Ryan

ALA vs. federal webtapping

The American Library Association issued a press release yesterday announcing its opposition to the Justice Department’s move to bring broadband internet access within the scope of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act:

CALEA was passed in October 1994 to obligate telecommunications carriers to assist law enforcement in executing court-authorized electronic surveillance, such as wiretapping. In March, the DOJ, the FBI, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency petitioned the FCC to expand the coverage and strengthen the enforcement of CALEA.

[ALA states] that if the petition is granted, “innovation will be threatened, privacy diminished, and unnecessary costs imposed� on libraries and campuses that provide broadband connectivity. The groups also maintain that the expansion of CALEA could hinder the efficiency and security of existing applications and could require libraries to collect and retain more personally identifiable information about patron use, which would then be subject to requests under the USA Patriot Act.

Complete press release.

April 24, 2004 by American Library Association Internet Legal Issues Libraries

MPLS’s Hadley on funding cutbacks

Minneapolis Public Library director Katherine G. Hadley had an op-ed piece in yesterday’s Star Tribune re: the impact of last year’s budget cuts:

Since last fall, when the Library Board faced drastic budget reductions for 2004, hundreds of people in Minneapolis and beyond have written to tell us how important the Minneapolis Public Library is to their family, their business, their classroom. Many have also given generously out of their own pockets to help the library recover from the cutbacks in state funding that have forced huge reductions in staffing and hours of service . . .

In both the public and private sectors, the new fiscal reality demands new ways of doing business — often doing more with fewer resources. As well, the world of information is rapidly evolving. The public library is at the nexus of these intersecting trends.

Complete article (registration necesssary, USERNAME: lisnews, PASSWORD: library).

April 24, 2004 by Libraries

Google’s chastity belt too tight?

A critique of Google’s SafeSearch from CNET News featuring a quote from Librarians’ Index to the Internet’s Karen Schneider:

PartsExpress.com proudly touts itself as the Net’s No. 1 source for audio, video and speaker components–but online shoppers who rely on an optional feature in the Google search engine to block porn sites would never know it.

By an accident of spelling, the domain name of the Ohio electronics retailer includes an unfortunate string of letters, “sex,” which is enough to block the Web site from Google’s filtered results.

Complete story.

April 23, 2004 by Google Internet Libraries

Saloons once filled Denver’s library needs

A brief reflection on Denver’s saloon libraries of yore from the Rocky Mountain News:

It took 31 years after Denver’s 1858 birth for the town to open a free public library. Denver Public Library has made up for lost time since, becoming the nation’s No. 1 library from 1999 to 2001, according to the definitive Hennen’s American Public Library Rating index.

Then budget cuts reduced funding and staff, forcing the central library to close each Wednesday since July 1, 2003. Each of the 22 branches also closes one day a week.

At this rate Denverites will have to start going to saloons again for reading materials. In the town’s early days, saloons competed by offering goods and services, including reading rooms …

Complete article.

April 20, 2004 by Librarians Libraries

SAA et al on Weinstein nomination

The Society of American Archivists, The Association of Research Libararies, and others are expressing concern about the nomination of Allen Weinstein to the post of Archivist of the United States:

We are concerned about the sudden announcement on April 8, 2004, that the White House has nominated Allen Weinstein to become the next Archivist of the United States. Prior to the announcement, there was no consultation with professional organizations of archivists or historians. This is the first time since the National Archives and Records Administration was established as an independent agency that the process of nominating an Archivist of the United States has not been open for public discussion and input. We believe that Professor Weinstein must—through appropriate and public discussions and hearings—demonstrate his ability to meet the criteria that will qualify him to serve as Archivist of the United States.

Complete statement.

April 16, 2004 by Uncategorized

British Library mounts £10 million archives program

From Managing Information:

The Endangered Archives Programme is the largest of its kind ever undertaken in the world and will be administered by the British Library’s archives team in conjunction with a panel of international experts. The programme will be formally launched in the autumn and the first grants are expected to be made next year. Initial funding will enable the programme to run for about eight years, but it is hoped that this can be extended …

The Programme is a response to world-wide threats to historical and cultural records from wars, natural disasters, ignorance and neglect. Its aim is to preserve forever our knowledge of vital aspects of human society and activity. Grants will be used to help identify endangered records and re-locate them in institutional archives in the region to which they relate …

Complete article.

April 16, 2004 by Archives Librarians Libraries

Ghana’s library workers set to strike

A union representing Ghana’s library workers is promising “the mother of all strikes” unless
a conflict over salaries is resolved:

[Union representative Alex Sackitey] said this time round, the workers said, “enough is enough” and that they were going to stay away until their demands were met.

A section of the workers the paper spoke to claimed their wives had divorced them, owing to poor salaries and conditions of service. “Our children are also out of school because we cannot pay school fees,” one worker stressed.

[Library workers] were wearing red bands and chanting war songs at the Greater Accra Regional library in Accra when The Chronicle visited the premises.

Complete story from the Ghanian Chronicle via allAfrica.com.

April 3, 2004 by Librarians Libraries School Libraries

Post’s Fisher on D.C. Library board

As those of you living in Washington know, the D.C. Public Library is a neglected gem –
on Monday the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher pointed out part of the problem:

Too many of the mayor’s pipe dreams (leaded or unleaded) get clogged up and die. But now, the mayor’s agenda features something small enough to be achieved and big enough to make a difference — reviving the city’s sad library system. Two springs ago in this space, I detailed the pathetic state of the libraries — unkempt, thin collections; sagging buildings; an utter failure to capitalize on the system’s stellar real estate holdings.

But as often happens in Washington, a wall of political interests stood between a vision and progress. Biggest obstacle: the library’s board of trustees, whose members are, according to Leonard Minsky, director of [The D.C. Library Renaissance Project], “illiterate, dysfunctional, so famously incompetent that nobody in the country wants to work with them.”

Complete story. Fisher’s faith in developers is naive at best, but he’s right that the current board is a major stumbling block to real change.

March 19, 2004 by Librarians Libraries

$80 million for Seattle Public Library

From the Seattle Times:

In 1998, just weeks after voters agreed to spend $196 million to build a new downtown library and improve branch libraries, the Seattle Public Library Foundation announced an ambitious goal of raising $60 million in private money.

When former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi announced his $3 million gift yesterday, that put the total raised at more than $80 million — far exceeding what the foundation had dreamed of.

“This is more than any public library in the country,” said Terry Collings, executive director of the foundation …

Complete article

March 19, 2004 by Librarians Libraries

Hentoff on Cuban libraries

From the Village Voice:

A drive is under way to gather a million signatures by May 4 in support of bills in Congress to amend Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. The bills seek to restore the privacy safeguards in the Constitution that John Ashcroft eliminated by giving the FBI the power to get bookstore and library records through the compliant secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, without informing readers, book buyers, the press, or anyone else.

Harvesting these protesting signatures are 40 organizations and 81 individual companies, including libraries, bookstores, book publishers, as well as writers, and other ardent advocates of everyone’s freedom to read …

So far as I know, in this congregation of freedom-to-read activists, not one on the list—except for PEN—has said or done anything about the torment that 10 independent librarians in Cuba are undergoing in Fidel Castro’s gulag, along with 65 other pro-democracy dissidents rounded up in the dictator’s crackdown in April last year.

More.

March 6, 2004 by Libraries

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