American Libraries articles from August 2005

American Libraries archives from August 2005

Why Library Education Matters
August 1, 2005... Libraries and librarians face a number of challenges. Who is going to replace all of the librarians who will retire in the next 10 years? Will they even be replaced? How can we ensure that our profession becomes more diverse and "looks like...

Cultural program fund monies still needed.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The deadline has been extended until September 15 for contributions to the Cultural Communities Fund, which is administered by ALA's PPO (AL, May, p. 7). Nearly $264,000 in contributions is still needed to receive matching funds through the...

ALA collaborates on mapping project.(ALA News)(American Library Association)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... A new collaboration between ALA and Florida State University in Tallahassee enables users to probe online into the number of public libraries in a specific congressional district and who the U.S. representative is. FSU's Public Library...

New Jewish lit award offered.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... ALA's RUSA, Arthur Brody, and the Brodart Foundation have established the Sophie Brody Medal to honor the U.S. author of the most distinguished contribution to Jewish literature for adults. The first award will be presented in June 2006. ...

ALA named NISO Maintenance Agency.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... ALA's ORS has assumed a five-year responsibility as the National Information Standards Organization's (NISO) Maintenance Agency for the Information Services and Use: Metrics and Statistics for Libraries and Information Providers--Data...

Scholastic expands Pura Belpre support.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Scholastic has developed a special promotional video in expanded support of the Pura Belpre Award as part of a broader three-year commitment to help build the award's endowment. The publishing company's Weston Woods division will debut...

Festschrift planned to honor Conable.(ALA News)(Gordon M. Conable)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... A festschrift on the subject of intellectual freedom is being created to honor former Freedom to Read Foundation president Gordon M. Conable, who died suddenly January 12 (AL, Mar., p. 53). Possible topics include, but are not limited to:...

Publishers donate books for teen read.(ALA News)(Young Adult Library Services Association)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Lerner, Scholastic, and Orca book publishers are donating books to librarians and educators who plan to celebrate YALSA's Teen Reed Week (TRW). October 16-22 (AL, June/July, p. 13). Lerner will donate one new biography to librarians and...

Seattle next "Lawyers for Libraries" stop.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... ALA's OIF will host the northwest regional "Lawyers for Libraries" training institute November 17 in Seattle. This is the seventh in a series of regional institutes that followed two national institutes in 1997 and 1998. Primarily...

"Smartest Card" enters second year.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... September's Library Card Sign-up Month will mark the second anniversary of PLA's "The Smartest Card. Get One. Use it. @ your library" campaign. The campaign message will be the focus of national publicity materials distributed by ALA's...

Libraries receive latest Oprah pick.(ALA News)(Oprah Winfrey)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Through a continuing partnership with Oprah's Book Club, ALA organizational library members received free copies of the club's entire "A Summer of Faulkner" selections, three novels by William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury,...

Logitech funds new literacy toolkit.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Libraries, Learning, and Literacy in the 21st Century, a new toolkit for literacy advocates, is included with this issue of American Libraries. The toolkit, also available as a downloadable PDF from www.ala.org/21stcenturyliteracy/,...

Denver creates student chapter.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The University of Denver's Library and Information Science program has become ALA's 54th student chapter. Student members at the MLIS level and beyond are eligible to form official student chapter groups at schools offering ALA-accredited...

ALSC names fantasy book favorites.(ALA News)(Association for Library Service to Children)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... ALSC has developed a recommended-reading list to accompany the recent release of the J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Selected titles include L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz (Michael Neugebauer Books, 1996),...

Advocacy webinar now online.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... A web-based seminar, or webinar, of ALA's Advocacy Institute, which took place during Annual Conference in Chicago, is available at www.ala.org/issues&advocacy/ for a limited time. Targeting beginning library advocates, the institute...

Alexander Hamilton exhibitors selected.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Forty libraries have been selected to host ALA's PPO traveling exhibition Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America which examines the Founding Father's role during the Revolutionary War and founding period (1774-1804). The...

Presidential tour.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... PRESIDENTIAL TOUR. ALA student chapter members from the University of California at Los Angeles join ALA President Carol Brey-Casiano (seated, middle) April 18 during a campus visit, which included a tour and talk with Information Studies...

