LISNews: Librarian News

This is London has this story on a 73 year old man in England, borrowed The Bulpington Of Blup by HG Wells from Clapton library in August 1939, and just returned it this week, the funny thing is he paid his fine!
At least he wasn\'t Arrested!

\"He noticed on the flyleaf that the fine for overdue books in 1939 had been a penny (1d) a week. He calculated he had kept the book for 3,145 weeks, which he converted to £13.25, before sending back the book with a cheque for the same amount. \" -- Read More

You think you\'re having a bad day.
\"The computerized catalog system at the New York Public Library has been down since Monday, forcing users in all 85 branches to search the stacks visually and librarians to check out books by hand.\"

This story appears in the New York Times, so registration is required.

The Universal Studios Research Library has shut down. Read this story from the Record Online.

It\'s the place where Gregory Peck got the idea for his ordinary-Joe hairdo in \"To Kill a Mockingbird,\" where Alfred Hitchcock got the lowdown on flight patterns for \"The Birds,\" where George Roy Hill first glimpsed the bookie joints he wanted to depict in \"The Sting,\" and where Steven Spielberg learned about shark behavior for \"Jaws.\"

For 84 years, its voluminous clipping files -- organized by topic and crammed with photographs -- were used to design the look and feel of thousands of movies and television shows, from the cop shop in the 1950s TV series \"Dragnet\" and the rocket control panels in 1995\'s \"Apollo 13\" to the
restaurants in this year\'s Jacqueline Susann biopic, \"Isn\'t She Great.\" -- Read More

Publisher after publisher has introduced a line of historical fiction featuring admirable heroines. Read this story from the Record Online.

To the delight of publishers, girls are showing a voracious appetite for learning about their predecessors -- a pursuit that has propelled historical fiction into an unexpected big-bucks commodity.

Historical novels and biographies were once the preoccupation of a devoted but small band of readers. Now they\'re flying off bookshelves, particularly those books aimed at 7- to 14-year-old girls. -- Read More

David Ettinger writes:Below is the text of a letter to the editor of The New York Times I recently wrote which was published this past Sunday:

Whatever Happened to the Class of \'93?\" (Feb. 20) looked at how the Internet had defined the careers of Stanford graduates, turning some into quick millionaires. It described one graduate -- one of the first
employees of Yahoo who now heads its Web cataloging team -- as possibly the \"world\'s richest librarian.\"

I don\'t begrudge her her good fortune, but her situation contrasts markedly with that of thousands of dedicated professionals with library science degrees and extremely modest incomes who, like her, love what they do, but whose work is scarcely recognized by society, monetarily or
otherwise.

Washington, Feb. 20

David Ettinger is a librarian at the Gelman Library at George Washington University.

Publishersweekly.com has a nice story on National Poetry Month.

It\'s been five years since the Academy of American Poets designated April National Poetry Month, and this year\'s month-long literary celebration and marketing frenzy will feature more promotions, readings and bookstore events than ever. -- Read More

The LA Times has a rather interesting look at filtering programs. It\'s a look at programs for use at home, by parents, as a way to control what their children see.The author, Lawrence J. Magid , compares the pros and cons of several popular filters.

\"Whether you use a filtering program, be sure to talk with your kids about safety on the Internet. Remind them to never give out any personal information or arrange a face-to-face visit with anyone they encounter online. Filtering technology has its place, but it\'s no substitute for old-fashioned parenting.\" -- Read More

This weeks Time Magazine cover story is about E-Books, and how Stephen King has really changed things. King has some very interesting things to say on the subject, not the least of which is he expects to make $450,000 on the E-Book.
Check out Time.com for the entire story.

\"\"There\'s a lot of plumage here, but I wonder if the beast underneath isn\'t still pretty scrawny,\" he says, pointing out that the Net is still too slow and hard for many people to use.\" -- Read More

2 Librarians in Las Vegas have filed suit saying they were treated unfairly after they complained of a co-worker and his pornography. He was looking at porn on computers, and employees endured harassing comments and when new issues of playboy came in. There is a short story here on MSNBC

\"Executive Director Daniel Walter told News 3, “it is absolutely against library policy to download pornography. A violation of that policy is subject to discipline. We have a no-tolerance policy for harassment.”

DO they get Playboy at that library? -- Read More

Information on the XIX Brazilian Congress of Library Science and Documentation, the III Latin-American Congress of Library Science and Documentation, and the VII National Meeting of Legal Documentation and Information can be found at: www.pucrs.br/cbbd2000

The event will take place in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, from 24 to 30 September 2000, at the Convention Center of the Pontifica Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul - PUCRS.
Main Topic: Information for Citizenship.

