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New Orleans Update
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Montana State Library pulls
screening of ACLU Film
The Montana State Library in Helena announced February 21 that it was canceling its upcoming screening of a film critical of the USA Patriot Act because of complaints that the program would only feature the opinions of the film’s producer, the American Civil Liberties Union. A day after the cancellation, the ACLU of Montana reserved the meeting room of the Lewis and Clark Library in Helena to show Beyond the Patriot Act in the same February 24 time slot....

Historian discovers scheme
to reclassify NARA documents
Since 1999, at least six government intelligence agencies have been clandestinely withdrawing certain publicly available documents from the open shelves at the National Archives and Records Administration and reclassifying them as secret, according to a February 21 report by a historian connected with the National Security Archive....

NARA issues rule
on maintaining e-mail records
After soliciting input from federal agencies and public-interest groups, the National Archives and Records Administration issued a final rule February 21 on how government agencies should maintain short-term electronic records such as e-mail....

Early registration cutoff is March 3
for
Annual Conference
in New Orleans,
June 22–28

Law for Librarians training seminar, Chicago, April 4–6. Learn about legal issues facing libraries and develop training skills. Limited space available.

Paper ballots for ALA’s 2006 election must be requested by March 3. Find out more about the paper ballots and online voting here.

Browse through new products from ALA Editions and ALA Graphics

Step Up to the Plate
@ your library:
Registration open
Just a little over one month until the baseball season’s opening day, registration is now open for ALA’s 21st-century literacy program that teams up libraries and baseball....

World Wrestling Entertainment
promotes Big Time Reading
World Wrestling Entertainment’s Get R.E.A.L. Read initiative, YALSA, Comcast, and the Chicago Public Schools have joined forces to launch a reading incentive program for Chicago teens around WWE’s upcoming WrestleMania 22....

ALA President Michael Gorman
responds to EPA library closings
“The American Library Association is deeply concerned about the very negative impact on public access to environmental information that will result if the proposed 80% cuts to funding for the Environmental Protection Administration’s libraries are made....”

Lawyers for Libraries
in Houston
ALA and the Texas Library Association will present a Lawyers for Libraries Training Institute in Houston, April 25. This session will be a preconference to TLA’s annual conference, April 25–28, at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center....

Public copyright round tables scheduled
The Washington Office notes that the Library of Congress’s Section 108 Study Group is looking for input at two public round tables on revising the current library and archives copyright exceptions: March 8 in Los Angeles and March 16 in Washington, D.C. Deadline extended to March 3....

ALA, Highsmith, Bretford
team up for renovation
ALA announced March 1 that it will team with library vendors Highsmith and Bretford to renovate the interior of a historic Carnegie library branch of the New Orleans Public Library during the Association's Annual Conference....

ALA volunteers plan to renovate this historic New Orleans Public Library branch.

Rolling with the punches
The battered, bruised Big Easy proved no amount of floodwater could dampen its spirit on Fat Tuesday, as healthy crowds lined parade routes and Katrina-themed costumes brought satire to new heights in the French Quarter....
New Orleans Times-Picayune, Mar. 1

Rebuilding in New Orleans
In a way, it’s fun trying to rebuild a system using a much smaller staff. At the branches everyone is the custodian, the plumber, the delivery driver, and if you have time, you can be a librarian....
Geraldine Harris

A visitor reports on New Orleans
For the past few years I’ve been attending the first parade of Mardi Gras, put on by the Krewe du Vieux. It’s the only parade that goes through the French Quarter and still has floats pulled by people and/or mules. Not at all for the entire family, they proudly carry on their tradition of xxx-rated satire....
Judy Card

Poll: Effects of Katrina differ by race
Black residents of New Orleans were hit harder than their white counterparts by Hurricane Katrina, but they were also more likely to express optimism about the city’s future, according to a poll released Monday....
CNN, Feb. 27

New Orleans gets more flights
Continental Airlines says that by May it will be back to its pre-Katrina level of 111 weekly flights from New Orleans, albeit with a different passenger base than before....
Houston Chronicle, Feb. 21

Vital signs improving in New Orleans
Six months after its near death by drowning, the Crescent City is marking its resuscitation with Mardi Gras....
CNN, Feb. 28

Not as big, not quite as easy
As it revives from Katrina, there are still plenty of reasons for tourists to love New Orleans, but the recovery is gradual....
Newsday, Feb. 26

Grant available for LITA National Forum
A grant of up to $2,500 is available to a librarian currently living and working in the Caribbean to attend the 2006 LITA National Forum in Nashville, October 26–29….

Coughlan Publishing to host AASL reception
Coughlan Publishing will sponsor the Networking Reception at AASL’s 2006 Fall Forum, “Assessing Student Learning in the School Library Media Center” in Warwick, R.I., October 13–15....

John Ames Humphry/OCLC/
Forest Press Award
Sylva Natalie Manoogian is this year’s recipient of the International Relations Committee’s John Ames Humphry
/OCLC/Forest Press Award....

