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U.S. & World News
ALA News
Booklist Online
D.C. Update
Division News
Round Table News
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Kiowa County Library destroyed in Greensburg tornado
The mile-and-a-half wide tornado that destroyed 95% of Greensburg, Kansas, the night of May 4 and left nine people dead also wiped out the main branch of the Kiowa County Library, located in the city’s downtown. Librarian Debbie Allison, whose historic home was also demolished by the storm, visited the ruined facility May 7 and reported that only a section of the walls was left standing, up to a height of three feet. She found that a few books remained, but they were completely soaked and unsalvageable....

Fire devastates D.C.’s historic Georgetown branch
The District of Columbia Public Library’s Georgetown branch was struck April 30 by a three-alarm fire that destroyed the roof and much of the 1935 building’s second floor, including the Peabody Room, which housed an invaluable collection of records and artifacts detailing the history of the neighborhood. Library officials said the Peabody Collection suffered less damage than initially feared, with about 95% of the items intact....

Interview with Iraq National Library Director Saad Eskander
Following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saad Eskander left the relative safety of England to accept the directorship of the National Library and Archives of Iraq. Librarians and cultural organizations around the world had voiced outrage over the looting and burning that occurred after the takeover, and Eskander was determined to play a role in the recovery and the establishment of a democratic government. He spoke with American Libraries Editor in Chief Leonard Kniffel by mobile phone April 14 from Baghdad, where he and his staff are struggling against unimaginable odds to return the National Library to some semblance of normalcy....

Urban librarians meet politicos in Cleveland
“Help them make the right decisions,” said Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson, welcoming the Urban Libraries Council to his city. It was the mayor’s way of saying that library administrators must be at the table with government officials when economic development is being discussed. Whether the funding is city, state, or federal, the 114 participants in the ULC’s May 4–5 “Partners for Success” conference agreed that it must be won by demonstrating the value of libraries and librarians to the vitality of their communities....

EPA libraries still disposing and dispersing materials
According to an Environmental Protection Agency procedural document (PDF file) issued April 9, the agency is still requiring its libraries to “disperse or dispose of their library contents when appropriate,” despite a February 6 commitment from EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson during Senate hearings to a moratorium on further library closings and discarding of holdings. Another April 9 document (PDF file), from the EPA’s own Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, expresses concerns about the agency’s effectiveness in prosecuting polluters if data and documents are dispersed outside the EPA to other libraries. The EPA briefed members of Congress on its libraries May 4....

Vatican Library to close for three years
The 559-year-old Vatican Library will close for urgent repairs July 14 and not reopen until September 2010. Vatican officials made the announcement, which came as a surprise to scholars and historians, April 26, emphasizing that the work was needed to safeguard some 72,000 manuscripts housed in an underground bunker built only 25 years ago. Library Prefect Raffaele Farina said the bunker needed extra fireproofing, upgraded electrical wiring, and new emergency exits....

Arkansas Supreme Court saves library millage
The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled April 26 that property taxes collected specifically for schools and libraries cannot be diverted to fund commercial development. The ruling goes against the city of Fayetteville’s attempt to use the 25-mill tax to pay off bonds issued to clear land for a new downtown hotel....

Wisconsin school restricts What My Mother Doesn’t Know
The School District of Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, voted April 30 to limit middle-school-library access to Sonya Sones’s What My Mother Doesn’t Know to 7th- and 8th-graders. Before the vote, 6th-graders could read the novel if permitted by the school library media specialist, Spring Hill Middle School librarian Miranda Ladwig said in the May 3 Baraboo News Republic....

Medway may get a state funding boost
The Massachusetts House of Representatives has approved legislation that would earmark an additional $250,000 in FY2008 for the cash-strapped Medway Public Library. The State Board of Library Commissioners revoked the library’s certification in February, seven months after voters failed to override the state’s Proposition 2 1/2 tax-limitation law to allow the library to stay open 32 hours a week—the state’s minimum requirement. Although the library escaped closing, it has only been open 20 hours a week since June 2006....

University of New Mexico fire damage totals $17 million
One year after a suspicious fire destroyed thousands of books and journals in the basement of the University of New Mexico’s Zimmerman Library, university officials have assessed the damage at nearly $17 million—more than three times its initial estimate. The April 30, 2006, blaze burned more than 13 racks of bound journals and caused smoke damage throughout the entire building. The origin of the fire remains under investigation....

