LISNews: Librarian News

3M, in partnership with the American Association of School Librarians, will donate 3M Detection Systems to up to 100 school library media centers in 2000.
Deadline for applications is May 31, 2000
In an effort to help school libraries maintain their valuable resources, 3M, a leader in library security, announces today the launch of \"3M Salute to Schools,\" a program providing up to $1 million in 3M? Detection Systems to school library media centers in the United States. -- Read More

I found This Funny Page on Slashdot today.
Someone did an \"Interview\" with the search
engine AskJeeves
asking VERY simple questions, questions any librarian
would be able to answer. The answers are
outstanding. It shows how far computers (And the web)
need to go to replace librarians.

UpdateAsk Jeeves if He\'s Gay! -- Read More

The Nando Times has yet another great library Story.This one on how in the past few years, libraries have become more aggressive about promoting themselves.

With publishers ever-nervous about the future of reading, libraries offer a large, dependable market. According to the most recent statistics available from the Book Industry Study Group, public libraries bought close to $700 million worth of books in 1997 and are projected to spend almost $900 million by 2002. And because libraries have a mission to buy books that are useful, and not just popular, they accept titles mainstream stores avoid.

\"Publishers depend on libraries for midlist titles,\" said Marcia Purcell, director of Random House\'s department of library promotion. \"The same is true with first-time novelists. Some bookstores are reluctant to take a chance on a first novel. Libraries are willing.\" -- Read More

ML Live has a Story on a little fight brewing in Michigan. Residents in one School District pay $1.6 Million a year for library services; their neighbors pay nothing. So managers are demanding all residents pay their fair share or possibly lose access to the library.

\"What we have said to them is, \'Look, we don\'t think this is fair. We would like you to join (our) district library.\' If they decide not to do that, we will terminate our contract.\"Sherry Hupp, Cromaine library director, said of the northern district residents. -- Read More

TCPalm.com has this Story on the bill introduced Monday would require public libraries in Florida to install software filters on at least half of their computers that have Internet access.

More and more children are accessing pornography on the Internet,\" Campbell said. \"More and more sexual predators are using libraries to access our children.\"
[Sen. Skip Campbell, D-Tamarac] -- Read More

A Story on how the Whitney Point Central School District (NY) has removed Inner City Mother Goose by Eve Merriam from its middle school library after a parent complained about its language and content.The book, The Inner City Mother Goose by Eve Merriam, updates Mother Goose rhymes to make satirical comments on street violence, housing inadequacies, crime and other problems plaguing inner cities. -- Read More

The Nando Times has a nice look at the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C.

\"On April 24, 1800, President John Adams approved an appropriation of $5,000 to purchase \"such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.\"

Books - mostly on history, economics and law - were ordered from London. They arrived in 1801 and were shelved in the new U.S. Capitol. The collection consisted of just 740 volumes and three maps.

Next week, on April 24, millions of books and much history later, the Library of Congress celebrates its 200th anniversary as an institution that grew, in the words of one of its biographers, into \"a symbol of American democracy and faith in the power of learning.\" -- Read More

Excite News Has this interesting business-side oriented story on how Encyclopaedia Britannica\'s image has seen a dizzying transformation.

\"The new, gizmo-loving side of the august publisher showed through again Monday with the introduction of a software application that gives users of Palm handheld computers access to all 44 million words of the encyclopedia.

\"Britannica now goes wherever you go,\" said Don Yannias, chief executive officer of Britannica.com Inc., the Chicago encyclopedia publisher\'s digital arm.
\" -- Read More

CIO.com has a nice review of the book Building Wealth By Lester C. Thurow; a book that seeks to define the rules in a Knowledge-Based Economy.

\"Everyone understands what it means to own land or productive equipment and how those rights can be enforced. It is not so clear, however, what it means to own knowledge or how those ownership rights can be enforced\" -- Read More

Finally a Story that admits the web is not going to shut down libraries.

\"It soon became clear that libraries are far from the tar pit - that, in fact, as both Reid and Keith Lance, director of Library Research Services for the Colorado State Library, noted: This idea so many people have, about libraries declining in the age of the Internet, is just wrong. Libraries, in fact, recognized the competition that technology presented and have offered it themselves. -- Read More

This Story from Digital Mass puts an interesting spin on a new web site that offers to respond to a typed-in question with an answer and an attributed source, usually in as little as a tenth of a second. The Web site is Factcity.com and if they do indeed pull this off, could put a few Reference Librarians out of work. Check it out and let us know what you think. -- Read More

I can\'t pass up the opportunity to post a story that Involves Who Wants to Be a Millionare? and Drew Carey!

