LISNews:

Fran writes \"Discussion by Mark Crispin Miller regarding terrorism and civil liberties and the manner in which the media is excluding relevant events from reported occurrences.

Full Story
\"

Interesting look at how the strong media concentration has caused censorship to become largely privatized, that is the owners of the media and major advertisers censoring what we read. I guess this will free up the government to worry about passing more...new...better...faster laws (DMCA).
Oh, wait, no, that was bought and paid for by that same strong media concentration .

See Also.

Scientific Amercican has a Report on the latest and greatest in ePaper.

They talk of \"the last book\": several hundred bound pages of self-printing paper with a separate processor imprinted on each page and enough memory chips in the hardcover volume\'s spine to store the entire contents of the Library of Congress.

I like how new technologies are always able to \"Store the LOC\", microfilm, the web, ePaper....

Although there has been no indication that the Anthrax bacteria has invaded the Library of Congress, the facility has been closed for precautionary reasons in order to check the building\'s ventilation system. An earlier report indicated that Anthrax spores may have been detected in the LOC, however as of now, that is not the case. more...

The UCLA Hammer Museum has an exhibition of objects from LA libraries. Check out the web site for more information and pictures from the exhibition \"\'The World From Here\' is a love letter to all libraries,\" says Robin Rauzi in the LA Times. Her article is pretty glowing as well. The exhibition began as the idea of Bruce Whiteman, the head librarian at UCLA\'s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, who was trying to get an idea of the special collections in area libraries.

Ira Bhargava writes: \"This is to introduce myself as a medical librarian employed with Institute
of Nursing in Dubai, UAE, which is in middle east. I have more than 16 years
of experience behind me as a school/medical librarian.

Recently I have been requested by a local group of schools to organize a
workshop on school libraries.I would like to cover the following 3 main
topics:

1. How to organise an effective school library
2. How to instill reading habits in children
3. How to go about computerising/networking school libraries belonging to one group of entrepreneurs.

So what do you think? How does one find suitable materials to use in a conference... Post your answers below.

From The Times:

Fierce controversy has erupted over proposals to create a new £1,220,000 visitor facility in Oxford’s famous Bodleian Library. The proposals involve cutting a new entrance through the masonry of the Tower of the Five Orders of Architecture, introducing a permanent exhibition display with liquid crystal screens beneath the exquisite fan vault of the 15th-century Divinity School, and inserting barriers across the vista through the arch of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Clarendon Building and the two arches of the Bodleian quadrangle to the great rotunda of James Gibbs’s Radclifffe Camera . . .

More.

OSS4LIB pointed the way to This Article by Richard Poynder over on infotoday.com about Open Source projects, and more specifically, open source projects in libraries.

For anyone who does not know what we mean by \"Open Source\" this is a great introduction. He covers Library-Specific Projects
like Prospero, MARC.pm, and KOHA, the world\'s first open source public library system.

Although officials think this is likely a hoax of some kind, they\'re not taking any chances. Police are investigating a case in which a packet containing a powdery substance was found in a library book at the public library in Miami, OK. Thus far, drug tests on the substance have turned out negative. Authorities intend to acquire the necessary court order allowing them access to information about the patron who checked out the book. more... from The Joplin Globe.

The Pawtucket (RI) Public Library recently conducted a survey to determine how they can best serve the public. They discovered that many people in their community have no idea what their local library has to offer. more... from The Providence Journal.

After finding \"suspicious particles\" in a box of interloaned books, the Taunton High School Library (MA) was evacuated. A Hazardous Materials Emergency Response team collected and tested the material and discovered that it was nothing more than birdseed. According to the article, \"Only two librarians were in the library at the time and for precautionary reasons they were sent to the nurse\'s office to have their hands washed. Students were told of the incident at the school and urged not to panic or be alarmed.\" more... from The Taunton Gazette.

Mitch Freedman writes :\"Dear Colleagues:
Attached is the slightly revised version of my report to the Executive
Board, and by extension to the Association.

Following is a review of significant events and initiatives since
I was
informed of my election, May 3rd, 2001, as President-Elect of the
American Library Association.

Below you can read his thoughts on The Annual Meeting for 2001, The IFLA Conference, Cuba Resolution, Bob McKee and the Pay Equity Issue, Anti-terrorism Bill and much more...

