Over the time you’ve seen a lot of bookshelves on Freshome, but what I’ve found today is really impressive. I was browsing Flickr and I found this beautiful example of organizing books by color and the smart guy that managed to do it, is user chotda. This is a very good way of changing the whole aspect of a bookshelf with a little bit of creativity. I guess you’ll have to pay more attention to the book’s cover from now on if you want to reproduce that effect and have your own rainbow bookshelf.
The New York Times has a readers comment section that has the following statement then question.
Susan Jacoby's new book bemoans the state of American culture. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential knowledge, she says, but they also don’t think it matters.
Why do you think Americans are perceived as being hostile to global knowledge?
Click here to see the NYT readers comment section.
The book by Susan Jacoby that the NYT is referring to is "The Age of American Unreason". Here is the review of the book in the Los Angeles Times.
If you're tired of using the same old search box on your local library website for research projects, it might be time to broaden your horizons. Try out one of these in-the-works betas sponsored by world-class libraries around the world. From academic libraries like that at MIT or renowned research centers like the Library of Congress, the following beta research tools feature innovative tricks to connect you with the most relevant, valid results on the Internet and in their card catalogs. Melvil Dewey would be proud.
Bad News For the Greater Victoria Public Library, where all 8 branches are expected to be closed indefinitely as of Sunday at 5 p.m. after the library board voted Wednesday to lock out unionized employees.
The move is the latest step in a five-month-long labour dispute between the Greater Victoria Labour Relations Association and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 410.
The labour dispute "is to the stage where the library can no longer operate viably," said library chief negotiator Ron Brunsden.
The 18th World Book Fair, the largest in the Afro-Asian region, showcasing books on youth and children kicked off in the Capital on Saturday.
The major attraction of the Book Fair is the presentation by Russia, which is the guest of honour country at the fair.
The other features of the fair are Youth Pavilion, Children Pavilion and the pavilion comprising books on and by Mahatma Gandhi.
While the Children pavilion will showcase everyday activities for and by children, the Youth Pavilion will conduct a variety of programmes for the youth.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony, Sahitya Academy Award winner and eminent writer Prof U R Anantha Murthy said the books have romance with them and they also grow with the readers provided the reader is tolerant, curious and have a sense of patriotism. "There are great writers and books in the languages that were not a part of mainstream. The languages need to be treated with respect. They need to be popular with masses," he said.
The Human Resources and Development Minister Arjun Singh, in a message, said "it is a cliché to say that books are man's best friend, but sometimes it is refreshing to repeat clichés because they carry the truths of life. The role of publishing industry coupled with the contribution of the writers, scientists, scholars etc is going to assume much greater significance," he said.
Marcus Banks Says he became firmly convinced that the traditional journal model is antiquated for sharing research and knowledge among librarians. A better course is to develop and nurture excellent blogs, with multimedia capabilities and guaranteed preservation of the postings. This could be an entirely new blog that starts from scratch, or an established journal that evolves into a blog.
In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine.
The idea is to give readers the opportunity to sample the books online in the same way that prospective buyers can flip through books in a bookstore.
UNESCO and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) invite everyone to propose an international Logo to identify the work on information literacy. The aim of creating this Logo is to make communication easier among those who carry out information literacy projects, their communities and societies in general. The Logo will be available free of charge and promoted as an international symbol of information literacy.
Our first attempt at recommending NON-Librarian blogs includes sites to make your life better, improve your finances, help you be a better marketer, and even one that lets you see other folks deepest darkest secrets. I've included the "honorable mention" list, and a few "see alsos" below. Our goal was to make a list of sites you can read to learn something new that doesn't entirely focus on libraries. Read on below to see why each site made the list. As always, if you don't like the list, supply your own, or let me know who we missed or who we should've left off.
In no particular order, here's more on each site, along with the runner ups.
I must admit, I Love Boing Boing. You never know what you're going to see on Boing Boing, from Unicorns and Bigfoot to DRM and the Creative Commons. They call it "a directory of wonderful things" and it certainly is. They're one of the most popular sites on any list for good reason, they set the trends.
Post Secret just barely beat out Cute Overload & Seen Reading in our "silly diversions" category. Post Secret is so compelling it's hard to pass up. PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
Did you know Patriots QB Tom Brady was once a cast member of The Brady Bunch? Snopes Knows The Truth. Just a bit more popular than Common Craft for "answers", at first glance you might think debunking urban myths is silly, but it doesn't take long until you'll realize this is reference work at it's finest.
I started LISNews 8 years ago because of Slashdot. There is no shortage of geek blogs out there, but Slashdot started it all. It's still one of the best places to keep up on news for nerds. I debated whether or not to make this a link to Doggdot instead of just Slashdot, but in the end figured Doggdot might be a bit too much. Slashdot is "news for nerds, stuff that matters." Often overlooked these days for newer sites like Digg, Slashdot still points the way to important tech news.
Seth Godin is marketing. Seth's popularity put him ahead of Scott and Experienceology for marketing blogs. There are quite a few marketing and customer service blogs out there, but Seth seems to be the most popular with LISNews readers, and for good reason. He's one of the most well known marketing gurus out there.
Do you ever leave your house? Do you ever buy anything? If you're a consumer, you should read The Consumerist, more practical than Freakonomics, their about page says it all: "We're biased towards the consumer. We favor bad company stories over happy customer tales. We're not anti-capitalist; we're anti-stupid-capitalist."
Perter Suber has been covering news from the open access movement for years. Open access is all about "Removing the barriers to serious research." Though a more general Academic Blog like Wired Campus might be a logical choice, a more focused blog proved to be the most popular choice.
Lifehacker: Tech tricks, tips and downloads for getting things done. More general than Google Tutor, It's blog on software and personal productivity recommends downloads, web sites and shortcuts that help you work smarter and save time. Hack your life, make it more livable.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit, I'm not sure I had ever seen Read Write Web before it was the most nominated site on this list, and one of the most read blogs in the world. They say they provide Web Technology news, reviews and analysis. It's a crowded field, to say the least, but they stand out with insightful and original posts. Just ahead of sites like Social Media, Weblogg-Ed, everythingismiscellaneous.com and Infodoodads.
Buried on page A17 of Wednesday's Washington Post is a bit of a non-surprise: President George W. Bush has effectively killed a position monitoring compliance with government efforts to release documents.
Late last year, Washington watchdogs won over a reluctant President Bush, who agreed to sign a law enforcing better compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.
"But in his budget request this week," the Post's Elizabeth Williamson writes, "Bush proposed shifting a newly created ombudsman's position from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Department of Justice. Because the ombudsman would be the chief monitor of compliance with the new law, that move is akin to killing the critical function, some members of Congress and watchdog groups say."
