Mock Turtle

The most unique war photographer

Editor & Publisher brings us the story of Yoshito Matsushige, who took the only surviving post-bomb photographs in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.


Matsushige wandered around Hiroshima for 10 hours, carrying one of the few cameras that survived the atomic bombing and two rolls of film with twenty-four possible exposures. This was no ordinary photo opportunity. He lined up one gripping shot after another but he could only push the shutter seven times.

When he was done he returned to his home and developed the pictures in the most primitive way, since every dark room in the city, including his own, had been destroyed. Under a star-filled sky, with the landscape around him littered with collapsed homes and the center of Hiroshima still smoldering in the distance, he washed his film in a radiated creek and hung it out to dry on the burned branch of a tree.

Five of the seven images came out, and they are all the world will ever know of what Hiroshima looked like on that day. Only Matsushige knows what the 17 photos he didn’t take would have looked like.

Read the whole piece by Greg Mitchell.

April 20, 2004 by Uncategorized

Particle physicists rescue rare vinyl recordings

The NewScientist.com news service reports a significant breakthrough in the preservation of classic audio recordings captured on aging vinyl. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have come up with a way to use highly sensitive optical instruments, originally designed to monitor subatomic particles, to clean up and restore old recordings without mechanical contact.

Read the article on the new high-tech, low-touch audio restoration technique and be sure to listen to the sample “before” and “after” clips of Leadbelly’s 1950 recording of “Goodnight Irene.”

April 20, 2004 by Legal Issues

Bowling Green State University Pop Culture Library to receive Raven Award

At the 58th annual Edgar Awards ceremony this April 29, the Mystery Writers of America will honor Bowling Green State University’s Ray and Pat Browne Library for Popular Culture Studies with a Raven Award for “commitment to preserve mystery fiction through a formidable and constantly growing collection of detective mystery novels and manuscripts.”

At the 58th annual Edgar Awards ceremony this April 29, the Mystery Writers of America will honor Bowling Green State University’s Ray and Pat Browne Library for Popular Culture Studies with a Raven Award for “commitment to preserve mystery fiction through a formidable and constantly growing collection of detective mystery novels and manuscripts.””It is very rare that libraries are recognized, so this is a wonderful, significant award,” said Dr. Lorraine Haricombe, BGSU dean of libraries. “It’s an honor that recognizes the commitment, preservation and collection efforts of everyone over the years who has been associated with the library and made it regionally, nationally and even internationally known. We hope the award will inspire more people to seek out the collection.”

In addition to murder mysteries and detective fiction, the Browne collection includes extensive materials related to: popular fiction; performing arts and entertainment; graphic arts and mass communications; sports; travel and recreation; teen culture and counterculture; folklore; wit and humor; science fiction, adventure, and ghost stories.

Read the press release on the Ascribe newswire.

March 12, 2004 by Academic Libraries Librarians Libraries

Blackmun’s papers opened on 5th anniversary of his death

The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s extensive records from 24 years on the court were opened Thursday, March 4, on the fifth anniversary of his death. Interested parties gathered in the reading room at the Library of Congress to rifle through boxes containing the documents.

It turns out that the Roe v. Wade decision, which Blackmun had written in 1973, came closer to being overturned in 1992 than any of us suspected, as the court deliberated the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey that year.

The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s extensive records from 24 years on the court were opened Thursday, March 4, on the fifth anniversary of his death. Interested parties gathered in the reading room at the Library of Congress to rifle through boxes containing the documents.

It turns out that the Roe v. Wade decision, which Blackmun had written in 1973, came closer to being overturned in 1992 than any of us suspected, as the court deliberated the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey that year.It has been more than ten years since the posthumous opening of Thurgood Marshall’s papers, revealing intimate details of the court’s inner workings. Blackmun, like Marshall, served 24 years on the court, retiring in 1994. He accumulated far more correspondence than Marshall. According to Washington lawyer David Frederick, Blackmun “took copious notes and never threw away any of his papers.”

Upon retirement, Justice Blackmun donated all 530,000 items in his personal archive to the Library of Congress, stipulating their release five years after his death.

Read more about the Blackmun papers’ revelations about the 1992 Casey ruling in this AP story, Papers: Roe v. Wade was almost overturned.

March 5, 2004 by Harry Potter Legal Issues Libraries

Nemo finds way to French court

Franck Le Calvez is suing Disney and animation studios Pixar for copyright infringement and breach of trademark. The French children’s book author has told a Paris court that the main fish character in the Disney film Finding Nemo, which has so far grossed $850 million, was a direct copy of a character he created: a cheerful orange-and-white clown fish named Pierrot.