33rd National Library Legislative Day
This year, over 420 participants from 47 states came to Washington, D.C., to speak with members of Congress May 1–2 for National Library Legislative Day about the needs of libraries in the areas of funding, telecommunications, copyright, privacy, and government information. One of the participants was Danny Chapman (right) of Lake Forest, Illinois—winner of the student contest that decided the theme and logo for the annual event—who visited his legislators (including Rep. Mark Kirk) with the delegation from the Illinois Library Association....
District Dispatch blog, May 8

Endowment fund passes $30-million mark
At their regularly scheduled spring meeting at ALA headquarters in Chicago May 9, the ALA Endowment trustees announced that the Long-Term Investment Fund has passed the $30-million mark. The Endowment has increased by $14.3 million or 88.8% in value since its inception in the late 1980s....

Game Lab to explore gaming and libraries
Researchers from ALA, the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana are working together to research games in libraries through a project called Game Lab. They will tackle the development of a classification structure for games and determine the public good served by the library that provides gaming programs....

Tools to assist privacy practices
As part of its effort to support libraries and librarians seeking to improve their protection of library users’ privacy, ALA is making available new tools to help libraries conduct audits of its privacy policies and procedures. Developed by ALA during its own 2003 privacy audit, each tool is a document template that can be adopted and changed to serve the needs of the individual institution....

Hollywood Librarian to debut at Annual Conference
Ann Seidl’s full-length feature documentary, The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians on Film, will premiere at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., on June 22. The film shows the realities of 21st-century librarianship, including stereotyping, censorship and intellectual freedom, and the impact of librarians on society. Watch a trailer (1:40) here....
The Hollywood Librarian

Registration open for copyright teleconference
A national teleconference and webcast on “Copyright in the Digital Age: An Update,” will take place June 1 from 12 to 2 p.m. Eastern time. It will feature national library leaders discussing the complex copyright and intellectual property issues affecting libraries and schools. To register, call 800-354-6587 or visit the College of DuPage Press website....

New CPLA candidates and courses approved
The Certified Public Library Administrator Program Certification Review Committee approved five candidates and one program course during the Spring 2007 review. The new course in marketing will be offered online by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign....

Public awareness at Annual Conference
The ALA Public Awareness Committee is sponsoring three programs at Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., that will benefit communicators from all types of libraries. The Campaign for America’s Libraries program will share stories and strategies about the campaign, while two other sessions will focus on new technologies for PR practitioners and the history of women in baseball....

Advocacy Institute to feature essentials of lobbying
The Advocacy Institute at Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., will feature an intensive afternoon session covering lobbying techniques. The session, led by former lobbyist and congressional aide Stephanie Vance, will offer library advocates hands-on exercises, role-playing, and ways to effectively lobby congressional decision-makers....

Better know your Association
ALA Internet Development Specialist Jenny Levine created this 10-question multiple-choice quiz on the American Library Association as part of a gaming workshop she held at the Computers in Libraries conference. Her intent was to show how gaming can be used for assessment in addition to literacy and learning. Take the ALA quiz!...
Shifted Librarian blog, May 4

Abe Lincoln sites in the District
In addition to the assassination site at Ford’s Theatre, Washington teems with Lincoln landmarks. There is the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, which Lincoln attended; the Armed Forces Retirement Home’s Anderson Cottage, where Lincoln wrote a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation; Fort Lesley McNair, where the conspirators were tried and hung; Mount Olivet Cemetery, where conspirator Mary Surratt is buried; and the Wok N’ Roll Chinese Restaurant (right), the location of the former boarding house run by Mary Surratt where the conspirators met. (Thanks to history buff Charles Walton for these suggestions.)...

Thousands of teens celebrate Teen Tech Week
YALSA has successfully completed its first annual Teen Tech Week, “Get Connected @ your library,” March 4–10. The Bloomington (Ill.) Public Library hosted a podcasting workshop and an animation workshop for young adults. The Arnold O. Beckman High School library media center in Irvine, California, hosted two technology talks for its teen users and their parents—one from Orange County Register reporter Tamara Chuang on the latest tech gadgets and one from Sgt. Steve Wolf of the Irvine Police Department on safely using social networking software and the internet....

Jed Horne to speak at RUSA breakfast
Pulitzer Prize winner Jed Horne will be one of three featured authors at the annual “Literary Tastes Breakfast” during ALA Annual Conference June 24 in Washington, D.C. In 2006, Horne and the staff of the New Orleans Times-Picayune received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath....

Debraski elected YALSA president
Sarah Cornish Debraski has been elected vice president/president-elect of YALSA. She is active in the New Jersey Library Association, has published extensively on romance novels and booktalking, and currently serves on the YALSA Board of Directors....

