August 2009

Editorial in the NYT

Washington should pass legislation that would prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against content.

Pat Holt of Holt Uncensored decries the plummeting of print newspaper sales, and offers several serious suggestions to publishers.

“After our 30-year honeymoon with computers, and 20 solid years on the Internet, people are getting tired of screens and starting to miss the newsprint experience. It’s time for newspapers to earn their way back into readers’ minds and pocketbooks. Here are some suggestions:

Fight for Your Paper – Everybody’s waiting for publishers to do something — to, in the first place, define the benefits of newspapers that computers can’t offer. If you run a newspaper, the time has come to get out there and tell readers: Our paper publishes the kind of stories in print that you can’t find on the Internet.

This means that the newsprint version will be different from the website version, so you have to believe in it. If you don’t think that newspapers are far ahead of the Internet in key ways, get outta the biz.”

The author of ‘Forever Barbie’ would be OK with another author citing her work, had the source been made clear.

Full story here.

Even if you can’t remember a specific Reading Rainbow episode, chances are, the theme song is still lodged somewhere in your head:

Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high,
Take a look, it’s in a book — Reading Rainbow …
Remember now?

Reading Rainbow comes to the end of its 26-year run on Friday; it has won more than two-dozen Emmys, and is the third longest-running children’s show in PBS history — outlasted only by Sesame Street and Mister Rogers.

Full piece on NPR

Donations totaling more than $300,000 will go a long way
An effort that spans across city lines will help keep Omaha’s Florence Library open. Supporters of the library helped raise more than $300,000 in just two weeks, well over the $90,000 needed to keep it open through the end of the year.

Story here.

Additional story in the Omaha World Herald.

Mansfield librarian has refiled a lawsuit that alleges three faculty members defamed him during a 2006 dispute over a required reading list for freshmen.

Scott A. Savage is suing Norman W. Jones, Hannibal Hamlin and Gary Kennedy in Richland County Common Pleas Court. Savage is seeking $25,000 in compensatory damages and $25,000 in punitive damages from each of the three faculty members.

Savage, who characterizes himself as a devout Christian and member of the Religious Society of Friends, sought to have several conservative book titles included on the reading list. He claims faculty members maliciously attacked his character and damaged his reputation with e-mails and statements during spring 2006 faculty meetings.

Full article here.

Good News for Louisville’s Main Library! Bent but not broken, and with signs posted on the doors proclaiming “We’re Open!” Louisville’s Main Library welcomed patrons back Thursday afternoon, 23 days after floodwaters destroyed tens of thousands of books and inflicted $5 million in damage.

One week to go in LFPL fundraiser

Blog-A-Thon On Monday!

On Monday August 31st, I would like to propose a blogathon to raise funds on behalf of the Louisville Free Public Library. Earlier this month, the main library fell victim to a flood which put over four feet of water in their basement. As you can imagine, a lot of stuff got ruined. Steve Lawson, a member of Library Society of the World, was moved enough by their plight to set up a PayPal donation account so as to collect fund and write a check to the Library on September 1st. (Update to his post here.) I thought that, through a combined effort on the part of the library blogging community, we might push the fund raising campaign up a notch. And thus was born the idea of a blogathon.

Mary Simun did not enjoy reading as a child. But in college, she discovered her love of reading, and hasn’t stopped yet.

To make up for lost time, Simun spends her Friday afternoons volunteering at the Friends of the Redondo Beach Public Library store. Friends of the Library is a non-profit organization that supports libraries nationwide. The Redondo Beach chapter was established in 1985 to provide resources not covered in the city budget. Diane Chillington, the personnel coordinator of this chapter, said the Redondo Beach library has become slightly more dependent on the Friends since the economic downturn last year.

Does your library have FOL store? or a Friends group? Share news of how they’ve helped your library…

Like the rest of the nation, Hawaii’s libraries are suffering in the economic downturn. The state public library system is considering several different options to deal with its shortfall. KGMB9 reports.

Instead of closing down five branches on the Big Island, Oahu and Maui, the state librarian (Richard Burns) is now proposing furloughs.

The plan includes anything between two and four furlough days a month, depending on the changing budget situation.

The state librarian also says he will leave 72 vacant positions unfilled.

The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has put out a campaign designed to raise awareness of the privacy implications of Facebook’s developer platform. It’s focusing specifically on the popular “quiz” applications, like “Which Cocktail Best Suits Your Personality?” and “Which Wes Anderson Movie Character Are You?” These are largely one-time-use apps that many a Facebook user clicks on and tries out with little concern. CNET reports.

According to the ACLU chapter, “millions of people on Facebook who use third-party applications on the site, including the popular quizzes, do not realize the extent to which developers of quizzes and other applications have access to personal information. Facebook’s default privacy settings allow nearly unfettered access to a user’s profile information, including religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, photos, events, notes, wall posts, and groups.” For the promotion, it’s put together a quiz about how much you know about Facebook-based quizzes.

Side note: Creating a Facebook quiz app to draw attention to the pratfalls of Facebook quiz apps is very meta.