May 2000

Librarian pay

Phil sent in this story from The faculty and staff newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh has a rather interesting story on the pay difference between librarians at Pitt and Penn State main campuses. It seems average pay at PSU is about $5,300 higher than that paid to Pitt Librarians.

Phil sent in this story from The faculty and staff newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh has a rather interesting story on the pay difference between librarians at Pitt and Penn State main campuses. It seems average pay at PSU is about $5,300 higher than that paid to Pitt Librarians. English professor Phil Wion, who chairs the University Senate\’s budget policies committee, said he compiled the statistics — using data from Pitt\’s Office of Institutional Research — because Pitt and Penn State are uniquely comparable: They are the only two members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) in Pennsylvania with \”state-related\” status.


Unlike Pennsylvania\’s 14 state-owned universities, the four state-related schools (Pitt, PSU, Temple and Lincoln) get substantial Commonwealth funding but function much like private institutions.


Pitt\’s administration argues that comparisons between faculty pay at Pitt and PSU satellite campuses are skewed because Penn State branches emphasize business, engineering and other disciplines that pay comparatively high faculty salaries, while course offerings at Pitt\’s Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown and Titusville campuses are more comprehensive, with greater emphasis on the humanities.


Wion replied, \”It\’s hard to know exactly what variables are behind these numbers. Nevertheless, these are the best publicly available figures we have. And certainly, the magnitude of the differences between the faculty salaries paid at Penn State\’s branch campuses and our regional campuses is so great that it\’s clear we have some catching up to do.\”

Audio books are turning new leaf

The Chicago Tribune has another Story on the increaing popularity of Audio Books. Audio Books have become the fastest-growing segment of the book industry.
Are they being offered in your library?

Are they being Used?

The Chicago Tribune has another Story on the increaing popularity of Audio Books. Audio Books have become the fastest-growing segment of the book industry.
Are they being offered in your library?

Are they being Used?
In the process, audio books, like electronic books, are redefining cultural attitudes toward reading. They are even becoming the first medium for some titles, whether because they\’re controversial or aimed at a special audience more likely to \”read\” a book in that form than curled up in an armchair with a bound title.


In fact, a recent survey indicates that one-fifth of American households listen to audio books, an increase of 75 percent since 1995.


Book publishers are taking note of the phenomenon. This Friday in Chicago, as part of Book Expo America,the audio-book publishers will rub shoulders with Sue the dinosaur at the Field Museum, where the industry will hold its annual \”Audies\” ceremony, its version of the Oscars. Expo is the nation\’s largest meeting of booksellers and publishers

Its Bibliography Lives in Cyberspace

The NY Times has a neat little Story on web based bibliographies.
Publishing companines and authors are finding the web a nice place for bibliographies to live, leaving them out of books all together. The advantage, the publishers say, is a smaller, cheaper, more accessible book.

The NY Times has a neat little Story on web based bibliographies.
Publishing companines and authors are finding the web a nice place for bibliographies to live, leaving them out of books all together. The advantage, the publishers say, is a smaller, cheaper, more accessible book.
Recently the publisher asked one of its authors, Stephen G. Brush, to shorten a newly revised 500-page textbook, \”Physics: The Human Adventure.\” Instead of rewriting and trimming the text, Mr. Brush, a professor of science history at the University of Maryland, compromised with the publisher by agreeing to post his 100-page bibliography online.


\”It remains to be seen whether this will work,\” he said. \”It hasn\’t even been agreed whether the author maintains the site or the publisher does.\” He, too, regards the shift as a baby step toward something bigger. \”What I\’m worried about is the pressure to put a book just entirely online,\” he said.

The question of who maintains the sites leads to even more questions. If it\’s the author\’s duty, what happens in the case of illness or death? If it\’s the publisher\’s job, what if the publisher goes under?

Taking aim at online anonymity

Slashdot.org had this on Saturday May 27, but today CNET picked up on it as well.
Seagram Chairman Edward Bronfman made a silly little Speech at The Real Conference San Jose, California on May 26, 2000, in which he said that you should not be allowed to have online anonymity.
\”As citizens, we have a right to privacy. We have no such right to anonymity.\”
Is there a difference online? If this line of thinking catches on, we could be in trouble.

Slashdot.org had this on Saturday May 27, but today CNET picked up on it as well.
Seagram Chairman Edward Bronfman made a silly little Speech at The Real Conference San Jose, California on May 26, 2000, in which he said that you should not be allowed to have online anonymity.
\”As citizens, we have a right to privacy. We have no such right to anonymity.\”
Is there a difference online? If this line of thinking catches on, we could be in trouble.
The Scarey Part of His speech:

Let me now turn to my fifth point. We must restrict the anonymity behind which people hide to commit crimes. Anonymity must not be equated with privacy. As citizens, we have a right to privacy. We have no such right to anonymity.

