LISNews: Librarian News

Michigan Live sure does have alot of library stories. This one is about how The Georgetown Township Library is now using a collection agency for fine collection.

Patrons with more than $50 in lost or long-overdue materials from the Georgetown Township Library could end up with a black mark on their credit report.
The Township Board recently approved a proposal by library officials that will allow the library to start a program to recover some of the more than $22,000 in materials owed by patrons.
Of the amount owed, $18,637.67 is owed by patrons in the library service area; the remainder is owed by patrons from other libraries and through interlibrary loans.
Library officials hope to begin the program by May 1 for 131 patrons with outstanding bills of at least $50. They expect to recover $11,880.67 through the program.

Check out this article Here. From the Birmingham News.

His slide had been a long one. The 43-year-old preacher\'s son had started out as the pudgy kid whose teachers said didn\'t reach his potential. The Army hadn\'t helped and then he bounced from job to job. Now he owed child support. He had maxed his credit card. He was drinking again. And he had gotten fired after a drunken-driving arrest in 1998.

LISnews would like to thank Christina for submitting the link to this great article on the history and importance of the Newberry Awards. From Open Spaces Quartley.

The Newbery is the Holy Grail of American children\'s book writers. There are other awards -- the National Book Award for Young People\'s Literature, for example -- but none comes close to conferring the cachet, the recognition, that the Newbery conveys. It is the oldest children\'s book award in the world. Libraries and bookstores have shelves devoted to Newbery winners. The author\'s future books -- and reissued earlier ones -- will frequently bear on their covers the legend \"Newbery Award author.\"

It\'s rare to find someone who says so many nice things about
librarians in one article. Th
is article I found in the magazine University
Business has nothing but praise for the foresight
librarians have when dealing with technology.

STROLLING
THROUGH the university library used to be a walk down memory
lane for returning alumni. Cavernous reading rooms evoked
similar memories for both the 50th reunion class and the
5th. Not anymore. During the past decade, card catalogs have
become little more than decorative furniture, and the
periodical room is now likely to be full of terminals to
access online journals. Not even the class of 1995 would
recognize the Encyclopaedia Britannica; it has abandoned
hard copy and CD-ROMs for a Web-based product. -- Read More

This Story is from the Detroit Free Press. Thanks
to Bob Cox for another submission.

A bill to prevent children from using library computers to
access pornography -- and to discourage sex predators from
preying via computer -- cleared the state Senate on
Thursday.
The Senate also approved a bill to halt the quick
destruction of campaign finance records. Both bills went to
the House.
The library bill passed 37-0 after it exempted college and
private libraries from requiring electronic filters or other
means to block sexually explicit material.
\"We are standing before a whole world of hard-core sexual
predators coming after our kids,\" said Sen. Mike Rogers,
R-Brighton, the bil -- Read More

Harry Potter is inder fire in MI.This Story from the Detroit Free Press.

Some teachers are so riled over efforts to restrict children from reading the best-selling Harry Potter books that they are threatening to burn their Winnie the Pooh discount bookstore cards.

Protesting teachers -- about 40 signed a petition asking the school board to take its restrictions off the Harry Potter books -- also plan to attend Monday\'s Zeeland Board of Education meeting, hoping to get the board to take the clamps off the Harry Potter books. The novels by Scottish author J.K. Rowling feature Harry, a boy being trained at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and his adventures in fantasy. -- Read More

A story from MI on The American Family Association.

To some, the American Family Association is one of the greatest protectors of conservative values in this nation. To others, it is a group of mean-spirited censors who deal in half-truths and intimidation.

Either way, the Tupelo, Miss.-based organization has a long history of activism, largely aimed at what it considers the pernicious influence of the media. Its local affiliate, the Holland Area Family Association, has been active for a decade, but its previous local efforts have largely been sound and fury with little results.

Over the years, the group led drives against the sitcom \"Ellen\" for its perceived promotion of homosexuality, radio shock jock Howard Stern, the National Endowment for the Arts and the presence of adult magazines in federal prisons. -- Read More

Read this story Here. From the Register-Guard

Architects have finished designing the new Eugene Public Library,nailing down the size at 127,000 square feet and the expected cost at $32.2 million.

The ground floor will feature an indoor garden and coffee bar near the front entrance, a section for new and popular books, an area for young adults, the compact disc collection, the children\'s center and a 200-seat meeting room that can be split in two.

From Omaha.com

More than 50 people gathered outside the Council Bluffs
Public Library on Wednesday evening, protesting the board\'s refusal to vote on placing content filters on Internet-connected computers.

The crowd, which included more than a dozen children, listened to presentations by Creighton law professors Michael Fenner and Ed Morse and Pottawattamie County Attorney Rick Crowl. -- Read More

I\'ve been sitting on this one for awhile, not sure if I should post it. Someone sent this story on a retired library worker in AU. I can\'t verify where it came from, or if it\'s even real, but I just can\'t resist.

MELBOURNE, Australia-Gun-toting granny Ava Estelle, 81, was so ticked-off
when two thugs raped her 18-year-old grand daughter that she tracked the
unsuspecting ex-cons down - - and shot their testicles off! \"The old lady
spent a week hunting those bums down-and when she found them, she took
revenge on them in her own special way,\" said admiring Melbourne police
investigator Evan Delp. \"Then she took a taxi to the nearest police
station, laid the gun on the sergeant\'s desk and told him as calm as could
be: \'Those bastards will never rape anybody again, by God.\' Read more if you dare.... -- Read More

Someone sent in this interesting question:

\"I wonder how many of the 10 people who make it onto each episode of the \"Who Wants To Be a Millionaire\" game show as semi-finalists are librarians? I have yet to hear any of the persons who make the final cut, landing in the \"hot seat,\" identify themselves as librarians, but when they introduce the semi-finalists, I always play \"Spot the librarian\" (calling out, \"I bet she\'s a librarian. And she looks like a librarian.\"). It is, after all, a trivia game, and as a reference librarian at Arizona State University said, doing reference is like playing Trivial Pursuit for a living. \"

I think I remeber this question somewhere involving the contenstants on Jeopardy as well, anyone seen that one?

