The Telegraph says Anna Patchett, the only American writer on the shortlist, was the
surprise winner of this year\’s £30,000 women\’s Orange Fiction Prize for
her novel Bel Canto.
Bel Canto was the outsider at 7-1 and
has received a mixed reaction from
British reviewers.
June 2002
Former Library Director Jailed for Embezzlement
The former director of the Bristol (Tennessee/Virginia) Library has been sentenced to 30-days for stealing funds from the library. The maximum sentence could have been as much as 20-years, but the judge was lenient because of the circumstances that drove her to do it. Read More.
Library fire declared arson
As a follow up on This One, the fire at the Stark County District Library’s Perry Heights branch has been declared arson.
The blaze which wiped out the 8,050-square-foot building, was set on the structure’s south side, investigators said.
To compensate for the loss of the Perry Heights branch, county library officials will have a Bookmobile at the branch parking lot today. The Bookmobile is a short-term method to provide library service in the township.
Criticism on Indian LIS Community
VK writes \”Head of National Information System for Science and Technology (NISSAT),India criticises Indian Library professionals and schools for not improving services and working environements.The man who headed this important institution and misguided it for the last ten years now putting all bad images on poor librarians in India,as he is not belong to LIS.Lot of hot discussions are going on in various platforms like Indian listserves etc.
Read Interpretation of maladies.\”
Poor marks for Canadian school libraries
GlobeBooks.com has a Story that says The Americans understand the key role school libraries play
in learning. Why doesn\’t Canada?
Canadian politicians have evidently embraced standardized testing, but they seem troublingly indifferent to school libraries. Most provinces seem to regard them as a kind of discretionary item, easily sacrificed in the name of budget restraint.
Thanks to Bob Cox for the story!
Liberal Groups Back Away From Book on 10-Year-Old Homosexual
Bob Cox passed along word from CNSNews That Says the National Education Association (NEA), said it would not be involved in determining whether the book, Strange Boy, Friday, would make its way into American schools, and The position of the American Library Association (ALA) is that local school districts would determine whether Strange Boy would be among available reading material next fall.
\”I would guess that it would be individual school districts that would make a decision like that,\” Beverly Becker, spokesperson for the ALA, said. \”Most of those decisions take place locally.\”
Book taste linked to dreams
Bob Cox sent over Ths BBC Story that says People\’s taste in books indicates the kind of dreams they have, one of the largest studies into the phenomenon has shown. They found adults choosing fiction had stranger dreams – but were more likely to remember them.
Pie Are Round at the Library
Lee Hadden writes: \”In an article in the June 10, 2002 issue of Chemical and Engineering
News, there is an account of a library in Brooklyn allowing freshly baked
pies to cool on a window sill of a library, to see if anyone would take
one. People are more honest than would be accounted for in children\’s
nursery rhymes.
Read more about it.\”
Teen Arrested for Using Library Computers to Email Death Threats
A 13-year-old Florida boy has been arrested for emailing death threats to another student. According to News-Press, \”The messages contained references to ritualistic murder by satanic cults. Investigators tracked the e-mails to the library and had to get a court order to search the library’s computer files.\” Read more.
Fear of Reference
Barbara Fister has a Point Of View piece in The Chronicle of Higher Ed where she asks, What is it about libraries that makes students speechless with anxiety? She says rather than creating a global, virtual reference desk, let\’s improve the local collaboration between professors and librarians to help students overcome their embarrassment.
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