"Justice represents the agencies when they're sued over FOIA . . . It doesn't make a lot of sense for them to be the mediator," staff lawyer for the National Security Archive Kristin Adair told the Post. The group has filed suit against the White House to force it to preserve e-mails relating to Iraq and the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame Bush's spokesman says may have been lost.
Also bemoaning the revelation was Senate Democratic Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT).
"Once again, the White House has shown they intend to act contrary to the intent of Congress," Leahy told Williamson in a statement. "I will continue to work through the appropriations process to make sure that the National Archives and Records Administration has the necessary resources and funds to comply with the OPEN Government Act, and we will continue to work in Congress to make necessary reforms to the Freedom of Information Act."
The White House said, through a spokesman, that "only the Department of Justice, as the government's lead on FOIA issues and mediation in legal matters, is properly situated and empowered to mediate issues between requestors and the federal government."
The law Bush signed last year -- the Open Government Act of 2007 -- requires that government agencies released information Americans request within 20 days of face fines. Bush inked the law New Year's Eve. The ombudsman's office would hear disputes over unmet requests and monitor the agencies facing examinations.
Under the planned deployment, the ombudsman was to be part of the National Archives, where most documents eventually end up and are usually sent out from.
The Bush Administration is already under pressure from Congress for its alleged politicization of the Justice Department. Nine US Attorneys were fired for what Democrats say were "political" reasons; the White House has refused to allow aides to testify to Congressional committees about what they know.
In August, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government reported that “current government handling of FOIA requests is deteriorating” and that the Justice Department was “consistently granted the lowest percentage of [FOIA] appeals of any agency.”
On New Years Eve, facing “congressional pushback against the Bush administration’s movement to greater secrecy,” President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act, toughening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The legislation — unanimously passed by the House and Senate — would push agencies to respond more quickly to records requests.
But now, the White House is doing everything it can to neuter the law. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) said yesterday that Bush’s FY2009 “funds for the Office of Government Information Services authorized under the newly enacted OPEN Government Act will be shifted to the Department of Justice” from the National Archives. Congress Daily reports:
“But by shifting the funding to the Justice Department, OMB would effectively eliminate the office, because it appears no similar operation would be created there,” according to an aide to Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT). […]
National Archives officials are relatively independent of political pressure, the staffer explained, “but DOJ is different.” Government transparency advocates consider the department hostile to efforts to improve FOIA responsiveness, in part because it represents agencies sued by FOIA requesters.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a cosponsor of the OPEN Government legislation said he “does agree with Senator Leahy and would oppose that effort” of the adminstration.
The Justice Department’s efforts to protect government secrecy are notorious. In fact, in the 109th Congress, the Department “squelched efforts to pass the OPEN Government Act.” But even initially “putting it [funding] in DOJ would essentially obviate what Leahy and Cornyn did with the legislation,” said Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org
Bush’s noncompliance with the legislation makes clear his effort to return to his old ways of egregious government secrecy.
EVERYONE knows libraries are not just about books anymore, but no one knows it better that the women at the main information booth of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
The two most common questions they field: Where are the restrooms? And where’s the free Internet?
But better questions would be:
• Which way to the Kerouac exhibition?
• How can I see a Gutenberg Bible?
• Where is the current issue of the journal of Australian Aboriginal Studies?
A bleak winter weekend is a great time to haunt the city’s libraries, when they seem to serve almost as much as museums and performance halls as repositories of the written word.
Though noteworthy libraries dot the five boroughs, including the new Bronx Library Center and historic branches financed by Andrew Carnegie, the natural place to start is at the famous lions on Fifth Avenue, at what is officially the Humanities and Social Sciences Library.
This winter, the landmark library at 42nd Street is home to “Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road,” an exhibition built largely from the library’s own Jack Kerouac Archive. It traces Kerouac’s peripatetic life using unpublished manuscripts, photos, journals and notebooks, but the centerpiece is the actual scroll Kerouac used to type out “On the Road.”
By March, there will be another set of exhibitions: on John Milton, who would have turned 400 this year; on Édouard Baldus’s 19th-century photographs of French historic sites; and on French cliché-verre landscape prints. You feel more cultured just thinking about a visit. The library itself is also worth perusing. Flip through the 11,000 periodicals that are available upon request in the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room. Or explore the popular map division, or the 440,000-item Asian and Middle Eastern division.
Two notes: though the library at 42nd Street is open (and has tours) during the weekend, many sections are closed on Sundays. You also should apply online for a free Access card, needed to request some materials, if you think you’ll be interested in rummaging. (New York City residence is not required.)
The Schomburg, in Harlem, is looking sharp after an $11 million overhaul last year, and holds, among much else, 400 black newspapers, rare books and the original manuscript of “Native Son” by Richard Wright. On Feb. 4, it will open the Abyssinian Baptist Church Bicentennial Exhibition, examining the evolution of what, at the time of its founding, was the only African-American Baptist church in the state of New York.
Though it also has exhibition halls, the most attractive feature of the Library for the Performing Arts, next to Lincoln Center, is the free screenings and performances. Coming highlights include the Russian pianist Maxim Anikushin playing Beethoven and Schubert (Jan. 31) and the African-American historian Camille F. Forbes on the pioneering black comedian Bert Williams (Feb. 2).
And again, there’s the arts library’s intriguing collection. A random search through the card catalog turned up a volume — a scrapbook, really — of 19th-century theater programs, just slightly crumbling, with a whiff of musty paper that no scanned image can evoke.
Among them is the program for the Nov. 17, 1884 performance of “Hamlet” at the Boston Museum starring Edwin Booth. He returned two days later to play Iago in “Othello,” as well as the title role in “Macbeth” later that evening. Now that’s a lot of iambic pentameter.
Finally, the Morgan Library & Museum may not be part of the public library system, but it shouldn’t be missed. The complex of buildings in Murray Hill includes (among other things) the financier J. Pierpont Morgan’s original library, completed in 1906, and a 2006 expansion by the architect Renzo Piano, who added exhibition space and a cafe. A restaurant in the original building serves lunch daily and dinner on Fridays until 8 p.m. Menus are designed to correspond with exhibitions.
In the West Room, which served as Morgan’s private study, the 16th-century coffered ceiling imported from Europe and the red damask wallpaper give the place a royal air.
In his library, three stories of books line the 30-foot walls (except where there hangs a Baroque tapestry depicting one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Elsewhere in the building, you’ll find amazing illuminated manuscripts, a 1240 pocket Bible and even an original print of the Declaration of Independence. Oh, it also has three Gutenberg Bibles, beating the Humanities and Social Sciences Library by two.
The reading doesn’t have to end at closing time. The Library Hotel in Midtown has a collection of 6,000 books organized, and this is not a joke, by floor according to the Dewey Decimal system.
