Louise

slashgirl points us to this story:

An Austrian illustrator behind a comic that depicts Jesus as a laid-back, binge-drinking surfer is in the midst of an uproar.

A group of artists gathered in Vienna Tuesday to draw attention to Greece’s ban of Austrian illustrator Gerhard Haderer’s The Life of Jesus, a religious satire and playful re-imagining of the life of Christ. It is reportedly the first book the country has banned in more than 20 years.

From The Globe and Mail

Fifty years from now, if your local repertory house wants to show the 2004-2005 Genie-winner for best Canadian film, chances are very good that the theatre will be able to get a print of the movie and that your local artsy video outlet will have some sort of digital copy.

In part, this is because all five films up for tonight’s top honour received money from Telefilm Canada, and starting in 2001, the federal agency mandated that all features receiving Telefilm assistance have to submit two archival-quality prints of each finished movie to Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, plus a Digital Betacam version for mastering purposes.

…in the United States, which has churned out the most movies of any nation over the past 100 years, it’s estimated that 50 per cent of the features produced there before 1950 have disappeared, a result of the effects of technological obsolescence, neglect, financial hardship and inadequate archiving. For films produced before 1920, the figure is 80 per cent.

From the Jordan Times:

Issam Mahmoud, regional director of Trans-Middle East International Distribution Company, said the 15-year UN embargo on Iraq caused a lag not only in the acquisition of books, but also in the categorisation and management of volumes in the country’s libraries.

Mahmoud said the current system of categorisation in Iraqi libraries relies on traditional systems using card catalogues rather than the computer- based categorisation systems now used by most libraries around the world.

Coventry, England – Blaze hit library reopens

A new-look Foleshill library has reopened in Coventry – 18 months after arsonists gutted the building.

In September 2003, the popular library was severely damaged after thieves stole 12 computers and then poured petrol on books to set the building on fire.

More than £500,000 of damage was caused in the blaze, which gutted the Broad Street building.

The library, which was built in 1912, was closed for 18 months while salvage work was carried out and the facility refurbished. Now the library’s new look has been unveiled.

Submitted by Cortez. Highlighting Persepolis and Persepolis 2.

Iranian illustrator Marjane Satrapi has documented her life in prose and pictures from comfortable childhood before the revolution to an exile and a return to Iran. From http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17900 (April 7, 2005):
“The art department of her university in Tehran, under the supervision of mullahs, was forbidden to offer traditional anatomy classes. Female models posed covered head to toe in sheets like black chadors, while male models were allowed to pose in marginally more revealing street clothes. When Satrapi, an indefatigable student, stays late to draw a seated male model, she is challenged by a supervisor, who tells her it is against the moral code for her to look at the man she is drawing. When she asks with incredulous flippancy if she should look instead at the door while drawing the man, the supervisor replies, ‘Yes.'”

Copied from The Librarian’s Rant today:

Perusing (as I do this time of year) the Peeps at the Library research from Millikin University, I notice that they’ve hit the big time! From the announcement on their website:

CBS’s Rita Braver came to Staley Library with a Chicago CBS film crew on March 2 to record an Easter feature for CBS News Sunday Morning – namely, to interview Susan Avery and Jen Masciadrelli about their creation of that famed Peeps page! This will be part of an Easter Sunday story about the Peeps, including a visit to the Peeps factory and a look into the varied uses that people make of this curious little sugar and marshmallow creature.

Yay, Peeps!

MsBooks writes “From NewsNight with Aaron Brown – CNN-tv February 21 (story by Beth Nissen, about a page down in transcript)

Ustidar (ph), a librarian who headed up the preservation department, was one of the first to return, one of the few librarians who survived. The library’s director and some 20 members of staff died in the tsunami.

…Banda Aceh’s only public library was a busy place, used by more than 800 people a day. They would come to read the periodicals, magazines, and newspapers from around the region, to wait their turn to get online, access the World Wide Web.

…Since the tsunami, the sense of what’s essential has shifted to new homes, clean water, restored livelihoods. In a city of ruined schools, clinics, and neighborhoods, rebuilding a library doesn’t seem like a high priority.

This veteran librarian insists it is. “Life is more than just food and shelter,” she says. “A full stomach without knowledge means little. We need education. We need knowledge to expand.” Knowledge in an information age to catch up, keep up.

“Libraries step up pursuit of overdues”

The notion of shared library materials — books, CDs, DVDs, etc. — is one that relies heavily on a social tenet we’re supposed to learn in kindergarten: if you borrow something, make sure you give it back.

Virtually all library patrons follow the rules, but the economic ripples caused by the 1 percent or so who don’t eventually become a significant storm surge.

Article in the NY Times comparing Jon Stewart’s America: The Book favorably (?) against today’s school history textbooks:

With a sendup of social-studies textbooks that is not merely for students, Stewart and the ”Daily Show” satirists have a lesson for champions of ”civic renewal”: thanks to all the partisan pugilism, kids are being served sanitized pablum in school — and that’s hardly a recipe for energizing our citizenry.

…Yet these satirists are definitely on the kids’ side. …it’s real textbooks that are a waste of time and money …The ”Daily Show” satirists are on to the deeper problem: the reductive, defensive spirit that pervades the whole textbook endeavor, with traditionalists and revisionists alike trapped into totting up inches devoted to Liliuokalani versus Lincoln. It’s readers who are truly short-changed

From http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA491141

After entering as a “bit player” among feudal lords, she became an honored, celebrated campus leader. Building and repositioning the library, Susan Nutter brought it from what one senior professor called “an embarrassment” to its current role and site, a central force and place in the academic enterprise at North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh. As Vice Provost and director of libraries, Nutter “has taken a middling library and made it into a model for the entire profession,” says her colleague Carla Stoffle, dean of libraries at the University of Arizona. “The NCSU libraries have come to be recognized across our campus as vital for the university’s success,” says NCSU provost James Oblinger. Despite these and many more achievements, she “supports and gives credit generously to others and is unduly modest about her own contributions,” says Karin Wittenborg, university librarian at the University of Virginia.

Professor Michael K. Stoskopf tells how, with her guidance, the NCSU faculty decided to forgo personal salary increases during trying financial times in North Carolina. They insisted that the money go to support the development of the NCSU library. “This generous gift made with enthusiasm by the entire university faculty was the catalyst that allowed the transformation of our library to one worthy of respect and admiration,” Stoskopf continues, adding, “It is as good an example as I can provide of Susan’s special abilities.”

Because of these achievements, and with these enthusiastic endorsements, the editors of LJ celebrate Nutter as the 2005 Library Journal Librarian of the Year.