LISNews: Librarian News

Maybe you've blogged about a disturbing patron, or posted something on a tumblr account about the not-quite-with-it daily visitor to your library.

From M (Michigan) Live: Former library assistant Sally Stern-Hamilton (under the pen name Anne Miketa) wrote a fictionalized book about about her experiences in the library and was fired for it. Now she's suing.

Stern-Hamilton’s literary work, entitled 'Library Diaries' — a disturbing look at life in the library — wound up on the shelves at Mason County District Library. It got her fired there as a library assistant.

Now the author has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the library violated her free-speech rights by firing her.

“(Stern-Hamilton’s) First Amendment interests, combined with the interests of the public, outweigh the government’s interest in the efficient performance of the workplace,” her attorney, David Blanchard wrote. “(She) was explicitly fired for engaging in protected speech.”

Library director Robert Dickson declined to comment. Attorney Kathleen Klaus, representing the library, Dickson, and Marilyn Bannon, president of the library board, said she would respond to the complaint next month. The controversy created headlines three years ago when Stern-Hamilton was fired from her job of 14 years.

"After working at a public library in a small, rural Midwestern town (which I will refer to as Denialville, Michigan, throughout this book) for 15 years, I have encountered strains and variations of crazy I didn’t know existed in such significant portions of our population,” Stern-Hamilton wrote in the introduction. -- Read More

Industries that rely on fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright law have weathered the recent slow economy better than other businesses, according to a new study released by a tech trade group.
Economic Contributions Of Industries relying On Fair Use[PDF]

City library director Vicki Elkins never imagined that the hardcover book about Zephyrhills history she helped compile would end up controversial. It was supposed to be a gift to the community, preserving its history in 285 pages that took nearly a decade to compile. Then in April, more than two years after Zephyrhills From A to Z's release in December 2008, a resident sued the city not about its content, but about its price tag of $29.95, plus tax.

A legal battle that examines whether Congress has the right to recopyright works that were already placed into the public domain will take place during the Supreme Court's October session. The plantiff is Lawrence Golan a conductor at the University of Denver where the decision has been detrimental to his program as the increased cost of newly copyrighted works has placed a large selection of previously accessible material off limits. The law which was passed in 1994, gave foreign works the same legal protection that US works enjoy. This has huge implications for the digitization efforts of libraries across the country. If Mr. Golan wins his suit, libraries will feel much more comfortable making a great number of foreign-produced work more accessible through digitization.

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Professors-Fight-Over/127700/