LISNews: Hawkish On Libraries Since 1999

Lee Hadden Writes:

An author, friend of libraries
and a hero in the war against
censorship has died in New York. Charles Rember
challenged the government
censoring of many works of literature that were
considered obscene during
the 1960\'s, including Henry Miller\'s \"Tropic of Cancer,\"
John Cleland\'s
\"Fanny Hill\" and D. H. Lawrence\'s \"Lady Chatterly\'s
Lover\". Books published
overseas could not be purchased and mailed to
citizens in the US, or
otherwise made available to either adults or children.
Books written in the
US that were considered obscene were open to
confiscation and destruction.
Mr. Rembar was noted for his wit and his ability
to explain rather
simply complex legal arguments, and to strike to the
heart of a legal
question. My favorite quote of his was \"Pornography is
in the groin of the
beholder.\" -- Read More

I remember when the Bibliotheca Alexandrina had
somewhere between 200,000 and 700,000 scrolls. It
was a sad, sad day when the library burned down way
back in
48BC. Well now things are all better. National
Geographic has a Story (sent in by Bob
Cox) on the $200 million renovations. When it is
opened, early next year, there will be room for 8 million
books.

\"I think it\'s an inspiring building,\" the
library\'s director, Professor Mohsen Zahran, says. \"It
has a great deal of symbolism and meaning, and it
carries a message to future generations.\"

The Urban Libraries Council, together with the School
of Information Studies
at SUNY at Buffalo (Got my MLS there), has released
the results of a 3000+ household national
telephone survey of Internet use and public library use.
Highlights, a
research report, and the questionnaire are available on
the ULC
website

The good news is we found some
astoundingly positive numbers. Forty percent
of the respondents indicate they use both the Internet
and the library.
Even better, three out of four Internet users tell us they
have used the
library in the past year. Sixty percent of the library users
are also
Internet users. -- Read More

The Chicago
Tribune has a rather strongly worded Story on filtering. The author says that like the death
penalty, filters don\'t work.

\"So it doesn\'t really
matter that filters can\'t do either of those things
effectively. Since so many people want to believe they
do, it makes good political sense for members of
Congress to play along.\"

A while back we posted a report published by the
Alliance for Childhood questioning
computer use by young children For those interested in
or in
need of support regarding appropriate computer use
by young children,
David Thornburg has a response on PBS.org.

\"What I DO have a problem with is the assertion
that computer use in school is designed to take the
place of these other activities. I have never visited a
school where children were not engaged in physical
play, art, and adult contact, even when these schools
are loaded to the gills with high-tech! Properly used,
technology just becomes another powerful tool for
learning. But the assertion of these authors is that we
have abandoned human contact for virtual worlds. \"

Interested in E-Pubs? Gary Klein
has
written a lengthy critique.

One of the problems with netLibrary is a problem
that is common to
many other publisher & distributor driven systems for
delivering online
access to journal articles.

When was the last time you heard a faculty member
say \"I\'ve been out
of the loop on research in a growing field of my
discipline, and I would
like to catch up... Can you show me how I can read
some new articles
online from Oxford University Press?\"

After all, Oxford University Press publishes 170
different journal
titles, many of which are highly esteemed, and they are
going online,
right? -- Read More

Heraldnet.com has this Spoooky Story on a library ghost in Snohomish\'s Carnegie Building library. Miss Catharine McMurchy, who was a librarian there in the 20\'s and 30\'s still makes her rounds to keep the books \" neatly arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System\".

\"At one point, her chair began to shake. A gust of wind rattled a windowpane; the chair shook harder, \"As if a heavy-footed person walked beside me,\" she said.\"

Any ghosts in your library you\'d like to share?

Susan Hill writes:

Okay, I\'ve tried to hold my tongue, but I simply cannot remain quiet now. I
have just read October 30 American Libraries Online
specifically \"Kansas Library Stops Marking
Books as Suitable for Christians\". I am appalled and outraged that the ACLU
has taken on the battle of \"genre\" stickers in a public library. The labels
had been brought to the ACLU\'s attention by a library user, the Associated
Press reported October 21. A LIBRARY USER? ONE LIBRARY USER? Where are the
voices of all the library users who want those stickers on the books? -- Read More

ALAWON
Congressional leaders are now threatening to continue this session of Congress through Election Day. From day to day, prospects swing wildly for passage of the Labor, HHS, Education appropriations bill (H.R. 4577). One thing that has not wavered in recent days is the apparent Congressional determination to retain the filtering rider within the bill.

Most congressional offices are claiming to have heard very little from the library community on the filtering issue. Now is the time to make library voices heard. A concerted effort by the entire field is the only chance for removal of this onerous, bureaucratic, resource-hogging burden. -- Read More

Lois Fundis writes \"A follow-up: the full text -- all 95 pages! -- of the report of the Congressional Interent Caucus Advisory Commission, released last week, is online at copacommission.org/report
It\'s available in either html or .pdf format.
Among other things, it finds filtering to be costly, inefficient, and dangerous to First Amendment values, and suggests other approaches to the problem of kids having access to \"adult\" materials on the web. \"

Sun-Sentinel.com has a Story on cuts in FL school library media centers. The cut backs in school funding are hitting the libraries hard. They talk about the Library Research Service in Colorado study that showed test scores were 18 percent higher in elementary schools and 10 to 15 percent higher in secondary schools with strong media centers.

