[This one] comes by way of The Register
\”Tempting users with a free concert and the opportunity to hear Napster founder Shawn Fanning talk about programming, Napster hopes enough punters will show in the US capital on 3 April that legislators will back file sharing as a legitimate means of distributing music.\”
March 2001
Library Card Catalog, R.I.P.
Wired has a good Story on the new OPAC at Sonoma State University. Rather than following DDC or LC they use ARS, a system that is completely random. It\’s all done with computers and robots.
They say librarians are happy and say randomness is what makes the system so effective. Cal State Northridge was the first library to get ARS, UNLV aand Eastern Michigan University also have the Automated Retrieval System. No more browsing the stacks for the perfect book.
\”\”I think there was a lot of trepidation up front, especially by traditional users like faculty who are very devoted to the idea of browsing shelves, and of having everything exactly where it was last year,\” Butler said. \”There was some anxiety. But once we explained what it does for us, then they began to understand the principle at work.\”
Scholars Urge a Boycott of Journals
The Chronicle has an Interesting Story on a looming boycott of scientific and scholarly journals.
The boycotters want publishers to place their content in independent repositories on the Web six months after a journal issue has appeared in print.
See also:
Original Article in Science as well as the Editorial by Science\’s editors who say the proposal puts nonprofit, scholarly publishers at risk.
\”\”As scientists,\” the scholars argue, \”we are particularly dependent on ready and unimpeded access to our published literature, the only permanent record of our ideas, discoveries, and research results, upon which future scientific activity and progress are based.\”
Church Members Burn Harry Potter, Other Books
This is so cool, I thought people had all but given up on actually burning books.
ABC News has This Story on the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Butler County PA.
Don\’t worry, they burned more than just Harry Potter Books, included were animated videos (Pinnochio and Hercules), CD\’s from Pearl Jam and Black Sabbath, and (here\’s the funny part) pamphlets from Jehovah\’s Witnesses.
I guess they are afraid of a little competition.
\”Our purpose comes out of the Bible,\” the Rev. George Bender of the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Butler County. \”We read in the Bible how people, after they received Jesus Christ as their savior, took things out of their homes and burned them. They [the members of the congregation] received Christ and they willingly did this.\”
Book Pulled In Utah
Junetta writes \”Here\’s a news item from the Salt Lake City based deseretnews.com:
The Newberry award-winning novel about a black family\’s visit to Alabama at the outset of the U.S. civil-rights movement has been pulled from a UT School District middle school classes.Two parents complained about the use of the book in a seventh-grade English class at Payson Middle School. They said \”The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963\” was violent had bad language, and (this is the funny part) depicted a teenager who misbehaved and was not punished.\”
Priceless historical documents being left to rot
Charles Davis writes \”Tens of thousands of priceless historical documents are being left to rot,
fade and disintegrate in the attics of the French National Archives, according
to furious scholars who have described one of France\’s most famous
institutions as being in \”an appalling mess\”.
Full Story at
The Telegraph \”
Showdown at the Lexis-Nexis Corral
A lawsuit that has been winding itself in the courts for 7 years is being heard by U.S. Supreme Court today. Freelance writers are upset that they are not getting enough royalty money from the publications and databases that show their work. The article from The Standard.
\”The case pits the venerable Gray Lady, along with publications such as Sports Illustrated and the Lexis-Nexis database firm, against six freelance writers, led by Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union. The central issue: whether the Times and other publications are obligated to pay freelance authors for electronically redistributing, via a computerized database, such as Nexis.com, or on CD-ROM, work that was originally published in newspapers and magazines.\”
A lawsuit that has been winding itself in the courts for 7 years is being heard by U.S. Supreme Court today. Freelance writers are upset that they are not getting enough royalty money from the publications and databases that show their work. The article from The Standard.
