LISNews: Librarian News

Frank Ryan writes \"Here is a good story - and a true
one!

A consultant colleague who specialised in thesaurus
construction was at a party. She was button-holed by an IT
\"techie\" who was very keen to make an impression. In the
course of their conversation he realised that what they
had in common was \"databases\". He described at length a
database of internal documents that he and his colleagues
had constructed and how after a few thousand records they
started to add \"tags\" to the records i.e. specific
words describing their content.

At this point my colleague interrupted and said \"Oh, you
mean a thesaurus of controlled terms\". The downcast
techie replied \"Has this been done before\"?

The Hindu, Online edition of India\'s National Newspaper on indiaserver.com, has a story on a dharna going on in Pondicherry.

\"Members of the Pondicherry State Library and Information Assistants Association will stage a dharna in front of the Assembly premises on March 27 (the day when budget session of the Assembly is scheduled to begin). \" -- Read More

Thomas J. Hennen Jr. writes \"This is (partly) satire.

In the February 2000 issue of Wired Magazine is the article \"Cyborg 1.0\" It is subtitled: \"Kevin Warwick outlines his plan to become one with his computer.\" Warwick, what a great irony, for catalogers, no? Warwick, a research in Great Britain, not a Framework or \"container.\" decribes his experiment to implant a chip in his arm and an attempt to record his emotions and then play them back to his nervous system, eventually, he hopes, over the web! He fears heights, so he will climb a cliff, record the emotion and play it back to his nervous system over the net. Spooky, no? See:
wired.com for the full story.

Readers may be familiar with the attempts by library folk to catalog the net using the Dublin Core and the Warwick Framework. (References below). These catalogers worry that the net is being indexed by search engines that can\'t possibly keep up with fast growing and chaotic web resources. -- Read More

The Standard has a good story on E-Books from the business point of view.

\"The book publishing industry relies on a business model that dates back centuries – and it likes it that way, thank you very much. While every other media industry has flocked to the Net, the staid book world has used the Web for merely advertising its latest releases.

But the page is turning. \" -- Read More

This Story from The Orlando Sentinel, has a great first line:

\"If you hate being shushed by librarians, brace yourself for something even worse: A collection agency may soon be calling about those long-overdue books. The Seminole County Public Library System is joining a handful of others in Florida taking advantage of a 1996 law allowing public libraries to use collection agencies to go after their worst offenders.\"

Of course they do arrest people for overdure books in FL too. -- Read More

I know it\'s not exactly funny, or exactly relevant, but News.com is reporting that A teenager arrested in Wales for allegedly hacking into e-commerce Web sites obtained the credit card details of Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and the world\'s richest man. You can read the full story Here

In a folow up to our What Banner Ads are saying about us story, CNN has this in depth story on one company, IDcide, that has developed a cure for this by providing a browser plug-in that discriminates between first-party (coming from the site you\'re visiting) and third-party (coming from other servers) cookies. The tool, called the Privacy Companion, can provide varying levels of security -- either blocking no cookies, just third-party cookies, or all cookies. -- Read More

The Boston Globe has a report on a program, called CPHack, that will let any Cyber Patrol user decipher the list and that also deciphers the main password for Cyber Patrol. Anybody with this password can turn off Cyber Patrol, thus defeating the purpose of the program. Slashdot has a great story on this issue too. Now Mattel attorneys are bulk-emailing subpoenas even to people who linked to the cphack code! -- Read More

The Roanoke Times Has this nice story on how well the
Chesapeake Public Library System is doing.

\"Last year,
an article in the magazine American Libraries ranked the
Chesapeake system seventh best in the nation among libraries
serving a population between 100,000 and 250,000.
    On the local level, 99.4 percent of Chesapeake\'s
residents approve of their library service, the highest mark
earned by any branch of the city\'s government. -- Read More

Michigan Live has This Story on Gary Glenn and his speach for the Holland Area Family Association\'s annual spring breakfast at Hope College\'s Maas Center. The breakfast typically focuses on anti-pornography issues.

\"There is no doubt in my mind there will be filters on the computers at Herrick District Library and every other library in the state,\" Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, told a Holland audience Saturday.\" -- Read More

A story at APBNews.com has some ways to help battle Plagiarism as it becomes more and more popular.

