American Libraries articles from February 2005

American Libraries archives from February 2005

Preserving Patron Privacy
February 1, 2005... I do a fair amount of on-line shopping these days, since it is difficult to find time to make purchases in the course of my road trips to visit ALA members across the country. I am frequently amazed by the amount of information online stores...

Newbery Award sabotage quashed.(ALA News)
February 1, 2005... A posting on Amazon.com of booklists purporting to be the 2005 ALSC Newbery Award winner and honor books, as well as titles considered for the award, was pulled after two members alerted division officials. The lists, which turned out to be...

ALA counsel leaves Jenner and Block.(ALA News)(Paula Goedert)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... ALA legal counsel Paula Goedert has left the law firm of Jenner and Block in Chicago to join Barnes and Thornburg, also located in Chicago. She will practice in the firm's Business, Tax, and Real Estate Department and will chair its...

USA Patriot Act study underway.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... ALA has begun a series of web-based surveys to assess the impact of the USA Patriot Act on America's libraries and library patrons (AL, Aug. 2004, p. 62-63). The Carnegie Corporation of New York is funding the project's planning phase, with...

MLA, NLM increase spectrum support.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The Medical Library Association and National Library of Medicine have each doubled their support of the Spectrum Initiative scholarship program, administered by ALA's OFD. Beginning in 2006, the two organizations will fund two scholars...

Newlen reelected as Endowment Trustee.(ALA News)(Robert R. Newlen)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Robert R. Newlen, head of the legislative relations office, Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, has been reelected by the ALA Executive Board to a second term as an ALA Endowment Trustee. Newlen's new three-year...

Krug receives honorary Doctorate.(ALA News)(Judith F. Krug)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... ALA OIF Director Judith F. Krug will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign during commencement ceremonies in May. Krug has served as OIF director since its founding in...

Model Privacy Audit documents available.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Documents used in ALA's Privacy Audit are now available to individual libraries at www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/otherpolicies/privacyaudit.htm. The documents include questionnaire and data-testing checklists that can be used as...

New award for LIS students created.(ALA News)
February 1, 2005... ALA is cosponsoring the new Mary Jo Lynch Award for Library and Information Science students in partnership with the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, and the Federal State...

New ALCTS Support Staff Grant funded.(ALA News)
February 1, 2005... Sage Publications is the sponsor of the new ALCTS Support Staff Grant. The grant will fund attendance by three full-time library support staff personnel at ALA Annual Conference. Recipients must have a minimum of three years of...

3M detection systems available.(ALA News)
February 1, 2005... Applications are available for school library media specialists interested in winning security products through the 3M Salute to Schools project, which will award a total of $1.5 million in systems. The deadline is March 1. Under a...

Scholastic to sponsor AASL conference gala.(ALA News)
February 1, 2005... Scholastic Library Publishing will sponsor the October 8 closing-night gala during AASL's 12th national conference and exhibition, October 6-9, in Pittsburgh (AL, Dec., p. 8). The event will be held at the Sen. John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional...

"Major Leagues" sponsors added.(ALA News)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... ALSC, Reforma, and the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum have been added as 2005 sponsors of the "Join the Major Leagues@your library" program. They join PLA and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. This year's program, which...

Booked for the evening.(ALA News)(Alex Boyd)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... BOOKED FOR THE EVENING was the theme of a November 10 gala honoring former BCALA President and Newark (N.J.) Public Library Director Alex Boyd (second from right), who retired from the library after 16 years. Boyd, who is also past president...

Commissioning a good read.(NEWS FRONTS ALA)
February 1, 2005... COMMISSIONING A GOOD READ. Miami-Dade County commissioners share the importance of reading with South Florida residents as participants in the public library system's Read poster campaign, an offshoot of ALA Graphics' celebrity Read poster...

Furnished with style.(ALA News)
February 1, 2005... FURNISHED WITH STYLE. Office Depot presents a $1,000 check to the Largo-Kettering branch of Prince George's County (Md.) Memorial Library System during Children's Book Week, November 15-21, 2004. The donation is part of its support of...