Carey, who launched his career in 1986 at the Cleveland Comedy Club, has chosen Ohio libraries to receive proceeds from his celebrity appearance on ABC\'s popular television show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Carey will appear on the Millionaire program on May 2 and 3 in a special game show featuring celebrities who will be playing for their favorite charities and causes. Carey has chosen Ohio libraries as recipient of his winnings during \"Celebrity Week\" on the program.

Is he smart enough to win a Million? -- Read More

Freedom Forum has a great Story From the prophetic Jon Katz on how quick people have turned to the web for news.

\"The Chicago-based group, a consortium of 3,000 university professors who consult on high-tech startups, found in a nationwide phone survey that the Net has replaced television and newspapers as the top source of key information for young adults, 67% of whom are already online.

In the survey of 1,014 households, nearly 70% of Americans aged 14 to 24 live in households that use the Net to gather important information, compared to a nationwide average of just 46%.\" -- Read More

A Story from the Binghamton Press has good things to say about book clubs.

\"This week is Turn Off TV Week. Reading is something where everyone can use their life experiences and enjoy an alternative to television,\" said Melanie Battoe, library director at the Guernsey Memorial Library in Norwich. Battoe started a book review group at the library Friday with a noon brown-bag discussion of Memoirs of a Geisha . This fall, she plans a monthly mystery book group. -- Read More

TechReview
has a very provocative Article on how the
DMCA and E-Books are going to change what we
all take for granted now.

\"We still have the same old freedoms in using
paper books. But if e-books replace printed books, that
exception will do little good. With “electronic ink,” which
makes it possible to download new text onto an
apparently printed piece of paper, even newspapers
could become ephemeral. Imagine: no more used
book stores; no more lending a book to your friend; no
more borrowing one from the public library—no more
“leaks” that might give someone a chance to read
without paying. (And judging from the ads for Microsoft
Reader, no more anonymous purchasing of books
either.) This is the world publishers have in mind for us.
\" -- Read More

The Nando
Times has a great St
ory on the latest trends being used in public
libraries as
competition increases from book stores, and the
internet. They give great coverage to everything from
coffee, to library buildings.

\"Imagine a place
where you can rent videos, get your hair braided or sing
in a rock \'n\' roll band. Imagine a place where you can
also attend plays, fax a document or walk among rows
and rows of computers.

Imagine Starbucks, Amazon.com and bonus
membership cards; market research, tracking systems
and snappy slogans. Imagine all of this at no
charge. -- Read More

Larocque Marce writes:

A Manuscript Written on the Margins of a Book will be
available to the worldThe
National Library of Canada has microfilmed
and sent to a Jerusalem publisher, a valuable 18th
century Hebrew printed
text containing 112 annotated pages of manuscript
commentary. \"The entire Torah world will thank you for
your gracious assistance in bringing these annotations
to light\", stated Rabbi Yosef Buxbaum, Dean of Machon
Yerushalayim, The Jerusalem Institute of Talmudic
Research, in a letter to Roch Carrier, the National
Librarian of Canada. -- Read More

Small Cap Center.com has a nice report on a Knowledge Mangement Study.

According to a just-released study, that free-flow of information in the digital age presents a daunting set of challenges for global firms struggling to generate, retain and leverage knowledge. “The growth of the Internet and digital businesses, which have been so critical in fueling our booming economy, is conversely the very reason why knowledge is so difficult to share and leverage,\'\' says Windle B. Priem, President and CEO of Korn/Ferry International.
The study identified four key areas where tensions are rising. -- Read More

Thomas J. Hennen Jr. writes: Those of us in Catholic grade schools of the 1950\'s know the terror that nuns induced with: \"That, young man, will be on your PERMANENT RECORD!\" Sister would record it and send it to the \"permanent record place\" at the parish, then it would go to the archdiosese and then, perhaps, ever and anon, to Vatican City by diplomatic pouch. :-)

Is that COLD terror or what? Makes you think about privacy, no?

The enonymous.com report, released April 10 is, according to their press release, the most comprehensive online privacy research effort to date, covers 30,000 Web site privacy policies over nine months and across all domains. Enonymous.com rates the sites\' policies from 0 to 4 stars, based a site\'s privacy policy regarding release of personally identifiable information. -- Read More

Andy Breeding writes \"Today\'s technology cover story on Salon.com titled \"The Twilight of the Cryptogeeks\" mentions that \"Librarians everywhere\" were given an EFF Pioneer award.

Be sure to Check it out.

\"Whitfield Diffie bounds to the platform, He stands now before the audience with his neat gray beard, shoulder-length blond hair and sudden uncontained enthusiasm. \"Librarians!\" he exclaims. \"I\'m thrilled with this award.\" -- Read More