May 2007

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who sent in this Princeton Packet article. The Princeton Public Library has inadvertently set off a firestorm of criticism involving Cuba, health care and human rights.
According to some critics, two of the 15 films shown during the library’s annual Human Rights Film Festival last weekend are “propaganda” and do not accurately reflect life in Cuba.
“I think it’s outrageous to have a film festival at a public library that leaves out all the realities of Cuba, especially when you have thousands of witnesses to the human rights violations,” said Maria C. Werlau, executive director of Cuba Archive, an organization that collects information about the country.

Robert C. Darnton ’60, a historian of 18th-century France from Princeton, will serve as the director of the Harvard University Library, Provost Steven E. Hyman announced Tuesday afternoon.

Darnton will replace library director Sidney Verba ’53 on July 1, who has presided over the Harvard Library for twenty-three years. Story from the Crimson.

Lise Van Borssum, a 19-year employee of the school system, has been charged with assault by contact after she was accused of striking a child on the leg with a stack of six or seven shelf markers. The child was not injured. She is on paid administrative leave and gave no comment to the press.

Tempers seem to be running short in and around the Galveston schools; Ms. Van Borssum is the third person (along with a kindergarten teacher and a bus driver) to hit or kick a child, according to this article in the Galveston Daily News.

kmccook writes “

“The library should keep up with the changes, but not at the expense of the written word,” said Diane Boerman, a library employee and shop steward for the librarians union.

Sacramento library staffers are circulating a petition of no-confidence in management, decrying what they view as a departure from amassing a rich research collection to pandering to the whims of the YouTube generation.
Librarians question administrators’ selection of materials, which include six copies of Paris Hilton’s “Confessions of an Heiress” autobiography and 10 copies of the film “Jackass 2.”

The dissenting librarians plan to present the petition with 600 signatures from staff, former staff and patrons to the library’s board at a Thursday meeting. It asks leaders to reconsider modeling library branches after a popular book or music store while casting off books with lasting value.

For more info:
See Union Librarian.”

Todd Gilman Has A Column in the Chronicle of Higer Ed. in which he offers his list of four traits that would not only make librarians more effective, but happier and more productive, too.

1. Openness
2. Responsiveness
3. Collaboration
4. Communication

Todd Gilman is the librarian for literature in English at Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library.

Map thief E Forbes Smiley has been ordered to pay $2.3 million, on top of his 3.5 year sentence, as restitution to map dealers and libraries in several Eastern US locations. Although 96 maps stolen by Smiley have been recovered, four are still missing. More from WPRI/Fox in Providence, RI

A task force will recommend that the Central Library of Rochester (NY) block patrons from viewing “pornographic and explicit” websites unless prior authorization is given by library administrators. The recommendation is offered in an attempt to keep County Executive Maggie Brooks from pulling $6.6 million in funding.

If she cut the library’s money, it would essentially have to close. As a result, the library’s board in February put a moratorium on unblocking Web sites picked up by the library’s filtering system, and a task force was established to decide what to do.

More from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

birdie writes “Previously unseen drawings by James Thurber to be displayed at the Columbus Library from the Columbus Dispatch. The works even include some erotic images — unusual for Thurber, who drew most often for staid New Yorker Editor Harold Ross.

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Ronald Reagan kept diaries during each of the eight years of his presidency, except for a brief period when he was recovering from an assasination attempt by John Hinckley. Yesterday, the day before the compilation of his diaries is to be released by HarperCollins in association with the Reagan Presidential Library, his widow placed two of her late husband’s five maroon, leather-bound diaries in a display case at the library.

According to this AP Story, the cover-to-cover theme in Reagan’s writings was his wife Nancy.

Jim Barksdale and Francine Berman (yes that Barksdale) have a Guest Commentary in the Contra Costa Times. They say the digital information that drives our world and powers our economy is in many ways more susceptible to loss than the papyrus and parchment at Alexandria. By contrast, the Library of Congress has in its care millions of printed works, some on stone or animal skin that have survived for centuries. The challenges underlying digital preservation led Congress in 2000 to appropriate $100 million for the Library of Congress to lead the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program NDIIPP, a growing partnership of 67 organizations charged with preserving and making accessible “born digital” information for current and future generations.