\"The Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program replaces every fifth word in a suspect paper with a standard size blank and asks the student to replace the missing words. The number of correct responses, the amount of time it takes to complete the task and other factors are considered in assessing the final \"plagiarism probability score.\" -- Read More

Thomas J. Hennen Jr. writes \"Three things have made the news lately that brought parts of the web to a halt:
the hacker attacks on Yahoo,
Brittanica\'s launch as a free online encyclopedia,
and Stephen King\'s e-book \"Riding the Dollar - oops I mean- Bullet.\"

Isn\'t it nice, in a way, that two of the three were book related?

But I have a serious concern! :-)

What will happen to collectors? How does one get a first edition of an e-book? King may have missed an historic chance here! Why didn\'t he and the publishers issue a first edition for e-book collectors? -- Read More

Barb O writes \"I would like feedback from those \"in the field\" regarding if there are set policies for restriction of \'R\' rated videos in place, how long have they been in place and are they working? \"

A few weeks back we had a few stories on this topic from MA and PA, check them out, and let Barb know what you think. You can get Links to the stories by clicking below. Is 13 too young to view \'R\' rated videos from the library? Is it our job to decide what children watch? What Would The Librarian Do? -- Read More

The
Salt Lake City Tribune is reporting that the declined to
set aside $1 million for state college and university
libraries, so some colleges are in a pinch for funds.

\"The schools had hoped the Legislature would earmark
funds to bolster their holdings and keep pace with journal
costs, following up on $1 million it provided for that
purpose last year. The money was to be divided among the
state\'s nine public institutions. But this year\'s request
was ignored.
    And now schools are grappling with the loss of
anticipated funding. -- Read More

Dan Chudnov over at OSS4Lib.org has written an excellent article for those not familiar with what open source projects, and how they can be used in libraries.

The biggest news in the software industry in recent months is open source. Every week in the technology news we can read about IBM or Oracle or Netscape or Corel announcing plans to release flagship products as open source or a version of these products that runs on an open source operating system such as Linux. In its defense against the Department of Justice, Microsoft has pointed to Linux and its growing market share as evidence that Microsoft cannot exert unfair monopoly power over the software industry. Dozens of new open source products along with regular news of upgrades, bug fixes, and innovative new features for these products are announced every day at web sites followed by thousands. -- Read More

Canadian Poetry Archive now available!

The Canadian Poetry Archive features some 1,000 poems, dating from 1826 to 1925, by more than 100 early English- and French-language Canadian poets.
The database also includes biographies of some of this period\'s more prominent poets, including Pauline Johnson, Archibald Lampman, Susanna Moodie, Émile Nelligan, Charles G.D. Roberts and Duncan Campbell Scott.

\"The richness and diversity of the poetry represented in our Canadian Poetry Archive remind us that Canada has a long and distinguished literary tradition,\" said National Librarian Roch Carrier.
The Canadian Poetry Archive can be found on the Internet at:
The National Library of Canada

Edweek.org has a report on an interesting study done that has shown a correlation between appropriate and sufficient library collections and qualified library personnel an performance on standardized tests.

\"

The reports conclude that test scores increase as school librarians spend more time collaborating with and providing training to teachers, providing input into curricula, and managing information technology for the school.

The full results will be reported in next month\'s School Library Journal.\' -- Read More

Andover, NH (Not MA) is a town with two libraries, and TheConcord Monitor has an interesting
story on the goings on in this small town.

\". This is
a true tale of two libraries, after all. And truth, as it
turns out, is stranger and sweeter than fiction. So bring on
the happy ending.
It has all the makings of a best seller: a small-town drama
twined with courtroom suspense, a plot crammed with history
and mystery, a quirky little subplot sketching life in this
poetically named setting, a cast of characters that includes
good guys and good guys and . . -- Read More

Owed an estimated $160,700 in books and fines, this library intends to collect. Read this story from the Greensboro News & Record.

The well-worn library copy of \"War and Peace\" shoved underneath the bed with the dust bunnies could cost you some percentage points on your next loan.

Nearly one year after the High Point Public Library turned its truant members over to a professional collection agency, more than 2,200 people have faced paying the fines or putting a seven-year blemish on their credit reports, according to the library\'s latest report released at its monthly Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday. -- Read More

Read this story from the Greenville News.

A Greenville County Library board with six new members aboard opened the possibility of filtering the Internet Wednesday by sending the controversial issue for a committee revamp.

\"I think site-oriented filtering might be the answer,\" said operations committee chairman Doug Churdar, a new member who said he will try to craft an Internet policy for board consideration within two months. Site filtering is a method of policing in which a filter blocks entire Web sites based on content rather than certain key words. -- Read More