LISNews: Librarian News

Eliades Acosta Matos, director of the José Martí National Library, reports on Cuban libraries under the embargo:

The cost of the embargo to the cultural life of the Cuban nation is immense and difficult to reduce to numbers. Still, it can be gleaned from the difficulties we face in acquiring the paper we need to print books, magazines and journals, and in obtaining the oil we need to generate the electricity that ensures, for instance, that our public libraries are not forced to reduce their evening hours . . . Of course, other technologies as well, computers, photocopy machines, microfilm readers, television sets or music players, items essential to the daily operation of any library, also face these same travel-related restrictions. And how could there be a normal and fluid exchange between Cuban and American colleagues when U. S. citizens face a fine of up to 250,000 dollars and ten years imprisonment if they travel, for instance, to a library conference in Cuba without first obtaining a license from the U. S. Treasury Department?

More from Movable Type. Thanks to librarian.net.

The other ABC News reports on the Centennial of the Australian National Library this past Sunday, September 23rd. Among the celebrations include author readings, tour, exhibitions and a circus group.

The Indian government is investing in libraries in the southern state of Udupi:

All district libraries in the state would soon get computer and internet facilities, announced Babu Rao Chauhan, Minister for Adult Education and Libraries. He laid foundation stone to the Udupi District Library and commercial complex building here on Sunday. He said that the Udupi Library would be upgraded as City Central Library and would be renovated at a cost of Rs 45 lakhs. A purchase Committee has been setup for the bulk purchase of books and 20 per cent of that would be reserved for local writers, he added . . .

More from South Nexus.

From today\'s Papua New Guinea Post Courier:

PRISONERS NEED BOOKS

I AM writing on behalf of the detainees (prisoners) in the Papua New Guinea Correctional Institutions who are earnestly seeking the assistance of the citizens of this country and overseas for library books. All the jails in the country have their own mini libraries but only a few books. Others only have the Jack and the Beanstalk novels and nothing else. We therefore need more books and other literature to restock the detainees’ libraries around the country.So, if you have any books that you want to “throw away”, please I urge you to donate them to:

Assistant Commissioner
Welfare and Rehabilitation,
Correctional Service Headquarter,
PO Box 6889
Boroko, NCD 111
Papua New Guinea

Your kind donations will certainly contribute a lot more to the wellbeing of our dear ones in the prisons around Papua New Guinea.

Stephen P. Pokanis
Bomana

More information on books-to-prisoners programs in the United States can be found here. If anyone has links for programs in Canada, the UK, or elsewhere, please email me and I\'ll post them here.