December 2003

Norma writes “The Columbus Dispatch ran a follow-up Dec. 28 on stories printed earlier in the year. I noticed that Samantha Crewson is working on establishing a library for Catawba, Ohio, 35 miles west of Columbus in Clark County. With donations and no government money she has collected 50-60,000 books. This is therapy for Crewson who had a brain aneurysm in 1994 and this project is helping her regain lost skills, according to the CD. Sorry, but I can’t link to the article.”

The Christian Science Monitor Says After spiking in the 1990s and early 2000s, the percentage of adult Americans online has leveled off in the past two years at 63 percent, says a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage is expected eventually to rise, but not as quickly as some had imagined.

“There would be more growth if only there were programs or opportunities for people who can’t afford it,” she says. “The Internet is clearly indispensible now, and when you have a technology that’s indispensible, there’s no question there’s a role for the government in taking a look at what happens when people don’t have that access … and what are the implications of that.”

Steven M. Cohen spotted an interesting AP Report that says the FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.

In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs “to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.”

It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways. [Via Foreword]

“Some days I love working the reference desk, some days I hate it, and it’s often the same day.”

Inspired by the original Ref Grunt, RefGrunt.com is an open, community weblog devoted to “refgrunting.” RefGrunt.com is a place to blow off steam, share a story, and make us laugh. At this point anyone can grab a RefGrunt.com account and post to the site.

Michael Horun writes: “The File Room, a catalogued web-based interactive archive of censorship cases, has recently been re-launched by the National Coalition Against Censorship as a major up-to-the-minute information resource on worldwide attempts to suppress expression. Open to submissions by organizations and individuals locally, nationally, and internationally, The File Room, is becoming one of the foremost resources on censorship in the world.

The project was initiated by Antonio Muntadas, a Spanish artist living in New York, and was originally produced in 1994 by the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago with the support of the School of Art and Design and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As planned, it then continued its existence on the Internet as an open submission archive. Currently, The File Room is hosted and maintained by the Arts Advocacy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC).“

K.G. Schneider writes: “PUBLIB, established in 1992, is one of the oldest and largest independent
library-related discussion lists. PUBLIB’s members include public librarians
from all over the world, library students, vendors, trustees, volunteers,
members of the library press, and others interested in public librarianship.

PUBLIB, managed by volunteers Karen Schneider and Sara Weissman, is read
directly by over 5,000 subscribers, and indirectly by many more. The focus
of PUBLIB is public librarianship. The list is collegial, the discussions
high-quality, and traffic is manageable, averaging several posts per day
(sometimes more when a “hot topic” emerges). PUBLIB’s publicly-accessible
archives provide a valuable first stop for questions about public library
services and management.

To subscribe to PUBLIB, browse its archives (back to 1995), or find out more
about this venerable institution, go to: sunsite.berkeley.edu/publib

Norma writes “The Columbus Dispatch on Dec. 28 refreshed our memory on the work Harry Campbell is doing to preserve the Ohio State University Libraries’ Thurber Collection. Campbell has a grant from the Save Americas Treasures to microfilm, de-acidify, provide conservation treatment and rehouse the bulk of the OSUL Thurber Collection. It includes manuscripts, drawings, books, photos and scrapbooks which include original drawings that illustrated Thurber’s books and New Yorker articles.

Campbell is also working on restoring a 1596 edition of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs as well as a 1563 lst ed. The original story ran on Jan 20, 2003 in the CD.”

Harry’s done some good things in the rather short time he’s been at OSU.

Walt Crawford writes “Sorry for the late notice, but:
Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 4:1 (January 2004) is now available for downloading at
http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ4i1.pdf

Walt Crawford writes “Sorry for the late notice, but:
Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 4:1 (January 2004) is now available for downloading at
http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ4i1.pdf

*Bibs & Blather (looking forward & back, plus weblog blather

*First Have Something to Say: 15: Breaks and Blocks (the third and final free chapter)

*Scholarly Article Access (PLoS publicity and feedback; other OA notes; and why this is the final Scholarly Article Access)

*Following Up (Martin Luther King, Jr. library; DVD compatibility; Amazon’s Search in the Book and swamping)

*Ebooks, Etext and PoD (the ebook biz, elibraries, devices)

*Copyright Currents (DMCA exemptions, the SunnComm follies, more music stuff, SCO and Linux)

*A Scholarly Access Perspective: Tipping Point for the Big Deal? (Elsevier, ScienceDirect, Cell Press, and academia)

Fair warning: In addition to this oversize issue, it’s highly probable that a special issue will appear before ALA Midwinter.”

the most popular Ask Yahoo! questions of 2003 are out. They include, at #1:
How many vacation days has George W. Bush taken to date as president? (George W. Bush has already taken more vacation than Clinton did in seven years.)

The Denver Post Says the local library looks more and more like a Blockbuster.

The ominous news for book fans is the same: As budget-squeezed public libraries rush to buy DVDs for an insatiable public, branches must act more like multimedia centers and less like temples of the printed page.

“The library is about people,’ said Ann Cress, associate director of public services at Jefferson County. “We try to build the collection that our population wants.’

“So many of us are attached to the text, and the paper, and the binding. It’s so tactile,’ said Beth Elder, senior collection specialist for Denver Public Library. “But many of our customers are leaving text behind.’