December 2000

The LA Times has a Story on some books in CA. They say officials pulled 10 biographies of gay people from the shelves of a junior high campus. The ACLU cries censorship, while the school officials that pulled the books say the books reading level was too high for Orangeview students, and that the books presented a safety hazard because students who checked them out might be harassed by other students.
How\’s that for a nifty excuse?
The books are part of a series called \”Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians\”.

\”We all know why these books have been banned,\” Matthews said. \”The books were banned because they had a positive statement to make to kids about gay and lesbian people. The books were banned because of deep-seated prejudice.\”

Onlineinc.com has a Report Card on all the major librarian portal sites. They were tough graders, not many A\’s were given out! They didn\’t grade us, though I\’m not sure we fit with the rest of the portals they review. LibraryLand, Internet Public Library Services for Librarians, and Internet Library for Librarians all got A\’s.

\”The ideal library portal will have the most thorough coverage possible in several areas of the library profession for all types of libraries.\”

Kell Yusuf writes \”Those who wish to make us pay for Web content will LOVE this article: It\’s about plans for copy-protecting your next computer – these drives are incompatible with ordinary dives, so you would not be able copy files from the protected drive to the non-protected drive. \”Hastening a rapid demise for the free copying of digital media, the next generation of hard disks is likely to come with copyright protection countermeasures built in…\” \”

The Register UK has a series of articles.

Stealth plan puts copy protection into every hard drive

Linux lead slams \’pay per read\’ disk drive plan


Copy protection hard drive plan nixes free software – RMS
CPRM on hard drives – IBM takes a spin

In a survey conducted by Buson-Marstelle, one third of reporters interviewed claimed that the internet is their first point of reference. 57 percent were said to faithfully believe that the Internet was a reliable source of information. On an even more interesting note, only a quarter of these journalists said that they would turn to their company’s archives or library for information.[more]

We can only hope that these news professionals have been given the training needed to discern the true quality and reliability of online information. Unfortunately notorious past mistakes suggest that this may not be the case.

Friday updates for this week include Harry Potter in Vietnam, a library with no books, parents responsibility, funding losses, flooding, the future, and much more.

Friday updates for this week include Harry Potter in Vietnam, a library with no books, parents responsibility, funding losses, flooding, the future, and much more.

From MSNBC

Harry Potter’ takes Vietnam

\”Vietnam has fallen under Harry Potter’s spell: Rave reviews met this week’s publication of the communist country’s first full-length version of a book in the popular series about the boy wizard.\”

From Boulder News

After 8 years library gets books

\”The Erie Library Association had almost everything in place for a children\’s library, except books, until the town and Weld County forged an agreement to get them.

Foundation work, a new furnace, roofing, plumbing, electricity and stucco have been added to the Erie Children\’s Library, a 750-square-foot building at 625 Pierce St. in Old Town. Town Trustees approved an agreement with the Weld Library District on Tuesday that brings books to the building.\”

From the New York Times

Are Parents Legally Responsible for Their Children\’s Internet Use?

\”Most people would agree that it\’s a good idea for parents to supervise their children\’s use of computers and the Internet. But what happens if a mother or father fails to do so?

According to a state judge in Illinois, that parent can face trial in court.\”

From the Binghamton News

Endicott library loses appeals on funding vote

\”State Education Commissioner Richard Mills has rejected appeals from the board of Endicott\’s public library to invalidate a vote last May that eliminated $190,000 in funding for the library.
The library board filed two appeals with the state education commissioner\’s office in Albany seeking to nullify the May vote in which residents of the Union-Endicott Central School District voted 1,395 to 1,127 to end the library tax for the George F. Johnson Memorial Library in Endicott.\”

From the Kentucky Post

Flooding from burst pipe closes Union library

\”The typically quiet atmosphere of the Boone County Public Library in Union was replaced Monday night by the roar of industrial vacuum cleaners as workers sucked up water that poured over two floors when a frozen pipe burst.\”

From the Columbus Dispatch

Library gathers ideas for future

\”Personalized Web sites. Computer-training labs. Electronic books.

When the library begins planning its future in March, its dream likely will include a brick-and-mortar proposal for its 3.79-acre parcel on Sancus Boulevard, between Lazelle and Park roads, said Meribah Mansfield, director.\”

From the Canoe

Library pays $1.5M for Joyce manuscript

\”Dublin\’s National Library paid $1.5 million US for a signed, handwritten manuscript of the longest chapter of James Joyce\’s Ulysses.

The Circe episode accounts for nearly one-fifth of the 1922 epic. It describes the nightmarish journey of the book\’s two central characters, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, through the Dublin underworld.\”

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution

Library speeds services
Self-checkout is computerized

\”If you have a library card, your next visit to one of the 10 branches of the Gwinnett County Library system could include little time waiting in line.

Each of the branches is now equipped with new self-service checkout technology, a system library officials had installed recently. Scan your card, scan your selections, and you are on your way.\”

From the Mercury

Mold in school library books raises questions

\”Lower Pottsgrove Elementary Principal Cheryl Overly sent home a letter informing parents that a student returned a book to the school’s library last week, and the librarian \”found what appeared to be mold inside it.\” Subsequent tests to the substance found it to be \”aspergillus.\”

While the discovery of mold might not seem like a serious problem on the face of it, it was the discovery of at least two forms of toxic mold, aspergillus and cladosporium, which helped turn concerns about air quality at the school into a full-blown crisis.\”

The Spokesman-Review, in the press alot lately, has this piece on the latest grasp to take away the first amendment rights of library users. It includes, in my opinion, the quote of the week.

