The Computer, Now a Fixture In U.S. Homes

Newsday has this article on a study by the National Science Foundation which states that 54% of homes now have computers.\"If you don\'t have a computer in your home, you\'re in the minority nationally, a federal poll has found. For the first time, more than half of American adults now have home computers, according to a National Science Foundation survey. And just under half are using their computers to go online.\" -- Read More

Schulz to receive Congressional Gold Medal

Everyone\'s favorite comic strip is getting an medal. Here is an Article just telling everyone that Charles Schulz will get the medal he always wanted.

\"President Bill Clinton signed a bill Tuesday giving the creator of the \"Peanuts\" comic strip the Congressional Gold Medal, the country\'s highest civilian honor and the one thing that Schulz -- a World War II veteran -- had desired.\"  -- Read More

Bookstores plan marketing extravaganza for fourth Harry Potter book

CNN.com has the exciting news about Harry Potter coming soon with the fourth book. Here is an Article telling you how some of the bookstores are going to market the book.

\"Many merchants are staying open until the early morning hours of July 8, when the as-yet untitled book is released. Others are organizing Harry Potter-themed parties with magic shows and live owls. Internet retail giant Amazon.com, meanwhile, is countering by promising FedEx quick delivery for up to 250,000 online shoppers.\"  -- Read More

A librarian\'s changing job description?

Have our job descriptions changed as a result of new technologies? I would agree with most who say that they have, as we need to know about online resources, evaluating those resources, navigating the web, and training our customers in their use. However, I think that this change should not uproot the basic foundations of present day librarianship, giving the customers what they want with the best possible service... -- Read More

To Fee or not to Fee

Should public libraries charge for services to not district residents? According to this article from Michican Live, one library district in Michigan may not have a choice.
\"If the county system closes, Grand Rapids most likely would become inundated. And possibly, those new users would deprive city residents, who pay a 2.15-mil tax, use of a large number of materials.\" -- Read More

Shhh! The Librarian Can Talk

Do librarians wear a sign that says \"harass me,
stereotype, me, annoy me?\" Here are just a few of the
comments I have heard in my short librarian career so
far. The questions are real but my replies are not.


Are you going to a library conference because a Dewey
Decimal number was changed?
My reply was do you know the dewey number for what I
think you are..uh, ignorant.


Do you have to go to school to be a librarian?
No, did you go to school for journalism to be able to ask
me a fascinating question like that because inquiring
minds want to know. -- Read More

Battle of the Directories: Yahoo vs. ODP

Less popular than NFL Europe, much less accurate than Tiger Woods, and even more unfair than Judge Judy: it\'s my showdown between Yahoo! and ODP. -- Read More

Old books of Importance

R Hannden writes : \"An old work by Archimedes is
now a new work. An unique copy of a long-lost treatise
on mathematics by Archimedes has been discovered.
The 10th century manuscript, entitled \"Method,\" had
been erased and used as a prayer book for 12th
century monks, who preserved the work through the
centuries until it was re-discovered in 1881, then lost
again until only recently. Read the strange and
fascinating history of this curious and unique book in
the article by Reviel Netz, \"The Origins of Mathematical
Physics: New Light on an Old Question.\" Physics
Today, volume 53, number 6, pages 32-37, or available
online at: aip.org

20% of children online solicited for cybersex

The Star Tribune has this scary article about a study that concluded that 1 in 5 children who are online get solicited for cybersex...3% of which happens in libraries.
\"The congressional study, the first scientific examination of risks to children online, also found that 1 in 4 children encountered pornographic pictures while researching homework topics or checking their e-mail. Of the 1,500 children, ages 10 to 17, surveyed in the study, teenage girls were most likely to be victims of sexual approaches, while teenage boys were most likely to accidentally come across porn\" -- Read More

Smut Filter Blocks All But Smut

This Story from Wired tells about a filterware product that could supposedly tell the difference between a naughty picture, and one that wasn\'t. The company, called Exotrope Inc., introduced its \"BAIR\" program last year, to much fanfare, but Wired ran some tests, and it turns out the saftware does not perform as advertised.

\"I agree with you. There\'s something wrong,\" says Dave Epler, Exotrope operations manager. \"That\'s not the way our image server is supposed to be working.\" -- Read More

You Gotta Love it...Librarian Turns 100

The Chicago Tribune has this fantastic article about a high school librarian who turned 100 years of age. Her gifts include Willard Scott announcing her name on NBC, she had a big party, and she had a library named after her.
I love reading these stories.\"\"Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass,\" Timuel D. Black, another former DuSable student, said. \"She gave us not only the books to read, but the personalities to guide us.\" On her birthday last year, DuSable renamed its 25,000-book library for her.\" -- Read More

Copyright Advocates Picket at LOC

The Salt Lake Tribune has this article on computers programmers picketing at the U.S. Copyright office. It includes a complete breakdown on the current issues surrounding copyright.
\"For 103 years, this niche of the Library of Congress has overseen the registration and cataloging of books, music, movies, architectural drawings and any other creative works that can be copyrighted. Its staff toiled in obscurity, with controversies rare and protests unheard of.
Then came the Internet... -- Read More

questia question

First NetLibrary.com now questia. E-texts in abbundance to provide new challenges to public libraries.

