LISNews: Librarian News

The good news is, thanks to super generous LISNewsterz LISNews is as good as paid for through the end of the year. The bad news is, of course, that leaves us with an infinite number of other years to pay for. There's really no way I can possibly thank everyone for their generosity, especially those of you who sent me a check or cash. Also thanks to everyone who paypaled money and everyone who just clicked a google ad. I've tried to send a thank you email to everyone I could identify, hopefully you got yours, if not, thanks, and sorry I missed you. Adding up the paypal donations, checks, and cash (yes, a few brave souls sent me cash) I've received just over $1500 out of the $1620 it'll cost for 9 months of hosting I was hoping to pay for. Unless there are almost no clicks (clicks=$$!!) on the google ads for the remainder of the year, the server is paid for. So, now what? I'm looking for feedback and ideas on what to do next. More below... -- Read More

Here's a quick follow up on paying for LISNews. LISNews is almost paid through the end of 2004, close enough that I believe the google ads should cover the cost of the server for the remainder of the year. I can't begin to thank you enough for your generosity and support. Thanks to everyone who paypaled money, sent me a check, or just clicked a google ad. I've tried to send a thank you email to everyone I could identify, and find an email address for. Here are the totals. I've received about $1490 out of the $1620 it'll cost for 9 months of hosting LISNews:
Paypal: $1100
Ads: $250
Checks/Cash: $140

Thanks everyone!

The most recent issue of Library Juice includes an essay by editor Roy Litwin. He reflects on Blake Carver's decision in February to encourage more conservative contributors to LISNews.

When Blake made his original announcement, I linked to it in Library Juice and called it "Batty." It seemed batty to me for Blake to describe his own site as a "liberal echo chamber" when to me it had for years seemed like one of the more politically conservative sources of information relating to librarianship available, in terms of the stories that were posted, but especially the comments that people were leaving. The belligerant, "AM Talk Radio" style of much if not most of the discussion on LISNews had led me to stop posting stories there roughly a year earlier and to stop reading the site almost completely. A year ago it already seemed, to me, that LISNews had, far from being a "liberal echo chamber," been taken over by a right wing librarian's militia group.

So, basically I am still disturbed by Blake's sentiments about his site and about politics in the library community. It comes as a surprise and a disappointment. If you are a reader of LISNews, I hope you will read it with a critical eye and an awareness of this development.

I would like to add that I have nearly stopped reading the comments in recent weeks. Mainly because my work load has increased and my free time has decreased, but also because it seems to be the same folks, beating each other up over the same issues. Sometimes I get the feeling that my moderate, left-leaning opinion isn't wanted here.

I received 3 questions on moderating last week, so I thought I'd write better explanation of moderation, and how it works here @LISNews.

Moderation: The ability of an LISNewster to cast a single vote on a comment. Comments end up being scored from -1 to 5, with each comment having the ability to be moderated up to 10 times, regardless of score. So the score of a comment can bounce around, between -1 (bad) and 5 (great), until it has been moderated 10 times. So if you see a score you disagree with, you can, most likely, moderate it differently. -- Read More