LISNews: Librarian News

The Shape of the 21st Century Library, by Howard Besser, a LIS professor at UCLA, was a chapter in Information Imagineering: Meeting at the Interface, published by ALA. This paper discusses the rapid evolution of libraries and stresses the importance of librarians\' active, intelligent intervention in the changes that are taking place if librarianship\'s core missions and values are to be preserved. Changes in other institutions, technology trends, disintermediation, and the mission of public libraries are discussed. I think this paper makes a good statement and could be a good discussion piece for the LISNews community... An excerpt here: -- Read More

This Commentary by Paul McMasters from Freedom Forum is filled with excellent points on First Amendment issues and libraries. Many good lines here for Friday\'s \"Quote of the Week\"\"we must rely on the fact that our children are remarkably resilient, relentlessly individual and essentially good. They have thrived on extensive First Amendment rights and deserve to arrive at adulthood with those rights intact.\" -- Read More

This Story from Salon.com is raising a terrifying possiblity.

\"Can hyperlinks be outlawed? Only last week, a California judge ruled, in a case brought by Ticketmaster against Tickets.com, that it\'s not illegal for one site to link to another. Among other things, that suit concerned \"deep linking.\" Ticketmaster alleged that by bypassing its home page and linking directly to \"inside\" pages, Tickets.com violated its copyright. The judge, however, held that \"hyperlinking does not in itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act.\" -- Read More

WASHINGTON, March 15 /PRNewswire/ -- \"There\'s a sea of
evidence that Internet pornography and related sex crimes
are a serious problem in America\'s libraries -- and we\'ve
only uncovered the tip of the iceberg, due to efforts by the
American Library Association to chill the facts,\" said
Family Research Council\'s Chief Spokesperson Janet Parshall
at a news conference Wednesday as FRC released a new
investigative report, \"Dangerous Access, 2000 Edition:
Uncovering Internet Pornography in America\'s Libraries.\"
Written by librarian David Burt after a six-month nationwide
investigation of library documents and computer logs,
\"Dangerous Access, 2000 Edition\" reports over 2,000
incidents of library patrons using online services to access
pornography. It is believed that thousands of more incidents
would have been reported had not the ALA intervened.

-- Read More