Contents
U.S. & World News
ALA News
AL Focus
Booklist Online
Division News
Round Table News
Awards
Seen Online
Tech Talk
Actions & Answers
Poll
Calendar

Senate Committee asks EPA to reopen its libraries
After nearly a year of controversy over Environmental Protection Agency library closings and consolidations, the Senate Appropriations Committee June 26 recommended that the agency restore the network of libraries to its former capacity. The committee report on the FY2008 Interior Appropriations Bill (S. 1696) directs the EPA to submit by December 31 a plan on how to use $2 million—the same amount cut from the agency’s FY2007 budget—to accomplish the restoration and “maintain a robust collection of environmental data and resources in each region.”...

D.C. grants landmark status to Main Library
The District of Columbia Historic Preservation Review Board granted landmark status June 28 to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. The move gives the 35-year-old modernist building, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, legal protection against demolition. The library was one of four on the endangered list posted by the Recent Past Preservation Network....

Small town hopes N.J. governor will save its library
New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine signed into law a 4% cap on property taxes earlier this year, but now two state legislators are appealing to him to modify it to save the Jamesburg Public Library—and possibly other small libraries in the state—from closing. State Assembly members Linda Greenstein (D-Monroe) and Bill Baroni (R-Hamilton) asked residents at a June 27 public conference to appeal to the governor to grant a one-year exemption that would move the library’s budget outside of the tax cap that goes into effect next year....

Rochester Central Library accepts Web restrictions
One month after the Monroe County (N.Y.) Library System agreed to block all pornographic sites on its public computers, trustees of the Rochester Public Library—which serves as the MCLS headquarters library—voted in late June to adopt the same policy. The city’s library board had previously disagreed over the policy, recommended by an eight-person task force in response to Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks’s threat to pull $6.6 million in operating funds if RPL did not block all access to adult websites....

ALA urges National Security Letter reform
ALA Council unanimously passed a resolution at Annual Conference June 27 condemning the use of National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain library records and urging Congress to pursue immediate reforms of NSL procedures. The action arose out of concerns over the misuse and abuse of NSLs detailed in the March 2007 report submitted to Congress by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General.... 

Council resolution on the National Library Service
At Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., ALA Council passed a resolution calling on Congress to provide the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped with the $19.1 million it needs to preserve its Talking Books program....
Librarygrist blog, July 6

Council actions on vital government services
ALA has reaffirmed its support for three vital government services to the United States Congress. In letters sent July 11 to all Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, ALA included Council resolutions in support of the Government Printing Office and the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, in addition to the National Library Service (above)....
District Dispatch blog, July 11

Ben Roethlisberger named Library Card spokesperson
Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback of the 2006 Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers, will be the spokesperson for this year’s Library Card Sign-up Month, which begins September 1. Roethlisberger is featured on an ALA Graphics READ poster. Promotional tools in Spanish and English are available online to promote The Smartest Card....

Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium
Top gamers will meet in Chicago this month to discuss how gaming impacts our nation’s libraries. ALA TechSource and ACRL will host the first annual Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium to be held in Chicago, July 22–24, at the Chicago Marriott O’Hare Hotel....

Yahoo! avatars can now wear READ T-shirts
Yahoo! subscribers can now dress their avatars—icons that subscribers can create to represent themselves in virtual space—in a READ T-shirt, thanks to a partnership between ALA Graphics and Yahoo! To dress your Yahoo! avatar in a virtual T-shirt, sign in at Yahoo! Avatars, select the tab marked “extras,” and click on “issues and causes.”...