A Shocking Report from the Chicago Sun Times. Teens actually READ!

In 1990, there were 66,268 books in print in the children\'s division, including young adult titles, she said. In 1998, that number soared to 130,850.

Middle school and high school students are being drawn to books that are filled with graphics and different typefaces. The books are designed to appeal to teens familiar with Web sites and computer games, say experts on teens and reading.

\"I like his writing,\" Michael said of Shakespeare. \"I just think it\'s cool.\"
Teens say they love to read about how their peers handle problems. -- Read More

A Follow up Story from the Denver Post.

A student group can have its Black History Month display.

Harold Bruff, dean of the University of Colorado law school, on Tuesday asked the law librarian to relent and allow the Black American Law Students Association to exhibit its take on the legal system\'s treatment of blacks throughout history.

The controversy started last week, after Barbara Bintliff, head of the law school library, asked to review the contents of the students\' display. According to Haygood, Bintliff rejected much of that content.

Bintliff has not responded to requests for comment.

\"We feel pretty good,\" said Ryan Haygood, president of the group. \"The students are really excited to see that we didn\'t have to settle for being treated - we felt - unfavorably.\" -- Read More

Oregon Live Reports

A review committee is pushing the school board to keep the Harry Potter children\'s books in local libraries and in the classrooms of the district\'s 20 schools.

The committee, appointed by Interim Superintendent Gary Bruner, on Monday unanimously recommended that the Bend-La Pine School Board let the books be available for unrestricted use.Bruner appointed the review committee after a Bend couple, Greg and Arlena Wilson, complained that the books would lead children to \"hatred and rebellion.\"

Greg Wilson said Monday he wasn\'t surprised by the committee\'s decision.

\"I just hope this whole thing will really open the parents\' eyes and get them more involved with what the schools are teaching,\" he said. \"I still believe that what I was doing is right.\"

What would a day be without a report from Holland, MI?

A mistake on the size of more than 100 campaign signs that promote Internet filters will cost a Holland group up to $1,250.

The signs, which measure about 11 square feet, went up in yards Saturday, but organizers of the pro-filter campaign were notified Tuesday they exceeded the residential district size limit of 6 square feet.

City officials gave the group two options: remove the signs or pay a $25-per-sign permit fee to temporarily override the city\'s sign ordinance.
Diane Van DerWerff, treasurer of Holland Area Citizens Voting YES! to Protect Our Children committee, said her group intends to keep the signs and pay the fee.

\"I feel so silly,\" Van DerWerff said. \"This was just one of those things.\"

Someone recommended this story at onlineinc, quick updates on the major search engines, read it Here.

All the major search engines are covered. AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile and the rest of the major search engines have new developments.

Infotoday has a report on how pubmed is doing HERE

The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s PubMed Central, the free but not yet realized repository for medical science papers, has recently received two votes of confidence—one from a publisher’s project and another from a European program. BioMed Central biomedcentral.com is a new publisher-based Web initiative that will forge a relationship with PubMed Central to enhance the proposed PubMed Central distribution model. BioMed Central is part of the Current Science Group that also includes Current Controlled Trials, Ltd.; Current Medicine, Inc.; Science Press, Ltd.; and others. E-BioSci, the European initiative that is modeled after PubMed Central, will utilize a consortium-based administration and is attempting to form alliances with European publishers.

BookWire has an interesting Story on the rash of rare book thefts. Keep your eye on the rare books room!

Copies of one of the world\'s rarest and most valuable books have been disappearing a rash of mysterious thefts that have perplexed police from the former Soviet Union to the United States.
At least seven of the 260 known copies of the 1543 edition of ``De revolutionibus\'\' have disappeared in recent years, including one copy each from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, according to Owen Gingerich, a professor at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. Five copies remain missing. -- Read More

CNN is carrying this story on an attempt to block a children\'s book.

Now an Islamic advocacy group has demanded Scholastic Inc. , stop distributing the book, maintaining that it contains inaccurate, offensive and stereotypical references to Muslims.

In the book, Laura, an American student at a private school in London, seeks to avenge her 11-year-old brother\'s murder by 15-year-old Jehran, a Muslim girl who is trying to escape from a forced marriage to a 54-year-old man with three other wives. She had sought the American boy\'s U.S. passport as a means of escape.

\"You get really skeptical when you see a title like that,\" said Alkebsi, who oversees international affairs for the Islamic Institute, a Washington think tank. -- Read More

The Washington Post has a not so suprising story about how the internet is changing our lives.

The Internet is creating a class of people who spend more hours at the office, work still more hours from home, and are so solitary they can hardly be bothered to call Mom on her birthday.

Those are some of the conclusions of a major new study of Internet users conducted by Stanford University\'s Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. But even before its official unveiling here today, the survey of 4,113 people was receiving extensive criticism, guaranteeing another round of debate over the effect of this new technology.

\"We\'re moving from a world in which you know all your neighbors, see all your friends, interact with lots of different people every day, to a functional world, where interaction takes place at a distance,\" said Norman Nie, a Stanford professor of political science and director of the institute. \"Can you get a hug, a warm voice, over the Internet?\" -- Read More