April 2003

Here’s A NYTimes Article on announce a campaign to rebuild as much as possible the plundered cultural institutions of Iraq.

Experts from the Louvre in Paris, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Berlin’s State Museum and Russia’s Hermitage unveiled a plan to inventory within six months the losses in a wave of looting at the National Museum in Baghdad, the National Library and other museums and sites. They also pledged to provide assistance to their beleaguered Iraqi colleagues in restoring damaged antiquities. The meeting included archaeologists from leading Western universities and officials of Unesco and the British government.

Jen Young noticed a NYTimes Article on the crazy competition in science fairs.

The simple fair of times past, when parents wielding encyclopedias turned the kitchen sink into a makeshift laboratory to help their children, has become a research extravaganza in which students armed with computers, electron microscopes and other powerful instruments explore ever more ambitious terrain.

Gary Price spotted This One that says monroecountylibrary.com is an anti-abortion Web site, featuring a purported photograph depicting an aborted fetus.
an organization called abortionismurder.org apparently owns www.monroecountylibrary.com.


The Monroe County Public Library’s real Web address is www.monroe.lib.in.us.

A Fun Little Column from The Daily Northwestern on loud people in the library.

“I am speaking on behalf of the Quiet People, those poor introverted souls who for some reason cannot study without some modicum of quiet.“

Ron Corbett tries to get to the bottom of the filtering problem in The Ottawa Citizen. He says the communications department advised library staff to refrain from any more debate on the issue of computer filters for children, until today\’s public meeting on the issue. That advice was never intended for councillors or trustees.

Another Story goes into more detail on the issue.

SpaceRef.com Has An Article that says there is a radical move afoot to close or drastically downsize the NASA library–to drastically reduce the size/staff/resources/capabilities of the NASA library to create a \”museum to showcase the Enterprises\” , doing outreach to the public.

The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that spam e-mails involving investment and business opportunities are especially dubious, with an estimated 96 percent containing information that probably is false or misleading. The FTC studied a random sample of 1,000 unsolicited e-mails taken from a pool of more than 11 million pieces of spam it has collected. The agency looked for deceptive claims in a message’s text or the “from” or “subject” lines.

Full Story

The Seattle Post Intelligencer says the library board announced yesterday that it would print and distribute bookmarks warning borrowers about the law that allows federal investigators to demand the names of patrons and the lists of books they read.

Also, they have a bit more on The PATRIOT Act Here, and another story Here.

Gary D. Price, MLIS, and ResourceShelf Guy spotted Florence Fights To Save Precious Books.

They look at a small group of restorers working through a mountain of 35,500 precious books dating back to the 17th century, wrecked by a flood way back in 1966.

The National Library and the Uffizi Gallery – treasure houses of priceless works of art, including Botticelli’s “La Primavera” – were hit hardest by the flood as they sit on the banks of the river.

Jen Young points us to This NYTimes Article on Diane Ravitch’s fiercely argued new book, “The Language Police,” that points out just some of the things students aren’t supposed to find in their textbooks or tests.

They say the commissars of political correctness on the left and the fundamentalist sentries of morality on the right have clamped down on the education system, more and more subjects, words and ideas have become taboo.