March 2010

Hawaii a natural place for Obama library site
Hawaii legislators are poised to urge President Barack Obama to choose the state where he was born and raised as the site of his presidential library. While Hawaii may be an underdog to Chicago for the selection, lawmakers should be satisfied if Obama rejects the traditional library in a way that could embrace both applicants.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, widely considered to be a likely Republican candidate for president in 2012, will hold two events in Central Iowa Monday as part of his latest book tour.

Mitt Romney’s nationwide tour in support of “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness” will take him to 19 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. Monday at noon, he will discuss the book and sign copies at the Des Moines Central Library, 1000 Grand Avenue

Later that night Romney will travel to Ames to speak in the Memorial Union Great Hall at Iowa State University. His presentation, which is co-sponsored by the campus’ College Republicans and the Committee on Lectures, will begin at 7 p.m. Iowa Independent reports.

The majority of schools do not have libraries and it will cost a staggering R2,2-billion to build one in each school, to stock it with books and to pay the salaries of librarians for 10 years, says the civil society group Equal Education (EE).

“It is shocking. It really goes to the heart of the South African education crisis,” said the EE’s Doron Isaacs.

The lack of libraries significantly contributed to the poor grasp of literacy and numeracy among millions of South African pupils, he said.

“Many Grade 1s will arrive at school and for the entire year they will only get to read about three or four books, whereas children in (former) model C schools will have two to three library books in their bags every day from Grade one,” he added.

Russia Bans Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” as Extremist
Russian prosecutors Friday banned Adolf Hitler’s 1925 semi-autobiographical book ‘Mein Kampf’ as extremist in an attempt to combat the growing allure of far-right politics.

Banned in Germany since World War Two, the book outlined Hitler’s vision of racial supremacy. Despite including tracts that are both anti-Jewish and anti-Russian, it has been championed by some Russian far-right groups.

Story in the NYT

Nearly 15 years ago, libraries were still primarily a place to go check out the printed, bound word. Only 28 percent offered Internet access, whereas today, almost all public libraries offer access and are helping to bridge the digital divide, according to a report by the University of Washington on Internet use in libraries across the country.

According to the report, “the wiring of public libraries has transformed one of the nation’s most established community resources into a critical digital hub”.

Every year, 169 million people visit their local public library and 45 percent of them access the Internet, according to the report. The report, which focuses its numbers of people 14-years old and older, is based on nearly 50,000 surveys from patrons of more than 400 public libraries across the country.

As Seth Godin pointed out last January, libraries “can’t survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don’t want to own” and that the “number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals.”

Full article here

Former law librarian sues W.Va. Supreme Court
A former Cabell County Circuit Court law librarian has filed a federal racial discrimination lawsuit against the state Supreme Court. Elsibeth McCoy’s suit also names the Cabell County Courthouse’s administration. McCoy says in her civil complaint that she was harassed because of her race and in retaliation for complaining about nepotism in the court system.

Observations of a Bookman on his Initial Encounters with an Ebook Reader
I decided to buy an ebook reader: not a Kindle, but a Sony. I’ve used it for a few weeks and can now begin to inquire: How do I feel about it?

In short, I absolutely love it. I have discovered that for the first time I can read–and enjoy–a digital book that I have downloaded.

A man was charged Monday with aggravated child pornography after images of children under the age of 13 were found on a flash drive he left behind in a library.
Police said the man asked staff at the Lewis & Clark Community College Library if anyone had turned in a flash drive. A library worker found the images on the equipment when trying to verify that he owned the flash drive.

The very same day the library board decided to close the Morrison Regional Library in SouthPark, the ABC board decided to open a liquor store only a block away from that library.

Several viewers with a sharp eye on the news, e-mailed NewsChannel 36 about that.

A post from Metafilter “On America’s little magazines” points to some neat info on what you might call zines. This Guardian Article has a nice primer.

The light it sheds on literature is brighter than that of the post-publication review, theory-addled academic appraisal or bookchat on blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Notwithstanding the new virtual communities, little magazines continue to be the main sponsor of the vital US tradition of intellectual dissent, which one suspects may be needed more than ever in our busy new century.