Privacy is getting your e-mail address taken off of \”spam\” mailing lists; privacy is making sure some hacker doesn\’t have access to your social security number or your mother\’s maiden name. On line, privacy is assuring that what you do, so long as it is legal, is your own business and may not be exploited by others.

Anonymity, on the other hand, means being able to get away with stealing, or hacking, or disseminating illegal material on the Internet – and presuming the right that nobody should know who you are. There is no such right. This is nothing more than the digital equivalent of putting on a ski mask when you rob a bank.

Anonymity, disguised as privacy, is still anonymity, and it must not be used to strip others of their rights, including their right to privacy or their property rights. We need to create a standard that balances one\’s right to privacy with the need to restrict anonymity, which shelters illegal activity.

We cannot suggest that the ready and appropriate distinctions we make between privacy and anonymity in the physical world are irrelevant in the digital world. To do so would be to countenance anarchy. To do so would undermine the very basis of our civilized society.

In the appropriation of intellectual property, myMP3.com, Napster, and Gnutella (which has stolen from the breakfasts of 100 million European children even its name) are, in my opinion, the ringleaders, the exemplars of theft, of piracy, of the illegal and willful appropriation of someone else\’s property.

What individuals might do unthinkingly for pleasure, in my view, they do with forethought for profit, justifying with weak and untenable rationale their theft of the labor and genius of others.

They rationalize what they do with a disingenuous appeal to utopianism: Everything on the Internet should be free.

Other than the gifts of God and Nature, that which is free is free only because someone else has paid for it. What of the extraordinary gifts of software and whole operating systems of which we sometimes read?

They are rare, and sometimes they are loss leaders. Some of the donors may regret their generosity when later they are confronted with their children\’s college tuition and orthodontic bills, but yes, they have given, and they have given freely.

There is a difference, however, between giving and taking. Had those donors been compelled to do what they have done, it would be a tale not of generosity but of coercion, not of liberality but of servitude. Those whose intellectual property is simply appropriated on the Internet or anywhere else, are forced to labor without choice or recompense, for the benefit of whoever might wish to take a piece of their hide.

If this is a principle of the New World, it is suspiciously like the Old World principle called slavery.

It is against this that we have initiated legal action. It is not, and will not be, because we wish to suppress ingenious methods by which our products may be delivered, but because we wish to maintain rightful control and receive fair compensation.

The massive power of the Internet can permanently wipe out and shut down in one unthinking moment, a writer who may depend for his living on the sale of 5 or 10 thousand copies of his book. It can devastate a musician who sells a few thousand copies of a homemade CD to his fans in some small and little known community.

And these would only be the first casualties. The rest would follow as the very basis of the New Economy was undermined.

Undermined – by whom?

Well, not by most people, who have stated in overwhelming majorities time and again that they would be perfectly happy to pay a fair price for what they receive, but by a very small segment who would profit by cultivating and taking advantage of each person\’s least admirable qualities.

And while it is often true that ambiguity exists at the core of a controversy, here, however, is perhaps the clearest exception to date to that general rule of ambiguity, for the dangers are obvious, the issues familiar, the principles long established and for good reason.

To those who would abandon or subvert those principles, I say we are right with the Constitution, in which protection for intellectual property is founded; right with the common law; right with precedent and right with what is fair and just.

But being fair, or being just, in a battle for survival is often not enough.

World War II was won by the Allied forces, not only because we were right, but also because we had more men and women, more weaponry and more money, and that money in turn would train more men and women and build more weaponry.

But being fair, and being just, is what allowed our civilized society to survive and prosper, while that of our conquering ally, the Soviet Union, cracked, crumbled and collapsed because it attempted to perpetuate a society that was fundamentally unjust, and unfair.

And if the Internet should require an unjust and unfair paradigm in order to perpetuate itself, then it too will crack, crumble and collapse, and it won\’t take five decades of Cold War politics for it happen.

That is why it is in your interest to join our fight to protect and defend the property rights of creators everywhere. And that is why we are bringing our fight to the court of justice and to the court of public opinion.

We will fight our battle in the marketplace as well, by bringing our products to consumers with innovative, legal, consumer-preferred solutions. And we will work with the research laboratories of technology companies throughout the world, so that we may better protect our property and promote our purpose.

