March 2002

Have you heard of CILIP?

Anjlee writes \”CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) will come into being on the 1st April 2002; formed by the unification of the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) and the Library Association (LA) in the UK.


CILIP will be the leading professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers, with around 24,000 members working in all sectors, including business and industry, science and technology, further and higher education, schools, local and central government departments and agencies, the health service, the voluntary sector, national and public libraries.


Find out more @ cilip.org.uk \”

Panelists reveal which one book they’d save

The Question: Suppose all the books on Earth were being destroyed and you could help keep literature alive by memorizing one. Which book would you become?


The Answers:

Stephen King\’s The Stand, Kate Chopin\’s early feminist novel, The Awakening, The Wind In The Willows, amoung others.

Me? I\’m not smart enough to memorize an entire book, which book would you choose?

Coin toss decides who keeps library job

The Star has a Story on that coin-flip-for-jobs story from Canada we ran last month.


Tails won it. The library held a coin toss yesterday — in accordance with a union agreement — to determine which one of 2 employees would get bumped into a more junior position. The winner says:

\”I feel so sick about it. It\’s not fair to do this to anybody, Deciding between two people on this basis, it should not happen. I\’m equally shattered for her.\”

Truckers Listen to Audiobooks!

An article from the Washington Post tells of a nationwide network of audiobooks, and a teacher that records them. The company that is producing the audiobooks, Books In Motion has more than 1,3000 titles in over 300 truckstops.

A nationwide network lets truckers rent tapes or CDs in one state and return them in another. Taylor, a former radio announcer and faculty adviser for Valdosta State\’s student radio station, said some truckers rent 60 to 70 titles a week.

The article also states that audiobooks are a $2 billion plus business with over 166 companies. Here\’s the full story.

I was unable to locate pricing for the rentals at the Books In Motion website.
See also the Audio Publishers Association website

Book Returned 70 Years Late

In New Zealand: The 102-year-old volume on the English royal residence of Hampton Court was found among books donated for a Rotary book sale. There are now plans to put it on display at the library in Ashburton, near Christchurch. Head librarian Jill Watson says the overdue fines at the time of issue were 3p a day for the first week and 6p a day thereafter.

The full story from Ananova

Expert: Porn filters bound to fail

MSNBC has Today\’s News on the big CIPA trial going on in PA.


Stanford University linguist Geoffrey Nunberg testified \”These are problems that in the nature of the enterprise can’t be overcome It’s just an absurd requirement to place on the technology\”, though he acknowledged that he had not examined more sophisticated server-based filtering software used by library administrators.

Yahoo Has Full Coverage as well.

Library child-porn surfer sentenced

A suburban Chicago man, already on probation for a similar offense, has been sentenced to 18 months "periodic imprisonment," with release only to attend work, for viewing child pornography online at a public library. He must also receive psychiatric and sex-offender treatment and stay off the Internet.

"It appears that his mother is babying him," said the judge.

Story in the Waukegan News Sun.

Forbes interview with John Seely Brown

steven bell writes \”Forbes has a good, if brief, interview with John Seely Brown, co-author of The Social Life of Information. Brown was asked his opinion on whether print books will be replaced with electronic ones. Here is part of what Brown had to say.
\”A book lets you skim through it, rapidly thumbing through the contents. The design of the book, the heft, the paper, tell you a lot. Right now we have no idea of what the affordances are with e-books. Eventually we\’ll find them.\”


Read the interview
\”

If you\’ve never read The Social Life of Information stop what you doing now and go read it.