Sheffer elected PLA president
Carol Sheffer, deputy director of the Queens Borough (N.Y.) Public Library, has been elected vice-president/president-elect of PLA. Sheffer has been a member of PLA and ALA for more than 20 years, serving on numerous committees, the ALA Recruitment Assembly, and the PLA Board of Directors....

YALSA offers four online courses
YALSA is offering four online courses this summer: “Making the Match: Finding the Right Book for the Right Teen at the Right Time,” “Pain in the Brain: Adolescent Development and Library Behavior,” “Power Programming for Teens,” and “Using Electronic Databases with Teens.” Classes will take place July 1–30, except for “Making the Match,” which runs July 1–August 10. Registration opened on May 7....

ACRL on plagiarism
ACRL has published Library Plagiarism Policies: CLIP Note 37, compiled by Vera Stepchyshyn and Robert S. Nelson of Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York. The publication is part of the ACRL College Libraries Section’s College Library Information Packet Committee series and is a pragmatic resource for college libraries, faculty, staff, and administrators to use to develop policies on the prevention and detection of plagiarism....

User rights at risk: Issues for media librarians (PDF file)
The Video Round Table is sponsoring a preconference, in conjunction with American University’s Washington College of Law and the Center for Social Media, on intellectual property rights, fair use, and orphan works issues. “User Rights at Risk in Video and Film” will be held June 22, 2–6 p.m., at the AU Washington College of Law....

Wilmette’s Central Elementary School wins Jaffarian Award
The Central Elementary School Library in Wilmette, Illinois, is the inaugural winner of the Sara Jaffarian School Library Program Award for Exemplary Humanities Programming. Barbara Ungar, library media teacher at Central Elementary School, developed and submitted the winning program, entitled “Central School Third Grade Virtual Museum: A Day in the Neighborhood.”...

2007 NSLMPY awards
The Norman (Okla.) Public School District; Harpeth Hall’s Ann Scott Carell Library (right) in Nashville, Tennessee; and North Elementary School in Noblesville, Indiana, will all receive this year’s National School Library Media Program of the Year (NSLMPY) Award from AASL. The honors will be presented at the AASL awards luncheon at ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 25....

AASL selects 2007 awards recipients
AASL has announced the winners of the Collaborative School Library Media Award, the ABC-CLIO Leadership Grant, the Distinguished School Administrator Award, and other divisional awards and grants....

River wins ACRL women’s studies award
Sandra A. River, architecture and humanities librarian at Texas Tech University Libraries, has been selected as the 2007 winner of the ACRL Women’s Studies Section’s Career Achievement Award. Sponsored by Greenwood Publishing Group, the award honors significant long-standing contributions to women’s studies in the field of librarianship over the course of a career....

WSS significant achievement awards
The winners of the 2007 ACRL Women’s Studies Section Award for Significant Achievement in Woman’s Studies Librarianship presented a panel at the 2006 National Women’s Studies Association meeting entitled “Locating Women’s Studies Information: Contemporary Quandaries in Providing Effective Access to Feminist Materials.” The panelists were Jennifer Gilley, Kayo Denda, Jenna Freedman, and Sharon Ladenson....

Lawrence Wright wins Bernstein Book Award
The New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism was awarded May 1 to Lawrence Wright for his book The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Alfred A. Knopf). The award, which includes a $15,000 cash prize, is given annually to a journalist whose work brings clarity and public attention to important issues, events, or policies....
New York Public Library, May 2

Montana librarians win state awards
When Deanna King began sorting mail at Parmly Billings Library, it never occurred to her that 28 years later she would win the Montana Library Association’s Honorary Lifetime Membership Award. And when Norma Glock collected pennies to build schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, she was focused on education and not the Sheila Cates Librarian of the Year Award....
Billings (Mont.) Gazette, May 5

Closed libraries are bad for business
Paula Schranz of Renal Care Consultants of Medford, Oregon, said she’s worried about her ability to attract and retain professionals in the future after all 15 branches in the county closed April 6 because of budget cuts. “If I was recruiting a physician right now, I would be concerned,” she said. But the Save Our Library System citizen group is campaigning for Measure 15-75, a three-year levy on the May 15 ballot that would reopen the libraries....
Medford (Oreg.) Mail Tribune, May 5

Gay penguins stir up a challenge again
The story of two penguins has caused at least one Lodi (Calif.) Public Library patron to request the children’s book be removed from the library’s toddler section or labeled to indicate mature content. Lodi resident Stephanie Bramasco asked the library board at an April 16 public meeting to remove the book And Tango Makes Three, deriding what she called its “homosexual story line that has been sugarcoated with cute penguins.”...
Stockton (Calif.) Record, May 5