Blogging for Katrina relief
Los Angeles Public Library Reference Librarian Mary McCoy will spend 24 hours at her computer from 6 a.m., July 28, to 6 a.m. Pacific Time, July 29, blogging every half hour on her This Book Is For You blog as part of Blogathon 2007. Her chosen charity is ALA’s Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund. You can sponsor her in this effort by pledging a lump sum or an hourly amount. All donations go directly to the ALA fund, rather than the blogger or Blogathon....
This Book Is For You blog, July 9; Blogathon 2007

COA accreditation actions
At Annual Conference, the Committee on Accreditation granted initial accreditation status to the MLIS program at Valdosta (Ga.) State University. Continued status was granted to programs at the University of Oklahoma, San Jose (Calif.) State University, and the University of Texas at Austin....

Libraries “Step Up to the Plate”
Nearly 1,000 libraries have registered for the Step Up to the Plate @ your library program, developed by ALA and the National Baseball Hall of Fame. By registering, libraries gain access to free tools to help promote the program in their communities. Resources include a toolkit with programming ideas and customizable media relations materials....

Irshad Manji on CSPAN-2 (Real Player format)
The complete 90-minute Annual Conference talk by Muslim dissident and feminist writer Irshad Manji on the liberal reformation of Islam is available for viewing as a RealPlayer file....
CSPAN-2, June 25

Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton
Fresh from her rousing speech at ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. (in part celebrating American Libraries' 100th anniversary), performer and author Julie Andrews joins her daughter, children’s author Emma Walton Hamilton, at the Martin Luther King Memorial Library to read from their new book The Great American Mousical. Also in this 4:09 video, ALA President Leslie Burger announces that Andrews will be the honorary chair of National Library Week in 2008....

Libraries Build Communities
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., plays host to the “Libraries Build Communities” program during Annual Conference. We go inside the historic building (2:25) to see this “blue wave” of volunteers hammer at shelves, tear open boxes of literature, and furiously vacuum dirt off old children’s books....

Teen Tech Week theme and wiki
YALSA kicked off Teen Tech Week for 2008 by launching a Teen Tech Week Wiki. The theme will be Tune In @ your library. Teen Tech Week will be celebrated March 2–8, 2008; registration will begin September 1, 2007....

YALSA memories: Future, present, and past
At YALSA’s 50th Anniversary party in Washington, D.C., Erin Downey Howerton talked with librarians from several different generations and recorded this 21:30 podcast. Past presidents of YALSA talk about publishing and YALSA history, new librarians discuss why they are looking forward to being involved in YALSA, Spectrum Scholars discuss why they chose YALSA, and Emerging Leaders provide their take on Annual Conference and ALA. YALSA also podcasted other conference events....
YALSA blog, July 8

ALA statements on the War on Terror
Elaine Harger, outgoing coordinator of the ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table, compiled a list of resolutions by ALA Council on the War on Terror for distribution to congressional offices during Library Day on the Hill at Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The list is also in PDF form....
Library Juice, June 29

New YALSA award for a first-time YA author
YALSA’s new William C. Morris YA Debut Award will celebrate the achievement of a previously unpublished author or authors who have made a strong literary debut in writing for young adult readers. The first award will be given in January 2009 at the Midwinter Meeting Youth Media Awards....

Excellence in Library Service to Young Adults
YALSA recognized 25 exemplary teen programs and services from across the United States in the fifth round of its Excellence in Library Service to Young Adults project. The top five programs are at the Hennepin County (Minn.) Library, Austin (Tex.) Public Library, Cleveland Public Library, Alameda County (Calif.) Library, and Albany (N.Y.) Public Library’s New Scotland branch....

Bound to Stay Bound Books and Melcher Scholarships
ALSC has announced the 2007 recipients of the Frederic G. Melcher and Bound to Stay Bound Books Scholarships. The scholarships are awarded annually to students who plan to enter ALA-accredited programs, obtain a master’s degree in library science and specialize in library service to children....