ACRL Membership Offers Key Benefits
February 1, 2005... Charting Our Future: ACRL Strategic Plan 2020," challenges the Association of College and Research Libraries to position academic and research libraries and librarians as indispensable to advancing learning and scholarship. Here's what we...

South Asian Libraries Hit Hard by Tsunami
February 1, 2005... At a series of meetings held January 6-10 at the Sri Lanka National Library in Colombo, UNESCO and other organizations agreed to establish a library disaster committee to assess the extent of damage to the country's library buildings,...

Gates Foundation Gives Away $10.9 Million
February 1, 2005... The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation January 14 announced gifts of nearly $11 million in challenge grants to state library agencies in 37 states and the District of Columbia, the second and final round of the Staying Connected program that...

Free-speech champion Gordon Conable dies at 58.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
February 1, 2005... Gordon Conable, president of the American Library Association's Freedom to Read Foundation since 1998, ALA Council member, and vice president of West Coast operations for Library Systems and Services (LSSI) in Riverside, California, died...

Didier named director of Ford Presidential Library.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Elaine K. Didier, former professor and dean of the Kresge Library at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, was named director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum effective January 10, replacing Dennis Daellenbach, who...

Virginia considers filters.(NEWS FRONTS)(internet filters)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The Virginia General Assembly is considering legislation in its 2005 session requiring any public library that receives state funding to install internet filters on its computers. "These filters are inexpensive, they're easy to use,...

Kenyon employee pleads guilty to rare-books theft.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... A former employee at the Kenyon College library in Gambier, Ohio, has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $50,000 in rare books and documents from the collection over a two-year period and selling them on Ebay. David Breithaupt and his...

Feds halt privatization of Mine Safety Library.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The Bush administration has halted plans to privatize the U.S. Department of Labor's National Mine Safety Library near Beckley, West Virginia. A December 17 announcement on the Labor Department's website explained that a cost-effectiveness...

International map thief goes to prison.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... A professional map thief, who has admitted to stealing some 50 rare prints from the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth to support an addiction to betting on horse races, began a four-and-a-half-year jail term December 22. Former...

LC adds 25 titles to National Film Registry.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Librarian of Congress James H. Billington named 25 more titles to the library's National Film Registry December 28, bringing the total number of films on the list to 400. The films, chosen by Billington in consultation with the library's...

Salinas hands out pink slips.(NEWS FRONTS)(library redundancies)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... All 33 FTE employees of the Salinas (Calif.) Public Library have received 60-day layoff notices from the city informing them they will no longer have a job after June 17. City Manager David Mora and a human-resources representative began...

Patron wills $1 million.(NEWS FRONTS)(libraries)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous woman in Clark County, Indiana, the Louisville (Ky.) Free Public Library and four libraries in southern Indiana will divide $1 million bequeathed to them in a charitable trust. The directors of the...

Hawaii library reopens.(NEWS FRONTS)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... More than two months after it was drenched by flash floods (AL, Dec. 2004, p. 16), one portion of the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library reopened to students January 3. The Hamilton Library annex was unaffected by the flood, but the area...

Ohio House rejects filters.(NEWS FRONTS)(public libraries)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The Ohio House of Representatives voted unanimously December 15 not to concur with the Senate version of a harmful-to-minors bill that would prohibit public libraries from using state funds to purchase computers or internet access unless all...

Phoenix adds filtering staff.(NEWS FRONTS)(libraries, internet)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Officials in Phoenix, Arizona, have followed up their decision in September to require filters on all city library computers by hiring extra staff to implement the new policy (AL, Oct. 2004, p. 14-16). The city council voted December 7 to...

Illinois librarian sentenced.(NEWS FRONTS)(Regetta Meyers)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Former Homer Township (Ill.) Library Director Regetta Meyers, who was convicted in October of stealing more than $157,000 from the library's petty cash account (AL, Dec. 2004, p. 23), was sentenced January 4 to six months in jail and ordered...

New IFLA secretary general.(NEWS FRONTS)(Peter Johan Lor)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has appointed Peter Johan Lor secretary general, effective February 15. Lor previously held the post of professor in the Department of Information Science at the University...

