September 2006

Writer behind JT LeRoy comes clean

Mister Cow Cow writes Yahoo! News The author at the center of an elaborate literary hoax is finally coming clean, or so she says.

Laura Albert, 40, a New York City native, is acknowledging that she is JT LeRoy, the supposed male author of gritty, graphic, best-selling novels like “Sarah” and “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,” which was made into a film.”

Bush’s “Reading First” Program Ignored Ethics

Kathleen de la Pena McCook writes “A scorching internal review of the Bush administration’s READING FIRST program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money the way it wanted. The report in full is available in pdf:

The Reading First Program’s Grant Application Process. The Reading First Director [Chris Doherty] who made certain that the grant process was open to a very few made this statement:”Beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in a way that will stand up to any level of legal and [whole language] apologist scrutiny. Hit them over and over with definitive evidence that they are not SBRR, never have been and never will be. They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags.” — [p.24].
More details here.

Loriene Roy, ALA President – Elect

An Anonymous Patron writes “Loriene Roy, professor in the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin, founded “If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything” a national reading program for Native American children in fall 1999. Roy, an Anishinabe (Ojibwe) enrolled on the White Earth Reservation and a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, has spent a lifetime promoting literacy for indigenous students.

Roy will be the first Native person to serve as president of the 130-year-old American Library Association (ALA) in 2007-08.”

Department of Athletics gives $5 million for new library @ OSU

The OSU Lantern reports Academics and athletics came together when Ohio State Director of Athletics Gene Smith gave a $5 million check to Joe Branin, director of the University Libraries, for the Thompson Library renovation project.

The money, said Branin, comes from increased television revenue for the football team, including the formation of the Big Ten Channel, which is scheduled to start in 2007.

British Library develops web crawling system for p

Anon E. Mouse writes Pocket-lint.co.uk: The internet is an ever-changing repository of information, where pages disappear as quickly as new ones appear. The British Library is part of a group of institutions working to preserve digital data presented on the internet for future generations and to make it available for research.

The British Library co-funded with The National Library of New Zealand the development of a web harvesting management system called the web curator tool. It uses software to crawl through a specified section on the web and gather snapshots of various sites.”

Library Patrons and Staff Beg — Keep Oro Valley Library Our Own

Citizens of Oro Valley, AZ want the Oro Valley Library to continue to be governed by the community, not the county (Pima County). The prospect of being part of a regional, county-funded system is not sitting well with many library patrons.

After about 30 speakers, each describing their personal fondness for the library, some council members indicated they would work to keep the library under the town’s control while others wanted the crowd to recognize the town’s own budget crunch.
Story from the Explorer News.

Passion for a Local Institution Speaks Volumes

Mister Cow Cow writes calendarlive.com: When Robert Aikens warned his customers that his bookstore was on the verge of going out of business, the denizens of this storied ski town drew a line in the snow.

They had watched an increasing number of families become unable to afford life here and move to a cluster of fast-growing suburbs to the west. They had seen local businesses strangled by a four-year construction boom adding more luxury hotels to the mass of Bavarian-themed ski lodges and trophy mansions that make up Vail.”

Peek at NSA’s Secret Reading List

Pete writes “Here is a Wired story giving just a hint about the reading habits of the super secret NSA.

“The tantalizing tables of contents to the best spy magazines you’ll probably never get to read have been posted online, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request that pried open four classified National Security Agency publications.

“This is one of the first glimpses we have had into NSA’s own library — and it’s a safe bet there are some gems in there,” said Secrecy News editor Steven Aftergood.”