LISNews: Librarian News

A character in the comic strip User Friendly calls the decision by Bear Pond Books of Montpelier, Vermont to purge their records lest they fall under the auspices of the Patriot Act heroic.

Today's strip also has a good idea about how to protect the customers of Amazon from a similar problem. (Not that there's much chance Amazon hasn't already been patrioted, right?)

Michael McGrorty writes: "The American Library Association announced this week that it has declared October 2003 Bleak History Month, in commemoration of dismal events that might otherwise be forgotten throughout the calendar year.

Libraries are encouraged to visit the ALA site to download posters, pamphlets and other educational materials on this year's Bleak History selections: The Great Depression, the Holocaust and the influenza pandemic of 1918. Collectible stickers depicting the Kennedy assasination and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby will be offered as well.

The official proclamation of Bleak History Month reads in part... -- Read More

A Modest Proposal by John Carlson, features writer for The Star Press.
He proposes a TV show about a library, because there are already plenty of TV shows about teachers, doctors and lawyers while you hardly ever see any TV shows about librarians. Naming ideas for the new show include, The Stacks, or DDS: The Stacks, and this would be the kind of sophisticated, thought-provoking television that American viewers demand.
Of course, to get anybody to watch, it would also have to include lots of gratuitous sex and violence.

Head librarian: \"How do you like our library?\"

Library patron (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger): \"Vell, zee periodical room leafs a lot to be desired, but it\'s got zome really nice stacks.\"

Lee Hadden writes: \"The Geological Society of London\'s Library has recently changed their
telephone number. Out of curiosity, they tried to discover how long they
had used the old number. In doing so, they found: \"...she discovered a
Council Minute dated 18 December 1912, agreeing to install a telephone [in
the library] - but only on condition that the number should be kept
ex-directory.\"Read more about it in \"From the Library\" inside the December 2002
issue of GeoScientist.Volume 12, number 12, page 23.\"