June 2001

Mary Minow passed along This Story from the Anchorage Daily News on the big gay pride exhibit at the Anchorage city library. It seems his lawyer said \”Don\’t put it back up and don\’t allow displays by other nonlibrary groups\”, so he did.

The group will begin to review the exhibit policy.

Mary Musgrave passed along This Dallasnews.com Story on the decision that will hand over operations of its new Lancaster Veterans Memorial Library to a company based near Washington, D.C. [LSSI].


They say the facility still belongs to the city and the council still makes all policy decisions and library employees would keep their jobs.

\”They wanted to make the hours the library was opened more in line with what the community wanted – maybe Sunday afternoons,\” Mrs. Filgo said. \”We haven\’t had a library director since February, and I feel like we\’re to a point where we need some professional help. We\’ve had good professionals, but [LSSI] brings expertise from a national standpoint.\”

Tanya writes \”The Granite School District Board of Education in Salt Lake City, UT has voted to eliminate school librarian positions if the local teachers association requests a pay raise over 1.4%. Have the board members been watching the Sopranos to brush up on their strongarm tactics? This is the classic, \”If you do what I say, I won\’t shoot the girl\” scenario. According to the Board Report, if the teachers association wants higher raises, the 35 librarians will be moved to teaching positions and the media centers will be staffed with media \”assistants\” who will be paid hourly. The claim is that this move will save $1 million dollars (imagine Dr. Evil\’s glee!)

To read the report visit granite.k12.ut.us
then click on BOARD REPORT about halfway down the page.
\”

Jason Kristufek writes…

\”A computer hacker got into the Burlington Library\’s Internet Web site and put \”drug-related and nasty words\” on the site\’s main page, Library Director Kay Weiss said. Weiss does not know the exact time the main page displayed the disparaging and drug-related words, and no one other than library employees has said that they saw it. \”It was just a coincidence that about three weeks ago someone developed a program that sniffs out weaknesses in Web sites and then relays them to hackers,\” Weiss told the Library Board.\” [more…] from The Hawkeye.

The Freeport Public Library is undergoing some major changes. People are complaining because the new library will have a meeting room and a coffee shop. The coffee shop was requested by patrons and a meeting room is always something that can benefit the library and the community. I guess ya just can\’t please some people. [more…] from The Journal Standard.
And, here\’s even more.

This sounds almost like a custody battle of sorts, but it\’s over some documents. They\’ll either go to one library, or the other, or they\’ll \”visit\” both. [more…] from The Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Even more here from The Pittsburgh Post Gazzette.

Bill sent along This Story on a man that returned a slightly worn, hardback copy of \”Les Miserables,\” due back to the old Covington Library on Sept. 24, 1928. Library officials said they considered some kind of fine, but decided just to let the man go on the day he returned it in late May.


Good thing he didn\’t try this in Minnesota, he\’d be whisked off to jail!

The BBC has a cool new site called An Animated History of Books.


They start with cave paintings and go right on through today, and beyond. Comes complete with disembodied, floating, talking head of Shakespeare.

Kendra Mayfield writes…
\”For publishers reeling from a recent Supreme Court loss, it\’s time to pay freelancers whose work has been republished in electronic databases without their permission. But rather than pay up or face billions in liabilities, publishers are deleting tens of thousands of freelance articles spanning decades. So who will bear the brunt of that extra work? The librarians, of course.\” [more…] from Wired.

Ryan Carter (not That Ryan) writes: \”USA Today article on the goings-on of YA books that deal with the same stuffs as do teens–violence and sexuality and stares, oh my! Mentions some good titles and their authors, touches on the importance of YA in public libraries, gets some blurbs from YA luminaries.

Also a ditty on the speedy disapparation of Tolkien books from library and bookstore shelves months before the movie opens.