LISNews: Librarian News

CNN.com has an interesting Article about a man and some dinosaur bones.

\"Author Steve Fiffer has assembled these disparate pieces into a compelling account of a man and his first love. The man is Peter Larson, a maverick fossil collector. The love of his life is a bag of bones. A very large bag of very large bones. The relationship between Larson and the remarkable fossil he unearthed in 1990 is the core of Fiffer\'s book \"Tyrannosaurus Sue.\"  -- Read More

Wired.com has this interesting article on the how the Digital Mellennium Copyright Act of 1998 is holding up.
\"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 was supposed to clear up copyright issues in the Internet era.

That hasn\'t exactly happened. Instead, there have been a series of lawsuits between the recording and motion picture industries, private companies and individual users, seeking clarification on how intellectual property is protected as music and video moves to the digital world.\" -- Read More

The Detroit News ran this story on a two week amnesty period that a library will give its patrons to return overdue books. After that, they will have police issue warrants.
\"People can bring back overdue books with no problem during the amnesty days ... or they\'ll be dealing with the Public Safety Department,\" Public Safety Director Adam Garcia said.
Anybody with an overdue book after May 31 could be charged with larceny, a misdemeanor punishable by 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.\" -- Read More

Clickz.com has a Story that points out how much pressure publishers are under.

\"The Internet changes the entire dynamics of publishing. When Stephen King\'s words can be packaged into a PDF file and downloaded by anyone with a computer in a few minutes, one must begin to question what his publisher, Simon & Schuster, is doing to earn its share of the income pie.\" -- Read More

Gregory V. McClay Wrote:

Here\'s what we do and what we have always done:
We help people access appropriate information as quickly and effectively as possible.
Here\'s what we used to use.... Books
Here\'s what we use now.... Books and Computers
Information used to come in .... Books and Periodicals
Information now comes in .... Books, Periodicals, Audio, Video, Computers
Nothing has changed but our options. We do the same thing. A patron asks a question. Depending on the type of information and the time available for the patron we access the materials that will best answer the question in the time allowed. -- Read More

A Story from The BBC reports a new study done by IBM, Compaq and Altavista, estimates that only 30% of all web pages make up a heavily interconnected core which most of the search engines index. They dubbed the core the \'giant strongly connected component\'.
They say that it can take hundreds of clicks to reach some web pages and others cannot be reached at all.
Of course this contradicts work carried out by Alberto-Laszlo Barabasi from the University of Notre Dame that suggested it took a maximum of 19 clicks to get from one side of the web to the other. You can check out the study Here. They call it the \"Bow Tie\" Theory.\"The result is the development of the \"Bow Tie\" Theory. One of the initial discoveries of this ongoing study shatters the number one myth about the Web ... in truth, the Web is less connected than previously thought. \" -- Read More

AZStarnet.com has a Story that is of interest. Friends of the Tucson-Pima Public Library have decided to sell some books online to help raise money for the library. They put some books on eBay and Amazon, and made a few extra bucks.

\"Billings, the Friends general manager, said the organization hopes to bring its annual online average to $50,000 in the next two to three years, adding: \"Opening up our sale online has become quite lucrative.\" -- Read More

Cabot writes \"National Library of Canada Consultation on Online Publications
Includes reports from a recent forum of publishers and National Library staff, to identify key issues for collecting and giving access to online publications.
URL: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/consult/consulte.htm \"

The Post Gazette has this funny article about the reviewers at Amazon.com.
\"Feeding our primal need to rate is just one of the benefits of technology. It
also makes it possible to create minor celebrities, since top reviewers also
get their own page on Amazon. And, perhaps best of all, at least if you
happen to be in the business of selling books: All the reviews are positive!\" -- Read More

MeidaINFO.com has this Report

\"By this summer, all of the nation\'s 100 largest
newspapers will offer news content online,
according to a new survey by E&P Online. The
one straggler, Investor\'s Business Daily, plans to
launch a new site with daily content by early
summer.\" -- Read More

Pat Ensor writes \"Top Technology Trends for Libraries: Y2K - from the Library and Information Technology Association

What technological issues have a good chance of affecting libraries in the next few years? A dozen leading members of the
Library and Information Technology Association are keeping up with that and discussing issues online and in person, so that
you can stay informed.

