endorse or oppose, as an institution, any controversial belief or policy, except on matters that directly impact the institution's funding or mission of discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge." Related: What is DEI, what does it mean, and why are companies really getting rid of it? As a result, several colleges have shuttered their LGBTQ+ centers and related services. Ohio State University has so far closed two DEI offices, cut 16 staff positions, and took down its website offering support to LGBTQ+ students. The link is now deactivated, though the Internet Archive shows the page was active as recently as May 25, as reported by Signal Ohio. The University of Toledo has also discontinued nine undergraduate majors in response to the bill, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. Meanwhile, Kent State University announced that it would be shutting down "several identity-based centers," such as its LGBTQ+ Center, Women's Center, and Student Multicultural Center. KSU is also ending its LGBTQ+ Living-Learning Community, which allowed queer students to live together, while stating "all other university academically based Living-Learning Communities will continue within our residence hall system." "We understand these centers and the Living-Learning Community have been powerful sources of connection, support and growth, and we acknowledge the emotional and personal impact this change may have on many members of our community," wrote Eboni Pringle, KSU's senior vice president for student life. Related: Iowa State students hold 'funeral' for LGBTQ+ center shut down by anti-DEI bill The ACLU of Ohio has maintained that the law violates students' and universities' freedom of speech, with Policy Director Jocelyn Rosnick saying in a statement that "as students nationwide witness the ongoing assaults against their First Amendment rights, it is disheartening to see Ohio's own legislators follow suit in this dangerous pattern of stifling political discourse." "By dismantling DEI structures, Senate Bill 1 sends a clear, harmful message to students that their unique backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives are not welcome in Ohio," Rosnick said. "Further, the exceedingly vague and contradictory language regarding the banning of so-called 'controversial beliefs or policies' creates a slippery slope for faculty and administration. This could lead to faculty avoiding any such topics in classrooms for fear of retaliation." "Institutions of higher education must remain places where academic freedom and diversity can foster – not be censored," she said.
