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Gates Foundation gives WebJunction $12.6 million
On June 21 as the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., was opening, Ohio-based library cooperative group OCLC announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s U.S. Library Initiative would give $12.6 million to its online community portal WebJunction. The five-year grant “will help us to sustain the programs that many library professionals are really beginning to depend on,” Bob Murphy of OCLC told American Libraries....

Naming flap costs Santa Fe library $1 million
The family of late businessman Michael J. Maloof has withdrawn an offer to donate $1 million to the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico, to support its new Southside branch library, after controversy erupted over a plan to name the branch after Maloof. Director of Libraries Patricia Hodapp told American Libraries that the Friends followed the city’s naming policy, which requires soliciting nominees from the public, permits buildings to be named only for deceased individuals, and allows the board to consider nominees’ character and donations of time or money....

New advocacy website targets the public
ALA launched its new public advocacy website, I Love Libraries, at the start of the ALA 2007 Annual Conference, June 21–27. The site contains a variety of features designed to attract—and hold the attention of—library lovers of all kinds: reviews of new and award-winning books, fast-breaking library news, library spotlights, a “find a library” feature, blogs and newsfeeds, as well as library-related links on YouTube and flickr....

Loriene Roy inaugurated 2007–08 president
Loriene Roy, professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, began her term as 2007–2008 ALA president on June 28. In 1999, Roy founded “If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything,” a national reading club for Native American children. She also directs “Honoring Generations,” an Institute for Museum and Library Services–funded scholarship program for indigenous students....

IMLS awards ALA $1.6 million in three matching grants
ALA will receive more than $1.6 million of the nearly $28 million in librarian recruitment and education awards announced June 19 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the 2007 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. The multifaceted grant program supports tuition assistance, curriculum development, service expectations, job placement, recruitment of nontraditional library students, and support for doctoral candidates to teach library science and research....

New LITA officers elected
Andrew Pace, head of information technology at North Carolina State University libraries, is the new vice-president/president-elect of LITA. His term, and that of newly elected LITA board members, begins after the 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. He has extensive experience with LITA programming, having served as a member of the National Forum Planning Committee and as a member of the Regional Institutes Committee....

PLA receives Gates Foundation grant
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded PLA a $7.7-million grant to develop and provide a national advocacy training program for public librarians over the next three years. PLA’s training program will provide librarians with the skills and resources necessary to seek increased funding, create community partnerships, and build alliances with local and regional decision makers....

Register for AASL Conference at early-bird rates
July 6 is the last day to register at low early-bird registration rates for the AASL 13th National Conference in Reno, Nevada. Attendees who take advantage of the early-bird rates can save $100 off the regular registration prices. The conference will be held October 25–28....

Follett to sponsor AASL Closing Night Gala in Reno
Follett Software Company and Follett Library Resources have teamed up to sponsor the Closing Night Gala at the AASL 13th National Conference and Exhibition in Reno, Nevada. Full conference registrants will be invited to enjoy the event at the National Automobile Museum on Saturday evening, October 27.... 

Audiobook of the year (PDF file)
The Audio Publishers Association announced the winners of the 2007 Audie awards at its June 4 gala in New York City’s Rainbow Room. The winners were announced in 32 categories, including a special Judges’ Award for titles in the politics category and the highlight of the evening, the Audiobook of the Year Award, presented to Zondervan Publishing for Inspired by...The Bible Experience: New Testament....
Audio Publishers Association, June 4

Readers make do in library-less Jackson County
There are no public libraries open in Medford, Oregon—or the rest of Jackson County and adjacent Josephine County—but library lovers aren’t taking the closures sitting down. They’re sharing books over coffee or swapping them on the library steps. Even the small Rogue Valley Metaphysical Library in Ashland (right), with its tidy collection of titles on UFOs and spirituality, is reporting an uptick in traffic....
Portland Oregonian, June 20

Will Manley to step down as Tempe city manager
Tempe, Arizona’s city manager is calling it quits after a career that included running the library, giving advice about space aliens, and getting yelled at over a dead golfer. American Libraries and Booklist columnist Will Manley, 57, announced his retirement June 25 after six-and-a-half years of running the city of 160,000. Manley said the job simply wore him out....
East Valley (Ariz.) Tribune, June 26

Billington says talking-book fund is sufficient
Librarian of Congress James Billington recently told a key appropriator that funding for a National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped program, which fell about $7 million short of his original request, was sufficient. LC originally requested $19.1 million for a talking-book program, which would transition to digital from analog technology. But Billington said he was satisfied with the funding level allocated in the spending bill....
The Hill, June 26

The Big Read gets bigger
National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia promises the Big Read will be in 400 U.S. cities next year, meaning town-wide celebrations of works by American writers Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, Harper Lee, Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, and others will be in all 50 states and in every congressional district. Four international Big Read programs are coming online next year in Mexico, Russia, Egypt and China....
CNN, June 25