Getting behind reading.(NEWS FRONTS)
February 1, 2005... GETTING BEHIND READING. Staff members from the Germantown (Tenn.) Community Library marched in the annual Germantown Holiday Parade for the first time December 11. The back of their snowman costumes makes it clear what they want people to do....

Service with (six) strings attached.(NEWS FRONTS)
February 1, 2005... SERVICE WITH (SIX) STRINGS ATTACHED. Four Nashville (Tenn.) Public Library workers whose songs have been recorded by the Box Tops, George Strait, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers gave a free concert December 9 at the library. The...

Chinese exchange in Cincy.(NEWS FRONTS)
February 1, 2005... CHINESE EXCHANGE IN CINCY. Six teachers from Liuzhou, China, who came to Cincinnati in December as part of the Cin-Liu Chinese Exchange Teacher Project, will be working with the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County to use the...

Ten years of training.(NEWS FRONTS)
February 1, 2005... TEN YEARS OF TRAINING. Vietnamese and American librarians celebrate the 10th anniversary of a collaboration between the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science and Harvard University's Yenching Institute to train...

Southwestern comfort.(NEWS FRONTS)
February 1, 2005... SOUTHWESTERN COMFORT. Norman Powell (second from left) and his wife Armena (far right), join authors Byrd Baylor (left) and Luis Alberto Urrea Jr. December 6 at Tucson-Pima Public Library. The gathering celebrated Southwestern literature, a...

Doubly Distinguished.(NEWS FRONTS)(David McCullough)
February 1, 2005... DOUBLY DISTINGUISHED. Historian David McCullough, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography John Adams (Simon and Schuster, 2001), visits with fans following his December 4 presentation at the Tulsa (Okla.) Library Trust's Peggy V....

America defeats Mississippi ban.(CENSORSHIP WATCH)(libraries)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... At a special meeting of the Jackson-George Regional Library System board in Pascagoula, Mississippi, trustees voted 5-2 January 10 to put into circulation America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, a bestselling humor book...

Houston has a problem with displaying Porn Star's book.(CENSORSHIP WATCH)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, by Jenna Jameson with Neil Strauss, is no longer part of the bestseller display at Houston Public Library, a fact that has nothing to do with the fact that it has dropped from the New York...

Sex God stays on Montana school shelves.(CENSORSHIP WATCH)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... A materials review committee for the Bozeman (Mont.) School District voted unanimously January 12 to retain Louise Rennison's On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God: Further Confessions of Georgia Nicolson in the district's...

By the numbers.(NEWS FRONTS)(libraries, newspapers)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... 31 Months Time it took Columbia University cataloger Caleb Smith to walk every single block in Manhattan, a feat he completed in 2004.--New Yorker, Jan. 3. $3,000 to $5,000 Estimated value of a signed first edition of Ayn Rand's Atlas...

It might have been a doctor's.(QUICK TAKES)
February 1, 2005... Two handwriting experts solved a long-standing mystery at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh by deciphering one last signature on a tablecloth in the library's music department collection. The wife of former Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra...

Desperately seeking diets.(QUICK TAKES)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Librarians in West Berkshire, England, were puzzled when Newbury Library patrons started requesting diet books that didn't exist, asking for such titles as Honey, I Shrunk My Butt and Lose Your Bum While Sitting on It. A staffer...

Did they have their MLSes?(QUICK TAKES)
February 1, 2005... Was Dewey Decimal and the Librarians a real band, or was their album cover just the prank of a frustrated cataloger? The image made the library-blog rounds late last year, sending librarians' speculation meters into the red. Yes, the...

Tiffany archives to corning.(COLLECTIONS)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The Rakow Research Library at the Corning (N.Y.) Museum of Glass has acquired two sets of papers that recount the history of the Tiffany Studios and the glassmaker Lalique. The Arthur Nash papers reveal the recipe for Tiffany's signature...

Silicon Valley to Stanford.(COLLECTIONS)(Douglas Menuez)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The images captured by award-winning photographer Douglas Menuez that document the rise of California's Silicon Valley in the 1990s as a hub of the information industry have been acquired by Stanford University Libraries. The archive contains...