Franck Le Calvez is suing Disney and animation studios Pixar for copyright infringement and breach of trademark. The French children’s book author has told a Paris court that the main fish character in the Disney film Finding Nemo, which has so far grossed $850 million, was a direct copy of a character he created: a cheerful orange-and-white clown fish named Pierrot.Le Calvez says that he registered Pierrot the Clown Fish — both character and story — with the French authors’ copyright association in 1995. The story, like Disney’s movie, features a young fish separated from his family. Lawyers for Le Calvez said the first 30,000 copies of Pierrot the Clown Fish, published in November 2002, had sold out. But a second edition in October 2003 did not sell well … because bookshops did not want to stock it alongside Disney’s Finding Nemo books, they said.

Read all about Pierrot vs. Nemo at The Guardian.

February 25, 2004 by Legal Issues

The Patriot Act is your friend

Kim Zetter at Wired News interviews Viet Dinh, the Vietnamese-born author of the USA Patriot Act. Dinh has been called a “political pit bull” and “a foot soldier” for Attorney General John Ashcroft. But the 36-year-old creator of the hotly contested USAPA prefers to be called an “attendant of freedom.”

Kim Zetter at Wired News interviews Viet Dinh, the Vietnamese-born author of the USA Patriot Act. Dinh has been called a “political pit bull” and “a foot soldier” for Attorney General John Ashcroft. But the 36-year-old creator of the hotly contested USAPA prefers to be called an “attendant of freedom.”In May 2001, Viet Dinh, a law professor at Georgetown University, was tapped by the Justice Department to work for two years as an assistant attorney general, working primarily on judicial nominations for the department. But three months later the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and Dinh was drafted to work on the USA Patriot Act, a bill that would give the government some of its most controversial surveillance powers. The bill, coupled with the government’s subsequent treatment of immigrants and native-born citizens, prompted critics to charge the administration with overthrowing “800 years of democratic tradition.”

Read Dinh’s defense of his inflammatory brainchild.

February 25, 2004 by Legal Issues

In bookstores and libraries, support builds for Patriot Act repeal

An Anonymous Patron points us to this story in the Lowell [Mass.] Sun:

In the week since a petition to repeal controversial portions of the USA Patriot Act was placed near bookstore cash registers, an estimated 1,000 Massachusetts residents have added their signatures.

The local sign-in sheets are among the thousands distributed nationwide to independent bookstores and libraries by the Campaign for Reader Privacy. The goal is to collect 1 million signatures in support of overturning section 215.

A bill co-sponsored by U.S. Reps. Marty Meehan, a Lowell Democrat, and John Olver, an Amherst Democrat, aims to strike the controversial provision from the law. The bill has the support of 144 House members, both Republicans and Democrats, and is currently before a Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism.

February 22, 2004 by Books Legal Issues Libraries

Fairview families long for a library

Just 15 minutes from Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, Fairview is one of the largest and fastest-growing communities in Henry County, Georgia. A significant influx of African-Americans has rapidly changed Fairview from a rural area of ranch houses on large lots to one of subdivisions, supermarkets and strip malls. But still no library.

Many Fairview residents drive 10 miles through Atlanta’s legendary traffic to a library branch in neighboring south DeKalb County. They would like to have a library a little closer to home. …

Just 15 minutes from Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, Fairview is one of the largest and fastest-growing communities in Henry County, Georgia. A significant influx of African-Americans has rapidly changed Fairview from a rural area of ranch houses on large lots to one of subdivisions, supermarkets and strip malls. But still no library.

Many Fairview residents drive 10 miles through Atlanta’s legendary traffic to a library branch in neighboring south DeKalb County. They would like to have a library a little closer to home. …About two years ago, Henry County commissioners agreed to include a library for the community of Fairview on a list of projects to be completed within the next five years. However, county commissioners earlier this week turned down a request to budget about $5.2 million for the library and other projects.

In light of the commissioners’ vote, community leaders met today at Fairview Elementary School to talk about the library again and to discuss steps they might take to resurrect the idea.

“We feel based on what we’ve seen in the past year, we are going to be left out when it comes to the expenditure of tax dollars,” said the Rev. Daniel Edwards, president of Henry County’s NAACP branch, who called for today’s meeting.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the whole story of Fairview’s quest for a library and other services.

February 21, 2004 by Librarians Libraries School Libraries

Send your Valentine a text message poem

The Scottish Poetry Library (SPL) has commissioned six of Scotland’s leading poets (including laureate Edwin Morgan) to compose love poems suitable for text messaging, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Ananova tells the story.

SPL director Robyn Marsack says, “There is a vast swathe of people aged between 18 and 35 who do not think poetry has a lot to offer them. Looking at all the people texting furiously on the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow, we thought of using mobile phone technology to make them reconsider.” Marsack also said the poets were intrigued by the challenge of writing within the constraints of 140 characters, including spaces.

The poems can be downloaded from the Scottish Poetry Library website and sent anonymously on February 14.

February 8, 2004 by Libraries

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