LISNews: Librarian News

Have a look at our newest LISNewster, baby Kelly.

Kathleen writes "Racy reading can put a felon in jail. A Miami sex offender went to jail for reading Maxim magazine after probation officers decided that it was 'sexually stimulating' -- the latest sign of the Florida's get-tough policy toward people on probation. Sex offenders are typically barred from possessing ''obscene, pornographic, or sexually stimulating'' material under standard probation agreements.
Scott Hiaasen's story from the Miami Herald goes on to discuss Potter Stewart's famous I Know It When I see It."
Update: 07/19 10:52 EST by B:Not really sure what that Chronicle of Christian Faith thing was, so I took it out until someone points us in the right direction.

Kathleen writes "Bill Moyers denounced the right wing and top officials at the White House, saying they are trying to silence their critics by controlling the news media.
Over 2,000 people converged in St. Louis Missouri this weekend for the second-ever National Conference on Media Reform. Few issues were discussed as much as the future of public broadcasting in this country.

The conference was held amid accusations that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been largely taken over by conservatives who are influencing programming and hiring decisions.
In his first public address since leaving PBS six months ago, journalist Bill Moyers responds to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson - the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - of liberal bias and revelations that Tomlinson hired a consultant to monitor the political content of Moyers' PBS show "Now.""

Kathleen writes "The public bonfire of old and unread books in Scotland’s national book town,Wigtown, will be a vast funeral pyre of books to be lit today, marking the Celtic festival of Beltane.
The event, billed as the Beltane Book Burning, is the idea of Shaun Bythell, who owns The Bookshop
, Scotland’s largest second-hand bookstore. He agreed that the idea is a controversial one. “It certainly seems to polarise people. The reaction is either, ‘that’s a brilliant idea’, or ‘you will burn in hell’.�

The books destined for the fire are mass-produced artefacts - their contents will not disappear when they burn. If the objectors’ point is that books symbolise free speech, why are they not then sentimental about using newspapers as firelighters or fish and chip wrappings? There is also a practical problem: what do you do with unwanted books? They can be sent to the developing world - but how many Kenyan schoolchildren will really benefit from the works of Galsworthy? Does it justify the aviation fuel?

As the poet Joseph Brodsky observed: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.�"