Curmudgeony

Antonio Gamoneda has won the 2006 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish literary world’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. See Librarian for details.

In a followup to this story, Joe Hodnicki reports “U.S. Copyright Office has issued exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that may benefit media professors, archivists, and other academics. Details and links to official documents at the
Law Librarian Blog“

Filipino Librarian writes “The second issue of Library Student Journal (LSJ) is out. If you don’t have too much time, take a look at “A Cataloging Carol,” a short story with illustrations that features “ghosts” named Ranganathan, Borges and Berman. And don’t forget the footnotes! =)”

sdafasfasdfa writes “From Reuters.com: Yahoo has rebuffed rival Google Inc.’s attempt to learn more about its efforts to create digital copies of books, dealing Google another setback as it prepares to fight a copyright infringement suit, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

A group of publishers and the Authors Guild sued Google in a New York federal court last year, claiming that the company did not get proper approval to make copies of books available to anyone with an Internet connection, AP reported.”

Mister Cow Cow writes “Man charged in library bombing said he was studying religion: An Illinois man accused of setting off a pipe bomb in a Salt Lake City library denies any role in the bombing and says his visit was spiritual, not criminal.

But Zajac says he was studying the Mormon religion.”

Search Engines WEB reports an article from CNET news “he ran a business called Beautiful Super Models that charged $175 for portraits of aspiring models under 18 years old. Prosecutors acknowledge there’s no evidence he has ever taken a single photograph of an’unclothed minor…his models struck poses that were illegally provocative. “The images charged are not legitimate child modeling, but rather lascivious poses one would expect to see in an adult magazine”

Melchior writes “Cinnamon Stillwell’s article Mob Rule on College Campuses in the SF Chronicle reports on a growing trend at universities towards students suppressing (mostly conservative) views they disagree with by shouting down invited speakers and disrupting their events. I’d be interested to know if LISNewsers regard such actions a form of censorship.”

RobertL writes “An article in the online edition of the
Macomb
Daily reports that the Mount Clemens Public Library in Michigan is no longer
providing intenet access for patrons because of a ‘”large increase” in
visitors using the free Internet service to access what the library termed
obscene material in violation of library policies.'”

This week found the Free Government Information (FGI)
(http://freegovinfo.info ) volunteers posting the following stories:

• News of EPA library closures makes headlines – James R.
• Public Libraries and US Code Index – Daniel
• Smithsonian campaign and hacker tax credit – James R.
• Sunshine Week national audit – James R.
• Caution on comparing ACS to Census 2000 – James A.
• More on Google working with agencies – James A.
• Directorate of Legal Research at the Library of Congress – James A.

If you use Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or some other RSS reader, consider subscribing to the FGI Feed at http://freegovinfo.info/blog/feed to get FGI stories as they are posted. 160 people already have.

Kelly writes “The IHT headline says: ‘Newly disclosed documents show U.S. Defense Department tracked anti-Iraq war activities.’ According to this article, ‘An anti-terrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks on military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.'”