The fifth floor (like the 500s of the Dewey system) is dedicated to math and science, so guest room 506, for example, contains books on astronomy. A tip for those with allergies: opt for room 801, where the subject is erotic literature. Presumably, the books there gather far less dust.
LOST IN THE STACKS
Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street; (212) 930-0830; www.nypl.org.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Boulevard at 135th Street; (212) 491-2200; www.nypl.org.
Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza; (212) 870-1630; www.nypl.org.
Bronx Library Center, 310 East Kingsbridge Road; (718) 579-4244; www.nypl.org.
8 Kick-Ass Movies You Didn't Know Were Based on Books: Nobody reads books these days. After all, what's the point? There's no way some novel could ever kick as much ass as, say, watching Sylvester Stallone punch a guy's head off his shoulders. Or, could it? Believe it or not, a lot of the most kick-ass movies were adapted from kick-ass books. No, we're not just talking Lord of the Rings here. We're talking about ...
The Film: First Blood is a somber reflection of the hardships that faced Vietnam War veterans upon their return to their native country, in which the protagonist blows up a helicopter with a freaking rock.
The Book: No really. There were Rambo books. Seriously. No, they weren't composed entirely of onomatopoeias meant to represent the sound of explosions.
First Blood was written by author David Morrell, who wrote a lot of books that had pictures of knives on the cover.
In the book, Rambo is not the good guy, as he basically flips out and kills a whole town because the Vietnam War drove him insane. Also, the book's ending is depressing, as Rambo stops his totally awesome rampage to be shot in the face.
That's right; Rambo dies at the end. Hollywood decided to change that, too, paving the way for three sequels. Even stranger, Morrell wrote a sequel to the book to coincide with the film, which somehow portrays Rambo as still alive, without so much as an opening chapter where a necromancer summons him from Valhalla.
For the book version of Rambo: First Blood Part II The writer had to share a co-author credit with James Cameron and Sly Stallone (who helped dream up the story for the sequel) which is kind of sad, or not, depending on how much he got paid.
The Thing
The Film: Yes, The Thing. The one where the guy's torso grows teeth and bites another guy's arms off.
The Book: It was actually a novella (that's where the writer didn't feel like writing a whole novel and just wrote part of one) called Who Goes There? and it was written way back in 1938 by John W. Campbell (the whole thing is online here). Yes, it even has that scene where they're poking at the blood and it comes to life and goes flying out of the dish and we poop our pants.
It's considered one of the best science fiction novellas ever written, and you can thank the writer for all those elements of paranoia and tension that made the film great. On the other hand, the movie has that scene where a guy's head turns into a crawling spider monster and you probably need to see that one to get the full effect. Also, Kurt Russell.
Gah! Did that seriously just happen?
We'll admit it, those sorta fake-looking puppets freaked us out. If you ask us, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth would be much more effective if he just screened this movie and followed it up by saying, "See that? It lives in the Arctic. If you keep driving your SUV, that thing is going to thaw. And, it's going to be pissed." Of course, the Nobel Prize Committee probably wouldn't go for that.
The Film: Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the zany story of a cartoon bunny's madcap antics as he battles a corrupt legal system that has framed him for a brutal homicide.
The Book: Well, we asked the librarian for Roger Rabbit, and apparently, she gave us a William S. Burroughs novel instead. This thing is just plain bizarre. Seriously, when we buy a book about a cartoon rabbit, we expect a little bit more lightheartedness and a lot less "Oh, dear God, NOOOOOOO!"
The book is called Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf (whether that's his real name or cartoon name, we can't be sure). Oh, did we forget to mention that Roger Rabbit gets machine gunned to death?
No, seriously. That actually happens. Apparently, he never learned the old "rabbit season, duck season" trick. When's the last time that you saw that happen in a Disney movie? Aside from Bambi's mother. Or, the mom from Finding Nemo. Or, Mufasa from the Lion King. OK we guess Disney's sort of messed up too.
The Film: This chilling and suspenseful tale recounts the crimes of a cross-dressing recluse who enjoys tormenting innocent people, which may or may not have been based on the life of J. Edgar Hoover.
The Book: Remember how Hitchcock was called a genius, because of the amazing twist in the story, namely that (WARNING: 47- year-old spoiler ahead) the main character gets killed not long into the film? Yeah, he didn't come up with that. It was in the novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. So, why do people remember the film and not the book? Well, mostly because of this:
In 1960, that scene scared a nation off of taking showers, which inadvertently created the hippie. We don't care how many times you write the words "stabbity, stab, stab, stab" on the page, it just doesn't have the same effect as it unfolding in front of you. No, not even if you pay an orchestra to follow you around and make the shrieking violin noises.
Bloch wrote a sequel, called Psycho II (you don't often see novelists just stick a "II" at the end of their sequels, do you?) which the studio hated and refused to adapt to film, despite its awesome cover.
Instead they followed up the classic with a series of cheesy sequels in the '80s that were totally unrelated to his book. The studio reportedly didn't invite him to any of the screenings, in a great example of Hollywood "What-have you-done-for-me-lately" douche-baggery.
The Film: Dr. Strangelove is Stanley Kubrick's darkly comedic masterpiece that uses his witty and cutting brand of satire to boldly assert that the destruction of Earth is, in fact, bad.
The Book: Dr. Strangelove is actually based loosely on the 1958 novel Red Alert by Peter George, which differs from the film slightly in that it is not a comedy at all.
That's right, the inspiration for one of the funniest movies of all time has about as many laughs as the average Wayans brothers movie. Can you imagine a dry, mirthless and completely joke-free Strangelove? That would be like ... well, actually, it would be like about half of Dr. Strangelove. But the other half is, like, really funny.
The book doesn't end with the destruction of the world, as the rogue bomber gets shot down before it can drop its nuke on the Russians. You have to admit the film's ending is superior, because otherwise the message becomes, "Nuclear brinksmanship is a dangerous game, but it will probably turn out Ok in the end."
The Film: This classic parable provides the audience with a moral that resonates with all of humanity: If you put monkeys in charge of society, don't be surprised when everything explodes. Meanwhile, Charlton Heston overacts, punches aliens and nails attractive women in a way that would make Capt. Kirk proud.
The Book: The book was written by Frenchman Pierre Boulle, who also wrote The Bridge Over the River Kwai which itself became a classic war movie. His title (originally in French) actually translated to Monkey Planet, which we can all agree the studio should have kept.
If you look around, you actually find that they sell the book and DVD as a single set ... which, by the way, is sold with a cover that spoils the ending:
Above: Spoilers
The author's actual life was probably more interesting than either of those books. Boulle joined the army in French Indonesia during World War II, then became a special agent to help resistance movements fuck up the Nazis wherever they went. He got captured by Nazi loyalists and somehow this inspired him to write. Maybe the prison camp was run by armed monkeys, we're not sure.