Call her doctor Krug.(ALA News)(Judith Krug)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... CALL HER DOCTOR KRUG. ALA OIF Director Judith Krug (center) joins University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign officials May 14 after receiving an honorary doctor of humane letters degree during the university's 134th commencement. "It is...

It's Your Freedom.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... IT'S YOUR FREEDOM We're Talking About, Celebrating Your Freedom to Read is the theme of the 23rd observance of ALA OIF's Banned Books Week, September 24-October 1. The 2005 BBW kit, which is $35, includes 100 bookmarks (pictured), three...

LAMA Nurtures Tomorrow's Leaders
August 1, 2005... The Library Administration and Management Association is not just for library directors anymore. Among ALA's 11 divisions, LAMA boasts the most diverse membership--public, academic, and special librarians; architects, consultants, and vendors;...

Building Tomorrow's Libraries Today
August 1, 2005... Building tomorrow's libraries today will be the focus of ALA's new Vice President/President-elect Leslie Burger when she assumes her presidential duties in July 2006 (AL, June/July, p. 6). In a June 17 American Libraries interview, Burger,...

ALA Served as Training Ground
August 1, 2005... Susan Roman, the new dean of Dominican University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science in River Forest, Illinois, said "everything I learned at ALA is applicable" to her new position. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "I don't think I...

Congress Advances Patriot Act Reauthorization
August 1, 2005... With President Bush calling to have a bill to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act on his desk ready for signing September 11, Congress quickly began considering a smorgasbord of proposals this summer on some of the most controversial provisions set...

Library groups accept high court's Grokster decision.(NEWS FRONTS WASHINGTON)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled June 27 that distributors of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks can be held liable for copyright infringement if they actively encourage acts of infringement by users of their systems. In August...

IMLS Funds $21 Million in Recruitment Programs
August 1, 2005... The Institute of Museum and Library Services announced the awarding of 38 grants totaling nearly $21.1 million June 28 as part of its Librarians for the 21st Century program. The grants will fund recruitment programs by libraries, universities,...

Center for Democracy and Technology.(Washington on the Web)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Center for Democracy and Technology has launched Open CRS (www.opencrs.com), a searchable database of Congressional Research Service reports in the public domain. CDT asserts that while taxpayers spend nearly $100 million a year to fund...

Library of Congress.(Washington on the Web)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Library of Congress recently announced it has joined Internet2 (www.internet2.edu), an advanced networking consortium of more than 200 universities working with industry and government. LC will use Internet2's network--which is more than...

Metropolitan Library System.(Washington on the Web)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Metropolitan Library System, a regional library consortium in the Chicago area, has partnered with Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-III.) to create a website focusing on legislative information aimed at kids, parents, and teachers. Accessible from...

Gay Pride Exhibit Leads to Countywide Ban
August 1, 2005... A library school student's display of gay-themed young adult books in a public library branch for Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in June has sparked a controversy that resulted in an official ban on promoting gay pride events in Hillsborough...

Publishers Question Google Print Library Project
August 1, 2005... Citing copyright concerns, the Association of American Publishers has asked Google to suspend for six months its project to digitize books from the collections of several major research libraries--including Harvard, Stanford, and the University...

States See Boost in Library Funding
August 1, 2005... Despite economic woes, libraries in several states received good news in this year's round of budget battles. The budget signed by Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell July 7 includes $61.3 million in state aid to libraries--a 6% increase over last...

Niagara Falls Public Library Faces Closure
August 1, 2005... Following the defeat of a public referendum that would have allowed it to survive a million-dollar cut the city made to its budget last year, the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Public Library and its LaSalle branch could close their doors for good unless...

Inappropriate-Materials Resolutions Fail
August 1, 2005... Lawmakers in Louisiana defeated May 24 a nonbinding resolution that called for public libraries to make access adults-only for "age-inappropriate materials that are publicly cataloged." The Committee on Municipal, Parochial, and Cultural Affairs...

Utah Bookstores, ISPs Challenge Antiporn Law
August 1, 2005... A group of 14 Utah bookstores, internet service providers, and free-speech groups filed a challenge June 9 in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City to the state's new antiporn statute. The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, the Freedom to...

