LISNews: Librarian News

HeraldNet in Washingston had this brief story.

\"A tough-talking 14-year-old boy got more than he bargained for after he allegedly waved a knife at a 46-year-old man outside the downtown Everett Library about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

According to witness statements, the man accidentally bumped the boy on the sidewalk outside the library. The man excused himself. The boy allegedly said, \"Darn right, you\'d better excuse yourself, old man,\" said Everett police Lt. Greg Lineberry. -- Read More

JS Online in Milwaukee, has This Story on legal troubles brought on trying to exclude from the library religious services or instructional meetings.

\"The City of West Allis, WI violated a man\'s First Amendment rights when it refused him permission to use the public library\'s Constitution Room for a presentation about creationism, a federal judge ruled in a decision made public Tuesday.

\"The Library\'s Constitution Room is a designated public forum, and no compelling state interest has been advanced to support the exclusion of plaintiff from using it,\" U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman wrote in his decision. -- Read More

A Report from The Union Leader says that New Hampshire schools and libraries are missing out on more than $2 million a year in federal funds due to overwhelming paper work.

\"There is a tremendous amount of paperwork, and it changes\" annually, said Theresa Pare, a librarian with the New Hampshire State Library. The program is now in its fourth year, and none of the paperwork is the same as previous years, she said.
\"The application process has been horrendous,\" agreed Judy Fillion, a director with the state Department of Education. -- Read More

The Project for Excellence in Journalism notes that political news is still produced mainly by \"old media.\" Personalized home pages such as My Yahoo tend to shunt important materials off in favor of newer items. Some web-based media, such as Salon.com and MSN, are given higher marks for their efforts to combine shallow linking with original reporting. See Currents for the full story. -- Read More

Michigan Live has a Story on the doings at the Ann Arbor District Library. It seems they have stopped mailing over due notices, and only contact patrons by email. They have also more than doubled fines.

\"It\'s a major change in policy,\" said William Razgunas, a regular library user. \"Hollywood Video is for-profit, so they have no obligation to their customers to set the fine one way or another. But taxpayers don\'t support Hollywood Video.\" -- Read More

Read this Story from the Omaha (NE) Wold-Herald.

A City Hall meeting over the prospect of extending library hours grew contentious Monday afternoon, and one Omaha City Council member walked out in anger.

The meeting between Mayor Hal Daub, Councilman Marc Kraft and others was supposed to address increasing tension over when extended library hours, which had been budgeted for by the council, would be implemented.

\"The meeting did not go well with the mayor,\" Kraft said. \"I ended up walking out of it after having been insulted.\"

The Daily Southtown in Chicago has This Great Article that is a series of interviews with local librarians. A nice look at the librarian of the 00\'s,

\"

Lose the image of the hair up in a bun. Old Maid is just another card game to them, and some actually have tattoos and wear more than two earrings. Librarians throughout the Southland say they have plenty of passion, too — not for the discipline of tidy bookshelves and silent facilities, but for books and all the things that go along with reading and learning.P.S. Some are even male.\" -- Read More

Yahoo News picked up This Story on Bookstores where customers pick out titles and have them printed in minutes. It would be like having an unlimited number of books in stock. Combine this with an E-Book reader and your library could put together an impressive collection in no time! -- Read More

PC World has an interesting how to Article on setting up your own E-Library on your PC. It shows where to get the software and even a few titles.

These links should all work now, if you tried them before, they we\'re all broken. -- Read More

The Gardiner Public Library has published their \"Who Reads What?\" survey of celebrity book picks.Gary J. Remal, Faith Hill, Christina Ricci, Nolan Ryan and others are on the list. -- Read More

The Citizens\' Stamp Advisory Committee, a group of independent citizens appointed by the Postmaster General to review more than 40,000 suggestions for stamp subjects received by the United States Postal Service each year, recommended a commemorative stamp for issuance on the Library\'s Bicentennial date, April 24, 2000. Ethel Kessler, the designer of the breast cancer stamp issued on July 29, 1998 by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Postmaster General William Henderson, has designed the Library\'s Bicentennial commemorative stamp, as pictured here on the Library of Congress Website -- Read More

Chicage Tribune columnist James Coates gets all hot and heavy describing his recent experience personalizing the Excite portal. He\'s so excited, he throws out his style guide, tacking a .com on the end of every second word. -- Read More

Asia
Biz-Tech has an interesting Story on a verdict
handed down by the Osaka District Court states that,
under certain sets of conditions, links used to connect
one Web page to another could be considered an
infringement of the law.

\"

The court\'s ruling means that if somebody creates a
Web page that includes a link to another page, and if
that other page is in violation of the law, then the person
who creates the link can be charged with aiding and
abetting the crime. This is regardless of whether or not
they are aware of the illegality of the page they linked
to.\" -- Read More

The Times
UK is reporting in a Very Short Story
that the worlds oldest bookstore, JOHN Smith & Son in
Glasgow\'s West End is closing thanks to competition
from online giants such as Amazon and BN.com.

The firm was founded in 1751 by John Smith, the
youngest son of the Laird of Craigend, who opened a
shop on Trongate selling books, snuff and coffee to
Glasgow\'s tobacco merchants. -- Read More

Troy Lowrie a local Denver owner of strip clubs
PT\'s, PT\'s Gold and All Stars, in addition to seven
others nationwide has said he will donate $1,000,000
worth of stock in his clubs to the columbine library
fund.

\"We all know it\'s a great cause,\" Troy Lowrie
said.The Story in on the Denver
Post. -- Read More

A Story on the NY Times goes
into some depth on how tricky the laws are regarding
linking on the Web.

\"When a federal judge
issued a decision last week in a case involving \"deep
linking,\" many reports suggested that the controversial
Internet practice was now unambiguously legal. But the
story is more complex than that. In fact, deep linking --
the practice of linking to a page deep inside another
Website, bypassing its home page -- still appears to be
in legal limbo.\" -- Read More

The News Press in Florida, has a
great look at school libraries.

“On the Internet, you can just type it in and it will
find it for you,” Congregane said. “You can do it right at
home, you don’t have to go out to the library to get
information.”

Educators have mixed opinions about how the Internet
and other technology are used in schools.

Overall, what the Internet means is that the role of the
school library has changed. \" -- Read More

I posted this once already, but this time around, I would really love to see your feedback on the ODP controversy. -- Read More

The AP Wire is carrying this story;

A 1,000-year-old book of riddles, a 15th-century love letter and a 20th-century bear named Pooh: All are strands in the rich history of English literature being celebrated this summer by the British Library.

This body of literature is ``the thing, above anything else, that Britain has given to the world in the course of the last millennium,\'\' government arts secretary Chris Smith says about the national library\'s major exhibit for the year 2000. -- Read More

This Story from Salon.com is raising a terrifying possiblity.

\"Can hyperlinks be outlawed? Only last week, a California judge ruled, in a case brought by Ticketmaster against Tickets.com, that it\'s not illegal for one site to link to another. Among other things, that suit concerned \"deep linking.\" Ticketmaster alleged that by bypassing its home page and linking directly to \"inside\" pages, Tickets.com violated its copyright. The judge, however, held that \"hyperlinking does not in itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act.\" -- Read More