January 2003

Australian Authors bank on library lending fee

A Story Out Of OZ says The Australian Federal Government paid $14.2 million to 8500 Australian authors and publishers last year to compensate for people borrowing their books from public libraries and in schools.
Without extra income from government schemes, an author said many would-be Australian authors would be forced to give up.

“There are 260 million people in the US, 67 million in the UK, so it’s much harder to make a living from people in Australia,” he said.

“If the Australian authors go, then our own culture gets ignored.”

Colorado Public depends on library for ‘Net

A Short Story From CO says according to the Colorado Department of Education, public libraries provide the only access to the Internet for about half or more of the state’s population, including 48 percent of library visitors younger than 18, 66 percent of those between 18 and 54 and 85 percent of those older than 55.

The Internet is becoming a primary – in some cases, the only – access point to a wide variety of government services, educational materials, health resources, communications tools and commercial activities, according to a report based on a survey of 1,900 library patrons throughout the state. As such, public access to the Internet becomes increasingly important to ensure equal access to information for all segments of society.

Creating a Culture of Ideas

Technology Review has An Interesting Story by Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and back-page columnist for Wired magazine, who says expertise is overrated, and innovation is inefficient, because it is undisciplined, contrarian, and iconoclastic.

He tries to answer the questions what makes innovation happen, and just where do new ideas come from?

“Our biggest challenge in stimulating a creative culture is finding ways to encourage multiple points of views. Many engineering deadlocks have been broken by people who are not engineers at all. This is simply because perspective is more important than IQ.

We Are All Publishers Now. What Does That Mean?

Peter B. Boyce made This Presentation to the Internet Society, INET’99 Conference.

He takes a look at how it’s now possible for everyone to put their material where everyone can see it, usurping, as it were, the traditional job of the publisher, that of distributing information. He says it is clear that the processes and materials of traditional publishing are changing, and whether or not the traditional publishers can adapt to using the new medium and new formats of information exchange is very much an open question.

Bell, Bowers battle it out as Atlanta library fights bias case

The Atlanta Journal Is Reporting on the battle over a multimillion-dollar jury verdict against the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System.

Seven white women who won a $23.4 million jury verdict a year ago against the library, its director and several board members. U.S. District Judge Beverly Martin in Atlanta later reduced the award to $16.8 million — $3.5 million in compensatory damages and $13.3 million in punitive damages.

It could be several weeks, even months, before the appeals court issues its decision.

Poets’ protest cancels White House festival

A few people have sent over This One that says afraid that poets would criticize the upcoming war, Laura Bush cancelled a Whitehouse poetry festival. One of the invited poets, Sam Hamill, was urging the others to turn the festival, intended to celebrate Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes, into a \”poetry against war\” day.

FSU won’t take Fl State library

The case of the Florida State Library continues with Word That Florida State University will not take on the responsibility as originally envisioned by Gov. Jeb Bush\’s proposed budget.

FSU President T.K. Wetherell said they don\’t have the money or the space, 10.8 linear miles of it to accommodate almost 1 million documents. They say there are five other secret possibilities being considered, but another library official said he thinks the private Nova Southeastern University in Broward County is among the possibilities.

\”One of the important roles of the state library is to provide an interface between citizens and their government,\” Mason said. \”When you remove the state library, you remove the librarians that make access to that information possible; you are removing the ability of citizens to know what their governments are doing.\”

Internet Seen As More Important Than Ever; Less Trustworthy

An AP Story says Americans who use the Internet consider it at least as important as newspapers and books, even as they\’ve become more skeptical of what they find online. The Internet now exceeds television, radio and magazines in importance among online users. You can read the study for yourself, Here.

“When you need real information you always go to the library. But (for) easier stuff, and you\’re too lazy to go to the library, you can find it from Google,”

Oklahoma may close library for blind

Via NewsOK.com:

Blind and physically handicapped Oklahomans will have to do without state-funded braille and books on tape services if proposed budget cuts are imposed, officials said Tuesday.

The state Rehabilitation Services Department wants patrons of the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped to contact lawmakers to head off a proposed 20 percent budget cut that would force the library to close, spokeswoman Jody Harlan said.

Complete article.