Sculpture for Georgia Library Has City Council Flustered
August 1, 2005... Although the Muscogee County (Ga.) Library Board had agreed on purchasing a metal sculpture for the new Columbus Public Library last October, it wasn't until a photo of the 35-foot, free-standing abstraction appeared in the May 27 Columbus...

Naperville launches biometric ID system.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Naperville (Ill.) Public Library board approved a $40,646 contract May 18 with a local technology firm to install biometric scanners on its public internet computers. The scanners, to be installed in August, replace the current system of...

Florida officials order restricted library shelves.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Commissioner Randy Harris has countered criticism of a new policy in place at the Marion County (Fla.) Public Library System that requires books inappropriate for children 17 and under to be shelved in a restricted area. The commission...

Board rejects labeling explicit YA books.(NEWS FRONTS)(Guilderland, New York)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Guilderland (N.Y.) Public Library board members June 9 rejected 7-1 a proposal that would have required staff to label new teen books containing sexually explicit passages with an orange "PG" label. Trustee John Daly initially proposed...

No RFID for SFPL; State ban softened.(NEWS FRONTS)(radio frequency identification devices)(San Francisco Public Library)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The city's budget committee approved increased funding of 5% for the San Francisco Public Library in a late-night budget meeting June 30, but rejected 4-1 the library's request for $680,000 to phase in microchip circulation technology at the...

Multnomah Library Losses Due to Inactive Security Gates
August 1, 2005... The Multnomah County (Oreg.) Library is in the midst of a security review after officials determined that 18,786 items--0.8% of its collection of 2.4 million items--had been reported missing in the first half of 2005. The library has also...

Chicago branches are booming.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... As libraries in other parts of the country are struggling to preserve funding for hours and staff, Chicago's library system is in the midst of its largest single-year expansion. Chicago Public Library officials report that the city will add...

Utah library workers walk out over merger.(NEWS FRONTS)(Kaysville, Utah)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Kaysville (Utah) City Library workers walked off the job in a sickout July 6 to protest a 3-2 decision by the city council a day earlier to merge the library with the Davis County system. Four full-time and seven part-time employees could...

Bancroft gets retrofitted.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The University of California at Berkeley's Bancroft Library closed its doors June 1 to move its entire collection to temporary quarters in preparation for a $64-million seismic upgrade and renovation. Most of the library's 500,000 books, 50...

Chicago plans expansion.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The University of Chicago is planning a $42-million, 40,000-square-foot expansion of its Regenstein Library, a project that will allow the facility to house 8 million volumes and make it the largest research library under a single roof in...

Hampden library closes after override failure.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The 114-year-old Hampden (Mass.) Free Public Library closed its doors June 30 after voters failed to approve a May 16 Proposition 2 1/2 override that would have included $108,000 to keep it open another year. Massachusetts Proposition 2 1/2...

JFK materials recovered.(NEWS FRONTS)(John F. Kennedy)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Thousands of President John F. Kennedy's documents and artifacts were returned to the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston July 13. The materials were confiscated after Kennedy's death by his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, who had been...

Group sues to pray in library.(NEWS FRONTS)
August 1, 2005... Liberty Counsel, a legal defense organization based in Orlando, Florida, that takes on religious-rights cases, filed a lawsuit June 16 in U.S. District Court against the Rampart Library District near Colorado Springs, Colorado, over its...

Philadelphia funds restored.(NEWS FRONTS)
August 1, 2005... The Philadelphia city council May 25 approved a revised budget submitted by Mayor John Street that restores $3.5 million in funding for the Free Library of Philadelphia. The additional dollars will allow the library to maintain full service...

Money returns to Medina.(NEWS FRONTS)(District Library)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Medina County (Ohio) District Library now has all its tax money back after a bank error caused $192,000 in state funding to be deposited into the account of a cowboy boot company in Tennessee. National City Bank in Cleveland, which holds...

Meeting-room appeal.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Officials in Contra Costa County, California, have appealed a federal judge's May 23 ruling that says the county library cannot ban religious services in its meeting rooms, County Librarian Anne Cain has confirmed to American Libraries. The...

Sirsi/Dynix merger.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The executive officers of two major vendors of integrated library systems announced June 21 that the two corporations were merging to form a single company. Sirsi CEO Patrick C. Sommers and Dynix CEO Jack Blount said the new company,...