Either way, he deserves credit for creating antagonists that were taken seriously, even though they're animals wearing people clothes. Science has conclusively proven that to be adorable.
The Film: Charles Bronson fights a one-man war on crime by standing in dark alleys, waiting to be mugged, then shooting the muggers. One seriously must wonder why Batman never considered this approach. That would have saved him some time.
The Book: No, the movie this was based on wasn't a Punisher comic book. There's actually a freaking Death Wish novel. The book is the same premise, with hilariously contrived justification for vigilantism and graphic depictions of the protagonist-killing scumbags. Though, to be fair, the novel only inspired the first Death Wish which sort of addressed the issues of victimhood and vengeance, and not the numerous sequels in which Charles Bronson strapped on a machine gun and killed every jaywalker within a 10-mile radius.
The author (Brian Garfield) was actually a Pulitzer nominee (not for Death Wish, though that would have been awesome). The book he wrote before Death Wish was called What of Terry Conniston?, which we're assuming taught him the importance of not giving your book a retarded title. He proved it by following up with Death Sentence, Tripwire, Fleshburn and Death Blood, only one of which we made up.
Death Sentence, by the way, was just made into movie; it's also about a mild-mannered man who goes on a rampage to avenge a terrible crime. How was it? Well, let's put it this way: They traded Charles Bronson for Kevin Bacon.
The Film: It's Die Hard. Do we need to recap this for you? Yeah, we didn't think so.
The Book: That's right, Die Hard, one of the least bookable films of all time, is loosely based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever, by the obviously fake-named Roderick Thorp. That book is a sequel, so you'd assume the first one was called Nothing Lasts Forev, but it was actually given the imaginative title of The Detective. It was itself adapted as a film in 1968. In that movie, the John McClane role was portrayed by ... wait for it ...
Frank Sinatra.
Go ahead. Look at Die Hard the same way again. We dare you.
Anyway, while no book in history can possibly top Die Hard (which we believe Roger Ebert described as "the cinematic equivalent of Hulk Hogan wrestling a bear. While on fire."), it does have the same premise (though all the character names were changed for some reason). A later book the guy wrote, Rainbow Drive, got turned into a 1990 movie starring Peter Weller ... the guy who played RoboCop. That movie isn't as well known, because the title made it sound like a film about a gay resort.
In some alternate universe, we like to think this connection led Mr. Thorp, Bruce Willis and Peter Weller to sit down for drinks one day. The three would walk away from this meeting in our alternate 1991 with an agreement to make Die Hard vs. RoboCop. In this alternate universe, the 1993 Academy Awards had to be canceled, because one film won every single award.
This One From Last Week caught my eye. Why must we "lure teens" into the library? Doesn't it make us sound creepy? A quick search of some newspaper archives shows me we've been doing it for years! Do reporters do this on purpose? Some other goofy headlines:
USC library's lure: Modernized facility attracts By: Hammond, James T.. State Warren library branch lures teen readers with style and clothing show By: Dunn, Andrew. Herald-Sun Books aren't the hook when libraries lure kids to video-game events By: Newman, Heather. Detroit Free Press Books aren't the hook: Video game events lure young people -- especially boys -- to local libraries By: Newman, Heather. Detroit Free Press Library is 'more of a cool place' now: Video games, once shunned, are being used to lure teens By: James, Douane D.. Sun-Sentinel Library lures girls to books with looks: Beauty tips focus of event for teens By: Cuniff, Meghann M.. Spokesman-Review
There's little doubt that Google Inc. is indeed king of online media. In August 2007 alone, Google captured 57% of worldwide market share among search engines, with more than 37 billion search inquiries, according to analyst firm comScore Inc. in Reston, Va. Add to that a mind-boggling stock price of $711 per share on Nov. 5. Not surprisingly, this dominance has led to endless rumors about where Google is headed next.
An apology may be in order. How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, the slim French bestseller which has become a sleeper hit in English translation this fall, may have a fantastic but faulty title. That's because unlike, say, the news summary magazine The Week, or the chic advice guide In the Know: The Classic Guide to Being Cultured and Cool, How to Talk... is not intended to help you cheat at life by appearing more sophisticated or educated than you really are. Indeed, the author Pierre Bayard has a sheepish admission to make. theglobeandmail.com Has The Review/Interview.
Public.Resource.Org, the Internet Archive, and the Boston Public Library announced the commencement of phase 1 of a project that aims to create a comprehensive digital archive of 60 million pages of government documents over the next two years.
Phase 1 of the project will produce a minimum of 2.5 million pages of digital text using a scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) technology suite developed by the Internet Archive. The Boston Public Library is the first Contributing Library in the program, and has agreed to lend a 50-year run of Congressional Hearings from 1936–1986, as well as a complete copy of the Catalog of Copyright Entries. Scanning will take place at the Boston Library Consortium's Northeast Regional Scanning Center.
ALA’s newest office, the Office for Library Advocacy (OLA), became official at the start of ALA’s fiscal year, September 1, 2007. Its existence is a direct response to ALA member needs identified through a number of surveys over the last several years. Advocacy is one of six goal areas in the ALA Ahead to 2010 strategic plan.
The purpose of OLA is to support the efforts of library advocates at the local, state and national level. The office works to create resources, training and peer-to-peer networks to help local advocates fulfill their local advocacy goals for the improvement of libraries of all types. It provides tools to help local advocates make the case for increased library funding, new and expanded buildings, getting bonds and referenda passed, and fighting library budget reductions and closures. Working with the Chapter Relations Office, the new office will help support statewide advocacy efforts, and will work with the Washington Office to strengthen grass roots advocacy at the national level. The office will also work closely with the Association for Library Trustees and Advocates (ALTA), Friends of Libraries USA (FOLUSA), and with other ALA groups advocating for specific types of libraries and/or library issues. The Office has grown out of the advocacy function within the Public Information Office will continue many initiatives begun there.
Under the direction of interim director Marci Merola, the office has hit the ground running!
ilovelibraries.org, an advocacy website launched in June 2007, continues to develop. On average, the site receives over 60,000 page views monthly–and in September, ilovelibraries drove more traffic to Booklist Online than Google™ searches!
As a result of efforts by the Chapter Relations Office and the Chapter Relations Committee, 25 state chapters are now using Capwiz advocacy software, which allows viewers (members and the general public) to contact state and national legislators via Ilovelibraries.org. Special 2010 funding will allow the remaining chapters to use this software. Further discussion among Chapter Relations, Washington Office and OLA will address incorporating more library issues into the site and seamless use of Capwiz for both state and national issues.
Ilovelibraries.org has begun promoting the Youth Media Awards, which will be presented during the Midwinter Meeting (Monday morning, January 14). (Use www.ilovelibraries.org/youthmediaawards as your bookmark!). YALSA partnered with Ilovelibraries.org to promote Teen Read Week.
