LISNews: Librarian News

The San Mateo-based Califa Group, which is the largest library network in California, has made major strides in its project to create an ebook ownership model along the same lines as the Douglas County Libraries in Colorado.

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BIRMINGHAM, Alabama: Jeff Bogart wouldn't let a Colorado gunman who shot 70 people, 12 fatally, during a showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" in a movie theater spoil his 4-year-old son's chance for his favorite comic book character, Batman.

The father and son were among about 300 people who attended a Batman event at the Hoover Public Library celebrating this weekend's release of the latest Batman movie. The 10:30 a.m. event included library personnel dressed up as Batman, Batgirl, The Riddler and other characters from the popular comic book series.

"You still need to live life to the fullest and not let people like that crazy gunman stop you," Bogart said. "Our prayers are with those families who went through that unimaginable horror there."

Hoover Public Library director Linda Andrews said she and other library officials toyed with canceling their event, which had been planned weeks before the tragic shooting shortly after midnight Friday at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. But in the end they felt there was no need stopping the kids from having their fun. -- Read More

What Malians fear more is the condition of about 300,000 ancient manuscripts. For centuries, Timbuktu hosted thousands of students who came to learn about Islam. Books on religious and other subjects were written, copied and traded.

Libraries and institutions there such as the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research still preserve and use many of them. If these precious documents meet the same fate as the monuments, the loss would be irreplaceable.

Sadly, the World Heritage Convention and the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two additional protocols have turned out to be toothless. They could not bind the radical militia.

Hope now lies in two places. The statute of the International Criminal Court includes as war crimes the deliberate destruction of cultural properties. Such legal provisions could be improved in scope to become effective deterrents.

A proactive empowerment of local communities to care for and guard their heritage during conflict is another avenue to explore. UNESCO's assistance to local guards in Congo during the time of conflict (2001) to save the world natural heritage sites there was reassuring.

Read more about it at: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article3646625.ece

With the publication of the Freeh report relative to the child abuse scandal at The Pennsylvania State University, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrisey is calling for the outright physical destruction of many campus monuments to coach Joe Paterno. Not mentioned in the piece by Morrisey is Paterno Library on-campus which otherwise bears the coach's name.