LISNews: Librarian News

Search-Engines writes "Following revelations that a high-ranking member of Wikipedia's bureaucracy used his cloak of anonymity to lie about being a professor of religion, the free Internet encyclopedia plans to ask contributors who claim such credentials to identify themselves. But, he said, if people want to claim expertise on Wikipedia, they ought to be prompted to prove it. If they don't want to give their real names, they shouldn't be allowed to tout credentials. Had that policy been in place, Wales said, Jordan probably would not have gotten away with claiming a Ph.D. in religion http://physorg.com/news92507189.html"

Bob Turner writes "Declan Mculagh sends this out to his Polytech mailing group...this video is a MUST see....Watch it and weep...bt Based on preliminary reports, this is what seems to have happened on Tuesday evening: Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was quietly studying in the campus library around 11:30pm. Campus police asked him for his ID, a usual procedure. Mostafa didn't have it with him and walked toward the exit. While en route, one of the police officers laid a hand on Mostafa (which may well be simple battery) and he reacted by saying "Get off of me." That's when he was hit with a blast from a Taser, which can render someone unable to walk for 5 to 15 minutes. But the cops, through malice or ignorance, kept demanding that Mostafa immediately stand up and walk to the door. He was screaming at this point and said he could not, at which point they Tased him again and again. The cops also threatened to Taser bystanders as well if they persisted in asking for badge numbers. This, too, is on videotape and is in fact a crime. (Think that cop will go to jail? Right.) The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3CdNgoC0cE Articles on this incident: http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38958 http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38960 http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/californi a/la-me-cellcamera16nov16,1,2951795.story http://cbs2.com/local/local_story_319101652.html
 "

A trio of readings on the radical idea of libraries in our society:

• An All Things Considered guest commentator wonders if libraries could be created today if they didn't already exist.
• The Right to Read, by Richard Stallman, is an oldie but a goodie. Worth a re-read to see how much more believable the story is than when it was written.
• What if book publishers started to sue libraries? is a rehashing of the now classic Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon.

Also of note is an upcoming UK report stating that
"knowledge should be public good first, private right second"
-- now that's just kooky talk!

Lorcan Dempsey Takes A Look at the many "long tail" discussions and says the real issue is how well supply and demand are articulated in a network environment. And when we think about it in this systemwide way the picture is less reassuring. Think of two figures. The first is that ILLs account for 1.7% of overall circulations. The second is about circulation.He says Libraries do indeed collectively manage a long tail of research, learning and cultural materials. However, we need to do more work to make sure that that long tail is directly available to improve the work and lives of our users.