A bit of history: In May of 2005, the Ford Foundation awarded ALA $80,000 to be used towards advocacy efforts. Counting the hree Advocacy Institutes presented during the fall of 2007, a total of 17 were presented under the grant. Although the Ford Foundation grant ends December 31, 2007, the Advocacy Institutes will continue using funds budgeted to the Office for Library Advocacy, both at the national and regional level.The Advocacy Institute Task Force (AITF) of the Public Awareness Committee (PAC) was created to oversee the Ford Foundation Grant and to help institutionalize the Advocacy Institutes into the work of the Library Advocacy Now! (LAN!) Subcommittee of PAC. This Task Force will continue to oversee the Advocacy Institute, looking for ways to increase collaboration and looking for new funding streams. Three Final Advocacy Institutes took place under the Ford Foundation grant in fall of 2007.
Work has begun on Advocacy University (Advocacy U), an online resource to help advocates at the local level. The ultimate goal of this project is two-fold: to have a variety of resources and tools available on each topic and to provide increased trainings at the local level throughout the country. Content for Advocacy U will most likely be divided into these sections: a bibliography of articles, websites, case studies; a tutorial on how to use outcome measurement; a syllabus for teaching others about advocacy; and a network of experts in this area that can be called upon for help, or to come and speak in local libraries or communities.
The Office for Library Advocacy worked with the Office for Research and Statistics (ORS), the Washington Office (WO), and three divisions, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), and the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) to create the Advocacy Statistics for Youth Project.The impetus for this project is that there many reports “out there” containing relevant statistics to help make the case for school libraries, but they are often difficult for an advocate or member in need to access quickly. The Advocacy Statistics for Youth initiative, funded by special 2010 funds, will allow partners to hire a researcher to pull statistics from these lengthy reports and create a web-based tool for members and advocates to use. It will be categorized under headings such as early literacy, closing the learning gap, relationships between school libraries and academic success, and relevancy of 2.0 tools. This will be positioned on the AdvocacyUniversity resource, but can be multipurposed as needed. It will serve as a template for similar projects through ORS and for AdvocacyUniversity. The goal is for it to launch in time for ALA’s 2008 National Library Legislative Day.
Finally, the Office coordinated ALA’s participation in the National Book Festival on September 29, 2007, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The booth was located in the Pavilion of the States, along with state libraries from around the country, D.C. and U.S. Territories. With a focus on the general public audience, the ALA booth featured ilovelibraries.org, Book and Media Awards, Banned Books Week and Teen Read Week. Volunteers for the event included Pat May and Mark Bard of the ALA Washington Office, as well as YALSA members Pam Spencer Holley, Priscille Dando, Debbie Clifford and Kathy Fitch. OLA was grateful to the ALA Washington Office, PIO, OIF, YALSA, ALSC, and ALA Publishing for their assistance and donation of materials.
Yahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong.
By Jacob Leibenluft Posted Friday, Dec. 7, 2007, at 4:30 PM ET When it does battle on the Web, Google rarely loses. Last year's closure of Google Answers, however, marked a rare setback for the search giant. An even bigger shock is that Yahoo! succeeded where Google failed. Yahoo! Answers—a site where anyone can post a question in plain English, including queries that can't be answered by a traditional search engine—now draws 120 million users worldwide, according to Yahoo!'s internal stats. The site has compiled 400 million answers, all searchable in its archives. According to the Web tracking company Hitwise, Yahoo! Answers is the second-most-visited education/reference site on the Internet after Wikipedia.
The blockbuster success of Yahoo! Answers is all the more surprising once you spend a few days using the site. While Answers is a valuable window into how people look for information online, it looks like a complete disaster as a traditional reference tool. It encourages bad research habits, rewards people who post things that aren't true, and frequently labels factual errors as correct information. It's every middle-school teacher's worst nightmare about the Web.
The site's home page, which offers a real-time snapshot of the dozens of questions posted every minute, provides a good sense of users' favorite topics: relationships, computers, homework, pregnancy. These queries reveal why something like Yahoo! Answers might draw so many visitors. The questions—"Why does the stomach make funny noises when it's hungry?" and "How do stoplights sense a car?" for instance—are difficult to answer with a traditional Web search. If you're looking for advice on your new haircut or help on the third question on your precalculus problem set, Yahoo! Answers might be your best option. Most strikingly, Answers draws a large enough crowd that you're likely to get an answer almost instantaneously. Post a semicoherent question and the responses will come within minutes, if not seconds.
For educators fretting that the Internet is creating a generation of "intellectual sluggards," the problem isn't just that Yahoo!'s site helps ninth-graders cheat on their homework. It's that a lot of the time, it doesn't help them cheat all that well.
Take a popular question asking about common customs and beliefs among Native Americans. In theory, this is the kind of query Yahoo! Answers is made for. It's more easily asked in the form of a complete sentence rather than in a series of search terms, and it has a factual answer some users might know.
How did Yahoo! Answers do? On the plus side, the question received an impressive 97 different answers, including a few knowledgeable responses and helpful references. But several of the postings were misleading, confused, or just plain wrong. If you started off uncertain, it's hard to imagine you would read the responses and feel any more confident. To top it off, the answer eventually chosen as the "best" was, enigmatically, "American pie."
In some academic areas—physics is one I've noticed—the Answers community consistently does an impressive job of providing accurate answers and a clear explanation of how to get them. But in other disciplines, the site's record as an educational tool is, to put it charitably, unreliable. A recent question about dual citizenship attracted 12 answers in just two hours; some of the responses were nearly accurate, many partially true, and others entirely false ("yes it is true they outlawed dual citizenship in 2001 due to people going to canada and the uk for free health care while they were not paying taxes in that country"). Another thread on the relationship between Iran, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden offered a few insightful responses about Sunni-Shiite politics surrounded by enough noise—"No one really cares except for people like yourself!"—to confuse or annoy anyone who might pose the question earnestly.
Some people might look at this mixed record and think that Yahoo! Answers is just like Wikipedia. But the differences between the two sites say a lot—about why Wikipedia has been such a success, why the Web's leading reference site is so hard to replicate, and how Yahoo! Answers has become so popular despite its flaws.
Like Yahoo! Answers, Wikipedia isn't perfect. But for savvy browsers who know how to use it, Wikipedia is an invaluable source of factual information. In the last two years, there's been a heated debate over whether Wikipedia is as trustworthy as Encyclopedia Britannica. This obscures a crucial point: Wikipedia is at least reliable enough that such a question can be asked. Take my word for it—no one is going to make any such claims about Yahoo! Answers any time soon.
