Bossier Parish Police Juror is calling for changes to the Bossier Parish Library System after past and present employees have brought forward allegations of racism and race-based hiring.
Library employees allege a laundry list of racist practices in the hiring and treatment of black employees by the library administration, which employees say came to a head last fall when an assistant cataloguer who is white, mentioned a need to use a whip for motivation in front of two black employees.
The required transfer in four weeks of all of the Bush White House’s electronic mail messages and documents to the National Archives has been imperiled by a combination of technical glitches, lawsuits and lagging computer forensic work, according to government officials, historians and lawyers.
And speaking of Friends of the Library…
A Holiday Home Decoration Fair that replaced the Friends of the Rochester Hills Library’s holiday home tour was a big hit.
A silent auction of four-foot trees, wreaths and table centerpieces was held in the library Nov. 27 through Dec. 7. It raised $1,500.
“In previous years we sponsored a popular holiday home tour, but it was becoming more and more difficult to find homeowners willing to open their homes,” said library director Christine Lind Hage. “It was also a difficult time of the year to get enough volunteers to staff the event.” This year, local businesses and individuals donated the items that were auctioned. Hometown Life reports.
The first Saturday in December, University Book Store in Seattle, WA opened its first “Holiday Advice Booth,” the brainchild of Stesha Brandon, the store’s events manager. Modeled after Lucy’s psychiatrist booth in “Peanuts,” book advice was offered for 25 cents, with the money raised going to the store’s Scholarship Endowment Fund, which helps financial-aid students purchase course materials and textbooks.
It was staffed in one-hour shifts from 10 to 6; advisors included Brad Craft, the store’s used-books buyer, Nancy Pearl, the World’s Librarian, two sales reps–Dan Christaens from Norton and David Glenn from Random House–and me (author of this article, Marilyn Dahl). Stesha was our runner (and supplier of homemade baked goods). We had a blast.
Sounds like a lot of fun; read the entire article at Shelf-Awareness.
Maybe library friends shops could do something similar? Of course, there’s only one Nancy Pearl, but those friends have done a lot of reading over the years…
THE Federal Government’s controversial internet censorship plan may extend to filter more web activity than first thought, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy revealed today.
In a post on his department’s blog, Senator Conroy today said technology that could filter data sent directly between computers would be tested as part of the upcoming live filtering trial.
“Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial,” Senator Conroy said.
Add one more headache for whoever is running Apple’s App Store approval process: edgy books.
Books aren’t a huge part of the App Store, but there are over 600 titles for sale, ranging from classics to Japanese comic books. CNET’s own David Carnoy has a new detective thriller out called Knife Music, but you won’t find it on the App Store.
That’s because when Carnoy enlisted a software developer to submit the book to the App Store, Apple rejected the book for containing “objectionable content,” citing a clause in the iPhone SDK that states: “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement (sic) may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”
Some not-so-cheery holiday news for staffers with the St. Tammany Parish Library: They can’t accept gifts from grateful patrons – not even small ones such as baked goods or houseplants.
That’s the word from the state Board of Ethics, which recently responded to a query from library officials about the gifts.
A staff attorney for the Ethics Board says the gifts cannot be accepted.
National Public Radio has introduced a nifty little feature that lets you create your own custom podcast of NPR content on topics that interest you. Type in Obama or Madonna or whatever, and you can sign up for a stream of NPR clips that match your keywords that can be downloaded to your computer, smartphone, iPod or Zune.
I’m highlighting this, not because I think this particular feature will be all that widely used, at least in its current incarnation. Podcasts are not a mass market phenomenon now. For most services, only a small fraction of users choose any option that involves customization. And while NPR has done a decent job of making the service easy to use, it still has a few steps to it.
But I am very interested because I think that NPR is onto something that really shows where digital media is moving, especially for news.
Well, it’s had a good long run, nearly 600 years. But…is it the ‘end of the book’?
Here’s an opinion piece by Tom Engelhardt in the LA Times. He has worked in publishing for more than three decades and is currently the editor of TomDispatch.com, where a longer version of this article is published.
From the article:
Worlds shudder and collapse all the time. There’s no news in that. Just ask the Assyrians, the last emperor of the Han Dynasty, the final Romanoff or Napoleon — or Bernard Madoff. But when it seems to be happening to your world, well, that’s a different kettle of fish.
Two weeks ago, a close friend in my niche world of book publishing (at whose edge I’ve been perched these last 30-odd years) called to tell me that an editor we both admire had been perp-walked out of his office and summarily dismissed by the publisher he worked for. That’s what now passes for politeness in the once “gentlemanly” world of books.
His fault, the sap, was acquiring and editing good books. The sort of books that might actually make a modest difference in the universe but will be read by no less modest audiences — too modest for flailing, failing publishing conglomerates.
California State Librarian Susan Hildreth likes the idea of putting a school inside a new downtown San Diego central library, which may bode well for the city’s effort to keep a $20 million state grant.
But downtown San Diego parents aren’t sure they need a high school, as is being proposed in a new plan to save the $185 million library project that has fallen short of its fundraising goal.
Hildreth will be leaving her position as the CA State Librarian to become Director of the Seattle Public Library. She will assume her new post early next year.
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