Category: access

Lynne Cheneyvp’s wife tells department of ed how to do their job, has educational pamphlets destroyed

Posted on by jessamyn

While I despair of ever getting decent headlines on newspaper stories about books, the words A modern book burning did catch my eye. The story is about Lynne Cheney, wife of the current VP who objected to the content in a pamphlet being published by the Department of Ed. The pamphlet entitled “Helping Your Child Learn History” [old version here, currently out of stock] apparently refers to the National Standards for History Guidelines which advocates a more “lumps and all” approach to history which encourages expanding the history focus to include the contributions of women, minorities, radicals and other less-popular figures of their times. Good news as well as bad news. As a result of her criticism, the Department of Ed, destroyed 300,000 of the pamphlets.

At the time, Lynne Cheney, the wife of now-Vice President Cheney, led a vociferous campaign complaining that the standards were not positive enough about America’s achievements and paid too little attention to figures such as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Paul Revere and Thomas Edison. At one point in the initial controversy, Cheney denounced the standards as “politicized history.” [thanks lee]

graphic novel removed from CA public library

Posted on by jessamyn

Stockton [CA] City Council is giving close scrutiny to the library focussing on age-appropriateness of unfiltered internet access and graphic novels like Phoebe Glockner’s A Child’s Life which they called a “how-to book for pedophiles” while at the same time objecting to its being available to children. Librarians agreed and removed the book from library shelves entirely. Glockner, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, has a few words to say about this on her own blog, and asks for advice. [thanks dan]

accessibility in library web sites in KY, a sad state of affairs

Posted on by jessamyn

Library Web Accessibility at Kentucky’s 4-Year Degree Granting Colleges and Universities a paper by a Kentucky web development librarian. Guess what, despite the fact that the ADA pretty much mandates accessible web sites, we’re not seeing them.

Based on low levels of compliance with the basic principles of Web accessibility and the potential of legal threats, institutions need to take accessibility issues more seriously. While the impetus to do so should fall under the rubric of professional ethics rather than avoiding a legal threat, either reason will suffice. Much like issues involving copyright, librarians embrace, on ethical terms, the protection of intellectual property while, at the same time, the threat of litigation hangs over our heads. Ethics may be important but they are also cheap. Litigation, on the other hand, is expensive. On issues such as standards, librarians understand how ignoring cataloging standards could have a negative impact on accessing collections. Can we afford to ignore Web standards when doing so impacts accessibility? [unalog]

government legislation concerning access to information

Posted on by jessamyn

Put your reading caps on if you care about access to government information. The Government Reform Committee Minority Office [i.e. the Democrats] have published a big chunky report entitled “Secrecy in the Bush Administration” Covering topics ranging from FOIA to the expansion of “national security” and “sensitive information” classifications to the administration’s reluctance or refusal to provide Congress with information necessary to their research and committee work. The ALA is mentioned on page 67, the USA PATRIOT Act on page seven.

For example, the National Security Archive is an independent research institute and library located at George Washington University, which collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through FOIA. As of early 2004, the National Security Archive had over 300 outstanding FOIA requests submitted in 2001, for which the government had provided no substantive response. [secrecy news]