\”The case pits the venerable Gray Lady, along with publications such as Sports Illustrated and the Lexis-Nexis database firm, against six freelance writers, led by Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union. The central issue: whether the Times and other publications are obligated to pay freelance authors for electronically redistributing, via a computerized database, such as Nexis.com, or on CD-ROM, work that was originally published in newspapers and magazines.\”
\”When the case was originally filed in 1993, electronic databases and reproductions were still largely the province of research librarians and special computer terminals. But as the dispute wound its way up to the high court, the popularity of businesses such as Lexis-Nexis has skyrocketed, largely because of the ease of access afforded by the Internet. Currently, 2.2 million subscribers conduct more than 700,000 searches on the database each day, with the majority of searches coming via the Web. On tap are 11,900 databases filled with content from 31,300 sources, including thousands of newspapers and magazines.\”
\”That\’s quite a cash cow for publishers, and freelancers say they just want a fair piece of the action.\”
\”This shows the greed and the arrogance and the disrespect on the part of the industry,\” says Tasini, who is personally involved because of four pieces he wrote that were published in the Times and Newsday. \”These businesses simply do not want to pay writers.\”
\”Tasini says the solution is to track reuses of individual works and compensate authors accordingly, much as the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers does for music composers. The National Writers Union has struck a deal with literary database Contentville, establishing a Publications Rights Clearinghouse for freelancers that transfers 30 percent of Contentville\’s download fee whenever a registered freelance piece is accessed via Contentville.\”
\”That model can be extrapolated to other computerized databases. But the publishers in the case, which are supported by a host of companies, from Dow Jones to Knight Ridder (KRI) to the National Geographic Society, say publishing articles through outlets such as Nexis.com qualifies as a \”revision\” of the original work, e.g., of a particular issue of the Times. Thus, say the companies, the Copyright Act of 1976 protects it as part of a publisher\’s collective copyright. The freelancers counter that such redistribution isn\’t merely a revision of the original publication because customers can download articles written over a number of years in any combination they choose.\”
Guinness Book of Records Business Is Put Up for Sale
[This one] comes by way of BookWire
\”The self-appointed arbiter of truth on trivia from the world\’s hairiest man to its largest rabbit was put up for sale yesterday. The drinks giant Diageo, which owns The Guinness Book of Records, has brought in a merchant bank to seek a buyer after executives decided the 45-year-old publication was no longer a core interest.
It was founded to solve a bizarre dispute between top staff at the Guinness brewery over high-speed game birds. The sale will be the first time the book and the famous brewer have not had the same owner. The encyclopaedic annual has enjoyed remarkable success since it first appeared in 1955 by selling 90 million copies – a figure beaten only by the Bible, the Koran and Mao Zedong\’s Little Red Book.\” [more…]
Man Arrested in Minneapolis Library Child-Porn Case
David Chanen [writes…]
\”A 40-year-old man was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of viewing child pornography on a computer at the Northeast public library in Minneapolis.
It was the first time anybody had been arrested at a Minneapolis public library for looking at such images, said Mary Lawson, library system director. A security guard called police after he saw the man viewing Web site pictures of naked and clothed children between the ages of 4 and 12.\”
[more…] from the Star-Tribune.
David Chanen [writes…]
\”A 40-year-old man was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of viewing child pornography on a computer at the Northeast public library in Minneapolis.
It was the first time anybody had been arrested at a Minneapolis public library for looking at such images, said Mary Lawson, library system director. A security guard called police after he saw the man viewing Web site pictures of naked and clothed children between the ages of 4 and 12.\”
[more…] from the Star-Tribune.
Officers arrested the man at the computer about 2:30 p.m. He later was released. Investigators will search the computer for pictures. The Hennepin County attorney\’s office is reviewing the case.
To discourage patrons from surfing the Web for porn, the city Library Board in May began requiring computer users to sign in and show identification. The board limited computer use to a half-hour. Signs also were posted warning against sending, receiving, printing or displaying text or graphics that violate state laws concerning obscene material. Possessing child pornography is a felony.
Lawson said the policies have improved conditions at the libraries, especially the Central Library. Downtown librarians had complained of being harassed and intimidated by working in an environment where they might be exposed to porn.
\”Things have been going very well at the libraries,\” Lawson said. \”There have been some incidents involving people viewing pornography, but staff handled them appropriately.
In those instances, police weren\’t called because the porn didn\’t involve children, she said.
Story by David Chanen
The Star Tribune
March 10, 2001
A Look Over Seas
Super Helpful Charles Davis sent in a bunch of UK
oriented stories. I love to get news that isn\’t all
American for a change.
The
Telegraph
says The Queen is opened her library March to put
some of the world\’s rarest
books on display at a reception that will honour leading
figures in the publishing industry. This also ,arked the
first time that a radio programm (other than the
addresses to the nation) had been transmitted from
the Palace.
They also ran a story on a move by the British
Library lto stop 250 musical scores and extensive
correspondence with great European composers going
abroad. They include a signed and annotated score of
Beethoven\’s Ninth Symphony,
Super Helpful Charles Davis sent in a bunch of UK
oriented stories. I love to get news that isn\’t all
American for a change.
The
Telegraph
says The Queen is opened her library March to put
some of the world\’s rarest
books on display at a reception that will honour leading
figures in the publishing industry. This also ,arked the
first time that a radio programm (other than the
addresses to the nation) had been transmitted from
the Palace.
They also ran a story on a move by the British
Library lto stop 250 musical scores and extensive
correspondence with great European composers going
abroad. They include a signed and annotated score of
Beethoven\’s Ninth Symphony,
The Daily Telegraph at http://www.telegraph.co.uk also
reported on March 23rd that An archive of photographs,
books and letters that belonged to Alice Liddell, the
inspiration for Lewis Carroll\’s Alice in Wonderland, is
expected to fetch £2 million at auction this summer.
From Yahoo! UK, The U. of California has acquired a
pair of manuscripts that the Marquis de Sade penned in
the insane asylum depicted in the biopic \”Quills\”, the
British-made film nominated for a clutch of Oscars.
Recent Comments