Read on for details.... -- Read More

Boston.com has this story on the decision by the West Hartford Libraries to ban the use of cell phones.
\"West Hartford librarians will reach out and shush someone under a new ban implemented in the reading areas of the public libraries in town.

The ban is in response to some complaints over the past few months about annoying ringing and chatting phone users.
\" -- Read More

PhillyNews.com
has a cool Story on a new
museum exhibit in CA that shows \"The Future of
Reading\"

\" Books use sensors to produce
sound, dozens of pages of text fit onto one screen,
ordinary-looking business cards can be encoded with
\"glyphs\" containing invisible resumes, and a little boy\'s
life story can be laid out on a giant fish-eye
screen.\"

You can visit the exhibit Online -- Read More

David Plotnikoff, staff writer for the San Jose Mercury News, notices that \"on the Net there is no shortage of structures to facilitate the orderly transfer of advice from the clued to the clueless. ... Every recreational pursuit from water ballet to weasel husbandry seems to command at least one Web site that\'s well-populated with professional experts and eager kibitzers of all stripes.\" -- Read More

This Story begs the question, Does being in Jail mean you can\'t read what you want?
In The Arkansas Benton County Jail, apparently it does. It seems the Ministry is now choosing the books prisoners can read, and has removed everything except \"volumes with religious themes and \"spiritually uplifting little novelettes\".

\"\"I think this is a violation of our constitutional rights,\" said Ms. Marin, who is being held on suspicion of misdemeanor failure to pay fines and restitution and driving with a suspended driver\'s license. \"I do not believe they can let the clergy tell us what we can and cannot read.\" -- Read More

Don Saklad writes \"Sadly, the friendliest BPL\'er ever Paul DeLillis died.
Paul\'s kindly nature with all people he encountered are
delightful BPL memories.

For further information contact BPL audiovisual\'s Doris Chin
or Steve Olson
http://www.bpl.org/WWW/gl/glsaudiovisual.html
http://www.bpl.org/brls/resources/contact_info.html
\"

MSNBC carried this article on coffee and gift shops at the public library.
\"On a recent day, a woman crunched on her Caesar salad and thumbed through the latest John Grisham mystery. Two teens sipped their caramel-flavored java as they perused the periodicals. Down the hall, a man bought a bag of Edgar Allan Poe-pourri at the gift shop. If it sounds more like a Barnes and Noble bookstore than the stuffy library from the days of old, Springfield-Greene County Library director Annie Busch certainly hopes so.
“The library is no longer the dim, dusty place that you only visit if you have to,” Busch said. “It’s suddenly a pretty cool place to hang out.” -- Read More

The Times of India has this neat article regarding the future of the print publishing.
\"The printed word and books would retain their importance in the coming years, despite the advent of digital technology and the electronics revolution, according to James Billington, librarian of the American Library of Congress.

Mr Billington, chief of the world\'s largest library, appeared face to face with librarians and information technology officials of Mumbai, at the first digital video conference held at the American Center on Thursday evening. It was held in celebration of 200 years of the library.\" -- Read More

The Sun Herald has this positive column on reference librarians.
\"When I started my professional career as a librarian, it was as a reference librarian. The motto of a reference librarian is that there is no such thing as a stupid question. If you need to know an answer, reference librarians will move heaven and earth to try and find that information.\" -- Read More

Here is a sad
story from Michigan Live
on the tragic death of a beloved Libary
Cat.

\"Residents of the rural Michigen
community are mourning Deuce\'s loss after the cat
was mauled to death by two dogs Friday while it was
resting on the building\'s steps.\"

Be sure to
check out The
Web Site of the departed cat. -- Read More