Wikipedia's greatest virtue is that it is self-editing and self-correcting. The site's draconian efforts to consolidate pages and remove entries that aren't deemed important have a crucial side effect: They focus users' energy on revision rather than addition. By contrast, Yahoo! Answers is more devoted to quantity than quality. It struggles to prevent repeat questions from appearing over and over again. And unlike Wikipedia, the Yahoo! community expends far less energy trying to hide dubious or just plain incorrect contributions, despite a community rating system designed to flag them. Often, a correct answer will be hiding somewhere on an Answers page, only to be obscured by a tide of wrong or off-topic material that never gets erased. Wikipedia pages are subject to constant revision. If a vandal screws with an entry, one of the site's busy janitors cleans it up. If new information becomes available or a new user devotes energy to making improvements, then a Wikipedia article will get better even years after it's first posted. Yahoo!, by contrast, "closes" questions to new answers after a week, although users occasionally post comments afterward. While the site's answers live forever on the Web, each question attracts only seven days' worth of collective wisdom.
The small, almost obsessive community that built Wikipedia created a culture of reliability. For contributors to see their writing on the site, they must submit information that's clear and accurate enough to survive the scrutiny of other users. Yahoo! Answers has created a more formal, yet far less successful, reward structure to identify top users. Every time you post an answer, you earn two points. If you win a "best answer" distinction, you get 10 points. (The person who asked the question gets the opportunity to select the best answer; if they choose not to, it is selected by community vote.) This system highlights the site's greatest strength and its greatest weakness: Everyone gets credit for answering, but there's not a huge push to make sure the answers are right.
As its devotees would point out, Yahoo! Answers allows you to ask questions Wikipedia would never touch. Many of the site's users are simply looking for advice, local knowledge (like a restaurant recommendation), or an opportunity to start a discussion. But for these questions, too, the quality of the responses varies widely, and users can be stuck struggling to separate the good answers from the bad.
Even though Yahoo! Answers is so frequently sloppy and inaccurate, it's still the juggernaut in its field. Despite a rapid proliferation of answer-giving sites—Amazon.com's recently inaugurated Askville just joined a crowded field that includes Answerbag, WikiAnswers, AnswerBank, and Ask Metafilter—Yahoo!'s is still by far the most popular. And in the question-answering game, size matters. While the others have a few clever features (like Answerbag's efforts to separate "educational" and "conversational" questions) or a more specialized community, the sheer magnitude of Yahoo!'s community gives it the upper hand.
After all, while Yahoo! Answers and its peers are classified as reference tools, what they actually provide is social networking. The thrill of Yahoo! Answers comes in the instant interaction: the scores of questions, the immediate back-and-forth discussions, the opportunity to feel like an expert, and, eventually, the promise a query will be labeled a "Resolved Question" no matter how difficult.
For a passive reader, this has the same value as listening to two random guys at a bar talk about what to do if you are driving during a tornado. You may not learn very much by eavesdropping—and you certainly shouldn't trust what you hear if disaster strikes—but that isn't really the purpose. The lesson Yahoo! Answers teaches is that, for millions of people on the Web, it's less important to get a good answer than to get someone to listen to your question in the first place.
Jacob Leibenluft is a writer from Washington, D.C.
The folks over at www.Ask.com continue to do some good work, and get very little notice. The NY Times took notice of AskEraser, which allows users to make their searches more private.
Ask.com and other major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft typically keep track of search terms typed by users and link them to a computer’s Internet address, and sometimes to the user. However, when AskEraser is turned on, Ask.com discards all that information, the company said.
Books go high-tech is a nice summary of all the high-tech challenges to the humble paper book. Audiobooks and E-books may just now finally be making some gains. Is this the beginning of the end for the printed book? Not yet. With $24.2 billion in sales in 2006, according to the Association of American Publishers, the traditional book industry still dwarfs audiobook and e-book sales. But if you are simply seeking to engage with the content of books, regardless of format, technology is providing alternatives.
As the different formats evolve, we're getting closer to knowing how we will "read" on future commutes. But the turf wars, you might say, are to be continued.
Congress was apparently busy on Wednesday moving forward with incredibly bad laws that are designed to look good to certain constituents, but are highly questionable in real terms. We already discussed the new PRO IP bill, but the House also rushed through approval of the SAFE Act, which is one of those ridiculous bills that everyone feels compelled to vote for to "protect the children." Only two Representatives voted against the bill (and, yes, for his fans, one of them was Ron Paul). As Declan McCullough's report makes clear, the backers of this bill rushed it through Congress for no clear reason. They used a procedural trick normally reserved for non-controversial laws -- and made significant changes from an earlier version, never making the new version available for public review prior to the vote.
So what's so awful about the law? Well, like most "protect the children" legislation, it goes way overboard in terms of what people are expected to do, and like most legislation having to do with technology, seems utterly clueless about how technology works. The bill would require anyone providing an "electronic communication service" or a "remote computing service" to record and report information any time they "learn" that their network was used for certain broadly defined illegal activities concerning obscene images. That's double trouble, as both the illegal activities and the classification of who counts as a service provider are so broadly defined. McCullough notes that anyone providing an open WiFi network, a social network, a domain registry or even a webmail service probably qualify under the law. Glenn Fleishman describes what the law could mean in practice, points out that anyone who runs an open WiFi network for the public is now basically required to snitch on anyone they think may be doing anything deemed "illegal" in this act, including viewing or transmitting certain obscene drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or paintings. As Fleishman notes, it "sounds like viewing an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog could qualify." Even worse, part of the snitching is that beyond sending a report and the images to the gov't, you're supposed to retain the "illegal" image yourself -- which would seem to open you up to charges of possession as well if you somehow screw up (if you follow everything exactly to the letter of the law, you are granted immunity).
If you don't snitch on anyone suspected of viewing or transmitting these images, then you, as the network "operator" are suddenly liable for huge fines. Honestly, the liability is so big that anyone offering WiFi is probably better off no longer doing so. This is one of those laws that politicians love to pass, because they think it makes them look like they're protecting children -- when all they're really doing is creating a huge and unnecessary headache for all kinds of service providers, from open WiFi operators to social networking sites to webmail offerings. But, of course, it moves forward -- with no public scrutiny and no discussion -- because almost no politician wants to allow a politician to accuse him or her of voting "against" protecting the children.
Your local librarians are delighted to welcome you to the library. We are happy to help you find whatever you need (except for you porn surfers--you know who you are). There are, alas, some limitations to what we can do for you. Most of those limitations involve computers. As for the rest, well, we're talking humans here...
First, I have to point out that those of us in middle age were trained in the Dark Ages when computers were the size of dump trucks and Bill Gates was in preschool. When I went to library school, there was one computer course, on programming in Basic, and I didn't take it. Considering that, my fellow over-50 librarians and I are doing pretty well coping with technology that didn't exist 30 years ago and changes daily.