Librarians describe life under an FBI gag order
Life in an FBI muzzle is no fun. Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI National Security Letter and accompanying gag order. It sounded like a spy movie or, gulp, something that happens under a repressive foreign government. Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey, librarians in Plainville, Connecticut, received an NSL to turn over computer records in 2005....
Wired, June 24

Free speech or smut?
A recent trip to the public library to research birds with his teenage son has turned into a kind of crusade for Richard Greathouse of Cedar Hill, Missouri. Greathouse, 60, said he and his 13-year-old son went to the Northwest branch of the Jefferson County Public Library on June 16 where he picked up a copy of the Riverfront Times, which contained “smutty” advertising....
Suburban Journals of St. Louis, June 26

D.C. Public Library to begin renovations
The District of Columbia Public Library is moving forward with major renovations of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, while designs for a new facility have been tabled—for now. Improvements to the outdated and long-neglected MLK Library in Mount Vernon Square address pressing needs, said Monica Lewis, library spokeswoman. The library system is expected to spend more than $2 million in modernization....
The Examiner, June 27

Food, toiletry items pay for fines
People who owe overdue fines to the Wethersfield (Conn.) Library can pay them off with pasta, canned foods, or items such as toothpaste. The library is collecting food and toiletries needed for the food bank in exchange for forgiving fines on overdue books and materials....
Stamford (Conn.) Advocate, June 26

Library trustee charged with embezzling
The longtime president of the Penns Grove–Carney’s Point (N.J.) Public Library Association was arrested June 21 and charged with embezzling more than $75,000 from the library. H. Donald Stewart Jr. is alleged to have embezzled the funds between November 1993 and May 2007. The money is said to have helped Stewart afford a lavish lifestyle that included a Cadillac Escalade that may have been paid for in part through library funds, authorities said....
Gloucester County (N.J.) Times, June 22

King collection starts to pay off for Atlanta
It’s been a year since Atlanta did what many thought was impossible: The city bought the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection in an eleventh-hour deal, avoiding an auction and returning more than 10,000 of the civil rights hero’s personal papers and books to his hometown. The collection is already beginning to pay off for King’s hometown and for his alma mater, Morehouse College....
Associated Press, June 24

In a university, not far away
UC Berkeley has the world’s premiere collection on Mark Twain—and Yale an unmatched trove of rare medieval manuscripts. But for research on Captain Kirk, Frankenstein, or Harry Potter, nothing tops the 110,000-volume Eaton collection at UC Riverside, the world’s largest library of science fiction, fantasy, and horror books....
Los Angeles Times, June 21

Murray Archive exhibition opens in Edinburgh
A £45-million archive containing correspondence by Charles Darwin, Lord Byron, Benjamin Disraeli, Sir Walter Scott, and David Livingstone is to go on display in Edinburgh June 27. Among the exhibits from the John Murray Archive to go on show at the National Library of Scotland will be the letter in which Darwin pitched the idea for his book On the Origin of Species, introducing the world to his theory of evolution....
Edinburgh Evening News, June 26

The Internet Archive—now officially a library
The San Francisco-based Internet Archive, established in 1996, is a website where surfers can spend hours exploring a universe of archived books, films, music, and more. In May, California officially recognized it as a library. The designation makes the online archive eligible to apply for several federal grant programs that are administered by the state of California....
Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette, June 24

Gloucester budget crisis reaches children’s room
The budget crisis in Gloucester, Massachusetts, will affect the city’s youngest readers. The Sawyer Free Library Children’s Room—which has provided books and learning material to hundreds of Cape Ann's youth—will see a reduction in hours and staff because of a trimmed city budget. The cuts, effective July 2, mean a reduction of nearly two business days worth of operating hours and elimination of three part-time children’s room staff members....
Gloucester (Mass.) Daily Times, June 22

The state of public libraries in Papua New Guinea
John Matthews writes: “Papua New Guinea has a highly centralized Public Library Service of 24 country-wide branches with centralized selection, ordering, and processing. Sadly, after 71 years this comprehensive system has gone into decline. As a library educator, I have witnessed this situation with melancholy as our public library system has gone out of touch with the current information landscape.”...
The National (Port Moresby), June 18

Out of the Secret Garden: The RDA/DC initiative
You may not think you care about AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules) or its successor, RDA (Resource Description and Access). But the next time you complain about the limitations of library data—the gazillions of records we have created about the physical items in our libraries—and wonder why none of the cool new applications leverage the millions of library records shared worldwide, or why your expensive catalog can’t integrate with a nifty new social software tool, or you wonder why there’s no Google mashup to connect readers and books, consider this: To a large extent, it’s because our data suck. Take an RDA survey before July 15....
ALA TechSources blog, June 21