The New York Times shifts its librarian stereotypes
NYT Fashion and Style writer Kara Jesella writes: “Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons—the ultimate humorless shushers? Not any more. A new type of librarian is emerging—the kind that, according to the website Librarian Avengers, is ‘looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing.’” For some reactions to the article, read Meredith Farkas, Karen Schneider, Melissa Rabey, Rory Litwin, and Mary Carmen Chimato....
New York Times, July 8

Librarians: We’re not what you think
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Web Services Coordinator John Hubbard writes: “From the spinster librarian in It’s a Wonderful Life to the crotchety archivist in Attack of the Clones, librarians are often portrayed as something less than noble or admirable. The perception of librarians has been a popular topic recently.” Hubbard illustrates many pop-cultural librarian images in his web gallery and a PDF file....
TK421

Senator seeks to increase FCC’s profanity power
Senator and presidential candidate Sam Brownback (R-Kans.)—who helped get the FCC’s indecency fines increased tenfold in 2006—said he will offer two amendments to a general government appropriations bill July 12, one that would “continue support for the FCC to fine broadcasters who air indecent, profane, or obscene content,” and another that would “fine broadcasters for airing excessively violent content during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.”...
Broadcasting & Cable, July 10

Nixon Library now under federal control
The privately operated Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, is now under federal control and researchers can pore over documents and tapes detailing “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” After a simple opening ceremony July 11, library officials and docents shared champagne and cake before moving to the research room to view 78,000 newly released Nixon papers and 11.5 hours of audiotape....
Associated Press, July 11

Mayor criticizes city’s approval of gay library move
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle took a swipe at gays July 10, attacking a request that the Stonewall gay and lesbian book archive be housed on city property. The tiff over the adult book collection brought to City Hall a war that started last week between Naugle and gays in the city. Commissioners voted 3–2 to approve the county-run Stonewall Library and Archives request to move the collection to the city-owned ArtSpace library at Holiday Park....
Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel, July 11

Bazoongas banned in Saskatchewan
References to bullying, breasts, and the word “bazoongas” have made a children’s book nominated for a Saskatchewan award too hot to handle for a school in the southwestern part of the province. The librarian at Elizabeth School in Kindersley objected to a scene in Nikki Tate’s Trouble on Tarragon Island where the young heroine is teased about her activist grandmother posing seminude in a calendar, with taunts about her grandmother’s saggy breasts, or “bazoongas.”...
Saskatoon (Sask.) Star Phoenix, July 5; Nikki Tate’s blog, June 27

10 things to know about J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and his wizardly world have become a pop-culture phenomenon, but there may still be a few tidbits you don’t know about the author, J. K. Rowling, and her record-breaking series. For example, Harry Potter got his namesake from Rowling’s cheeky childhood neighbor....
CTV Television Network, July 10

Pennsylvania libraries in budget crisis
Amid the last-minute, early-summer frenzy that almost always marks the state budget process, this much was certain: Officials at public libraries didn’t see any reason to expect much change in the way of help from Harrisburg. Even with a marginal increase in the $75.5 million the state doles out for libraries, the commonwealth is among the bottom third of states in aggregate per capita spending on libraries. The reason isn’t so much the state, however, as it is the localities....
Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette, July 1

Extensive flooding in Aliquippa
After a cloudburst sent 4 inches of rain through the streets of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, July 5, the resulting flood destroyed about 10,000 books—one-tenth of the town’s historic B. F. Jones Memorial Library’s collection—and damaged the children’s room in the basement, which was renovated last year at a cost of $750,000....
Beaver County (Pa.) Times, July 5; Pittsburgh (Pa.) Tribune-Review, July 7

Online social networks and information professionals
This article by Mike Reid and Christian Gray is the first in a series of three to explore the history and dramatic growth of online social networks and the implications of that growth for information professionals. In Part 1, they set the stage for the series by explaining the phenomenon and its historical underpinnings. They also define terms and provide a nifty timeline....
Searcher 15, no. 7 (July/August)

Google, Yahoo both working on new social networks
Google is sponsoring a project at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute to “rethink and reinvent online social networking.” The project is called Socialstream. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s Mosh is being called a “new cool social network product.”...
TechCrunch blog, July 8–9

