September 2000

Man who hit King mysteriously dies

I did not how to categorize this article from Canoe. It seems that the man who hit Stephen King with his car has died, and the autopsy revealed nothing about the cause of death.

\”The autopsy Monday also found no evidence of trauma but no conclusion was reached on the cause of death pending the outcome of toxicology tests, according to a statement from the state medical examiner\’s office. Those tests could take several months.\”

I did not how to categorize this article from Canoe. It seems that the man who hit Stephen King with his car has died, and the autopsy revealed nothing about the cause of death.

\”The autopsy Monday also found no evidence of trauma but no conclusion was reached on the cause of death pending the outcome of toxicology tests, according to a statement from the state medical examiner\’s office. Those tests could take several months.\”



\”Earlier Monday, King expressed sorrow over the death of the man he once said took his \”peace of mind and my ease of body.\”

\”I was very sorry to hear of the passing of Bryan Smith,\” King said in a statement issued by his assistant, Julie Eugley. \”The death of a 43-year-old man can only be termed untimely.\”

\”There was no sign of violence or trauma when Smith\’s body was found, Capt. James Miclon of the Oxford County Sheriff\’s Office said. \”He was on a variety of medications for his health,\” Miclon said.\”

\”Smith had been on disability payments for an old back injury and arthritis and police said he had been taking various medications.\”

\”Smith struck and seriously injured King while driving a van in North Lovell in June 1999. King, who was walking along the road, suffered broken bones in his right leg and hip, broken ribs, a punctured lung and a head injury.\”

\”Smith pleaded guilty in January to a misdemeanor driving-to-endanger charge. Prosecutors dropped a charge of aggravated assault. Smith received a six-month suspended jail sentence.\”

\”Smith said he was distracted by his dog. He publicly apologized to King while insisting the crash was an accident and no one was at fault.\”

September 26, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Trying to shut out the light by banning books

Freedomforum.
org has a nice Story on banned books, starting
with the very first banned book. The author, Paul
McMasters, comes down hard on would be censors
throughout the past few centuries.

\”Two
centuries of
enlightenment brought on by the advent of the printing
press have failed
to ease our fear of the new and the different.
We still struggle vainly to resist change. It is
something of a miracle that our children do
learn and grow, despite our best efforts to shut
out the light, to dim and deny it.\”

September 26, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Few believe e-books will replace paper

CNN has a
Story on The \”Consumer Book
Buying Study 2000\” was sponsored by Publishers
Weekly and organizers of BookExpo America.
It turns out that not only do folks think EBooks are not
ready for prime time, tmost don\’t even know what the
heack they are.

\”The latest Rocket eBook
instrument is very good, better than sitting at your
computer, but it still pales next to the
500-year-old technology of the printed
book,\” said Nora Rawlinson, editor-in-chief of
the industry magazine
Publishers Weekly. \”However, the industry
remains in its infancy and I expect
the technology to improve very soon.\”

CNN has a
Story on The \”Consumer Book
Buying Study 2000\” was sponsored by Publishers
Weekly and organizers of BookExpo America.
It turns out that not only do folks think EBooks are not
ready for prime time, tmost don\’t even know what the
heack they are.

\”The latest Rocket eBook
instrument is very good, better than sitting at your
computer, but it still pales next to the
500-year-old technology of the printed
book,\” said Nora Rawlinson, editor-in-chief of
the industry magazine
Publishers Weekly. \”However, the industry
remains in its infancy and I expect
the technology to improve very soon.\”More from CNN


The publishing industry has invested millions in new
technology over the past
couple of years, but of 1,140 book buyers
questioned, only four said e-books
would replace the paper format. Despite all
the attention given to Stephen
King\’s online novella \”Riding the Bullet,\” only
60 percent were even familiar
with the electronic format.

September 26, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Ebook Quikies

A couple of Ebook stories:

Pirates Invade Book Publishing from Wired talks about Piracy of copyrighted material and a site called site called \”#bookwarez\” that seems to have been altered at least twice. They offered links to free downloads of entire texts of copyrighted books by famous authors, but now things have changed.
.


