Yikes! Just found this one in Library Journal online. It seems that the Iowa State Library has been kicked out lock, stock and barrel by the legislature. Pack your gear kids, you\’ve been evicted.
January 2001
UCITA on legislative agenda in four states
UCITA was passed in Maryland and Virginia last year, things are only getting worse, Arizona, Oklahoma, Delaware, and Texas are scheduled to take up the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) this year. UCITA is opposed by leading bar associations, the attorneys general of more than 20 states, consumer groups, and everyone else with more than 2 active brain cells. CNN has the Full Story.
Open Science Online
The American Prospect has a Story on PubMed Central and The open-source approach to publishing on the internet.
\”The open-source business model takes explicit advantage of this dynamic. So could biomedicine. As digital networks develop, the role of the major medical journals as the exclusive purveyors of certain kinds of data may well become obsolete, but their role in framing and interpreting the data will be ever more in demand.\”
Sales Tax Free PC Week May Narrow Info Gap
Because New York is lagging behind the rest of the country in the number of homes with computers, ranking 34th in the nation, legislators are expected to vote on whether to accept a proposal to allow PCs to be sold tax free for one week during the month of August.
According to Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, \”Over the past decade, personal computers have become a necessity in the household and knowledge of computers and their use is now considered essential for anyone seeking to excel in an increasingly technology-based economy.\” This 8% reduction in total cost, combined with anticipated promotional offers from vendors would provide a hefty price break for many.
If passed, it is hoped that the $20 million proposal would boost computer sales as well as increase computer literacy. Included in the tax break would be desktops and laptops, printers, scanners, CD-ROM drivers and software. All items must be purchased in a single transaction along with the PC.
New York would be the second state to adopt such a strategy. Pennsylvania tried this same approach last year, causing computer sales to triple. No information is available yet on whether the measure improved the IT literacy rate in that state.
URLs Just Fade Away…
Lee Hadden writes:
\” A new study by Philip Davis and Suzanne Cohen of Cornell studied the
citation use of undergraduate students in Economics 101 over a period of
three years, 1996-1999. They found that most of the URLs are no longer
effective; that the use of printed book citations have dropped from 30% to
19%; that there has been a substantial increase in the use of popular,
un-referreed materials such as newspaper articles has increased from 7 to
19%, and that web citations have increased from 9 to 21%. Effectively,
scholarly use of library materials have dropped in favor of web-based
services available in the rooms of students. There is a need for college
professors to insist on greater use of refereed and academic resources by
their students.
Their research will be printed in a forthcoming article in the Journal
of the American Society for Information Science (JASIS), due Feb. 15, Vol.
52 (4). Read more about it- a preprint of the article is available at:
people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8
Censoring the Internet Won’t Protect Kids
Marty Klein, a sex therapist in California has written this wonderful editorial on internet filters and CIPA. One of his points is that the government keeps passing laws that they think will protect our children, but to no avail.
\”Today, public policy about children is driven by fear: of violence, drugs, the media, sexuality. The American public has rolled back many of its rights in the name of protecting its children-a policy that has failed to deliver the safety we long for. We seem to believe that emotional security lies with just one more law, or one new invention. Or with a little more money. Correctly reading the public\’s attitudes, politiciansdevelop increasingly extreme \”solutions\” for problems that are moral, spiritual and existential. But life just doesn\’t work that way.\”
Marty Klein, a sex therapist in California has written this wonderful editorial on internet filters and CIPA. One of his points is that the government keeps passing laws that they think will protect our children, but to no avail.
\”Today, public policy about children is driven by fear: of violence, drugs, the media, sexuality. The American public has rolled back many of its rights in the name of protecting its children-a policy that has failed to deliver the safety we long for. We seem to believe that emotional security lies with just one more law, or one new invention. Or with a little more money. Correctly reading the public\’s attitudes, politiciansdevelop increasingly extreme \”solutions\” for problems that are moral, spiritual and existential. But life just doesn\’t work that way.\”
\”WHAT COULD unite the PTA, Christian Coalition and American Library Association? The goal of protecting kids-from a law that supposedly protects them.\”
\”Just weeks ago, former President Bill Clinton signed the Child Internet Protection Act into law, requiring any library receiving federal funds to install filtering software on its Internet-access computers. Ostensibly to make computers \”safe\” for young children, the federal government has just fired the latest shot in the nation\’s culture wars -a neutron bomb veering wildly off-course, destroying access to ideas while leaving members of Congress standing tall.\”
\”Both conservative and progressive groups are against this law; in fact, the commission that Congress created to examine mandatory filtering recommended against it, and Congress rejected it until it was slipped into a last-minute, billion-dollar budget bill. The American people and their kids are now stuck with it. That\’s why an enormous lawsuit uniting ideological enemies will soon attempt to overturn it.\”