Providence wants reform.(NEWS FRONTS)(Providence Public Library )(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... A library advocacy group sponsored a rally June 13 at Providence (R.I.) City Hall to call for basic changes in the makeup of the city library's board of trustees. The Library Reform Group, created in 2004 after the city council urged the...

Alberta drops keylogging.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... An Alberta privacy commissioner ruled June 30 that a library's use of keystroke logging software to monitor employee computer use violates Canadian law. Patricia Silver, director of the Parkland Regional Library in Lacombe, Alberta, had...

Harvard wants worker to pay.(NEWS FRONTS)(Harvard University)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Harvard University attorneys filed a motion June 28 seeking $3,319 in reimbursement court costs from Desiree Goodwin, the Harvard library assistant who lost a federal discrimination lawsuit against the university in April (AL, May, p. 18-19)....

Illinois groups unite.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Three consortia serving academic libraries in Illinois have merged to form a new organization under the direction of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Officially launched July 1, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries...

Tobacco ads stripped.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Tobacco advertising will be removed from school library editions of Time, Newsweek, People, and Sports Illustrated as part of an agreement between publishers, tobacco companies, and the state attorneys general. The action follows a...

Aligned in Alexandria.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... ALIGNED IN ALEXANDRIA. First Lady Laura Bush tours the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt May 24, with (to her right) Director Ismail Serageldin and (to her left) Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak and Chief Librarian Sohair Wastawy. Bush...

Not in Kansas anymore.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE. Members of the Kansas Army National Guard's 891st Engineer Battalion visit the new library at Camp Sapper II in Iraq. The Iola (Kans.) Public Library donated many of the books in the new library, which was unofficially...

Presidential approval.(NEWS FRONTS)(Hamid Karzai)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan browses through a book of photographs at the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. During his daylong visit to the university May 25, Karzai was...

Marked for history.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... MARKED FOR HISTORY. Dana Russell shares a park bench with a sculpture of Mark Twain and his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn dedicated April 30 at Fort Bend County's Cinco Ranch branch in Katy, Texas. The artwork, donated to the library by...

Buck stops here.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... BUCK STOPS HERE. Baseball great Buck O'Neil signs autographs at the North Miami (Fla.) Public Library June 11. O'Neil, 93, played with and managed the Kansas City Monarchs from 1938 to 1955 and teamed with the legendary Satchel Paige during...

Plate pride.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... PLATE PRIDE. State Librarian Janet M. Welch and New York Library Association President Rocco Staino, joined by several young patrons, introduce the State Department of Motor Vehicles "Love Your Library" license plate June 29. Proceeds from...

Plumes on parade.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... PLUMES ON PARADE. The Junkanoos demonstrate a West Indian carnival processional May 21 as part of the Miami-Dade (Fla.) Public Library's Art of Storytelling event, which also included professional storytellers, author appearances, and...

Random winners.(NEWS FRONTS)(Random House Audio Publishing Group)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... RANDOM WINNERS. Random House Publishing awards an appearance by Wild About Books (back row, center) author Judy Sierra and illustrator Marc Brown to the children's department of Avon Lake (Ohio) Public Library. Sierra and Brown regaled some...

Exploring Asian cultures.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... EXPLORING ASIAN CULTURES. A dance featuring a 70-foot Chinese dragon kicks off the third annual Tulsa (Okla.) City-County Library Asian-American Festival June 4. More than 1,700 people participated in events that included origami, henna hand...

Arkansas parent challenges multiple titles.(CENSORSHIP WATCH)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The National Coalition Against Censorship has characterized a Fayetteville, Arkansas, parent's challenge to dozens of school-library books as "open[ing] the floodgates to unending demands." NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin wrote July 12 to...

Playboy stays put in Illinois.(CENSORSHIP WATCH)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Oak Lawn (Ill.) Public Library board unanimously approved June 21 the retention of Playboy magazine in the library collection despite the reconsideration request of area resident Mark Decker. The father of three, Decker said in the June...

Library resists pulling gay papers.(CENSORSHIP WATCH)(Upper Arlington, Ohio)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The Upper Arlington (Ohio) Public Library board announced July 12 that it was reexamining its policy on distributing any free newspapers in the wake of demands by several area residents that the library stop making available the gay-interest...

