December 2003

Resolution for 2004: Share LISNews with a Friend

Gentle readers, please help us spread the word, LISNews is here for all of us. Feel free to forward this message to a friend, or a discussion list, like your state library association, library school, or local system.


LISNews, established in 1999, is one of the oldest and most popular library weblogs. LISNews includes librarians and many others with an interest in libraries and information science.

LISNews, managed by volunteer librarians from across the globe, is visited by close to 5,000 people a day, and includes a mailing list of almost 2,500. LISNews focuses on news stories from around the world that are of interest to librarians. Stories that impact our professional and personal lives are shared and discussed on the site through out the day. LISNews has an archive of almost 10,000 stories dating back to 1999.

Toxic mold in Guam school library blamed for illnesses, death

The buildup of toxic mold in the library of Jose Rios Middle School in Guam may have been the cause of one death and several cases of respiratory illness among staff members, according to the Guam Federation of Teachers. Administrators at the school and the Department of Education appear reluctant to discuss the issue, claiming only that they never received notice of any concerns regarding the mold. However, the school librarian reported the problem in a letter dated October 17. Officials say that school will reopen on schedule January 5. Get the whole story from KUAM TV-8 News.

2003 Dublin Core Conference Summary

Boxes & Arrows has the 2003 Dublin Core Conference Summary.

“Overall the conference showed lots of enthusiasm in the use of standardized metadata for future inter-operability between institutions such as libraries, government agencies, and corporations. It was interesting to hear various DC people acknowledge that they needed more awareness of how DC was being used in non-traditional settings and ways, such as in corporations, with hardware, and in conjunction with other standards. It will be exciting to see how Dublin Core metadata and other metadata standards start to share a common ground with the information architecture community.

U.S. gives college $7.5 million to build `environmentally friendly’ library

From the Chicago Tribune:

Officials at tiny Judson College, an evangelical Christian school in Elgin, hope a $7.5 million federal grant for a new “environmentally friendly” library and academic center will bring the institution recognition for energy-efficient architecture.

The money, secured by U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), in whose district the college is located, will go toward construction of a $16 million library and division of art, design and architecture.

Judson President Jerry Cain believes the 80,000-square-foot building will set the standard for environmentally friendly buildings. “This will raise our profile and will position us as a leader in environmental architecture,” he said.

al-Manac

It sounds like a demented Jeff Foxworthy comedy routine: “If you’re driving around town with an almanac… you might be a terrorist.”

But the FBI isn’t kidding: if you’re stopped by a cop who notices an almanac in your car, you could be on your way to assist the police with some enquiries. They say that almanacs contain information about various cities and landmarks, along with photographs and maps. Horrors!

Would this be a good time to point out that the highest-ranked almanac in Google Directory’s list of almanacs is offered by a secretive organization implicated in violent plots around the world?

UPDATE: yes, it’s a duplicate — I *swear* a search for “almanac” failed to turn up the SMC/Blake article!

Update: 12/30 14:42 EST by B:The LISNews search engine is less than useful most of the time, but Ben’s post was better than mine so I’m inclined to let it be. That should not stop anyone from making fun of Ben for missing the first one 😉
The Original post has some comments worth reading. There’s been about a million new stories published with some interesting titles:

“People with almanacs may be terrorists, FBI says”

“The Osama Farmer’s Almanac”

“Read alert as US lists books as terrorist tools”

“Beware of terrorists with almanacs”

and “Armed with an almanac? The FBI has its eye on you”

Great children’s books have the best beginnings

Nice Column by CAROLINE PARR, coordinator of children’s services for Central Rappahannock Regional Library on great openings.

She highlights some of the best beginnings of favorite children’s books.

“Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. We’re moving today. I’m so scared God. I’ve never lived anywhere but here. Suppose I hate my new school? Suppose everybody there hates me? Please help me God. Don’t let New Jersey be too horrible. Thank you.”

Truth seekers – Reference librarians hunt down the most obscure facts

One From Columbian.com takes a nice look at the life of a reference librarian.

They say you can find all the answers by heading for the reference desk at your local library, where the person behind the counter is a detective, archaeologist and interpreter all in one. The most successful reference librarians combine a terrier’s persistence with an investigator’s flair for sleuthing. And they can be justifiably proud of their successes.

“We could look in a reference section and call other agencies and do interlibrary loans and feel you came to a reasonable end to things,” she said. “Now there’s an infinite number of things, millions of new Web pages added every day.”
https://lisnews.org/2003/12/
lisnews.org
CC-MAIN-2024-22
65206
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:5WF64LHJUWDLPJQYNZLSNCAJVY5QY24G
<urn:uuid:177002c2-23be-4597-9990-a89fda0bf57f>
2024-05-28T13:46:05Z
172.67.147.1
text/html
sha1:5D7CEOPID3SMR3RYSKGNDCOYHYBLSEGG
<urn:uuid:14233178-700b-4eeb-92f8-815006944c50>
https://lisnews.org/2003/12/
response
<urn:uuid:0844867e-10b2-465b-8d8f-31965743e570>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2024-22
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for May 2024
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-76
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.5-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/