Physical library visits fell from 214.6m to 59.7m in the year to March 2021, a drop of 72%, as Covid-19 restrictions shut branches for much of the 12-month period. The closures also led to a major decline in the number of books borrowed. Unsurprisingly, the number of web visits grew – up by 18% to 154.7m. - The Guardian
"Broadway's mask and vaccination policy will remain in place through at least April 30, the most recent extension date for the policy announced last month. Broadway has required audience members to be be vaccinated and wearing a mask since its return last year." - Playbill
“It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose.” - The New York Times
"Edward Halealoha Ayau … and representatives of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency for native Hawaiians, are receiving the artifacts in four German cities — Berlin, Bremen, Göttingen and Jena — and Vienna." -The New York Times
Disney added 11.8 million Disney+ subscribers globally in the fiscal first quarter, topping the average analyst estimate of around 7 million, according to StreetAccount. - CNBC
"Tutankhamun represents an extremely narrow slice of Egyptian history; imagine if, in the year 4850, the world understood the United States largely through the Presidency of Millard Fillmore." - The New Yorker
While much of the current critique of AI is still framed by science fiction dystopias, the way it is being used now is increasingly dangerous. We now rely on machines to make decisions for us and thereby increasingly substitute data-driven calculations for human judgment. - MIT Sloan Review
The story of the index "is, on one level, a history of information science, but it's also a history of reading and writing and everything those actions entail — communication, learning and imagination, as well as competition, anxiety and no small amount of mischief." - The New York Times
The marble sculptures create both a physical barrier for the trawlers’ nets and a unique underwater museum, open to anyone either through arranged scuba diving tours or their own dive. - National Geographic
The rocker has sold "Every Breath You Take", "Roxanne", and the rest of his songs to Universal Music for a price believed to be up to $300 million. - The Guardian
"(There's) a growing number of historians who worry that Poland's ruling far-right government is trying to cover up the darker side of the country's past, including Polish complicity during the Holocaust, effectively silencing historians who veer from Poland's official narrative." - PRI's The World
By this point Dear Evan Hansen and In the Heights feel much farther away than West Side Story, Encanto, and Tick,Tick ... Boom!, but they all came out in 2021. And, writes Jackson McHenry, most of them came out better than had seemed the case a few months ago. - Vulture
Dancer and planetary science PhD student C. Adeene Denton: "Getting to set the first site-specific work on the International Space Station (was) a big pipe dream of mine … before I studied enough astronauts to realize that most of them beat me to it." - Dance Magazine
He has two more projects to finish for Steven Spielberg, and he says those will be his last movie scores. Not that he's retiring: he'll be doing more conducting in Europe and composing more concert works for the stars who love to perform them. - The New York Times
Anna Leporskaya's Three Figures (1932-34) was on loan from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow to the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Ekaterinburg when a new guard decided that two of those three figures should have eyes. - The Guardian