\"We want to do the right thing and shrink classes, but who picks up those breaks?\" Correll said. \"It\'s awful, and it\'s not going to get any better.\"

Martin De Saulles writes \"Researcha (the global community for information professionals) asks whether library and information schools at US and UK universities are producing the right candidates for the private sector. There appears to be a consensus amongst employers that new graduates are not receiving appropriate training with an emphasis still placed on training candidates for public libraries. A major factor for this deficiency appears to be a lack of commercial experience amongst University faculty.

Visit the Researcha Web site to follow this debate and make your contribution in our Industry Issues discussion forum. Membership to Researcha is free and takes 2 minutes. \"

Found this one on the AP Wire.

A man who got himself trapped inside a library has been booked -- after calling 911 -- for breaking and entering.

Gregory Roberts, 43, was arrested when he called police from a pay phone in the foyer of the library, police Sgt. Joel Cano said.

Officers found his shoeprints on broken glass where he allegedly gained entry by kicking in a window pane, and Roberts apparently cut his hands while dealing with glass shards, Cano said.
Wandering inside the library, Roberts got trapped between the outer and inner doors of the foyer, Cano said. He couldn\'t go back in, and he couldn\'t go back out.
Now Roberts is behind another door -- a jail door.

\"Sometimes,\" Cano said, \"late night studying just doesn\'t pay.\"

Initiatives to begin the reconstruction of public libraries in the
war-torn province of Kosovo were agreed at a recent meeting in The Hague.

Representatives of key players agreed a plan of action, which would
establish a network of mobile libraries throughout the country.
65 library buildings had been destroyed or severely damaged during
the recent conflict. Following the recommendations of a recent report
on libraries in Kosovo [see note], it was agreed that the quickest and
most effective way to serve the needs of people, in the greatest number
of communities, would be a mobile library and information service. -- Read More

Jud Barry writes:

What is librarianship? Your readers might be interested in the Defining Librarianship website, which is looking for the common ground of librarianship-a source of ethical behavior-on which all librarians stand.

All librarians: whether a modified librarian whose body-pierced unconventionality need not mean a lack of professionalism, an anarchist librarian preparing to catalog the revolution, a librarian in frankly pro-censorship China, or a librarian for the equally (but differently) pro-censorship Concerned Women for America.

They can go to Defining Librarianship and help find the common ground.

ZD Net is Reporting more on how the U.S. Copyright Office (part of the Library of Congress) has backed the right of companies to limit access to their content when it is offered on the Internet.
The Copyright Office said people should be able to read filtering software\'s black lists, and allow folks to bypass malfunctioning security features of software and other copyrighted goods they have purchased. This gives copyright holders a whole new level of protection.

\"The decision will \'significantly impede efforts for libraries to continue to provide information in the digital age.\'
-- Miriam Nisbet, American Library Association \"

Pressgazettenews.com has an Op-Ed Piece on the political-library climate in Green Bay. The Brown County Board of Supervisors (A conservative bunch?) actually voted to keep a library branch open, even though the money doesn\'t seem to be there.

\"People here may be conservative in many respects, but when it comes to public-policy issues that involve making hard choices, the people they elect to serve on the County Board might just be a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals.

Ohio.com has a Story on the Akron library system consideration of changing the filtering policy. They says the internet has \"put librarians at the vortex of a debate over information and censorship that is forcing them to rethink their role in the electronic age\".

I do like the job descrition in this one though, \"A librarian\'s job finding information for people\".
The Ohio Public Library Information Network says:

\"OPLIN\'s stance is that the state of Ohio shouldn\'t be mucking around telling locally elected boards of trustees and their staffs, who know what\'s going on in their own neighborhood, what to do.

I think Mucking is a librarian-only term.

2 Stories take different views on The
\"Surveying the Digital Future\" study by the University of California at Los Angeles Center for Communication Policy.

Freep.com
Says internet users are watching television 4.6 hours less per week than nonusers.

\"The influence of the Internet will dwarf television,\" said Jeffrey Cole, director of the center. \"The Internet has become the fastest-growing electronic technology in world history.\"

Nando Times
Says nearly two-thirds of all Americans have ventured online, and the majority of them deny that the Internet creates social isolation, ah.... denial.

\"What we\'ve found is that almost no one is afraid of the government monitoring us,\" they said. \"They\'re afraid corporations are watching what they do.\"

Fele Lay
writes:

I am majoring engineering and I want to enter a
university that has an excellent science library.

Now I go to New york public library-science and
industrial and business
library to search books and journals. I do not know
whether it can be
compared with the best science libraies in universities.

Does anyone know of any Library Rankings for
Science Libraries?Or can anyone suggest a good
science library?