Karen K

The American Library Association recently posted a brief press release about a new, revised database-protection bill proposed by Representative Cliff Stearns. The bill, H.R. 3872, is called the Consumer Access to Information Act and would prohibit private parties from suing over database misusage. ALA does not say whether they support the bill, but they opposed its predecessor, H.R. 3261, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act.

A Lebanese search engine is under development with a goal of achieving wide international usage. The search engine, called Conteq, is going to be launched at the end of this year. It’s advantage over Google, apparently, is fewer search results. The article is unclear on whether they’ll be better search results or why. There is some allusion to making companies fill out a “matrix” and to a “multi-parameter search engine”.
Hard to say if this will be anything new and important.

A woman in Utah has been pushing for a bill to get public libraries to use filters. The article in the The Spectrum (“Southern Utah’s Homepage”) states quite matter-of-factly: “The bill will cut off state funds to libraries that refuse to put filters on their computers to filter Internet smut.” Apparently the woman’s hometown library in Cedar City already refuses to carry R-rated movies, so there is precedent for being restrictive about what a public library can make available. The article, interestingly, does not explain what the lawmakers view as an objectionable site, although it refers casually to “porn filters,” ignoring the issue of what actually could get filtered.

The Library of Congress, which has the largest collection of documents from Thomas Jefferson, has made these documents available online. The 27,000 papers include letters on topics ranging from ordering crops to signing the Declaration of Independence. Article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

PR Newswire has a summary of the results of a study by the Public Library Association and the Association of Library Service to Children that shows that parents of children under 5 who participate in library-based literacy activities are more likely to engage in “literacy behaviors”, e.g., reading to their children. The report doesn’t seem to be on the PLA website, though.

A library in Bettendorf, Iowa is planning a garden that will feature plants mentioned in Emily Dickinson’s poems. There doesn’t seem to be a particular connection between Dickinson and the city of Bettendorf. Here’s the full article.

This article in the Philadelphia Inquirer gives two writers’ metaphor-filled, warm and fuzzy impressions of public libraries.

Some enthusiastic quotes: “maximum excitement with minimum investment of resources”, “my local library, fitness center for the individual seeking to expand horizons rather than to flatten the abs”.

It can’t hurt to read praise like this every now and again!

This article summarizes a study done at UC Berkeley about the volume of new information saved on computer files in 2002. It includes some “fun with numbers” facts, such as:
“The supply of new material saved in a single year, 2002, would fill half a million libraries the size of the Library of Congress … if it were all converted to print”. The full report is at http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/.