AndyW

From q13fox:

An Oak Harbor mom is upset with a book her fifth-grade daughter brought home from school.

It’s called “What’s the Big Secret” and is available at many public schools.

“I can’t even stand that she had already read this without me even knowing,” said Jennifer Swedeoson.

Swedeoson had planned to have “the birds and the bees” talk with her 10-year-old daughter Kaleigh when she reached middle school. But that timeline changed when Kaleigh brought the book home from school yesterday.

“I start flipping through, this is all right, but then it starts talking more about sex and I get into it and it’s completely too graphic for her.”

“What’s the Big Secret” shows how boys and girls are physically different, offers a lesson in reproduction and talks about “different types of touching.”

“This is one of the first that definitely caught my eye, talking about masturbation when you are 10 years old,” Swedeoson said. “What do you need to read that for? I’m not so upset about the book itself. I think they should be sending home permission slips, making sure parents are aware that the book is there.”

Full story

Via USAToday:

President Obama’s national security adviser said today that analysts are poring over an “extraordinary” trove of terrorism intelligence gathered during last week’s raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

“It turns out that this is the largest cache of information gotten from a senior terrorist ever gotten from any terrorist in one operation,” adviser Tom Donilon said on CNN’s State of the Union. “It is about the size of a small college library.”

Via The Record Searchlight:

“The North State Tea Party Alliance and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California Friday filed separate lawsuits against the city of Redding and the City Council, each claiming the Municipal Library’s new leafleting policy is unconstitutional and should be overturned.

“We are working together, even though there are separate lawsuits, for the same end result,” said Tim Pappas, the Shasta County assistant public defender who on his own time represents the North State Tea Party Alliance.”

Full story

Robert Darnton at the New York Review of Books Blog asks:

“Can we create a National Digital Library? That is, a comprehensive library of digitized books that will be easily accessible to the general public. Simple as it sounds, the question is extraordinarily complex. It involves issues that concern the nature of the library to be built, the technological difficulties of designing it, the legal obstacles to getting it off the ground, the financial costs of constructing and maintaining it, and the political problems of mobilizing support for it.

Despite the complexities, the fundamental idea of a National Digital Library (or NDL) is, at its core, straightforward. The NDL would make the cultural patrimony of this country freely available to all of its citizens. It would be the digital equivalent of the Library of Congress, but instead of being confined to Capitol Hill, it would exist everywhere, bringing millions of books and other digitized material within clicking distance of public libraries, high schools, junior colleges, universities, retirement communities, and any person with access to the Internet.”

Read the full entry.

New York Times: WESTHAMPTON BEACH, N.Y. — Ever since Books & Books opened its doors on Main Street here last month, it has missed out on some of the adulation usually reserved for new independent bookstores in the age of Amazon.

Several storeowners nearby have ordered their staffs not to shop there. Indignant older women have marched inside the bookstore to yell at employees. And someone, or perhaps several someones, may have sneakily placed used chewing gum between the pages of new books.

The animosity seems to have stemmed from the fact that Books & Books moved in when there was already an independent bookstore, the Open Book, around the corner. And as some people saw it, there was no room for another one.

Full article

It’s no longer illegal under the DMCA to jailbreak your iPhone or bypass a DVD’s CSS in order to obtain fair use footage for educational purposes or criticism. These are the new rules that were handed down moments ago by the U.S. Copyright Office. This is really big. Like, really big.

[Full article at TechCrunch]

Star Tribune (Minneapolis-Saint Paul): On a proverbial dark and stormy night, Sage Holben’s porch is relatively dry for her Friday moviegoers. Riley Soeffker, 13, munches on pretzels, and Ben Grim, “almost 5,” wolfs down some popcorn. Neither is distracted by the bunny-rabbit shadows that Pedro Garcia’s hands are casting on the screen or the passing cars with loud exhaust systems.

As the rain picks up, one of three young adults walking down Bates Avenue bellows, “What is it this week?”

“‘The Fantastic Mr. Fox,'” Holben responds. “One week you should stop in.”

“I might have to,” the hooded pedestrian says. “It looks kind of slick.”

Even on the driest of evenings, the creaky but sturdy L-shaped porch provides shelter from the urban storm, a refuge that Holben, a librarian at nearby Metro State University, has created in St. Paul’s rough-and-tumble Dayton’s Bluff.

Full story

[This librarian creates a place for neighborhood kids to come together and watch movies. It’s a pretty inspiring story. -AndyW]

The library is a home away from home for a lot of students, so get to know what it can do for you.
US News & World Report

When Mecklenburg County passed its $1.35 billion budget this week, it set the stage for the local library to finish negotiating with surrounding towns for financial relief.

Early next week, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library expects to have a final answer from those towns on what budget help it can expect, with some of it likely to come in the form of deferred lease payments on various branches. In the past two weeks, the city and county have funded the library’s $8 million sustainability plan at 70% of what was requested. Assuming similar support from the surrounding towns of 70%, the library faces more cuts, something library executives, employees and customers have endured throughout the past two years.

An earlier $2 million cut this spring led to a 39% reduction in operating hours and 120 layoffs, representing 24% of staff positions. With a new fiscal year beginning next month, the library is certain to suffer more cuts. The only remaining question is, how deep will those cuts be?

Read more: Mecklenburg library answers expected soon – Charlotte Business Journal