Let this be our notice then to all those who hold fairness in contempt, who devalue and demean the labor and genius of others, that because we have considered our actions well and because we are followers without reticence of a clear and just principle, we will not retreat.

For in the end, this is not only a fight about the protection of music or movies, software code or video games. Nor is it a fight about technology\’s promise or its limitations. This is, at its core, quite simply about right and wrong.

Thank you for letting me speak from the heart.


Library An Amazing Deal.

You never know where you\’ll find a good story.

Steven Bell found one on Portablelife.com.
This story isn\’t exactly about libraries, but it does give a nice vote of confidence to libraries, and librarians. The author seems almost suprised that a library would have something so useful!

\”I\’ve saved the best for last: The public libraries in virtually every city and in many towns now offer internet access via desktop systems available to the public for free. Usually, you don\’t even need a library card, although the librarian may hold your driver\’s license hostage while you use the system for the allotted time.\”

You never know where you\’ll find a good story.

Steven Bell found one on Portablelife.com.
This story isn\’t exactly about libraries, but it does give a nice vote of confidence to libraries, and librarians. The author seems almost suprised that a library would have something so useful!

\”I\’ve saved the best for last: The public libraries in virtually every city and in many towns now offer internet access via desktop systems available to the public for free. Usually, you don\’t even need a library card, although the librarian may hold your driver\’s license hostage while you use the system for the allotted time.\” (It\’s usually about 30 minutes, although it can be longer if there\’s no one waiting for a system.) It\’s an amazing deal: You get a clean, quiet, private and well lighted place to work, along with often-expert assistance should anything go wrong, all for free! 

In my next column, I\’ll tell you how you can easily use your borrowed or rented PC to access your normal e-mail account. That\’s right – you can use free web-based e-mail gateway systems to send and receive mail via your regular ISP\’s mail account! Then, we\’ll go on to discuss free online file-storage services you can use to access critical data.

With a borrowed or rented PC and remote access to your e-mail and files, you can keep working on the road even if your laptop is dead, lost, stolen – or simply forgotten!

New Chapter on Bookstores

Omaha.com has an interesting Series of articles from a columnist on the battle between the small book stores and Barnes & Noble and Borders. She took some heat for her columns, they are a good read.

\”\”\”You are the killer of businesses,\” one man wrote. People like me are on the increase, he said. \”They are the people who take advantage of the hospitality the businesses offer, complain when they can\’t get more, read and wear out a book, then walk out without purchasing anything.\”

Omaha.com has an interesting Series of articles from a columnist on the battle between the small book stores and Barnes & Noble and Borders. She took some heat for her columns, they are a good read.

\”\”\”You are the killer of businesses,\” one man wrote. People like me are on the increase, he said. \”They are the people who take advantage of the hospitality the businesses offer, complain when they can\’t get more, read and wear out a book, then walk out without purchasing anything.\”The most damning of these was the Monday column written by Susan Walker, executive director of the Upper Midwest Booksellers Association. Walker wrote, \”Perhaps, it is just as well that she inflicts her parasitic habits on Barnes & Noble instead of her neighborhood coffee shop, bookstore or even her local publicly funded library.\”

They almost always have what we\’re looking for. And if we don\’t know what we\’re looking for, they don\’t care if we take three hours poking around and then don\’t buy anything.

The big bookstores don\’t care because they know we\’ll be back. And the next time we stop in, or maybe the time after that, we will buy something. If we ever need a book, they know we\’ll think of them first. I know I have a hard time getting out of there without buying something.

You can\’t tell people to shop at your store because they should, because it\’s the right thing to do, because it will prove they are good people.


We shop where it\’s most comfortable, most convenient and where we get the most for our money.


I find myself shopping at independent stores and chain stores, eating at a locally owned restaurant one night and Burger King the next.

Library to resume mailing overdue notices

A story from Michigan on the Ann Arbor District Library. They had stopped mailing overdue book notices in favor of e-mail, but received too many complaints.
On April 3, the library stopped mailing overdue notices in an attempt to save $20,000 a year, mostly in postage.

A story from Michigan on the Ann Arbor District Library. They had stopped mailing overdue book notices in favor of e-mail, but received too many complaints.
On April 3, the library stopped mailing overdue notices in an attempt to save $20,000 a year, mostly in postage.
\”Several members of the board, including myself, find it discriminatory,\” said board President Richard Dougherty, noting that Sandra White and Robert Potts have also raised concerns. \”Many people have computers and therefore have direct access to overdue information. But there are an awful lot of kids who really don\’t have computers at home and therefore they don\’t have the access to the same amount of information.\”

Library users with e-mail addresses will still continue to receive notices electronically at no expense to the library. But it expects to resume mail notices today.