You may have seen the story last week about the principal in OH that banned a book after someone compalined the language in the book made her uncomfortable as did \"the behavior of the characters and the referral to drugs, alcohol, and sex, etc.\" The school superintendent has now changed his mind, after the teacher using the book put up a fight, and the book is back in. You can read the story at Toledo Blade.com

\"After much careful thought, lengthy discussion, and debate, as superintendent, I am hereby overturning Principal Jeffrey L. Snook\'s decision to ban the book Hoops by Walter Dean Myers,\" Mr. Puchta said. \"In the interest of putting the students of our district first, it\'s time to put this matter behind us so the educational process can continue.\" -- Read More

It seems like everyone wants a piece of the potter action. Now a childhood friend of JK Rowling says HE was the inspiration for Harry Potter in this story from Book Magazine.

\"Speaking from his home in the English West Country on Saturday, Ian Potter, a childhood friend of author JK Rowling, said he would be annoyed by anyone who claimed that Harry Potter–the incredibly popular fictional character created by Rowling–was inspired by a Potter other than himself.\" -- Read More

In a follow up to infodude\'s great Story on amazon.com and patents, you may want to check out the exchange between Jeff Bezos and Tim o\'Rielly.

Jeff has his open letter on
Amazon.com and Tim O\'Reilly has his on oreilly.com

Dr Aniruddha Malpani wrote in from India with this:

We feel health libraries can serve as catalysts to
empowering patients with information in developing
countries, and the HELP model could be replicated in most
parts of the world.

HELP - the Health Education Library for People, India\'s
first Consumer Health Education Resource Center , and one
of the world’s largest consumer health libraries ( as
determined by the Medical Library Association , USA ) was
established in 1997 to empower people by providing them with
the information they need to promote their health , and
prevent and treat medical problems in the family in
partnership with their doctor. We are a registered
charitable trust and a non-profit organisation. HELP has
become a prototype of the modern digital library. Our
website at www.healthlibrary.com is India’s leading health portal, and receives over half
a million hits. -- Read More

Diane M. O\'Keefe a librarian at Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital in MI sent in this wonderful song parody.

I am the very model of computerized Librarian.
I seek out information zoologic to agrarian.
I know each subject that is found in an encyclopedia
I handle every AV tool and every type of media.
My online databases can locate each journal article.
In physics texts, I can define each elemental particle.
In atlases and online maps, I find the way to Timbuktu.
Identify each capital from Bogota to Katmandu.

It goes on...... -- Read More

ABC News was one of the many sites with this story on Harry Potter.

Nancy K. Stouffer of Camp Hill, Pa., argues in her lawsuit that ideas for the Potter series were lifted from her 1984 book The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, which includes a character named Larry Potter.

“I think coincidences happen, but I still say if it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, it’s a duck,” said Stouffer, who also claims she owns rights to the word “muggle.” -- Read More

Karen Muller writes \"LAMA/YBP Student Writing and Development Award deadline is March 31

Students in American Library Association (ALA) accredited library and information studies programs are invited to submit articles in a Student Writing and Development Award competition sponsored by the Library Administration and Management Association (LAMA) and YBP, Inc. The deadline for entries is March 31, 2000.
For more information, article guidelines, criteria and an application, consult the LAMA web site at www.ala.org/lama/awards/ybp or contact Beatrice Calvin at 312/280-5036 or email: bcalvin@ala.org. -- Read More

With just one book, Stephen King may have changed how books are treated forever. His 66-page e-book racked up 400,000 orders during its first 24 hours for sale.For awhile now we\'ve been reporting how the E-Book will come around sooner or later, well, Sooner may be here now. Story after story, people are now writing about how the Ebook has already come of age.
I recently saw that at least one library is circulating an E-Book Reader beacause of the King book. The latest word is he will do it again, and certainly other big authors can\'t be far behind.

Check out these stories for more:

Business Week
Ecommerce Times
Direct Marketing News
SiliconValley.com
CNET.com

Everyone will finally know the real Silvia Plath.

The diaries, which are being serialized in London\'s The Guardian newspaper this week, provide new details about Plath and her turbulent marriage to British poet Ted Hughes. Plath gassed herself in her kitchen at the age of 30 a few months after Hughes left her for another woman.
After Plath\'s death,Ted Hughes maintained control over her journals and permitted only a much-edited version to be published in 1982. The couple\'s children are now permitting publication of the complete diaries.

\'\'The Journals of Sylvia Plath,\'\' will be published on April 3. You can read about the at booksunlimited.co.uk

The Detroit Free Press has an interesting story on the crushing burden that tax time puts on some librarians.

\"Sally Arrivee, head reference librarian, calls it her \"hundred days of hell.\" And she\'s sick of it.\" -- Read More