March 2006

I’ll start today’s “Friday Updates” with a couple quick notes on the server. Index.pl takes forever to load. (By this I mean if you’re logged in and go to the LISNews home page, you can expect a 10 second wait.) Super Sysadmin Shane is working on that issue, but it’s turning out to be a tricky problem. Doubling the RAM in the server didn’t help, nor did killing tags, or the ads. There’s a few other slashsites on the same server, and LISNews is the only problem child. In other “bug” news, I did figure out why some stories flop over to the extreme left side of the screen (didn’t fix it yet) but I still can’t chase down that bug in the submission form.

In addition to the tagging & titles changes from earlier in the month, I added 2 new features that might interest you. If you go to Your Account Page you should see a box for your “Flickr ID”. If you put your Flickr username in there a random picture from that account will appear on your journal and elsewhere when you’re logged in. You can now also use the Slashcode Bookmarks system on LISNews. Here’s the LISNews Bookmarklet (never mind, I need to post that differently).

So enough about the code, below is a roundup of all the interesting stuff you might have missed this week.

I’ll start today’s “Friday Updates” with a couple quick notes on the server. Index.pl takes forever to load. (By this I mean if you’re logged in and go to the LISNews home page, you can expect a 10 second wait.) Super Sysadmin Shane is working on that issue, but it’s turning out to be a tricky problem. Doubling the RAM in the server didn’t help, nor did killing tags, or the ads. There’s a few other slashsites on the same server, and LISNews is the only problem child. In other “bug” news, I did figure out why some stories flop over to the extreme left side of the screen (didn’t fix it yet) but I still can’t chase down that bug in the submission form.

In addition to the tagging & titles changes from earlier in the month, I added 2 new features that might interest you. If you go to Your Account Page you should see a box for your “Flickr ID”. If you put your Flickr username in there a random picture from that account will appear on your journal and elsewhere when you’re logged in. You can now also use the Slashcode Bookmarks system on LISNews. Here’s the LISNews Bookmarklet (never mind, I need to post that differently).

So enough about the code, below is a roundup of all the interesting stuff you might have missed this week.Overall there weren’t many comments on the stories this week. A link to Libraryprivacy.org resulted in the usual political shouting match, but other than that, the only other stories to have any decent conversation were As library cuts costs, it raises CEO’s pay and Truant Kids In The Library.

I cleaned out all my “Bloglines-Saves” which resulted in several links to other blogs. This isn’t something I normally do, but there’s so many people writing very interesting things out there I figured it was time to start posting some links into the blogoshpere. I especially liked Biran Surrat’s White Paper on academic libraries and the CIL Sketches.

While the stories were quiet, this week’s Poll was lively. “What time is 3 pm?” This is probably one of the best poll discussions we’ve ever had.

Pleanty of interesting posts on the journals this week, some sad, some funny, some educational. Daniel left a note telling us of the sad news of his mother’s passing. We all wish him and his family well. Rochelle Formally Announced her big job offer in WI. I hope this won’t cut into her LISNews time! GregS* posted a funny little *Doh* from work. I continued to be impressed by The Search Engines Guy, he’s pointed to some interesting things in his journal. I also spotted his name on the front page of Digg this week.

I also found my new favorite quote from a censor “I am not trying to censor this book from the United States of America. They can go right down to Borders and buy it if they want…” This from the story on “The Handmaid’s Tale” being challenged down in TX.

Last, but not least, don’t forget to go Eat A Book Tomorrow.

In a decision that has outraged bookworms, HMV has been given the green light to buy the bookseller Ottakar’s.

The retailer already owns Waterstone’s, and authors and publishers say the merged super-group would ensnare half of high-street book sales in some towns, offering readers less choice.

Here’s the story; from The Independent and from The Guardian.

Interesting Story from Oregon where they recently received almost $73,000 to develop a meta-search tool. The money was part of more than $163 million in grants doled out by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services to state library agencies. The Oregon State Library received about $2.2 million, which was divided among various Oregon library project proposals, including OSUs.
Most of the grant money will go toward hiring a software developer. A preliminary version of the program should be available for use at OSU in about a month, Frumkin said, although the project won’t be completed until late May or early June 2007.

Here’s a headline you’ll never read in the United States: Schools and libraries shit as council staff strike. libraries and other services in west and north Wiltshire were forced to close on Tuesday, as thousands of council workers went on strike over pensions.

Lack of non-teaching staff meant Larkrise Special School, Trowbridge, and King’s Lodge Primary School, Chippenham, were closed, as were libraries in Melksham, Warminster, Westbury and Trowbridge.

Update: 03/31 14:10 GMT by B : Mock Turtle points out they’ve since changed it to read “Schools and libraries shut as council staff strike” (I’m positive I didn’t imagine it)

Steven Harris writes “Cornell AUL Ross Atkinson passed away recently. He was one of the biggest brains in the library and information science world. LJ has a brief note. The Janus Conference was one of his recent projects. We could use more intellects like him in our profession.”

Redcardlibrarian writes “The Judson school district board voted to reverse the ban on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale according to a report on San Antonio’s KTEN news:

But board vice president Richard LaFoille (lah-FOYL’) said he didn’t see how trustees could uphold the ban.””

Karl Sandwell-Weiss writes “Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries. More from here.

For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority,” Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

What will you do when someone demands the library not put out the magazine because, as a Muslim, it offends them? This magazine is from the Council for Secular Humanism, not a Christian group.”

An interesting post from over at Christina’s LIS Rant raises an interesting point. She’s taking a look at the seminal work in the communication literature from Clark and Brennan (1993) on common ground. It discusses how common ground is established in conversation and also reviews how features of different communications channels help/constrain grounding and how common ground can be different when communicating over different channels. For example, e-mail is reviewable and revisable, but not cotemporal or audible (in the traditional view). Common ground is established via the least collaborative effort required for the channel.

“I think the blogosphere has talked more about links establishing common ground in that they establish a common history and context. I link to librarians therefore I have an affinity towards librarians and/or I am one. More of placeing a person in their discipline via their blogroll and linking… but blogs are conversation…”

On March 30, the sponsors of the Campaign for Reader Privacy (CRP) — the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN American Center — released a statement accusing President Bush of “undermining a new law that expands Congressional oversight of the USA Patriot Act, including the provision that authorizes searches of bookstore and library records.”

In a “signing statement” issued on March 9, soon after he approved a bill that reauthorized the expiring sections of the Patriot Act, the President said he reserved the right to ignore provisions of the bill. CRP sponsors condemned the signing statement. More from the American Booksellers Association (Bookweb).

It’s all part of a scheme to warm up the beautiful old buildings of Glasgow, Scotland and the Mitchell Library, the largest reference library in Europe, (websites here and here), is next.

Here’s the brief, yet colorful story from the Online Evening Times.