Google Easter eggs
Phil Bradley points out that if you type certain character combinations in the Google search box and hit “I’m Feeling Lucky,” you will get some surprise results. Try it with google gothic, google loco, and xx piglatin. You can also watch a 3:55 video about it if you don’t want to type them in yourself....
Phil Bradley’s weblog, July 9

Online gaming community reaches 217 million
A global study of online gaming shows that the number of unique visitors to these sites has reached almost 217 million worldwide—a year-on-year growth of 17%. The comScore World Metrix study took into account all sites that provide online or downloadable games, excluding gambling sites. Yahoo! Games was the largest property, attracting 53 million unique visitors, with MSN Games following in second place....
comScore, July 10

Even more meta
Andrew Pace writes: “Every time I look, metasearch is still with us. Part of me keeps hoping it will go away, but nope, it’s still there. And thank goodness that there are enough people and companies out there still trying to make it better. Index Data announced July 9 that it has created IRSpy, a registry of information retrieval targets that support Z39.50 and SRW/SRU.”...
Hectic Pace, July 11

10 ways to irritate your IT department
Believe it or not, bandwidth and storage are finite resources for even the largest institutions. Your information technology department is another finite resource, which is why your IT guys hate spending hours cleaning all the crap off your machine that you’ve picked up through reckless web surfing. These 10 activities tax your office’s network and IT staff to their respective breaking points....
PC Magazine, July 10

Next up: Booby-trapped web pages
Raimund Genes, Trend Micro’s chief technology officer, warns that sometime next year more cyberattacks will begin originating from the Web than they do from email. He says: “If webmasters are careless, then you have a perfect infection scene. You have a silent killer and you don’t have the email evidence to trace it back to the initial infection scene.”...
C|net news.com, July 10

Will an iPhone blend?
Tom Dickson, founder of the Blendtec line of Total Blenders, demonstrates the blendability of Apple’s new iPhone in this recent video in his popular Will It Blend? series. According to Wikipedia, the phrase “Will it blend?” has become an internet meme on such sites as Digg....
Blendtec

The inefficiencies of freedom
Duke Law Professor James Boyle writes: “Sometimes, freedom can just come to seem inefficient. Old-fashioned. Something that can be subcontracted away. That is the time to worry. Or so it seemed to me when I read about a new blanket license that the Copyright Clearance Center is offering American academic institutions. If, under fair use, no permission is required, why is such a center even necessary? The answer is that there is profound disagreement about the extent of educational fair use.”...
Financial Times, July 1; Copyright Clearance Center, June 22

Meet the Disposable Librarian
Blogtator writes: “It is that time of the year again: Librarians are retiring or moving on to another job and not being replaced. In some cases, school district administrators are making difficult and dreaded decisions to cut valued professional school library positions. However, in too many cases, the outgoing librarian has made the decision easy. We all know these librarians: the people who will not be missed or replaced when they retire or move on to another job. They are the Disposable Librarians.”...
AASL blog, July 8

Q&A video: James Billington
The 13th Librarian of Congress discusses his 20 years on the job and LC’s future. The interview took place in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building as part of the ALA Annual Conference....
C-Span Q&A, July 1

Update on LC cataloging services
Tom Yee, assistant chief of the Library of Congress Cataloging Policy and Support Office, summarized some changes taking place in his department: In a move toward economy, commonly used subject strings will be added to the LC authority file; LC is looking at the application and structure of the LC Subject Headings, especially considering pre-coordination vs. post-coordination. Also, as catalogers retire they are not being replaced, so technicians are doing bibliographic description and the professional catalogers are concentrating on classification and subject analysis....
Cataloging Futures blog, June 29

New edition of Sears Subject Headings
H. W. Wilson announced its release of the 19th edition of the Sears List of Subject Headings, with 400 new headings on Islam, new literary genres, science and technology, entertainment, and politics. The Sears list, first published in 1923, has traditionally served small- to mid-sized libraries. All the classification numbers assigned to the Sears headings in this edition have been revised to conform to the 14th abridged edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification....
H. W. Wilson, July 9

