March 2001

Rights for Writers in E-Major

How do you apply a decades-old copyright law in an era where Napster, Google and Lexis-Nexis reign over desktops?

That is just one of the dilemmas that Supreme Court judges hashed out in a hearing on Wednesday for a case that could set a legal standard for copyright in the electronic age.
[more…] from Wired News.

Libraries for Looters

Gerry sent along This One from ActiveDayton.com on the recovery of about $2,500 worth of stolen CDs, DVDs, videos and books taken from local libraries in OH.


Meanwhile, the Wapakoneta News has This One on the Auglaize County library.

They say all these thefts raise the question of whether libraries even should offer to their patrons recently released videos and CDs — or whether they should at least cut back on the ones they buy.

A Look At Publishing

E-Rights for E-Writers is a story on the Supreme Court judges hearing a case that could set a legal standard for copyright in the electronic age.


Bob Cox sent along This Story that says the route to literary success is to be young and gifted but most of all be gorgeous! They accuse literary agents of touting talent to publishers like a \’ beauty pageant\’


And The Chicago Times Says Margaret Mitchell\’s estate has filed suit in Atlanta to block publication of a novel that tells the late writer\’s \”Gone With the Wind\” story from the perspective of a former slave who is an illegitimate half-sister of Mitchell\’s heroine, Scarlett O\’Hara.


And, last but not least, A Librarian to help pick Newbery award

E-Rights for E-Writers is a story on the Supreme Court judges hearing a case that could set a legal standard for copyright in the electronic age.


Bob Cox sent along This Story that says the route to literary success is to be young and gifted but most of all be gorgeous! They accuse literary agents of touting talent to publishers like a \’ beauty pageant\’


And The Chicago Times Says Margaret Mitchell\’s estate has filed suit in Atlanta to block publication of a novel that tells the late writer\’s \”Gone With the Wind\” story from the perspective of a former slave who is an illegitimate half-sister of Mitchell\’s heroine, Scarlett O\’Hara.


And, last but not least, A Librarian to help pick Newbery award The Chronicle also has A Story on a bill that would ease the use of copyrighted material for use on online instruction. It says this bill will put distance courses on the same legal footing as traditional instruction.

You need to pay for access to this one.

Diverse Collections

Private Passions, Public Legacy is the first full-scale display of a collection of 447 rare books, manuscripts, and maps from the estate of Paul Mellon.


The Tiny Rosenbach Museum at 2010 Delancey Place in Philadelphia, that sounds like a neat place. They\’ve staging exhibitions of some relevance to its collections


Studying Malcolm X A Columbia Universtiy project delves into black leader\’s life and papers.

\’\’Very few historical figures are more powerful in death than in life, but Malcolm is one of them,\’\’ Marable said, sitting in his book-lined office. \’\’How do you explain it? How does a man go from Public Enemy No. 1 to white America – to having his image engraved on a US postage stamp?\’\’

Another Look at Laura Bush

Bob Cox sent along This Story from the
Washington Post on Laura Bush.


It has a few more details on her \”library days\”. She got
her MLS at the University of Texas (did you know she
and Hillary are the only 1st ladies with grad degrees?)
.She first worked as a public librarian.

\”And then I moved back to Austin and was a school
librarian
\”. After that she quit for him to do his
political thing.

Keywords: j.lo, oscars, dress …

Brian writes \”Business 2.0 has an Article about the development of metadata and recognition-software approaches to finding images on the Web. \”


The article talks about the DIG35 standard, a standard they says is simple and universal enough to succeed. There are companies that are devising ways to automatically identify metadata within photos and videos, to save all that work that goes into typing it in.

So could this be done for books automatically to?

ISI Citation Awards

Fiona writes \”The annual ISI Science Citation awards have been announced! An antidote to the Oscars, the Citation awards count citations and give awards to those that get the most mentions. Surely a prestigious addition to any scholarly bookshelf.


Full Story \”

They say in the world of science, ISI citations are likened to The Oscars, they measure how often a scientific publication is cited in the research of others.

Library inventories don’t stack up

Bob Cox sent along this from The Columbus Dispatch. A rather Sad Story on some empty libraries.


Last summer librarians in 132 Columbus schools weeded 225,000 old books.

The titles included \”Seven Fun Disco Outfits You Can Make?\”, I can\’t believe they got rid of that one, disco will never die!


But anywhoo… Now the shelves sit empty until they get the money for new books, which they say is on the way.

\”To be honest with you, we have not had money for libraries since the 1980s,\’\’ said Brenda Gonzalez, supervisor of instructional information services for Columbus schools.\”

Will Printed Books Disappear?

Array Development has an Interesting Story on the digital revolution in publishing.


They argue printed books will disappear because digitization offers not due to the fact that they are cheaper but because knowledge-based products must come ready to be integrated with smart products and digitized communication, printed works are just not ready for that.

\”Printed books and newspapers simply cannot be integrated smoothly as digital versions could. With the digital revolution, the vast human knowledge stored in libraries will be at our finger tips, just as good as if we had read it all.\”