Louise

Follow up to this LISNews item:

Search Engine Watch reports:

Google Rumored To Launch Instant Messaging Tomorrow

Google to Deliver Instant Messages from the Los Angeles Times has unnamed sources telling the paper that Google will launched an instant messaging service called Google Talk as early as tomorrow. Aside from IM, the tool would also offer voice chat similar to what Yahoo Messenger currently offers.

Google’s said to have been testing the service for at least a month. Google confirmed to the LA Times that it had a new product to release this week (when don’t they?) but declined to say if it was Google Talk was the product.

The New York Times yesterday wrote that “Google executives” said they’d unveil a “communications tool” on Wednesday but not exactly what that would be.

Via The Librarian’s Rant.

The Athens News (Athens County, OH) reports that having an apparently deranged student arrested after bringing guns into your Library doesn’t seem to have any lasting effects.

“Though some at OU [Ohio University] feared that publicity about the incident might frighten off prospective students, at a time when the university is aggressively trying to boost enrollment, this does not seem to be happening.”

From AllAfrica.com. South Africa Bitter Battle of the Burqa Breaks Out Between Authors.

A battle over the burqa or Muslim veil had two award-winning women authors so enraged at a writers’ conference in Durban that one of them stormed out in anger.

The “ugly” public spat between Egyptian feminist author Nawal el Saadawi and South African writer Rayda Jacobs – both panellists at the Durban International Literary Festival – ended with Jacobs leaving the room.

The row was sparked when a member of the audience at Durban’s Diakonia Centre asked whether Muslim women wear the veil by choice or not.

This one from the Helena Independent Record has a funny opening:

If you walk into the library with an axe and start surfing Internet porn sites, you’re bound to cause a stir.

After a similar incident at Lewis and Clark Library, one must now check weapons at the door. But Library Board members aren’t sure what to do about online smut.

[ed. note: this article rehashes many of the same arguments we’ve heard before]

The Independent News reports on scientists who have begun to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome.

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure – a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

The Seattle PI reports on a new kind of act has rolled into The Sunset:
The First Fiction Tour hits the clubs

It’s the fourth stop on the second First Fiction Tour, where a quartet of debut novelists take their work to the people in unlikely tavern and club settings with “Great Drink Specials.”

This is the chance to catch these new novelists and their work before the heavy curtain of fame descends. Or at least salute their artistic feat in this iffy book world dominated by megaconglomerate publishers laser-focused on the bottom line.

From the Oregon Daily Emerald – University of Oregon: Nationwide libraries burned by budget cuts

Anyone who cares about the future of American commerce, politics, science, art, music, film or about our future as a society should take a moment during this week, officially “National Library Week,” to reflect on the unfortunate state of the American public library system. With the ease and speed of the Internet, it is easy to discount the public library as a home to musty plastic-covered books, a relic of the past.

Today, the estimated 16,421 public libraries in the U.S., often no longer valued as symbols of civic pride, have come under fire. When citizens reject local taxes and bonds, libraries and cultural programs are the first to go on the chopping block.

According to the American Library Association, projected and announced library funding cuts nationally have topped $111.2 million in the past 18 months, resulting in the “reduction in library funding … cuts to operating budgets, limited hours, reduced materials budgets, hiring freezes or elimination of personnel and reduced library programming.

The Orange Prize For Fiction has announced the Short List for 2005. Titles include Old Filth,, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and several others. You can also check out the Long List and List Of Judges.

The Orange Prize for Fiction 2005 longlist was announced at the London International Bookfair on Monday, March 14th.

Better saved than sorry [from FCW.com]

Recommendations for preserving the records of federal research would simplify the task of appraising those records, say archivists and records officers who have reviewed the proposed guidelines.

National Archives and Records Administration officials are seeking public comment by April 28 on a draft version of the agency’s first formal appraisal guidelines for research and development (R&D) records.

…The new guidance would supplement NARA’s appraisal policy, which classifies federal records as permanent or temporary based on their preservation value.

slashgirl points us to this story:

Urban expert Jane Jacobs and journalist Gwynne Dyer are among the 2005 nominees for the $15,000 Shaughnessy Cohen prize for political writing.

The award, in its fifth year, is given to a non-fiction book that broadens people’s understanding of contemporary Canadian political and social issues. Finalists will receive $2,000 each.