Top 100 webware apps
Over the course of 20 days in May and June, the community of Webware.com users voted for its favorite Web applications. These are the results: the top 100 Web apps, 10 in each of 10 categories, determined by Webware readers and the fans of the sites that made the final cut....
Webware.com

MySpace, Second Life, and Twitter are doomed
Lance Ulanoff writes: “Don’t get too attached to MySpace. You might want to pull up stakes from Second Life, too. And you’ll probably want to stop posting inanities to Twitter. Why? All of these sites will be gone before the end of this decade.”...
PC Magazine, June 13

Don’t blame me: It's the phone’s fault!
Pew Internet’s typology of information and communications technology users tell us a lot about how far along we are—or aren’t—in the “information society.” Among two groups—Inexperienced Experimenters (9% of the population) and Light but Satisfied users (15% of the population)—two-thirds said they needed help in getting new gadgets or services to function. And 42% of the Connected but Hassled (10% of the population) also said this about information and communication technologies....
Pew Internet and American Life, June 20

Who will be the YouTube of live video?
Nick Gonzalez writes: “The growth of YouTube and its subsequent $1.65-billion buyout left behind a bevy of competing video sites. Since then, competitors have been seeking to differentiate themselves by focusing on longer videos, higher (bitrate) quality videos, professional content, and paying their users. However, one approach to differentiation has been streaming live video over the internet. If social live video gets big traction down the road, it’s most likely going to be led by one of these startups.”...
TechCrunch blog, June 22

Assessing the ILS (PDF file)
The University of Windsor has released a background document intended as a first step in evaluating the current environment with respect to Integrated Library Systems. To date ILSs have been proprietary, monolithic systems encompassing the major operations of the library: circulation, acquisitions, cataloging, and a public catalog....
University of Windsor, June 17

Bowker acquires Medialab Solutions
Bibliographic information management company R.R. Bowker announced June 22 that it has acquired Medialab Solutions by Amsterdam, creators of the highly regarded AquaBrowser Library search-and-discovery platform used by more than 60-million patrons in public libraries throughout the U.S. and Europe. The acquisition represents the alignment of the richest collection of bibliographic data with the most popular and user-friendly, visual faceted search technology in the library industry, improving Bowker’s ability to deliver new products that enhance the user experience in libraries....
Marketwire, June 22

The library fix
Garrison Keillor writes: “When politics gets mean and dumb, you can cheer yourself up by walking into a public library, one of the nobler expressions of democracy. Candidates don’t mention libraries—they’re more likely to talk about putting people behind bars. Yet when I walk into the library near my house and see a couple hundred teenagers studying, most of them Hmong or Vietnamese, I see the old cheerful America that Washington has lost touch with, the land of opportunity.”...
Salon, June 27

Emory’s alternative to Google
After Google announced a major expansion of its Library Project this month, Emory University announced a different approach to digitizing collections. Unlike the Google model, Emory was only digitizing works that are no longer under copyright and was retaining control over sale of the works (through print on demand). On June 21, two companies working with Emory announced that they plan to take that model to many other colleges and universities....
Inside Higher Education, June 22

NYPL installs Espresso Book Machine
While it looks like it’s still a ways from setting up shop next to more traditional vending machines, those in New York City can now get their instant-book fix from the very first (non-beta) Espresso Book Machine, which has found a home in the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library. For the time being, most of the books on offer appear to be ones in the public domain, including over 200,000 titles from the Open Content Alliance database....
Engadget, June 21

Pimp My Bookcart II
Ever since the end of last year’s Pimp My Bookcart contest, people have been telling Unshelved how they plan to customize, trick out, augment, or otherwise pimp out their bookcarts for 2007. The comic strip folks announce that this year’s contest is now officially open, this time sponsored by Highsmith....
Unshelved

UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register
Thirty-eight items of documentary heritage of exceptional value have just been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, bringing the total number of inscriptions since 1997 to 158. The register lists documentary heritage endorsed by UNESCO as corresponding to the selection criteria for world significance. The new items include convict records of Australia, Qing Dynasty Yangshi Lei archives, Persian illustrated and illuminated manuscripts, and the Bayeux Tapestry....
UNESCO, June 20

Structure and form of folksonomy tags
Louise F. Spiteri writes: “Folksonomies have the potential to add much value to public library catalogs by enabling clients to store, maintain, and organize items of interest in the catalog using their own tags. Tags were acquired over a 30-day period from the daily tag logs of three folksonomy sites, Del.icio.us, Furl, and Technorati. The tags were evaluated against section 6 (choice and form of terms) of the National Information Standards Organization guidelines for the construction of controlled vocabularies.”...
Webology 4, no. 2 (June)