LISNews: Librarian News

Steve Fesenmaier writes \"Please ask your readers to log on to
New Pages
and sign the Petition in Support of Freedman/Berman Catalog.\"

Madeline Douglass writes \"Berman\'s catalog has always been instantly and continuously responsive
to the pulse of global culture, it embraces and celebrates diversity,
recognizes and defines emerging trends. It is the true Peoples Catalog
for the 21st century.

Dynamic and ever evolving, not limited by bias or outdated language or
censorship, Berman\'s catalog is NOT a relic of the past, it\'s NOT obsolete,
it\'s NOT incompatible with the internet. It can, more than any other existing
resource, be used to help us find the information we need on the internet. -- Read More

The British Library has released a number of proposals for the switch from UKMARC to MARC21 in UK cataloguing. The change is due to take place towards the end of 2003 and the document dicusses the issues raised. See the full document here.
I found it interesting, and not only because I\'m hoping my knowledge of MARC21 will get me job on my return to the UK later this year!

An interesting article from the always valuable First Monday tracing the history of the bibliographic control of printed sermons and its role in the development of the art generally:

This essay will focus on the field of homiletics in America, especially within the mainline Protestant tradition, which can trace its beginnings to the New England settlers in the 17th century. The invention of the printing press two centuries before had increased the need for bibliographic control across Europe, and when printing arrived with the settlers in America, that same need followed. The first homiletical textbooks came from the printing of sermons, and young ministers \"turned to these ordination sermons to supplement their apprenticeships with working pastors.\" The first libraries in America were theological libraries, stemming from the work in England of an Anglican minister named Thomas Bray and his Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. By the early 19th century, homiletics was transformed into a formal academic discipline with the establishment of seminaries and divinity schools across America.

This issue also contains the article Positioning the Public Library in the Modern State: The Opportunity of the Children\'s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).