We can figure out where Pacific Palisades, California, is located by using Google maps. We can locate a copy of a small press book available for loan from a library network 1000 miles away through World Cat. In a matter of seconds we can unearth dozens of Van Gogh "Sunflowers", using Google image. Using library subscriptions to online databases, we can find you the full text of an article from some arcane periodical and we can point the way to today's local newspaper's image edition, exactly as it appears in print form, but without the recycling hassle. We can demonstrate downloading unabridged audiobooks to your tiny MP3 player so you can listen to three books on your around-the-world flights and still have room in your carryon for a sandwich, some fruit, granola bars and (depending on those ever-shifting regulations) even some bottled water.
But we librarians, alas, only appear to be miracle workers. We can't get you all the materials you need to write your senior thesis by tomorrow if you don't get to the library until 5 minutes before closing. We don't have time to pull 14 Pile_of_books books for you and leave them at the desk so you can grab them between work and a theater date. (We might still do it sometimes, but admittedly we grumble.) We can't baby sit your kids after school while you are at work. We don't have a public address system to page your missing teenager who swore s/he was going to the library to study. We can't proofread your English homework. We can help you find online stock trading sites, but we can't suggest hot picks for your portfolio. We can help you find the forms but we can't do your taxes for you--and believe me, you don't want us to. No matter what your teacher or professor said, everything is not available on the internet.
But alas, we cannot fix the internet. If your e-mail account is "not available because the server is busy" and suggests you try later, we can't make it un-busy for you. The messages you receive about going into and out of secure sites are not an indication that the FBI, the CIA, the KGB, or the IRS is keeping an eye on you. Some online photographs and images have printing blocked, and we can't override that. If the form you are trying to fill out online is confusing or has conflicting instructions, we can't figure them out any better than you can. If the power goes off briefly and you lose the e-mail you had been writing for half an hour (don’t you hate that?), we can’t get it back. We can't make all the ads go away, although we might be able to eliminate the annoying ones that pop up and obscure your screen. If the CD or "floppy" disc you used to save your resume won't load on our computers, we're sorry--we really are!--but perhaps we don't have the software you used at home, or the CD had coffee spilled on it, or we just plain can't make it work. Computer_keyboard We can't teach you to e-mail or surf the Internet if you have never used a keyboard.
Most of all, we can't "fix" Microsoft, Apple, Dell, Gateway, Google, Internet Explorer or any of the other computer giants that control what happens on computers and the internet.
I know what URL stands for, and html, but I don't text message, RSS, or most of the other up-and-coming gizmos. Maybe soon. Probably about the time they become obsolete.
For now, if it's on the Internet, I can probably find it--fast. Which is apparently surprising for some of our patrons. A few years ago, a forty-something fellow watched me work my internet magic and pull up information he needed.
"Wow!" the guy said, looking at my graying hair. "Where did you learn to do that at your age?"
Though I'm sure this isn't something new for many of you, The Librarian Paradox is new to me:
A librarian is wandering round her library one day and comes across a shelf of catalogues. There are catalogues of novels, poems, essays and so on, and some of these catalogues, she discovers, list themselves, while others do not.
In order to simplify the system, the hard-working (and rigorously logical) librarian makes two more catalogues. One lists all those catalogues that list themselves; the other lists all those that don't. Once she has completed this task, she has a problem: should the catalogue which lists all the other catalogues which do not list themselves, be listed in itself? If it is listed, then by definition it should not be listed. However, if it is not listed, then by definition it should be.
On November 27th, 2007 effing (not verified) says:
that's why we have metadata... something which refers to something doesn't need to refer to itself... some people think these sorts of paradoxes are fun to contemplate: I never invite those people to my parties.
As in so many other areas of our profession that need change, another critically important one is to change our own ways of thinking about how to do business. We absolutely must pay more attention to how we can impress our user communities, and what must be done to leverage that to increase our visibility, community buzz and word of mouth about the library.
Halton's Catholic board has pulled The Golden Compass fantasy book – soon to be a Hollywood blockbuster starring Nicole Kidman – off school library shelves because of a complaint.
"(The complaint) came out of interviews that Philip Pullman had done, where he stated that he is an atheist and that he supports that," said Scott Millard, the board's manager of library services.
More and more, public libraries are being managed by private companies.
In late October, Jackson County, Ore., re-opened the doors to 15 of its public libraries after a lack of funds had forced them shut on April 6—the largest library closure in U.S. history. However, as patrons returned to the bookshelves in the southern Oregon county, they learned that their libraries are now under private, for-profit management.
Oregon suffered a $150 million budget shortfall—and Jackson County a $23 million loss—in fiscal year 2007, after the federal government failed to renew a $400 million annual subsidy designed to help rural communities suffering from the decline in timber-logging revenue. Though Congress eventually extended the funding by one year, Jackson County commissioners, strapped for cash, voted to outsource library services to the Maryland-based Library Systems & Services (LSSI), which specializes in library management. Founded in 1981, the company initially operated federal libraries during President Reagan’s era of privatizing government services and contracts. LSSI now privately manages more than 50 public libraries nationwide.
Companies like LSSI focus on counties that are desperate to keep their public agencies afloat but lack sufficient funds to do so. In the case of Jackson County, officials offered LSSI a five-year contract worth $3 million annually, with an additional $1.3 million reserved for building maintenance. The deal cuts in almost half what the county previously spent.
Public libraries in Dallas, Riverside, Calif., and Finney County, Kan. have also hired LSSI staff.
But the trend of farming out public libraries to a private, profit-oriented business has raised concerns. For one, private companies are not subject to the same oversight as are public institutions. More importantly, libraries have long been considered democratic bodies built on the cornerstone of information diversity, transparency and intellectual freedom.
“Libraries tend to reflect the communities they serve,” says Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association (ALA). “[They] respond to community needs and they do so within their budget, but they are not set up to make profit. A company coming in that doesn’t exist within the community that is profit-making, you can see that there is a different attitude and there is concern about that.”
Under public management, transparency tends to be clear. As much as 80 percent of public library funding can come from local tax support, making libraries accountable to a board of trustees with representatives from the community.
While municipalities have for years contracted “non-library services,” such as janitorial duties or photocopying, the outsourcing of “core” library services—cataloging and use of automated systems and material acquisition—has increased.
This prompted the ALA to create an Outsourcing Task Force and conduct a study on privatization in 1999. Two years later, the ALA council adopted a stance opposing outsourcing, stating that libraries are “not a simple commodity” but “are an essential public good” that should be “directly accountable to the public they serve.”
LSSI makes its money from the difference between the budget and what it spends—or does not spend. It typically downsizes staff, centralizes accounting and human resource services, and buys books in bulk, all while passing down administrative costs—sometimes as high as 15 percent—to patrons as general handling fees. (The company does not disclose its earnings.)