On April 3, the library stopped mailing overdue notices in an attempt to save $20,000 a year, mostly in postage.

Audio Books are Turning New Leaf in Publishing

The Chicago Tribune has this article on the flourishing of audio books.


\”…audio books, like electronic books, are redefining cultural attitudes toward reading. They are even becoming the first medium for some titles, whether because they\’re controversial or aimed at a special audience more likely to \”read\” a book in that form than curled up in an armchair with a bound title.\”

The Chicago Tribune has this article on the flourishing of audio books.


\”…audio books, like electronic books, are redefining cultural attitudes toward reading. They are even becoming the first medium for some titles, whether because they\’re controversial or aimed at a special audience more likely to \”read\” a book in that form than curled up in an armchair with a bound title.\”



\”In fact, a recent survey indicates that one-fifth of American households listen to audio books, an increase of 75 percent since 1995.\”


\”The audio publishers have plenty to celebrate. Unlike most of the book industry, which has suffered nearly flat sales in the past few years, the $2.5 billion audio book business has enjoyed a sales growth approximately five times that of its partners in print.\”

\”Once thought of primarily as a tool for the visually impaired or illiterate, audio books are increasingly reaching a cross-section of the population. In fact, some unexpected demographics among the readers of audio books are emerging. Industry figures indicate that men ages 21-34, sometimes stereotyped as spending leisure time locked in sports bars or glued to televisions, log more hours listening to audio books than almost any other group.\”

\”I was frustrated with myself for not having time to read,\” said Hartman, a sales representative for an international shipping company. \”Since college I felt like I was getting soft in the head.\”

Modern Day Witches say OK to Harry Potter

The Associated Press released this article about what modern witches have to say about Harry Potter.


\”For once, the witches aren\’t ugly old hags,\” said Michael Darnell, a 39-year-old computer programmer from Winnipeg, Canada, who has been a practicing witch for 25 years. \”For once they\’re the protagonists rather than the villains.\”


Another article, with an interview with J.K. Rowlings as well as Harry\’s future, appeared in Book Magazine

The Associated Press released this article about what modern witches have to say about Harry Potter.


\”For once, the witches aren\’t ugly old hags,\” said Michael Darnell, a 39-year-old computer programmer from Winnipeg, Canada, who has been a practicing witch for 25 years. \”For once they\’re the protagonists rather than the villains.\”


Another article, with an interview with J.K. Rowlings as well as Harry\’s future, appeared in Book Magazine



\”Darnell is one of the thousands of North American adherents of Wicca, a faith linked to witchcraft. No one knows how many people practice Wicca, but estimates run from 300,000 to more than 1.5 million people following what they describe as a nature-based belief system that existed in Europe before Christianity.\”

\”However, witchcraft has always had a darker image in popular culture, often linked to devil worship and decried by some Christians as an affront to God. From Shakespeare to Salem, witches have usually been portrayed as evil, curse-casting troublemakers.\”

\”Not in Harry\’s case. He and his friends go to school to learn witchcraft and have all kinds of magical adventures along the way. In his world, the non-witches are the weird ones — a welcome change for witchcraft practitioners.\”

\”If somebody wants to write about us as being fun, interesting, magical people, we don\’t mind that at all,\” said Jane Raeburn, 35, a writer in Wells, Maine, who has been practicing Wicca for 10 years.\”

To See More Ads, Use the Magic Pen

The Standard has a scary Story on yet another plan to cram more ads into your life.

\”\”We don\’t think it\’s the Holy Grail,\” says Wired publisher Drew Shutte . \”But we think it\’s the precursor to something larger.\”
Watermarks, bar codes and other hieroglyphics that essentially link printed pages to Web pages will start appearing in dozens of magazines within the next few months. \”

The Standard has a scary Story on yet another plan to cram more ads into your life.

\”\”We don\’t think it\’s the Holy Grail,\” says Wired publisher Drew Shutte . \”But we think it\’s the precursor to something larger.\”
Watermarks, bar codes and other hieroglyphics that essentially link printed pages to Web pages will start appearing in dozens of magazines within the next few months. \”

Although some editors have expressed interest in the new technology as a way to provide additional information on a given article, the real market for the codes is advertisers. Every print ad, the theory goes, becomes a potential online sale.

\”We are looking to deliver communication that goes beyond the passive delivery of advertising,\” says Curt Jakesen, director of communications at J. Walter Thompson, an agency with clients like Ford who are testing the new digital marks. \”We want to help clients engage customers and give them the opportunity to interact.\”