November 2002

Bergen.com Takes A Look At the civic reading movement. They say it all began in 1997 when an English professor at Prince George\’s County Community College in Maryland worked with libraries, churches, and schools to get everyone reading the same book at once. The project was called the Book Bridge Project, and its first selection was Bebe Moore Campbell\’s \”Brothers and Sisters.\” Next up was Seattle, and since Seattle, dozens of cities and states started civic reading programs.

jen writes \”You\’ll need a Chronicle of Higher Ed. sub to read this article online.
Education researchers, social scientists, and library representatives have charged that the Education Department is preparing to delete information from its Web site, in part because the material does not reflect the philosophies of the Bush administration.

The letter is the latest in a series of complaints alleging that the administration is limiting information and research on specific issues for ideological reasons.\”

Steve Fesenmaier writes \”
A new book of majestic images taken by NASA\’s Hubble SpaceTelescope brings the wonders of our universe to the fingertips of the blind. Called \”Touch the Universe: A NASA Braille Book of Astronomy,\”the 64-page book presents color images of planets, nebulae, stars,and galaxies. Each image is embossed with lines, bumps, and other
textures. The raised patterns translate colors, shapes, and other intricate details of the cosmic objects, allowing visually impaired people
to feel what they cannot see. Braille and large-print descriptionsaccompany each of the book\’s 14 photographs, making the design of
this book accessible to readers of all visual abilities.

Here\’s More \”

The following editorial appeared in the November 24, 2002 edition of the Binghampton, NY Press & Sun Bulletin: \”Binghamton Mayor Richard A. Bucci has probably done as good a job as anyone could have presiding over the city during a prolonged economic slump, but he\’s likely to go down in history as the mayor who closed the city\’s libraries. Some legacy.\” Read More.

Jen Young passed along this Feminist.org Story that says Minorities continue to be under represented on the covers of pop culture magazines and publications, according to a recent survey by the New York Times. Examining hundreds of magazine covers from 31 publications, the Times found the percentage of minority cover persons grew to just 20 percent in 2002 from 13 percent during 1998 to 2001. While minorities are gaining more exposure in fashion versus other pop culture magazines, Halle Berry in the December issue of Cosmopolitan remains only the fifth black Cosmo cover woman since 1964, the last one being Naomi Campbell in 1990.

Here’s An Interesting One on Jack Kerouac, and the fight over his $10-million estate.

They say the battle over Kerouac’s estate and literary archive lingers in Pinellas circuit court, the stakes rising as the author’s iconic status returned with the years. Fighting it out for a piece of the pie are his daughter, brother-in-law and Kerouac’s closest living relative, a penniless nephew who lives out of a pickup truck parked at a garbage dump.

The Scary Stories keep coming on Total Information Awareness, the Pentagon’s recently created Information Awareness Office headed by John Poindexter, the former national security adviser convicted in 1990 for his role in the Iran-Contra scheme. Maybe I souldn’t worry so much, after all, he said “We’re just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy.”

“When a government accumulates detailed information on its citizenry, ultimately that power is going to be abused,” said Charlotte Twight, an economics professor at Boise State University in Idaho who researches privacy issues. “We weren’t supposed to have this all-powerful central government.”

A Rather Odd Story from GA says Gov.-elect Sonny Perdue said Thursday that government agency directors who want to retain their jobs in Georgia’s first Republican administration since Reconstruction should be prepared to discuss Stephen R. Covey’s “Principle-Centered Leadership.”

Perdue caused what’s known in bookstore circles as the “Oprah Effect.” A mere mention by talk show host Oprah Winfrey of a certain book means an automatic spike in sales and signals book buyers to order more.

CILIP (previously the UK Library Association and
Institute of Information Scientists) has just released a
briefing paper on the employment of people with
disabilities in library and information services. This is
the latest in a series of guidelines on equal
opportunities issues relating to the library and
information world.

Seth Finkelstein writes “Following-up the recent decision for the
Supreme Court to Review CIPA (Federal censorware law), I’ve
revised and updated my censorware report:

The update adds new examples, and has been revised with more
discussion of the legal implications of this banning. This includes
mention in expert-witness testimony in the CIPA case, and connection
to the lower-court decision which
struck down
that law. “