September 2003

From Wired News – technology to restore waterlogged books

Ellen McCullough writes “It Sucks, but That’s a Good Thing
A very absorbent powder called Super Slurper is useful beyond diapers and oil filters. The new product will restore waterlogged books and will likely hit a library near you sometime next year.
See Wired For The Full Story.”

Nicholas Yeager, co-developer of Super Slurper for the book industry and president of Artifex Equipment, a California company that designs equipment for book conservation, agrees that flooding is one of the major difficulties libraries have to face.

PATRIOT act being used against journalists

Anonymous Patron writes This should sound frighteningly familiar:

“Citing a provision of the Patriot Act, the FBI is sending letters to journalists telling them to secretly prepare to turn over their notes, e-mails and sources to the bureau.”


The case in question has to do with a hacker–nothing to do with terrorism.”

Citing a provision of the Patriot Act, the FBI is sending letters to journalists telling them to secretly prepare to turn over their notes, e-mails and sources to the bureau.

Electronic Databases and Google: How do we promote quality?

Anonymous Patron writes “With libraries paying more and more each year in subscription fees for on-line databases, what are librarians doing to drive traffic to these resources rather than to Google and the web? Even more pressing, what are you doing to accomplish this when at least one of the major database vendors (Gale) is now including a direct link to Google in its major periodical databases? (No link, but go check out the search results of any Infotrac database.)”

The festival of school libraries

News From Russia has a Short Piece that says The wife of the Russian President, Ludmila Putin, has opened a festival of school libraries – “Bibliobraz.” The aim of the festival is to draw the attention of the whole country to “the difficult but so important profession of librarians,” said the wife of the President, as addressing the participants in the festival.

The festival of school libraries which will be held from September 30 to October 2 in Moscow, will be attended by the winners of the school-library contest from all regions of Russia, the workers of literature and art, schoolchildren and representatives of the Education Ministry.

Bomb book tests U.S. free speech

Steve M. Cohen donated This One on Lyle Stuart, the , 81-year-old president of maverick publisher Barricade Books, who they say, is an old hand at testing the limits of free speech and believes people should not be told what they can read.

Barricade’s titles are far from mass-market and bestseller fare. While some have recorded substantial sales from online and mainstream outlets, they remain largely unknown to the general public, and the firm is driven more by principle than profit although it does not disclose financial data.

Time Wild West Web was tamed

John Duncan writes spotted A Toronto Star Column that says it’s time for the Wild West we once proudly called the Internet to grow up.

I can’t quite figure out his point, but he says the pursuit of order and safety on the Internet is why Canada is considering anti-spam legislation and why California just introduced one of the toughest can-spam laws in the world.

It’s why dozens of privacy commissioners from around the world met in Sydney, Australia, earlier this month and unanimously condemned the use of spyware.

Preserving Ephemera of Recall Campaign

rteeter writes “The New York Times has this article on archivists rushing to preserve material from the California recall election. (Registration required)”

They say With just over a week before the election, their campaign bumper stickers, buttons, Web sites and in one case thong underwear are becoming treasured artifacts. Researchers, archivists and historians holed up in museum offices and library basements across the state — people who normally think in terms of years not days — are scurrying to preserve the stuff of this election.

Voice over IP via WLANs

Voice Via WLANs on Horizon

September 29, 2003
By Carmen Nobel

With new products that support voice communication via WLANs, several companies are working toward the goal of having PDAs replace desktop phones.

Symbol Technologies Inc., which caters to vertical customers, has plans for several new devices that marry wireless LAN support with voice capabilities, according to officials at the Holtsville, N.Y., company.

The company plans to add voice support to several of its devices based on Microsoft Corp.’s Pocket PC operating system, as well as a product road map that includes Pocket PC devices designed to support voice over Wi-Fi, officials said.

Through channel partners, Symbol in December will start selling a software option called Voice Communicator that turns a handheld device, running Pocket PC, into a walkie-talkie.

The rest of the story

Librarians to P2P critics: Shhh!

The Globe And Mail is running a CNET Story on the five major U.S. library associations filing a legal brief Friday siding with Streamcast Networks and Grokster in the California suit, brought by the major record labels and Hollywood studios. The development could complicate the Recording Industry Association of America’s efforts to portray file-swapping services as rife with spam and illegal pornography.