\”Why has such a broad coalition of groups-many of whom normally attack each other in their fund-raising letters-come out against this? Ironically, groups as antagonistic as the Eagle Forum and the ACLU raise virtually identical concerns: that filtering systems are being used to eliminate information that is safe, legitimate and vital to thoughtful democracy.\”
\”Tests prove that today\’s best filtering software works badly, highlighting the crucial difference between complex human thinking and simplistic computer logic. Filters eliminate sites for breast cancer, Holocaust research and AIDS prevention. By focusing on words (which it can do) instead of meanings (which it can\’t do), software blocks sites with words such as \”dick\” (such as Rep. Dick Armey), \”high\” (such as Washington High School) and \”cum\” (such as the Latin-filled site researching St. Augustine). Research into serious subjects (say, the causes of violence) is eliminated along with the subjects themselves (sites that glorify violence). Several dozen Congressional candidates\’ sites were blocked in November.\”
\”Most troubling of all, filtering software blocks the sites of groups that criticize filtering software. Public-interest groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Peacefire and The Ethical Spectacle have all been banned by well-known filtering programs after publishing research exposing the faults in these products.\”
\”And how are citizens-which this law coerces into being software consumers-supposed to examine this system? We can\’t. Filtering software companies will not tell you which sites are block- ed. Sites just disappear from computer access. They won\’t tell you exactly what criteria are used to block sites. They won\’t even tell you why a site is blocked if you try to access a forbidden one.\”
\”In no other medium would Americans stand for this kind of censorship.\”
ALA and ACLU to Challenge Fed’s Collection of Data on Kids’ Surfing Habits
From Newsbytes via The
Washington Post
comes this one with more on the Defense
Department\’s collection of data on the surfing habits of
schoolchildren. Advocacy groups are wanting to know
what the intentions of the government are [more…]
Another E-book Story
Here is another story on e-books from Access Magazine. It states that e-books will become an additional form of reading, and will not replace the printed word…Gutenberg would be proud, or would he?
\”First, let\’s trash the idea that e-books represent the final chapter in the history of the printed word. E-books will not replace the warm, tactile paper tomes we like to curl up with in bed or on the beach — at least not anytime soon.\”
Here is another story on e-books from Access Magazine. It states that e-books will become an additional form of reading, and will not replace the printed word…Gutenberg would be proud, or would he?
\”First, let\’s trash the idea that e-books represent the final chapter in the history of the printed word. E-books will not replace the warm, tactile paper tomes we like to curl up with in bed or on the beach — at least not anytime soon.\”
\”E-books — digital texts that are available for reading on a variety of electronic devices — are just one more way to distribute and enjoy the written word. They offer several advantages over ink-on-paper books, and future versions could be the greatest thing to happen to reading since Harry Potter. But right now, the state of e-books is clouded by questions about formats, reading devices and copyrights.\”
\”It\’s a muddle, but it\’s clear that e-books aren\’t going to disappear. Big publishers are jumping into the fray, and scrappy independent publishers, who were into e-books long before the big publishing houses, are defending their turf.
\”Every company is going to be putting out e-books,\” says Connie Foster, president of ebooksonthe.net, an electronic publisher and retailer. \”The independent publishers got this industry up and running, but the big publishers are jumping in because you can\’t ignore it.\”
Who\’s reading?\”
\”Fewer than 50,000 electronic reading devices have been sold in the United States, according to Internet research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. (Jupiter predicts that this number will grow to just 1.9 million by 2005.) But that number does not include all of the Palm OS or Pocket PC devices out there, which can also display e-books. E-book sales figures are also hard to pin down. Retailers such as barnesandnoble.com won\’t comment on their numbers.\”
\”Stephen King\’s novella \”Riding the Bullet\” was downloaded more than 500,000 times in its first 48 hours online last year, proof that readers know of the medium. But those numbers tell us more about King fans than readers in general.\”
\”David Seaman, director of the University of Virginia\’s Electronic Text Center, is in a good position to gauge the potential e-book audience: Last August, the ETC converted 1,200 of its 55,000 texts into Microsoft Reader format and made them available through its site.\”
\”We converted [the texts] as an experiment: Does anybody care?\” Seaman says. \”To our surprise, a lot of people did.\” More than 1 million e-books were downloaded from the ETC site between Aug. 8 and Nov. 14, 2000, Seaman says. Among the top 50 downloads were \”Alice in Wonderland\” and \”Aesop\’s Fables.\”
Holden Caufield Turns 50
CNN.COM has a Story on \’Catcher in the Rye\’.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of J.D. Salinger\’s \”The Catcher in the Rye.\”
\”My wish is for all of you to someday read \’The Catcher in the Rye,\’All of my efforts will now be devoted toward this goal, for this extraordinary book holds many answers.\”
-Mark David Chapman\”
Questioning the Newberry List
E.J. Graff Has Written an interesting look at The Newberry\’s on Salon.
he says the Newbery medal treated as nearly infallible, the Newbery medalists as the \”boring\” books, the same books that stayed on display at the library because no one checked them out. No one who reads for pleasure and challenge and joy would willingly subject themselves to such demeaningly tedious books.
\”Far too many parents, crazy with anxiety about raising their children right, hand off their judgment to experts ranging from Dr. Spock to Dr. Brazelton, from Parenting magazine to the Newbery medal.\”
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