Honeymooners to UCLA.(COLLECTIONS)(Harry Crane)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... The University of California Library at Los Angeles has acquired the papers of Harry Crane, a prolific scriptwriter for radio, television, and film who created the 1950s TV series The Honeymooners. Spanning Crane's work with such stars as...

Global Reach
February 1, 2005... SCOTLAND The British Safety Council has granted the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh its highest safety award, identifying it as one of Britain's safest places to work. The library won the award after an audit of its health and...

Straight Answers from Brewster Kahle
February 1, 2005... On December 15, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle announced an agreement with 10 libraries from five countries to "ensure permanent and public access to our published heritage" by creating a one-million-item digital library; partners range...

Thus Said ... How the World Sees Us
February 1, 2005... "If Darwinists want to teach that whales, which are mammals, evolved from black bears swimming with their mouths open, we should surely be entitled to criticize that. Yet school libraries have refused to accept books critical of evolution, even...

What Is ALA Doing about It?
February 1, 2005... The magnitude of the disaster caused by the December 26 earthquake and tsunami in southern Asia has stunned the world, and people everywhere have rallied with support. But what is ALA doing about it? It's a question Association staffers are...

On My Mind: The Inadequacy of LIS Classifieds
February 1, 2005... Many predictions have been made recently about an expected shortage of librarians, exacerbated by an anticipated wave of retirements in the profession. Adding to the concern is the increasing number of school-age children in the United States,...

The Scoop on Patron Privacy: Legislative Loopholes Have Made It Harder Than Ever for Librarians to Assure Users That Their Records Are Snoop-Proof
February 1, 2005... "Numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that 'what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops.'"--Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy," Harvard Law Review, December 15,...

A Dream Deferred: School Libraries and Segregation; Library Media Specialists in Schools Named after Martin Luther King Jr. Discuss the Challenges They Face on the Job
February 1, 2005... The historic 1954 court decision Brown v. Board of Education sparked radical changes in America's educational system. At that time, African-American children attended mostly segregated schools with inferior classroom resources and similarly...

Conducting Surveys on a Shoestring Budget: USC Staffers Garner Invaluable Library-User Information for Less Than $250
February 1, 2005... Excitement is in the air at the University of Southern California's Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Library in Los Angeles. Librarians and student workers hawk their wares like carnival stall owners, as clipboards, slips of paper, and pencils exchange...

Libraries Saving Lives in Iraq: The Need for Medical Information in Iraq Is Extreme, but Some U.S. Institutions Are Helping Out
February 1, 2005... In January 2001, 10 physicians from northern Iraq visited Quillen College of Medicine on the campus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. The medical school, nestled in a valley among the tree-cloaked slopes of the Appalachians,...

Currents: Professionals on the Move
February 1, 2005... Larry Alford will become vice provost for libraries and university librarian at Temple University in Philadelphia February 15. * David Anderson is the new head librarian at the Crossett (Ark.) Public Library. * Christie Pearson Brandau resigned...

Obituaries
February 1, 2005... Ann Axell Berglund, 83, a librarian at the Alexandria (Va.) Library for 22 years until her 1988 retirement, died December 16 of cancer. She began her career during the Korean War as special services librarian for U.S. forces in Yokohama, Japan,...

Cited
February 1, 2005... Frank Kurt Cylke, director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped at the Library of Congress, was awarded honorary life membership in the World Blind Union at its sixth general assembly in Cape Town, South...

Grassroots Report: Put Some Romance in Your Library
February 1, 2005... What is romance? Where does one look for it? Who needs it? Who reads it? Romance is a popular genre with readers, whose interest in the form is documented by sales figures and scholarly research alike. Denice Adkins, Linda Esser, and Diane...

Internet Librarian: Concealing the Creative Process
February 1, 2005... Dorothy Kilgallen led an extraordinary life. A gossip columnist as well as a journalist instrumental in Sam Sheppard's eventual acquittal (she revealed the judge's private pretrial opinion that Sheppard was "guilty as hell"), she became...