H. W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant
The Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield, Mass., has been chosen to receive the 2006 H.W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant for its “Me and My Shadow” program....

Maureen Hayes Award winner
Jennifer Smith, Northern Kentucky University, has been selected as the 2006 recipient of ALSC’s Maureen Hayes Award....

IRC Bogle-Pratt International
Library Travel Fund winner
The Bogle Memorial Fund and the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science will provide a $1,000 cash award for Leanne Hindmarch to attend her first international conference in Los Angeles....

ALSC Bechtel Fellowship winner
Children’s librarians Jacquelyn S. Rogers and Mary G. Marshall have been selected as the 2006 recipients of ALSC’s Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellowship....

ACRL WSS Career Achievement Award
Marlene Manoff, associate head and collection manager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Humanities Library, has been selected as the 2006 winner of ACRL’s Women’s Studies Section Career Achievement Award....

ACRL WSS Significant Achievement Awards
Katherine Kraft and the team of Carrie Kruse and Cynthia Johnson are the winners of the 2006 ACRL Women’s Studies Section Award for Significant Achievement in Woman's Studies Librarianship....

ACRL Instruction Section Publication Award
Michelle Hoschuh Simmons won the ACRL IS Publication Award for her article, “Librarians as Disciplinary Discourse Mediators: Using Genre Theory to move Toward Critical Information Literacy,” which appeared in portal: Libraries and the Academy 5, no. 3 (2005): 297–311.

ACRL IS Innovation award winner
“Issues of the Information Age: A Series of Continuing Public Forums at the University of Rhode Island” has been chosen to receive the 2006 ACRL Instruction Section Innovation award. Sponsored by Lexis-Nexis, the annual award recognizes a project that demonstrates creative, innovative, or unique approaches to information literacy instruction....

West European Specialist Study Grant winner
Dale Askey, web development librarian at the Kansas State University libraries, has been selected to receive the 2006 ACRL Western European Studies Section Coutts Nijhoff International West European Specialist Study Grant....

D.C. libraries wander off the path
to a happy ending
This story should be a celebration of democracy, a stirring tale about how D.C. residents, disgusted by the decay and disregard that have left the city’s libraries in wretched condition, rose up and demanded change—and got it....
Washington Post, Feb. 23

Futurist Thomas Frey
ponders transformation of libraries
Thomas Frey, executive director of the DaVinci Institute, talked about the future of libraries February 27 on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation, asking if “bookless library” is a contradiction in terms or a sign of the times. Frey is the author of an earlier think-piece about libraries issued by the institute, a nonprofit futurist think tank....
National Public Radio, Feb. 27

Google wages fresh campaign
against critics (Subscription required)
The battle between publishers and Google over the internet-search company's project to digitize library books has heated up with an announcement by Google that it was starting a campaign to dispel misperceptions about the project….
Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 23

Joint university–community
reading endeavor to take flight
The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, in collaboration with Arlington Public Library, Arlington Independent School District, and Reading and Radio Resource, are offering Arlington Reads, the city’s fourth-annual community-wide read, from March 2 to April 8....
University of Texas at Arlington, Feb. 27

Mayor opposes Hanover PL name change
Lawyer Louis T. Guthrie made the largest donation to the Hanover (Pa.) Public Library’s $3-million fundraising campaign in July 2001. It was then promised to Guthrie that the library would be renamed Guthrie Memorial Library. But Hanover Mayor Maggie Hormel has said the name change doesn’t reflect the will of the community....
York (Pa.) Daily Record, Feb. 27

Where women’s pay trumps men’s
Much is made of the fact the men often earn more than women. Well, that’s not always the case. See which occupations defy the norm....
CNN, Feb. 28

Home broadband adoption in rural America
Rural Americans are less likely to log on to the internet at home with high-speed internet connections than people living in other parts of the country....
Pew Internet & American Life Project, Feb. 26

Big Brother is reading your blog
These days, social networkers are concerned about protecting their privacy, not only from predators and scam artists, but from nosy employers and campus authorities....
Business Week, Feb. 28

Digital technology makes surveillance easier
The government surveillance stories that have filled the headlines in recent months aren’t isolated incidents, but rather reflect a widening gap between the technology that collects sensitive personal data and the laws designed to protect that data against government misuse....
Center for Democracy & Technology, Feb. 22

Online music services and academic libraries
As of fall 2005, nearly 70 colleges and universities had license agreements with online music providers such as Napster, Cdigix, Ruckus, Rhapsody, iTunes, and most recently, Yahoo! Music to provide their students access to music audio files....
ARL Bimonthly Report, Feb.

The blogga song
Laughing Librarian Brian Smith’s humorous Flash video song has been making its way through the biblioblogosphere. It’s sung by Lloyd the Llibrary Llama....
Laughing Librarian, Feb. 21