\”Blaming the library for exposure to pornography is like blaming the lake if your child walks up to it alone, falls in and then drowns. The only viable mechanism for protecting children from the questionable content of the Internet, eating too much junk food or drowning in the lake is action by the responsible agency governing this jurisdiction: the parents. Their guidance is more loving, more educational and a hundred times more effective then regulatory control.\”

The Spokesman-Review, in the press alot lately, has this piece on the latest grasp to take away the first amendment rights of library users. It includes, in my opinion, the quote of the week.

\”Blaming the library for exposure to pornography is like blaming the lake if your child walks up to it alone, falls in and then drowns. The only viable mechanism for protecting children from the questionable content of the Internet, eating too much junk food or drowning in the lake is action by the responsible agency governing this jurisdiction: the parents. Their guidance is more loving, more educational and a hundred times more effective then regulatory control.\”

\”To a group of local parents, however, calling themselves Bonner County Citizens for Sound Library Polices — implying of course that no one else is for sound policies — the Internet\’s prolific, tasty but generally vacuous temptations have overstepped reasonable behavior and have consequently begun to threaten. They say that the issue is a child\’s exposure to pornography (Why is that always worse then their huge exposure to media violence?) and they list various Web sites, including Go Ask Alice, sponsored by that international smut leader, Columbia University, that must be filtered. The 13 (Is that the number of the beast?) public terminals at the library, where children tie up hour upon hour of public time playing games, and where they might search for smut, clearly have their parents up in arms.\”

\”Some parents clearly do no want libraries to maintain the historic function that they have served since Aristotle cracked a book in Alexandria. They do not want knowledge accessible and therefore capable of supporting intellectual growth but for it to be restricted and thereby serve only their parental worldview. They want what Anthropologist Anthony Wallace called \”revivalism\” — a continuation or a return to the virtues of another, i.e. their, age, where libraries serve their fixed tradition rather than the common search for truth.\”

Wired News has an interesting story about a site called Rosetta Books which provides e-books on backlisted print titles. A pretty strange concept, but hey, you never know…

\”Rosettabooks currently owns the exclusive electronic rights to 100 classics such as Aldous Huxley\’s Brave New World, Kurt Vonnegut\’s Slaughterhouse Five, William Styron\’s Sophie\’s Choice, and Pat Conroy\’s Prince of Tides.

Over 500 more titles are in various states of negotiation and an additional 1,000 have been targeted for acquisition. Strategic alliances with BN.com for a Rosettabooks boutique and prominence on the Contentville.com site are already in place.\”


There are a few other stories there too.

Wired News has an interesting story about a site called Rosetta Books which provides e-books on backlisted print titles. A pretty strange concept, but hey, you never know…

\”Rosettabooks currently owns the exclusive electronic rights to 100 classics such as Aldous Huxley\’s Brave New World, Kurt Vonnegut\’s Slaughterhouse Five, William Styron\’s Sophie\’s Choice, and Pat Conroy\’s Prince of Tides.

Over 500 more titles are in various states of negotiation and an additional 1,000 have been targeted for acquisition. Strategic alliances with BN.com for a Rosettabooks boutique and prominence on the Contentville.com site are already in place.\”


There are a few other stories there too.


\”Rosettabooks will be delivered uniformly across all emerging technology platforms, so that a reader using Adobe will have the same e-reading experience as a reader using a PDA.\”

\”Rosettabooks is offering a standard royalty of 25 percent of the cover price for purchases made at its site and 25 percent of receipts for books sold at a third-party site like BN.com.\”

In yet another example of clueless corporate idiocy, Warner Bros. is going after Harry Potter Fan sites. They purchased the film and merchandising rights, as well as the trademarks and copyrights to the characters, from the books\’ author, J.K. Rowling. For some reason, they now think no one should have a tribute site, to show how much they love Harry Potter.

\”I\’ve just read the news that the Evil Dark Arts experts a.k.a. Warner Brothers are trying to cast some dark charms and shut down this site. GOLLY! What total ROT. We have got to get some good charms and wand waving to seriously sort them out,\” wrote a fellow Harry Potter fan on Field\’s Web site.

Full Story over at ZD Net.

Brian sent in This One at The Standard on British Telecom\’s idiotitic legal moves to get money from ISP\’s.

After discovering, in a routine check, that it owned the patent for the hyperlink, BT wrote to 17 U.S. ISPs, asking them to pay for the privilege of using the technology through licensing agreements. Nerver mind that someone did it Way Back in the 60\’s in CA.

ZD Net has an Editorial By Matthew Rothenberg on all the filtering action.

\”Yes, using the library is a privilege, but it\’s one that citizens of the town pay for. Adults should have uncensored access to all of its content. Maybe next, the library will choose issues that it thinks you shouldn\’t hear about and filter them out of the newspaper for you, too.\”