File under “other”
Jenna Freedman is part of a generation that grew up with zines during their heyday in the 1990s. Now she is part of an emerging community of professionally trained librarians who are trying to make zines a part of the modern academic library system. It is a community, Freedman says, that faces a difficult question: How do libraries—institutions that by nature require a strict, stately style of micromanagement—assimilate these self-published and occasionally category-defying dispatches from the cultural hinterlands?...
Boston Globe, May 6

Encyclopedia of Life launched
If the $50 million biodiversity effort launched May 9 goes as hoped, the Encyclopedia of Life could emerge as an authoritative version of Wikipedia for biology fans. Potential applications range from planning natural conservation in suburban subdivisions, to mapping coral reefs in the Pacific, to identifying that odd butterfly perched by your window. Led in part by Chicago philanthropists and researchers, the project aims to create a free internet resource to catalog and describe every one of the planet’s 1.8 million species....
Chicago Tribune, May 9

Anchorage area libraries face the financial ax
In Alaska, Matanuska-Susitna Borough is poised to chop away 40% of the funding for Wasilla and Palmer city libraries, with further plans to cut that money to zero by July 2011. In return, city leaders are talking about taking the battle to library patrons. Charging nonresidents as much as $80 for a one-year library card is one proposal being considered....
Anchorage Daily News, May 2

Germany hands over Waldseemüller map
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on April 30 officially handed over to the United States the 500-year-old map that was the first to tell the world of a new land it called America. Library of Congress historians say the world map, completed by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1507, is the first known document to use the name America, the first to depict the Western Hemisphere, and the first to show separate Pacific and Atlantic oceans....
Associated Press, May 1

Prodigal library snake found
Skeeze, a one-year-old red albino corn snake, had been loose in the Cedar Falls (Iowa) Public Library for a little more than a month when he was found May 1 by janitorial employee Dick VanBesien. The two-foot-long Skeeze was an integral part of last summer’s reading program on animals before he escaped from his cage. Plans are already underway for a writing competition about “Skeeze the Snake’s Spring Break.”...
Waterloo Cedar Falls (Iowa) Courier, May 2

Yard-sale tips
Every weekend around the nation, thousands of yard-salers rev their engines with this credo in mind: “Anything can be anywhere.” Newspaper classified ads clutched in their palms, they hit the roads hoping to find that lost Picasso dragged from a grandma’s attic. Linda Steadman, owner of Too Many Books in Roanoke, says one of the strangest finds she remembers stumbling across was a rare book of witchcraft spells. She bought it for $1, sold it for $150.....
Roanoke (Va.) Times, May 5

Kids protest to save school librarian’s job
After almost 21 years of service, school librarian Terri Knight is in danger of losing her job—and hundreds of students are rallying around her. Students at Benchley Weinberger Elementary School in San Carlos, California, staged a demonstration May 4. The school district would not comment on the situation, saying it is a personnel matter....
KNSD-TV, San Diego, May 7

Traveling coffeehouse jolts reservation nightlife
It was hard to argue with Ganado (Ariz.) High School librarian Steve Centers’s assessment that the April 26 open-mic coffeehouse at the library was “a complete success.” More than 90 people from as far away as Window Rock and Tsaile, Arizona, crammed the library to sip coffee, munch on free snacks, and watch about 30 local performers do everything from karaoke to reciting poetry while jogging....
Navajo Times, May 3

NBC joins fight against YouTube
NBC is taking sides with fellow media conglomerate Viacom over a piracy lawsuit filed against Google’s online video-sharing site YouTube, according to papers filed in court. The case involves a separate party, Los Angeles News Service operator Robert Tur, who sued YouTube in July for allowing its users to appropriate his famous footage of trucker Reginald Denny being beaten during the 1992 Los Angeles riots....
Reuters, May 7

Information technology users: A typology
The Pew Internet and American Life Project conducted a survey (PDF file) on the assets, actions, and attitudes of Americans who use IT and came up with 10 major types of technology users. Which one of these types describes you?—omnivore, connector, lackluster veteran, productivity enhancer, mobile centric, connected but hassled, inexperienced experimenter, light but satisfied, indifferent, or off the network. If you’re not sure, take the quiz....
Pew Internet and American Life Project, May 6

ExLibris gets SASsy
Ex Libris Group announced today that Robert Mercer has been appointed president of the Ex Libris Group North American subsidiary, effective immediately. Mercer was most recently a regional vice- president and general manager of SAS Institute, Inc. Mercer will replace Dan Trajman who joined Ex Libris in March 2004. Trajman will stay on in a consultative role through 2007....
Hectic Pace blog, May 8