Luis Acosta writes \"Short article in MIT\'s Technology Review on the Library of Congress\'s effort to figure out how to preserve digital information:\"

Congress recently gave the library $100 million to figure out what to do with all that stuff.

\"With that money we\'ll be able to gather the technical people and the archivists and start to develop a prototype,\"

The Guardian is running a Story on A report from Forrester Research that says rather than pay for something, users will simply switch to alternative, free services. There\'s a Press Release on Forrester.com, I couldn\'t seem to find the report, maybe someone else can.

\"Consumers access content when and where they need it, not when providers want to give it to them, and they won\'t pay for new media content since it doesn\'t eliminate their need for paid-for offline sources.\"

The New Zeland Herald has a Story on this year\'s Frankfurt Book Fair.

It seems people are more realistic about eBooks this year, In contrast with the \"euphoria\" of last year. Last year some of the marketing Geniuses predicted paper books would become museum pieces within a generation.

\"The electronic book has not fulfilled expectations. It has come back down to earth. The technology still needs working on and we need to consider which titles and which content is suited,\" said Sabine Kaldonek, a spokeswoman.\"

What? You mean the people in marketing were wrong? What a shock, marketing people over hyping something... well at least TV will never do that.

Here\'s a Funny One from The Chicago Tribune on Gov. George Ryan and his big ideas for the state\'s new Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum.

Ryan has publicly declared his own controversial chief of staff \"eminently qualified\" for the job of head o\' the library. He said the library \"will produce world-class scholarship if and only if it is run like a world-class institution. The director of a library or research center such as this will not have much time to engage in scholarly pursuits.\"

And you thought politicians in this country were all a bunch of crooks still...

Progressive
Librarians Around the World, originally created by
Raimund Dehmlow of Germany and off the web for a few
months, is now on libr.org
and being updated and maintained by Rory Litwin.

What it is is a directory of progressive, library-related
organizations and publications in different countries (or
individuals in cases where we don\'t know about a group in
that country).

The site also contains a \"Preliminary Statement of
Unifying Principles\" which some of you may find
interesting.

Aaron Tunn pointed us to the Warrior
Librarian Weekly.

Recent additions include:

What Librarians can learn from Kids: The
learning curve continues to climb.

Flame Wars: Caution,
all listserve subscribers...you could be next!

Deductive
Reasoning: Find out how library decisions are
made...

And....

Answering Machine Messages
for Libraries: Cut down on some unnecessary
interruptions to your workday...

I just noticed (yes, I am a few days behind on my reading) that Ryan has gone off and started his own Blog “infolibre”, which got me to thinking, the LISNewsterz are a busy bunch. Steve runs LibraryStuff, and Rory has always done Library Juice and a bunch of other things over on his Libr.org domain.
Occaissional contributor Thomas Hennen writes his Hennen\'s American Public Library Ratings. Andrew Runs traffick.com and Jessamyn has librarian.net still rarin after all these years.
Brian runs The Laughing Librarian, filteReality, and librarism.com.

The rest of the Authors are busy being busy in ways they like to keep themselves busy, and are out there making their mark on the world as well.
As always, If you\'d like join to join our crew, we can always use a new perspective, please let me know.
As we creep up on year 2 here at LISNews, I\'d love to add a new voice or two.

The Canadian government is making select public comments on proposed modifications to the Copyright Act available - and the response appears to be overwhelmingly critical. A sample:

I am a student of Computer Science . . . a programmer, designer and user. I have been following the legal developments in our neighbour countries with respect to technological measures for preventing copyright infringement and I am dismayed to see our liberal country considering the adoption of such extreme concepts of copyright \"protection\" reinforcement.

I protest the planned legal reinforcement of such technological measures. As noted in the \'Consultation Paper on Digital Copyright Issues\', technological measures have failed in the past and are often a serious hindrance for legitimate users. Reinforcing technological measures with the law encourages corporations to ineffectively attempt to stall infringement at the expense of legitimate users. These users become forced to endure odious constraints and limitations on the private use of media they have legally purchased and copyrighted information they have licensed.

More.

Bob Cox sent along Another Story on the lawsuit that never seems to die, over \"The Wind Done Gone\".

A court in Atlanta sent a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed against the publisher of \"The Wind Done Gone\" back to a lower court yesterday but expressed doubts about its eventual success.

\"We reject the district court\'s conclusion that SunTrust has established its likelihood of success on the merits,\" the court said in its opinion.