LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

The 2008 World Congress of Muslim Librarians and Information Scientists will take place in Kuala Lumpur next month.

The congress, which is being co-organized by some Malaysian Islam universities and librarian societies, will be held here on Nov. 25-27 after an absence of 13 years. It is the second time that Malaysia would welcome the congress after the country hosted it in 1986.

The first COMLIS was held in the United States in 1982 and the fourth one was held in 1995 in Tehran, Iran. Registration and call for papers at the COMLIS website . Bernama.com has the story.

A 215-year-old Jewish manuscript discovered missing a decade ago will be returned by the German library where it surfaced, an Israeli official said Tuesday.

A 1998 inventory check at the Tel Aviv's Rambam Library revealed that the one-of-a-kind manuscript was missing. Titled "The Book of the Levite's Worship," it was a treatise on Jewish law written by a Berlin rabbi in 1793.

The police had no leads on the possible thief and closed the case, said Avigdor Levin, the top cultural official at the Tel Aviv municipality.

A year later, the manuscript was offered at auction at Sotheby's in New York for between $16,000 and $18,000 and was not purchased, but was later sold to an unidentified dealer and disappeared again before the Israelis could put their hands on it, he said.

The manuscript was finally found thanks to a stroke of luck. In 2005, a manuscript specialist at Israel's national library in Jerusalem received a copy of a book being held by the German National Library and realized it was the "Levite's Worship."

After a legal team established that it was indeed the missing book, the German library agreed to return it to Tel Aviv. Levin said the Germans displayed "a lot of good will." Story from the AP.

Abu Dhabi: What can you do to make the day pass a bit more quickly during Ramadan? Browse at the bookstore perhaps...where according to Gulf News, fewer books are being banned these days.

The number of banned books in the UAE, dealing with controversial topics, is on the decline as the country takes a more tolerant stance towards the expatriate community, bookshop owners say.

"Of course, there are still books that will not be sold here - like the ones that scold [defame] religion, those with sexual content and images and also politically-charged books. But we are noticing that fewer books are being banned," Mohammad Yousuf, store manager of Abu Dhabi's largest bookshop, Jarir Bookstore, told Gulf News.

Librarians do *not* sit around reading books all day but despite that, you might want to check out this cool website from New Zealand "Read at Work" sponsored by the NZ Book Council.

Library fines could become a thing of the past if a group of UK librarians get their way. A fiery debate has been raging for the past week between librarians, with anti-fine campaigners describing the charges as punitive, old-fashioned and creating a negative impression of libraries.

"Libraries are facing competition from television, magazines, the internet, e-books, yet they have this archaic and mad idea of charging people money for being slightly late," said library consultant Frances Hendrix - a loud voice in the debate which has been taking place on an online forum for librarians. "It's all so negative, unprofessional and unbusinesslike; like any business, libraries need not to alienate their customers."

The Guardian article continues: "One librarian suggested adopting the ancient practice of some monasteries, in which monks who offended in the handling of books were publicly cursed. Another pointed to Soviet Russia, where they said that offenders' names were published in newspapers to shame them into returning their books. In New Zealand town Palmerston North next week, library users returning late books are being challenged to beat librarians on Guitar Hero to have their fines waived.

ZDnet reports: The European Commission plans to put the continent's works of art at the fingertips of web users could be up and running by the end of the year — if EU member states are willing to commit more funding.

Here is the new website's demonstration portal.

This community will bring out information on new and existing projects conducted worldwide to help develop, exploit and use any technologies for the educational and economic upliftment in various regions of India. This community will also highlight important items from different blogs, internet sites and articles on teaching information literacy skills to various communities in India.

Access this community from the Digital Divide Network at
Information Initiatives in India and blog at InformationIndia

As gaming in libraries becomes more of a commonplace and less of a radical notion, librarians will be forced to deal with the same kinds of issues they encountered when libraries began to carry movies.

When libraries started stocking VHS cassettes, there was a huge debate over R rated movies. Should libraries stock such films even though many R rated movies garner Academy Awards and other film acclaims? Now the rating issue isn't over R, it's M for Mature. Should a library carry a game or not simply based off its rating? Grand Theft Auto IV is rated M but received accolades throughout the entire gaming world. How reliable is the rating? Do we check it out to minors? And the list goes on.

We've had our share of trouble with game ratings here in the States, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the good folks over in the United Kingdom are slogging through similar problems.

More from the Beeb.

The Voice of America reports about a new sort of bookmobile in Ethiopia. A former children's librarian in San Francisco, Yohannes Gebregiorgis, has returned to his native land to spread reading with the help of donkeys and carts. Funding is being given by civic groups in the United States to help the effort.

The British Library is bringing some of the world's rarest books online, with the intent of giving as wide an audience as possible the most accurate experience of reading the real thing.

Turning the Pages is a unique piece of software designed to allow readers to look at rare books in a natural way. With Turning the Pages, users can read the books in their original format, almost exactly as they were intended to be read by their original audience. This article on ZD.net allows us to turn the pages of "Alice's Adventures Above Ground. " Look ma, no gloves!