Questia is building an online service to provide access to the full text of hundreds of thousands of books, journals and periodicals, as well as tools to easily use this information. Their primary market appears to be liberal arts undergraduates that prefer the net to the physical library and have amounts of money to burn. As an after thought, they may market to libraries, both public and academic.

-- Read More

Hyperlinks are patented

Saw this over on Slashdot today. British Telecom is planning on enforcing the patent they have on Hyperlinking. The Patent is on the IBM patent database and looks to be real. The original story is on nothingventured.com. They plan on going after US ISP\'s to collect the $$. All I can say is UGH!!!

Web Only GPO

The Southbend Tribune is running a Story on a congressional bill that will slash funding for the Government Printing Office. This is going to eliminate millions of government documents available to the public at Federal Depository Libraries. The Feds are proposing web ONLY access to all the docs.

\"Some materials are so critical to citizen access, people are going to want to use them in print version,\" said Michael Lutes, depository librarian at the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame has been part of the Federal Depository Library Program since 1883. -- Read More

Canadian Heritage Committee Issues Report on Book

Cabot writes \"The Heritage Committee of the Canadian House of Commons has issued its report on the book industry. Of note is the chapter on libraries, preservation and access. Among the recommendations are:

- the Department of Canadian Heritage develop and fund a set of comprehensive tools for measuring the activities of libraries in the form of valid and up-to-date statistics relating to library funding, library spending and library usage by Canadians, including print-disabled Canadians.

- Government of Canada, in conjunction with the provinces and in discussion with the
library community, Canada\'s publishers, wholesalers and booksellers, offer incentives for Canadian libraries to purchase more of their books from Canadian suppliers.

- Government of Canada provide additional funding to the National Library of Canada, beginning in the fiscal year 2000-2001, so that its AMICUS services (the union catalogue) may be provided at no cost to its users.

The Report can be found on-line at:
parl.gc.ca \"

Is Linking Illegal?

The NY Times has this Story on the legalities of linking. As more lawyers get invovled, and more people act like idiots, the legalities of linking become more and more complex. Now it seems that it may or may not be illegal to link to illegal material.

“Liability for a person’s linking to alleged wrongful content is really the next big thing” on the cyberlaw horizon, said Mark Sableman, a lawyer in St. Louis who specializes in new media law and who has written scholarly articles on the legal aspects of linking. -- Read More

Top 100 Banned Books

ALA\'s List of the most banned or challenged books of the 90\'s is out. And the top 5 are...


1. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite


2. Scary Story (Series) by Alvin Schwartz


3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou


4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain


5. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier -- Read More

Books Unbound, Life Unraveled

John Updike has written a fantastic op-ed piece for the New York Times about the sanctity of books what he would miss if they cease to exist.\"...already much of the written communication that used to be handled by letters, newspapers and magazines has shifted to computer screens and to the vast digital library available over the Internet. If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it.\" -- Read More

Are Librarians Crusaders?

Are librarians crusaders? While surfing the Internet, I
discovered this interesting article (http://www.slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~khtully/crusad.ht
m
) about Librarians as Information Crusaders.
Yes, librarians are true crusaders and for many things
besides information. Just a few of the things I can
think of that librarians crusade for are: more funding for
our libraries, better pay, and more support for our
profession. Why does it seem like much of what a
librarian does is a challenge or a battle. Whatever
happened to ask and you shall receive? -- Read More

Syndicate content Syndicate content
http://lisnews.org/node?page=1642
lisnews.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-06
86733
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:ASXP57S7XH7KIA5NGI234GAYKQIVK6FX
<urn:uuid:a98d82f8-abd6-4f79-b991-fb56026ae7fb>
2015-01-31T17:53:51Z
152.19.134.41
sha1:2MCHXIZ7PFGS3DFRJIFDC2LHTCE4N5EO
<urn:uuid:dc793d86-4cb4-4413-b4fc-aa40c1e0bd54>
http://lisnews.org/node?page=1642
length
response
<urn:uuid:43b3f464-327e-445b-b2a9-c189fdaf2b06>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-06
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for January 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf