LISNews: Librarian News

Maureen writes \"Madam Cybrarian - Article from the Washington Post
, Sunday, February 6, 2000
\"She\'s a \"cybrarian,\" in charge of a \"cybrary\" that aims, among other things, to help young students become as comfortable downloading information from the World Wide Web as their parents were taking notes from an encyclopedia on 3-by-5 index cards. Around the region and the country, school libraries like hers have become focal points of the effort to bring education into the digital age.\" \"

Slashdot has a great letter entitled
Your Rights Online: Open Letter to the Family Research Council. It\'s a great resource for everyone interested in filtering.

It includes a great list of links to the best resources on filtering.

\"I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on. \" -- Read More

Have a look Here. From the Contra Costa Times.

In the basement of the California State Library, among
historical archives on everything from bandits to the Gold Rush, sits an unlikely collection of art -- haiku art.

In fact, it\'s the nation\'s official haiku archive, and it\'s growing, despite the fact that a couple of Ivy League schools think Northern California is an odd place to house it.

Read about J.k. Rowling\'s on-line visit to Avondale Elementary School Here. From the Birmingham News.

Last week when young fans of Harry Potter books at Avondale Elementary School wanted to learn how the characters got such odd names they turned to their neighborhood public library.

Instead of flipping pages in books, they gathered in clusters around the library\'s public computers for an
online visit with author J.K. Rowling.

Read about this possible solution Here. From the Tacoma Washington News Tribune.

To offset budget cuts, Tacoma Public Library branches in East, Central and South Tacoma may lose materials but gain literacy and career-training programs.

Administrators say this \"magnet library\" concept would help avoid closing branches. Four of the system\'s sleepiest libraries - King, Mottet, South Tacoma and Swan Creek - would devote more space and materials to themes such as literacy or computers and drop some of their collections aimed at the general public.

The Buffalo News, here in Buffalo, NY, has quite a Front Page Story, on privacy in the information age.Most well informed people already know, you have very little privacy anymore. The problem with this story, however, is they imply that the information the public library is somehow equal to the information contained in any number of commercial or medical databses. The first picture from the headline is even a book being checked out.

Is anyone bothered by this? While they don\'t come out and say it, it is implied that library records are somehow public information, or the records are sold.The public library is mentioned with a Video Store!

\"She stops at the library for a book, or the video store for a steamy movie and computers record those transactions.\" -- Read More

Meckhart writes

Thursday, February 3, 2000; Page B02

The director of Prince George\'s County\'s library system has been placed on
paid administrative leave while library officials investigate his job
performance and whether he made a racially insensitive remark last month,
sources with knowledge of the probe said yesterday.

For full story:

The Washington Post -- Read More

The Age, in AU has an interesting Story HERE on Harry Potter.

The on-line bookshop Amazon.com publishes an ongoing bestseller list of the books most in demand by its readers at any given moment. It makes fascinating reading, listing as it does hundreds of thousands of books in order of their popularity. At present, number one on the list, narrowly beating Delia Smith and Frank McCourt, is one of J.K. Rowling\'s Harry Potter books. It is the fourth volume in the series. There\'s only one thing about this that might cause the eyebrows to raise a little. The fourth volume of Harry Potter hasn\'t been published yet, and won\'t be until July. Amazon\'s bestseller, in short, is a book that doesn\'t exist.

But the world of these books is thin and unsatisfactory, their imagery is derivative, their characterisation automatic, and their structure deeply flawed. -- Read More

Robert Kent sent this press release in from The Friends of Cuban Libraries.

On February 3, as foreign publishers made travel plans to attend the
Havana International Book Fair (February 9-15), the Friends of Cuban
Libraries released an Open Letter to the publishers signed by more than
thirty authors. The letter, entitled \"Book Fair or Carnival of
Persecution?,\" urges publishers at the Fair to make protests to government
officials against the \"scandalous\" repression of Cuba\'s independent
librarians, whom the authors describe as \"the only librarians in the world
who are being subjected to systematic persecution.\" -- Read More

The Pittsburg Post Gazette has a Story here on the university of Pitt\'s practice of not providing those benefits is the subject of a lawsuit by seven current and former employees.

A group representing University of Pittsburgh librarians is calling on the university to begin extending health insurance to domestic partners of its gay and lesbian employees. -- Read More

Chris Rodas writes \"Yahoo Health

Summarizes an article from PEDIATRICS about a study done in Italy on the accuracy of medical information on pediatric health sites.

Kind of scary!

