August 2009

Seattle’s Former Librarian Serving as Director of Global Libraries Initiative

Deborah Jacobs went from helping build Seattle’s state-of-the-art Central Library to visiting libraries overseas with no heat or running water and budgets as low as $30 a month. In her first year on the job at the Gates Foundation, she has directed an expanding program called the Global Libraries Initiative, which aims to improve free access to computers and the Internet in public libraries.

Today she is presenting a $1 million prize to a foundation in Medellín, Colombia, for its innovative use of technology in libraries to promote community development. More from The Seattle Times.

August 25, 2009 by Internet Librarians Libraries

The Real-Time Library

The Real-Time Library Academic libraries always had elements of Web 2.0 to them, but without the 2.0 technology. Much the same, the exchange of information in real-time (think phone and F2F reference) is not new to libraries, but now we have the convenience, immediacy and community presence of the real-time web world. We are poised to move there.

August 25, 2009 by Librarians Libraries

A Bit of a Mess in Dallas

Former President George W. Bush had his heart set on an expansive Presidential Library, but his requirements have been harder to achieve than he thought. No eminent domain for the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

A deal that was supposed to end a long-running lawsuit against SMU – and smooth the path for George W. Bush’s presidential library – has fallen apart amid charges that both sides broke the terms of a confidential agreement. Report from the Dallas News.

Last month, Southern Methodist University and two former condominium owners announced that they had settled the bitter four-year fight over who is the rightful owner of land now slated for the grounds of the Bush library.

The lawsuit has become increasingly hard-fought since President George W. Bush left office in January and returned to Texas.

Earlier this year, Hoffman ruled that Bush would have to give a deposition in the case. The condo owners said they wanted a chance to ask Bush about meetings with SMU officials who discussed putting the library on the condo site before it owned the land; (the condos have since been demolished). An appellate court reversed Hoffman’s order, and the condo owners appealed the matter to the Texas Supreme Court.

August 25, 2009 by Legal Issues Libraries

Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People

Officials at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit in San Francisco that governs Wikipedia, say that within weeks, the English-language Wikipedia will begin imposing a layer of editorial review on articles about living people.

The new feature, called “flagged revisions,” will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. Until the change is approved — or in Wikispeak, flagged — it will sit invisibly on Wikipedia’s servers, and visitors will be directed to the earlier version.

Story in the NYT

August 25, 2009 by Internet

New Hampshire State Library Undergoing Major Renovation

Wind shook the windowpanes and water dripped from the skylights. Collapsing plaster ceilings forced employees to take shelter under tables, all in the finest building ever erected by the state of New Hampshire, its library. Recently work began to renovate the first state library in the nation, a pink-and-gray granite Italian Renaissance structure on Park Street. The effects of decades of deferred maintenance are slowly being erased.

The library is open to the public, but unlike city libraries, it’s designed to serve researchers, not readers of popular novels. It holds the history of the state’s Legislature and laws, the genealogies of countless New Hampshire families, more than 150 years of annual reports from every town.

According to the Concord Monitor, first-time visitors should come to view not its documents but the building’s amazing architecture. The library’s entrance is framed by columns of polished granite. Inside are massive fireplaces, swirling Sienna marble wainscoting the color of butterscotch, marble mosaic floors with multicolored decorative borders, a dedication plaque made by Tiffany Studios, magnificent plasterwork unaffordable today, fine antiques, gleaming brass light fixtures and a domed chamber that until 1970 held the state Supreme Court.

August 25, 2009 by Legal Issues Librarians Libraries

Ring and Owner Reunited after 46 Years

A heartwarming librarian story.

Mary Lou Fioramonti had owned her class ring from Liverpool High School for three months when she lost it in the Jamesville Reservoir in 1963.
“I cried,” she said. “It took six months of babysitting to pay for that ring.”
Fioramonti (now Mailhot) said she and a group of friends had gone swimming in the reservoir one hot afternoon that summer. When she got out of the water, she discovered the ring was gone. “I looked around on the ground, but I didn’t find it,” Mailhot said. “I thought it was at the bottom of the reservoir and I’d never see it again.”

Read how fate, a yearbook, a few caring people and a helpful librarian reunited Mary Lou with her ring in the Central NY Link News.

August 24, 2009 by Libraries School Libraries

You there — Anonymous — You Could Be Fingered by Google

A blogger stripped of her anonymity by the US courts has said she plans to sue Google for handing over her real identity.

Rosemary Port, a 29-year-old fashion student from New York, has said she will file a $15m (£9m) lawsuit against the internet giant after it complied with an order from a US court to reveal that she was behind the vitriolic “Skanks in NYC” blog.

The case erupted last week after the Manhattan Supreme Court ruled that Google must hand over the identity of the writer, who had targeted 36-year-old model Liskula Cohen online and called her a “psychotic, lying, whoring… skank”.

Cohen had filed a lawsuit demanding that the writer’s identity be revealed, an argument that judge Joan Madden agreed with. Guardian UK , Salon, New York Post report.

Want the site? It’s now available.

August 24, 2009 by Google Internet Legal Issues

Fighting Crime…One Book at a Time

Seattle PI Blog post from new blogger Nancy Mattoon:

As librarians are well aware, even in the book world no good deed goes unpunished. Getting the right book into the right hands seems innocent enough–until it isn’t. Headline hungry scribes sometimes seek to link books and crime. (The permanent stain on “The Catcher in the Rye” after being found in the possession of both Mark David Chapman and John Hinkley post-crime is the most notorious example.) And censors still have a field day with the “evil” items made available in the Children’s Room. (Top targets on that hit parade: the “Harry Potter” series and Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy) But what of the notion that books can actually help fight crime? Two recent stories point out how the humble book may be a useful tool for the Thin Blue Line.

August 24, 2009 by Books Harry Potter Libraries

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