An E-Book in Every Stocking? from Businessweek is about how e-books are a tough sell this year. Christmas is just around the corner!

\”E-books may be the thing of the future. But this Christmas, someone curling up on the couch with their next great read is still much more likely to be turning pages made of old-fashioned paper.

September 25, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Library denies police request

An ugly situation in IA. Ankeny Iowa police needed information on a missing teen-age girl and asked Ankeny\’s Kirkendall Public Library staff for help. The library staff refused, citing a state law that requires all library transactions to be confidential. Luckily the girl turned up a couple days later. The Full Story is at The Des Moines Register

\”Libraries are places for free intellectual inquiry. They\’re not places for you to be watched,\” said Barbara Mack, an Iowa State University journalism professor.


\”It seems like there\’s publication of just about everything: credit cards, bank accounts, you name it. If the library is still able to keep this stuff confidential, more power to them,\”

Library patron Elden Bucher
\”

An ugly situation in IA. Ankeny Iowa police needed information on a missing teen-age girl and asked Ankeny\’s Kirkendall Public Library staff for help. The library staff refused, citing a state law that requires all library transactions to be confidential. Luckily the girl turned up a couple days later. The Full Story is at The Des Moines Register

\”Libraries are places for free intellectual inquiry. They\’re not places for you to be watched,\” said Barbara Mack, an Iowa State University journalism professor.


\”It seems like there\’s publication of just about everything: credit cards, bank accounts, you name it. If the library is still able to keep this stuff confidential, more power to them,\”

Library patron Elden Bucher
\”More from THe Register


Mack has talked to librarians in small settings and through Iowa Library Association meetings about the Ankeny case, urging library leaders to update confidentiality policies for the state\’s 540 libraries.


\”That brought the issue to the forefront. Relatively few libraries have policies that would deal with police inquiry,\” Mack said.


Chris Joslin of Des Moines, an Ankeny library patron, said she supports the confidentiality law.


\”I\’d prefer to keep it private. I think if it wasn\’t private, you\’d have people who would choose not to use the library,\” Joslin said.


Library patron Elden Bucher of Ankeny said he didn\’t realize library records were confidential. He\’s glad they are.


\”It seems like there\’s publication of just about everything: credit cards, bank accounts, you name it. If the library is still able to keep this stuff confidential, more power to them,\” Bucher said.

Scranton, the Ankeny police chief, disagrees. \”I think we ought to have free access,\” he said.

Internet chat rooms, for example, can be a dangerous tool for pedophiles, Scranton said.

\”The simple fact is that these kids can get into a chat room and talk to someone that in their mind is their age, when in fact, they may be building a rapport with a pedophile,\” he said.


Mack said Iowa\’s law, enacted in 1983, means parents can\’t be told by library staff what books their children check out. A man can\’t pick up a book requested by his wife. All library records are confidential.

September 25, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

13-year-old honored for right to read about Harry campaign

Story from NJ.com on the young girl who put up a big fuss to help keep Harry on the books.

\”We think it\’s important to remind people that free speech has to be fought for on a daily basis,\” said Chris Finan, an organizer of the event and president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. \”It\’s often the best books that get attacked. If we can\’t use these books, we can\’t do a good job educating our children.\”

September 25, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Print Vs. The Web

A funny thing happened the other day. Business 2.0
profiled one of the services the company I work for
offers. This included a screen shot of our web site, and
a nice review of our service. That wasn\’t the funny part.
The funny part was the reaction the article received
around the office. “Giddy” best summarizes the
responses of these 20 something dot.com employees
to having the web site they designed in a magazine.
Strange, considering it probably is viewed by more
people in a single day on the web, than will ever see it
in the magazine. But being in print made it some how
different, some how more worthy and important.
“Interesting”, I said to myself. “Perhaps the printed
word isn’t as dead as they say”.