\"Of the 19 Web pages that contained information on cough in children, 10 pages received a negative score for the quality of health information supplied because they contained more incorrect than correct information. None of the pages fulfilled all the criteria, five pages didn\'t show the name of the author, and only two pages revealed the date the information was last updated, which is important to include because rapid changes in health care recommendations make frequent updates necessary.\"

\"

Looking for a spot to find publishers on the web?

Peter Scott writes
\"I\'m currently in the process of updating my Publishers\'
Catalogues Home Page at:

http://www.lights.com
/publisher

It is now database-driven, and has access to publishers via
city, state, country, and subject

Shirl Kennedy writes
\"\"Four years after the new, larger Dunedin Library
opened, it is still getting by with same staffing level.\"

\"The staff of 18 full-time and 18 part-time and temporary
employees is stretched thin and suffering from job stress,
as employees are asked to do ever more work with no more
help. Supervisors do the jobs of lower-level employees,
forsaking their own responsibilities.\"
Check out the story
Here from the SPTimes

LISnews has been following the filtering debate in MI, now
the over opinionated Dr. Laura has jumped in. Michigan
Live has the story HERE. The list of nationaly
known people pushing for filtering is growing by the
day.

\"It is another individual from outside this
community that isn\'t aware of what is or isn\'t going on in
the Herrick District Library,\" said Gary Pullano, library
spokesman

Dr. Laura has pointed her moral compass to Holland.
Laura Schlessinger, syndicated radio talk show host and
advice guru to millions, is jumping into the local Internet
filter debate.

She is encouraging Holland residents to vote yes on a local
ballot measure to force Herrick District Library to install
Internet filters to block pornography.
She posted a message on her Web site, drlaura.com
\"One Feb. 22nd ballot measure in Michigan gives Dr. Laura
\"Warriors\" a chance to stand up for families,\" -- Read More

A Story on how a
science exhibit in St. Joseph County Public Library,
Indiana, was a huge hit with the kids.

This year, for the first time, all of the area\'s
higher-education institutions were exhibitors. They include
the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University South Bend,
Saint Mary\'s College, Bethel College in Mishawaka, Ivy Tech
State College, and the Purdue University School of
Technology at South Bend -- Read More

Oregon Live has a
story on how the government wants new libraries to be
built.
The 5 story structures are raising some concerns.

Library Director Ginnie Cooper finds herself in an
interesting position because the five county commissioners,
her bosses, have made it a priority for departments to
consider building mixed-use facilities. The idea is to
increase density in neighborhoods by putting county
facilities on the ground floor and housing or office space
above. A portion of the housing at each branch will have
carry cheaper rents for people in lower econom -- Read More

The Philadelphia Daily
News has a follow up on Yongyi Song\'s
arrival in the US.

After 183 days in a Beijing detention cell and 36
sleepless hours since his release, Yongyi Song arrived in
Philadelphia yesterday and told an awaiting crowd at the
airport, \"I\'m home now.\"
The usually mild-mannered librarian from Dickinson College
was animated, angry and unbowed as he steadfastly refuted
charges by the Chinese government that he was a confessed
spy.
Song denied statements made by the Chinese Embassy in
Washington on Friday that he was released because he had
admitted stealing sensitive documents. He also denied that
he had turned over to Chinese police the names of

The Pittsburg Post Gazettehas a Great 4 part series on the Problems with the E-Rate program.

A federal law designed to make sure that poor and rural children don\'t suffer technological discrimination because of the high cost of Internet service has created red tape, controversy and higher phone bills for millions of Americans. Post-Gazette staff writers Ann McFeatters, Karen MacPherson, Jack Torry and Eleanor Chute examine the issues in a four-part series. -- Read More

A Thought provocing article from the BostonHearld

The next few years may be some of the most challenging, and exciting, that libraries have ever faced.

Ever since humans first invented them some 5,000 years ago, libraries have been repositories of manuscripts and books. The advent of the Internet and the near-certain likelihood that most of the written word will soon be available on electronic, not paper media, raise questions about the role of libraries in our new, connected world. -- Read More

An Editorial from The StarTribune in Minneapolis presents an intelligent argument for filtering on all library terminals.

Perhaps the Minneapolis Public Library should consult with an attorney; I did. The First Amendment does not extend to obscene and indecent material. The question then becomes what is defined as obscene and indecent. I believe most people would agree with me. Displaying graphic photographs of a woman\'s genitalia on a computer monitor located in a high-traffic area where patrons (including children) must walk through is obscene and indecent. -- Read More