June 2002

\”…
among the best-selling fiction books of our times—right up there with Tom
Clancy and Stephen King—is a series about the End Times, written by Tim
F. LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, based on the Book of Revelation. That part
of the Bible has always held its mysteries, but for millions of people
the code was broken in 1995, when LaHaye and Jenkins published Left
Behind: A Novel of the Earth\’s Last Days. People who haven\’t read the
book and its sequels often haven\’t even heard of them, yet their success
provides new evidence that interest in the End Times is no fringe phenomenon.
Only about half of Left Behind readers are Evangelicals, which suggests
there is a broader audience of people who are having this conversation.\”

Ruth Kneale has written a great investigation into librarians\’ views of the public perception of librarians in the Internet Age. I see I\’m not the only one to get the comment \”You don\’t look like a librarian\” or \”You have to do a Masters degree to be a librarian!?\”. A very interesting read, which suggests that the public perception is gradually changing.

\”You don\’t look like a librarian!\” I heard that so often while I was in library school in 1997-99 that I set my email signature
file to be that quote, and vowed that I wouldn\’t change it until I went two months without hearing it. Well, I finally
changed my signature file in the spring of 2002!

[Seen on Shifted Librarian]

Lee Hadden writes: \”Newsweek has an article about the formation of a new \”Public Library of
Science\” by Mary Carmichael, \”Science: Free—And in English! A Napster for
nerds is on the horizon.\” Newsweek, July 1, 2002, page 9. Here, at the PLoS,
articles from major science journals more than one year old will be posted
free on the Internet, and with some commentary to simplify the language used
in their scientific communication.

Read more about it at MSNBC

\”Of course, free content won’t matter to the public unless it’s
readable, so PLoS’s articles will run next to common-language commentaries.
For its part, Science is trying to keep things as simple as possible. “I get
complaints from very smart scientists who can’t understand all our papers,”
says editor Donald Kennedy. “We work like hell to reduce that.” Still,
Science has to be technical in certain fields—after all, science is. Which is
to say, download papers to your heart’s delight. Just bring a big dictionary.\”

Steve Fesenmaier writes \”Mitch Freedman, new ALA prez, was interviewed this morning on the CBS Early Show. The story was about kids summer reading programs.

The story is
Getting Kids Connected To The Library
\”

The Canton Repository and News-Press.com both have Non-AP Wire stories on the FBI snooping in libraries. They both provide some good quotes, and a different angle than The AP Story that is everywhere now.

“I think the best quote I’ve heard about the concerns of librarians, and it’s paraphrased, is that without the ability to read and access information in private, the right to read whatever you want in a free society has no meaning,” Oliver said. “This is something that I think librarians consider very important and very private.”

See Also a Business Week story on The many post-September 11 surveillance upgrades.

Thanks again to Bob Cox for another story.

Bob Cox sent over This Denver Post Story on a 12-year-old seventh-grader who has been summoned to Littleton Municipal Court on a charge of unlawful retention of library materials: She had an overdue library book. Her mom says \”It\’s appalling that we can\’t even send a child to the library without having to worry about something like this.\” While library director Margery Smith says \”We do everything we can to get books back before getting to the point of sending them to court,\”

Troy Johnson writes \”Librarian\’s Book Club selects readings for July -August 2002.

The books selected are \”If we knew what we know.\” and \”Earth Abides\” More information about the books can be found at the homepage of the book club, Here
. \”

Perhaps if we\’ve read one, we\’ve read them all, but the New York Times has a two pager about filtering in Greenville, SC, DeKalb County in GA, and other places.
Read the (registration required) full story

Here\’s More on The FBI\’s effort, authorized by the anti-terrorism law enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks, is the first broad government check of library records since the 1970s, when prosecutors reined in the practice for fear of abuses.

They quote Judith Krug as saying she is frustrated by the hate mail she says she receives when she speaks out against the Patriot Act.

\”People are scared and they think that by giving up their rights, especially their right to privacy, they will be safe,\” Krug said. \”But it wasn\’t the right to privacy that let terrorists into our nation. It had nothing to do with libraries or library records.\”

Forbes has a Piece on The 200-year-old U.S. Patent Office and how it is beginning to show its age.


They say after 200 years of lumbering down the tracks, the intellectual-property process in the United States is beginning to go off the rails. Branches of the government are intervening where they never have before. Opposing camps, many with money and influence, are forming. Small inventors are diverted from where they can make the greatest contributions. And a culture of litigation, circumvention, and secrecy has evolved from an area where openness and law had long ruled.