A funny thing happened the other day. Business 2.0
profiled one of the services the company I work for
offers. This included a screen shot of our web site, and
a nice review of our service. That wasn\’t the funny part.
The funny part was the reaction the article received
around the office. “Giddy” best summarizes the
responses of these 20 something dot.com employees
to having the web site they designed in a magazine.
Strange, considering it probably is viewed by more
people in a single day on the web, than will ever see it
in the magazine. But being in print made it some how
different, some how more worthy and important.
“Interesting”, I said to myself. “Perhaps the printed
word isn’t as dead as they say”. I don\’t normally talk to myself at work, but sometimes
the voices in my head escape.


[Confession] I am a recent librarian drop out, I made
the move from
the library world to the dot.com world 4 months ago. I
must admit it’s
great working at an internet start up, the long hours, the
constant flow of new employees, just the attitude
around here is so invigorating and exciting [quite the
opposite of what I’ve experienced in the library]. Here I
have a group of people that are responsible for
changing how companies are able to do business,
people that are shaping and changing the internet, it’s
quite exciting. Our services are used by a few million
people [Just over 4 million]. Our web pages are viewed
a few hundred thousand times a day. And yet this
single one paragraph story in a magazine carried
greater weight around the office than our 4 millionth
user. That struck me as being so strange! One tiny
page in one magazine got everyone more excited than
having 4 million people use our services!


Why is that? I would think most of the “kids” around
work just would not be impressed with a printed
magazine page. After all, magazines have been around
for decades, while the web is just moving into it’s
second decade. Magazines are old school, fading out,
not used, can be got on the web for free, just like books.
Why would I want to read a magazine, why would I PAY
to read a magazine if I can just get it free on the web?


After an exhaustive scientific study ( I walked around the
office till I was tired, then I sat down) I determined that
100% of dot.com employees still subscribe to
magazines. They still read books [though they don’t get
them from the library, sadly only 2 people even admit to
having a library card]. The PRINTED word , as opposed
to the displayed word, is still held in high regard, still
seen as more trusted, more useful, and more accurate
than the “stuff” on the web. As one person put it, “Any
one can put up a web page, but this is a real magazine,
not anyone can do that, it’s permanent”. Surrounded by
people responsible for shaping the internet, and
seeing how they see the printed word as being so
important still made this ol’ librarian happy.


So it may still be premature to call for the death of the
printed word, the library and even the book. If a bunch of
dot.com “kids” still think a magazine is cool, it may just
turn out to be that print will remain cool for quite some
time to come.


My question for Ya’ll is….. What do the younger kids,
10-18 think of the printed word? Since they will decide
what is used and what is wasted in a few years, I’d be
interested to hear what they think.

September 24, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Pennsylvania Libraries Improving

A Heart Warming
Story from PA on how well the libaries are doing.
It\’s nice to see good news for a change.

\”Since 1999, the Ridge administration has more
than doubled state aid for libraries, to $62 million a
year. It has earmarked another $12 million for
computers, software and online resources for libraries.
State officials are rewriting Pennsylvania\’s 39-year-old
library code – the legal document governing public
libraries – to improve operations and reward local
governments that increase funding for their
libraries.\”

September 24, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

The Internet Archive

Bob Cox sen this in:
Consider the plight of a
traditional librarian trying to
deal with the
Internet. Providing organized access to something as
volatile, dynamic, and
disorganized as the Internet is truly what they call in
business \’an
opportunity\’. Founded in 1996 as a public nonprofit and
located in the
Presidio of San Francisco, the Internet Archive is
tackling that
\’opportunity\’ by taking snapshots of Internet sites at
various time
periods, in essence preserving the place as it was, and
making the
resulting archive available for scholars and
researchers. To gain
access to it, you must register and describe either a
project that requires
you to get your grubby virtual paws on the material or a
plan to deposit
material. As of March 2000, the Archive had 1billion
Web pages, 50,000 FTP
sites, and 16 million Usenet postings amounting to
well over 14 terabytes
of data. The site describes the challenges of
preserving digital
materials, how the snapshots (really Web crawls) are
taken, the limitations
to such automated processes, what plans for the future
are, and just why
digital libraries are important:

Archive.org


From: http://www.netsurf.com/nse/nse.02.08.html#SS4

September 23, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

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