Roads to Reading book donations
The Pathways Within Roads to Reading Initiative’s Biannual Book Donation Program provides books to literacy programs in small and rural low-income communities twice each year. The initiative donates books to school, after-school, summer, community, day-care, and library reading and literacy programs. The applicant program must have a tutoring component or a strong focus on remedial reading in a structured environment....
Pathways Within Roads to Reading Initiative

Kids in Croatia (PDF file)
In March, the Libraries for Children and Young Adults Commitee of the Croatian Library Association and the Medvescak Public Library in Zagreb organized a professional conference titled “Parents with Babies and Toddlers—Welcome to the Library!” The conference aimed to give children’s librarians additional information on services that have not been adequately established in the country....
IFLA Libraries for Children and Young Adults Section Newsletter, no. 66 (June): 4–5

Does your library love romance?
Romance Writers of America has launched a “Libraries Love Romance” contest to reward libraries that have made a significant effort to develop programming or displays highlighting romance fiction in the past year and a half. The winning library in each division will win $500....
Romance Writers of America

20th-century literary genres
George Eberhart writes: “Works of literary criticism have identified an extraordinary array of schools and movements defining the content and styles of novelists, poets, and dramatists who have flourished in the past 100 years. Here is a short list, culled from numerous sources, that offers examples of prominent works and serves as a quick refresher course for reference librarians and others who may be interested in genres but hazy on how to define them.”...
Britannica Blog, July 8

The future of the hospital librarian
David Rothman writes: “Hospital libraries as we know them may not exist in a decade or two. What’s changing now at an incredibly quick pace are the tools themselves as they become increasingly digital, not the mission or role of the libraries. The question becomes: How do hospital librarians set about to manage this change and continue to be invaluable to a hospital?”...
davidrothman.net, July 4

Health care websites
Although you can’t singlehandedly fix the woes of national health care that are spotlighted in the movie Sicko, many free websites at least put a bit more power in your hands to manage personal wellness or a medical crisis. Elsa Wenzel reviews a handful of the best....
Webware, July 10

Making Cities Stronger report
Public libraries build a community’s capacity for economic activity and resiliency, according to a recent study (PDF file) from the Urban Institute. This report adds to the body of research pointing to a shift in the role of public libraries—from a passive, recreational reading, and research institution to an active economic development agent, addressing such pressing urban issues as literacy, workforce training, small business vitality, and community quality of life....
Urban Libraries Council

Underwear and the development of literacy
Think the invention of the printing press led to an upsurge in literacy rates in the later Middle Ages? Wrong, according to some historians of communication, who believe that paper was more important than printing. Rags for rag paper, which was cheaper than parchment, came from discarded clothes. In the 13th century, as more people moved into urban centers, the use of underwear flourished—which caused a rise in the number of rags available for paper-making....
University of Leeds, July 9

Melvil Dewey to Ainsworth Spofford
Larry Nix writes: “This bedraggled postal card was mailed on October 21, 1884, by Melvil Dewey in his capacity as ALA Secretary to Ainsworth Spofford, who was the Librarian of Congress and a member of the ALA Executive Board. Dewey indicates that the Executive Board would meet in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 29, 1884, and would decide on a place and time of the next ALA conference. (It turned out to be Lake George, New York, in 1885.)”...
Library History Buff, July

History Detectives explores the Jefferson Pledge
In the Washingtoniana Division of the District of Columbia Public Library, photo archivist Mark Greek discovered an 1805 document that listed individuals who had pledged funds for the creation of a “permanent institution for the education of youth in the city of Washington.” Among those who promised funds were President Thomas Jefferson ($200) and his then Secretary of State James Madison ($50). This season, the PBS show History Detectives is airing the story of the discovery (PDF file)....
History Detectives; Washington Post, April 11