RSS feeds for Amazon.com tags
Amazon’s Customer Communities team has rolled out broader support for tag-based RSS feeds, according to Amazon’s Ian McAllister. The option allows subscription to feeds specific to the user’s interests and subsequently would also allow for the creation of widgets and mashups using the data created....
TechCrunch blog, May 8

Jessamyn installs Ubuntu
Jessamyn West made this 4:35 video of her installing the free, Open Source, linux-based Ubuntu operating system on two workstations at the Calef Memorial Library in Washington, Vermont. Along the way, she describes the features of the system, which comes bundled with popular Open Source software titles like OpenOffice, Gimp, and Firefox. The video has a great Cajun music soundtrack....
librarian.net, May 8

How to download YouTube videos
Stan Schroeder writes: “Google has a solid amount of cash in its pockets, but with all the recent lawsuits against YouTube one has to wonder if it’s time to salvage whatever videos you like from the service and save them somewhere where evil attorneys won’t look—your hard drive. Luckily, there are literally dozens of tools for downloading videos from YouTube and/or converting them to some format other than .flv.”...
Mashable Social Networking News, May 5

Is everything miscellaneous?
Karen Schneider writes: “This book is dangerous. David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous takes all the precious ideas we are taught as librarians and throws them out the window. Structure, order, precise metadata, bibliographic control: gone, gone, gone, gone. Even, for you edgier types, ye who tell of your Semantic Web and your RDF triples: old-school, good-bye, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”...
ALA TechSource blog, May 3

Open access for librarians
Karin Dalziel, library assistant at the University of Nebraska’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, offers an introduction to open access and why it’s important: “I hear occasionally about how open access publications are not a viable option for scholars to publish in. This sentiment is popular with scholars, but librarians are uniquely positioned to fight it. Librarians need to be informed of open access publishing methods and ideology because it is becoming an increasing force in scholarly literature.”...
Karin Dalziel’s website

Guidelines for conserving leather and parchment bookbindings
This publication (translated here into English) is an updated edition of the Richtlijnen voor de conservering van leren en perkamenten boekbanden issued in 1995 by the Dutch Royal Library (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) and the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science. The guidelines describe the types of damage to bookbindings and the stages of treatment each requires....
Koninklijke Bibliotheek

Ten ways for superpatrons to help improve libraries
Ed “Superpatron” Vielmetti has created a list of 10 things library advocates can do to make libraries better. Two of the more unusual ones include: Remix the library catalog into your own applications, and add a librarian to your instant message or Twitter buddy list....
Superpatron blog, May 2

The lolbrarians phenomenon
(strong language warning)
A spinoff of lolcat images, lolbrarians are humorous or bizarre library-related photos and graphics accompanied by a caption or word balloon in poorly spelled or syntaxed IM or pidgin English. Famous librarians like Nancy Pearl (right), Stephen Abram, and Michael Gorman are lampooned. A LiveJournal community has been established for uploads....
Lolbrarians website

Famous librarians’ favorite books
George Eberhart writes: “What do prominent librarians have to say about their favorite books? I asked 10 library leaders to identify the publications that have given them great enjoyment or significantly affected their professional or personal lives and philosophies. I defined the term ‘book’ as loosely as possible, to allow them to select anything from incunabula to websites.”...
Britannica Blog, Apr. 18, May 3

The Silent Library sketch
Dutch kickboxer and four-time K-1 world champion Ernesto Hoost makes an appearance on the wildly popular Japanese variety show Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!! (Downtown’s Not an Errand Boy!). In this segment (9:54), the Japanese cast and Hoost are in a staged library in which one of them has to undergo a punishment upon choosing the card with the skull and crossbones on it. Although the game requires that they remain silent during the entire segment, the cast repeatedly lets out bursts of muffled laughter that is loud enough for the occupants of the library to hear....
YouTube

Scholarly publishing groups issue white paper
In an effort to temper the rhetoric regarding the role of copyright in scholarly communication, three prestigious organizations representing the international scholarly publishing community issued a white paper May 8 on the academic use of journal content. The position paper lays out general terms for the appropriate balancing of rights for academic journal publishing....
International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, May 8

Anatomy of a postal card used by a library
Library philatelist Larry Nix writes: “Government-issued postal cards which have been mailed to or from libraries are one of my favorite types of postal librariana because they provide a view of real library work during another time in our history. This postal card was mailed from the University of Illinois Library to Salzburg, Austria, in 1932 and reused for the return message.” Find out why the mailing was sent....
Library History Buff, May 1