“They operate entirely with our tax dollars but they have no transparency,” says Buck Eichler, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503 in Jackson County, whose organization represented the public library employees. “They’re completely secretive about their books. We no longer know where our tax dollars are going.”
Although the total cost of running the libraries was cut, so, too, were library hours. Now, most libraries in Jackson County are open at half the normal operating times and are closed on Sundays, totaling only 24 hours a week, down from the 40-plus hours before the April shutdown. The exceptions are the libraries in Ashland and Talent, which will stay open for 40 hours and 36 hours a week, respectively, after local residents recently voted in favor of a levy on monthly utility surcharges in order to pay for the extra hours.
While counties still own the buildings and retain control of library policies, LSSI is in charge of hiring employees, which has caused mixed reactions.
“I don’t have any problems with it at all,” says Kim Wolfe, manager of the Medford branch. “I think it’s a personal decision for each individual. The community is thrilled to have the libraries opening again. They’re thanking us and they’re glad they can come in and use our services.”
SEIU’s Eichler, however, has said some workers have refused to go back to work under a private employer.
“We don’t want to sacrifice living wages at the expense of workers,” says Eichler.
LSSI brought back about 60 of the 88 people who were laid off, according to one library staffer. But now that they are no longer union employees, they’ve been subject to contractual changes in rights, benefits and disclosure information.
Although salaries are comparable to what they were before, employees in the Jackson County Libraries are now no longer part of Oregon’s pension system, which has been replaced with a 401(k) program. Medical benefits have also been cut, and salary levels have been “adjusted depending on market conditions,” says Anne Billeter, a former Jackson County library manager.
“I’m not saying that LSSI has a goal of union-busting, but it is certainly the net effect,” says Eichler.
Some areas have seen a backlash. In Bedford, Texas, after a community-wide petition campaign to oppose library outsourcing gathered 1,700 signatures in four days, city council members voted 4-3 to reject privatization in August. “If our library dies, this community dies,” said Mark Gimenez, a local resident who attended the board meeting.
But not every public library is celebrating victories. In Jackson-Madison County, Tenn., even after a community group lobbied against privatization, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled in April that the county board has a legal right to outsource.
Thomas Hennen Jr., director of the Waukesha County Federated Library System in Wisconsin, says, “It is the urgent duty of public librarians to put the ‘good’ back into the ‘public good’ of the public library movement.”
It's ten days in jail for a former Iowa City woman accused of stealing more than $1,000 in materials from the city's public library -- by using her children's library cards.
Fatima Perkins of Harvey, Illinois, pleaded guilty to third-degree theft. She was also ordered to pay a $625 fine as well as restitution, court costs and attorney fees.
Perkins used her four children's cards to check out 51 items from the library last year and moved out of town without returning them.
by Fresno County Peace and Freedom Party Wednesday Nov 28th, 2007 3:58 PM
All political parties and organizations will now be able to use Fresno County Library facilities for meetings.
November 28, 2007 - Today, the Peace and Freedom Party - with the assistance of the Greater Fresno Area Chapter of the ACLU - won a small but important victory for free speech and political organizations. The Fresno County Public Library has been continually denying the Peace and Freedom Party the right to use library facilities to hold its general meetings. The denial cited a Fresno County ordinance against using its facilities for campaign or political activity in connection with any election.
In a phone call to the office of Fresno County Librarian Karen Bosch Cobb, Attorney Richard Runcie (member of the Board of the Greater Fresno Area Chapter of the ACLU) and John Crockford (chair of the Fresno County Peace and Freedom Party) explained that denying the Peace and Freedom Party use of library facilities was contrary to Library policy regarding free speech. Messrs. Runcie and Crockford said that Library staff were misinterpreting the prohibition on election activities and wrongly denying Peace and Freedom Party use of library facilities.
In a phone call to Fresno County Peace and Freedom Party chairperson John Crockford, Ms. Bosch Cobb acknowledged the error and said she would direct staff to allow the Peace and Freedom Party to use Fresno County Library facilities for its general meetings.
A library angle has emerged in the case of a terrorism suspect indicted in July 2006 (along with a confederate) on charges of going through paramilitary training in Georgia and plotting to attack various targets in the region and elsewhere. The lawyer for Syed Ahmed, 21, a former Georgia Tech student, filed a document in federal court in Atlanta Thursday that FBI agents followed Ahmed to the Chestatee Regional Library, Dawsonville, GA, and searched the computer he had worked on without a warrant, according to the Associated Press.
U.S. Attorney David Nahmias responded in a statement to the AP that "The FBI's actions were lawful and appropriate as we will demonstrate when we respond to the motion in court," adding that "public libraries are not safe havens for terrorist-related activity."
(The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom advises librarians , “If the agent or officer does not have a court order compelling the production of records, the library director should explain the library’s confidentiality policy and the state’s confidentiality law, and inform the agent or officer that users' records are not available except when a proper court order in good form has been presented to the library.”)
Ahmed's lawyer, Jack Martin, said in court papers that an investigator used the computer’s history function to check web pages and e-mail addresses Ahmed had accessed. (Many libraries have equipped their computers to automatically clear each user’s history after a session.) "The actions of the government agent, contrary to the policies and procedures of the library, including policies to ensure the privacy of its authorized library users, violated the defendant's reasonable expectations of privacy," Martin wrote, according to the AP. He seeks the evidence to be suppressed. In the indictment last year, the government said that Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, 19, were motivated by the "defense of Muslims or retaliation for acts committed against Muslims." Both are U.S. citizens; Ahmed is Pakistan-born; Sadequee, of Bangladeshi descent, was born in Virginia. Both have pleaded not guilty. The government alleges that the the plot involved meetings, discussions, and training exercises; Martin has said the evidence was "imprudent talk."
Those fortunate enough to traverse the halls of Embedded Technology 2007 could've seen Seiko Epson's latest wonder up close and in person, but for the rest of us, we'll have to settle for the picture and a drool-worthy description over at Engadget.
Meanwhile, as Gary Price pointed out, Amazon is betting that e-books aren't a total e-bust. On Monday, the online retail giant will unveil its Kindle e-book reader at a high-profile event in New York, an industry source told CNET News.com Thursday. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is expected to be present for the announcement, to be held at the chic W Hotel in Union Square.
Ben Macintyre Says Ptolemy's great book collection at Alexandria had nothing on what is being compiled on the internet: "This digitising of human knowledge is the most profound cultural event since the invention of the printing press itself. In the third century BC the librarians of Alexandria sought to collect “books of all the peoples of the world”, and amassed perhaps half a million scrolls. But even the library at Alexandria was thought to contain perhaps as little as a third of all the books then written."
