past entry 25sep

Hi. OCLC responded to my email to them. They copied and pasted their press release into an email. Classy.

As It Happens, a CBC radio show, has a small radio spot on the Library Hotel vs OCLC dispute. [ thanks iboy ]

PATRIOT Watch: Send a fax to urge your senator to fix the PATRIOT Act.

PATRIOT Watch: The Maine Civil Liberties Union is sponsoring an all-day seminar on the USAPA. If you are in the area, please stop by. [ thanks aaron ]

Librarian Dolls Defend The Nation! An interesting article I am cited in, over at chicklit.

past entry 24sep

OCLC’s press release on the whole matter.

Banned Books Week over at Overdue Media.

PATRIOT Watch: Conservatives are really pulling out the stops on this Ashcroft vs Librarians dispute lately.

The unwillingness to keep vagrants out of libraries goes to the fundamental inability of leftist librarians to distinguish between maintaining minimal public standards and creeping fascism. [ thanks robert ]

The Sacramento Bee is doing a special report called Liberty in the Balance about the confusing overlap between civil liberties and national security. There have been two good articles about libraries, one about what present-day CA libraries are doing in the wake of the PATRIOT Act, and one about the Library Awareness Program. [ thanks pete ]

Just in case you want to check out the report I referred to the other day in which many librarians claimed to have been visited by law enforcement, it’s here. [ thanks george ]

Hey, it’s a moblog that seems to be all about pictures of books. [ thanks john ]

past entry 22sep

Hi. For some reason I am finding it easier to update this site now that I have a job. And I don’t even update it while I’m at work. I’m just more easily plugged in to things librarian, I suppose. To anyone who reads this site using RSSify via LISNews…. 20% of my traffic is suddenly coming from there. This site has a fair amount of readers, but not like that. Please consider setting your RSS reader to check for updates less frequently, or use one of the pre-made feeds that are linked above. I almost never update more than daily; setting a bot to check for updates every 5-30 minutes wastes bandwidth.

PATRIOT Watch: What do we need to get to the heart of this recent USAPA mess? Simple questions simply answered.

here’s the questions to ask your elected representatives to ask the Bush administration:

  • If these new powers are needed to fight terrorism, why aren’t they being used?
  • If these new powers aren’t needed to fight terrorism, why do you have them? And why did you misrepresent your reasons for seeking them?
  • If these powers have been used, why are you lying to us now?

Joe Janes talks about ALA-Toronto and the punch-in-the-gut that was the CIPA decision.

Speaking of faceted classification, there is the Bliss Classification System. [ thanks rteeter ]

past entry 20sep

Oh, hey, it’s banned books week. And again people debate the relevance of the name. Russ Kick who manages the very useful site The Memory Hole has written one of my favorite essays about BBW.

The majority of books on the Banned Books Week list haven’t been banned, but rather have been challenged. They are shelved in libraries and bookstores and included in school curricula across the nation. Virtually every book that is published can be purchased or checked out in the United States.

Or, as I like to call it Brand Books Week. Celebrate your freedom the American way, by shopping!

Lis has really pulled out the salient parts of this whole Ashcroft mess of late.

How to get Movable Type to do faceted classification.

Just Give it to Me Straight; A Case Against Filtering the Internet. [ thanks sethf ]

A real dilemma: being a library manager when only some of your employees are on strike…

What does it mean to be “too sexy” for an Ivy league library? Well, a lawsuit, for one. [ thanks jim ]