Technically Speaking: My Kingdom for an OPAC
February 1, 2005... Besides wishing that we had never come up with the arcane--and now anachronistic--term OPAC for online public access catalog, I wish we had one that searched better. I used to be a web OPAC product manager, and in three successive positions at...

Working Knowledge: ?Como Puedo Servirle?
February 1, 2005... Q I am a new reference librarian in a public library serving a growing Hispanic population. I don't speak Spanish but am willing to do whatever I need to provide the best service possible. We are also desperate to find suitable Spanish-language...

A manager is born.(Resources for Continuing Education)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Librarians promoted to managerial positions are often unprepared for their new role, a problem Pixey Ann Mosley helps address in her new book, Transitioning from Librarian to Middle Manager. She discusses the various roles of the middle...

Forms follow function.(Resources for Continuing Education)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Creating and updating forms, policies, and procedures just got easier thanks to a comprehensive guide from Rebecca Brumley. In The Public Library Manager's Forms, Policies and Procedures Handbook with CD-ROM, Brumley shares more than 300...

Advocacy goes to school.(Resources for Continuing Education)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... School library media specialists are important advocates for improvements in library programs, and Sandy Schuckett provides indispensable tips, examples, and training suggestions in Political Advocacy for School Librarians: You Have the...

Electronic roundup.(Resources for Continuing Education)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Two British colleagues share their insights on collection development in the second edition of Building an Electronic Resource Collection: A Practical Guide. Stuart D. Lee and Frances Boyle explain how to select, evaluate, and purchase...

LibQUAL+ analyzed.(Resources for Continuing Education)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... In Libraries Act on Their LibQUAL+Findings: From Data to Action, editors Fred M. Heath, Martha Kyrillidou, and Consuella A. Askew and their team of essayists take a look at the value of the 2002 LibQUAL+ survey data, the web-based survey...

A metadata primer.(Resources for Continuing Education)(Understanding Metadata)(www.niso.org)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Librarians know that metadata is data about data, or information about information, but where can you get a fuller, but still understandable definition? The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) provides the answer in...

?Habla espanol?(Resources for Continuing Education)(Brief Article)(Video Recording Review)
February 1, 2005... Reaching out and serving Spanish-speakers is the focus of a new video produced by the Colorado State Library and funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bridging the Digital Divide in the Spanish Speaking Community...

Bare-bones cataloging.(NEW FROM ALA)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Michael Gorman, coeditor of the original AACR2, explains the more generally applicable rules in this fourth and fully revised edition of The Concise AACR2. Writing for practitioners in small libraries, paraprofessionals doing copy cataloging,...

Artful dodger.(NEW FROM ALA)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Picking up where Guide to the Literature of Art History (GLAH) left off in 1980, editors Max Marmor and Alex Ross record and annotate the best art and architecture books and journals in Guide to the Literature of Art History 2. Together with...

Beyond bookstores.(NEW FROM ALA)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Jeannette Woodward gives permission to be a copycat in her new book Creating the Customer-Driven Library: Building on the Bookstore Model. She examines bookstore successes for ways that libraries can market their services using low- or...

Quick bibs: Rat Pack noir.(COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT)(The Cold Six Thousand)(The Ivory Coast)(Death of a Tenor Man)(The Devil's Wind)(Book Review)
February 1, 2005... Las Vegas is hot--no, not the climate and not the contemporary, Disneyfied version of the city. The Vegas we love today is the '50s and early '60s incarnation, the stomping grounds of the Rat Pack, a far less family-friendly gambling mecca...

Datebook: continuous learning.(EVENTS)(Calendar)
February 1, 2005... CHAPTER CONFERENCES May 11-13: Utah Library Association Annual Conference, Ogden. "The Times They Are a Changin'." Contact: Kim Rollins, 801-863-8752; rollinki@uvsc.edu; www.ula.org/conference/index.htm. May 12-13: New Hampshire...

Will's World: Absences, Death, and Forgiveness
February 1, 2005... I've been a Roman Catholic all my life. While many of my boyhood classmates fell off the Catholic bandwagon over the years, I have kept the faith. Like all the great religions of the world, Catholicism has much to offer imperfect souls like me....