Swords and sorcery in the stacks.(IDEA)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Nikol Price, a youth librarian in the Foothills branch of the Glendale (Ariz.) Public Library, has discovered a way to get teens into her library and build an interest in learning. In January 2003, she began running a game of Dungeons and...

Cheers.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... * June 1 Braille Institute Library Services of Los Angeles received the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped's Network Library of the Year award. * Brooklyn Public Library won a "Best of New York" award from the...

By the numbers.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... 10% Increase in number, to 15.6 million, of federal documents the Information Security Oversight Office reported as being classified last year, and 34% Drop in number of pages declassified last year, to 28.4 million--Associated Press,...

Mission to Uzbekistan
August 1, 2005... Following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Uzbek librarians have been working to turn what were essentially repositories of government information for official use only into true public libraries. Although citizens of his country...

SLA Annual Conference: Information Professionals Intent on Impact
August 1, 2005... The idea of 5,200 librarians descending on Toronto brings many an image to the active mind: serious faces and tight buns (the hairstyle, that is), sensible shoes and a whole lot of shushing, for starters." With this predictably uninformed...

MLA Annual Meeting: Medical Librarians Focus on Cultural Transformation
August 1, 2005... Futuro Magnifico! Celebrating Our Diversity" was the rallying cry for some 2,400 health-information librarians who convened May 14-19 in San Antonio for the Medical Library Association (MLA) Annual Meeting and Exhibition. Among the many programs...

Canadian Library Association Annual Conference: Soggy Calgary Fails to Dampen Spirits
August 1, 2005... Calgary, Alberta, hosted the 60th annual conference of the Canadian Library Association June 15-18. Torrential rain, flooding, and the declaration of a state of emergency didn't dampen the warm Calgary hospitality or the spirits of the 1,000...

BookExpo America: Publishing Industry Show Draws 2,200 Librarians
August 1, 2005... For better or worse, libraries and books are still fused in the public mind, and 2,242 librarians in search of new and forthcoming titles--as well as publisher freebies--found it for the better at BookExpo America at the Javits Center in New...

Thus Said ... How the World Sees Us
August 1, 2005... "My mother once told me that I was lucky because I loved to read. My real luck was having parents who shared the love of reading and who introduced me to the wonder of books... the day my father took me to the public library." From "Support...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
August 1, 2005... Mary Jo Lynch was not the first director of ALA's Office for Research and Statistics (Feb., p. 8); that distinction belongs to the late Forrest F. Carhart Jr. (Feb., p. 44).

How Does a Collection Get Developed?
August 1, 2005... A panel discussion at BookExpo America in June (see p. 35) made my understanding of "collection development" start to seem like a quaint relic of yesteryear. A simple concept it was: Librarians had an essential role to play in evaluating the...

On My Mind: Academia's Two-Culture Dilemma
August 1, 2005... In January I organized a panel for the Association of Library and Information Science Education annual conference in Boston (AL, Mar., p. 24-25) to discuss why there were not more youth-services specialists in the LIS Ph.D. pipeline to educate...

Documents to the People: Musings on the Past and Future of Government Information
August 1, 2005... There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. --Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince The government documents...

Google Print vs. Onsite Collections: Don't Send Your Paper Copies off to Remote Storage Just Yet
August 1, 2005... When the topic of Google Print came up at a recent meeting, one librarian made an interesting comment. His supervisor, he said, looked forward to having 15 million electronic books so he could send to remote storage every paper copy with an...

Are Your Students Prepared? Build an A+ College-Prep Collection by Following This Checklist
August 1, 2005... At Morris County (N.J.) Library, we found the best way to help our college-bound patrons was to create a unique space containing everything they need. How much did it cost? Just a few concentrated hours of staff time. We already owned the...

Bound to the Word: Guardians of Truth and Knowledge, Librarians Must Be Thanked for Their Role as Champions of Privacy, Literacy, Independent Thinking, and, Most of All, Reading
August 1, 2005... If you open up scripture, the Gospel according to John, it starts: "In the beginning was the Word." Although this has a very particular meaning in Scripture, more broadly what it speaks to is the critical importance of language, of writing, of...