Contents
U.S. & World News
ALA News
Booklist Online
D.C. Update
Division News
Round Table News
Awards
Seen Online
Tech Talk
Actions & Answers
Calendar

Liability for Georgetown branch fire contested
The engineering firm managing the renovation of the District of Columbia Public Library’s Georgetown branch claimed May 10 that its workers were not responsible for a fire that destroyed the building’s roof and second floor. Ebenezer Adewunmi, president of the Hyattsville, Maryland–based Dynamic Corporation, claims his crew was working on the opposite side of the building when the blaze broke out around noon April 30....

California school libraries continue staffing fights
As fiscal-year budget deadlines loom for California school systems, library staff in at least three school districts continue to battle to keep their jobs for FY2008, while school library media specialists in two other municipalities seem to have found staying power for another academic year....

Vienna city library hosts literary erotica hotline
The City Library of Vienna, Austria, is offering callers a spicy earful of erotic readings from 19th- and 20th-century books in its “Secret Collection” through May 31. A spinoff from a May 6 program of music, art, and dance called “The Long Night of Love” held at the Hotel Orient in the city center, the library’s erotica hotline features Austrian film and stage actress Anne Bennent (above) reading sexy excerpts from Austrian poet Hans Carl Artmann, American modernist writer Djuna Barnes, French novelist Rétif de la Bretonne, Swiss writer Gottfried Keller, and even love letters by German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle....

FISA court judge to speak at Washington Office Update
At the Washington Office Update Session on June 23, during the ALA 2007 Annual Conference, Royce Lamberth—former chief judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court—will be speaking about how the highly secretive court works, and how it has changed since the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001....
District Dispatch blog, May 14

LIVE! @ your library reading stage
The Public Programs Office, in cooperation with YALSA, will present the 13th annual LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage during ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., June 21–27. Sherman Alexie, Donna Leon (right), Lois Lowry, StoryCorps’s Dave Isay, Nick Hornby, Dinaw Mengestu, and 19 other award-winning authors and poets will read from their works....

Freedom to Read Foundation trustees elected
The Freedom to Read Foundation has announced the winners of its 2007 Board of Trustees election. Bernadine Abbott Hoduski, Therese Bigelow, Robert P. Doyle, John K. Horany, James G. Neal, and Judith Platt will serve two-year terms beginning with the 2007 Annual Conference....

MLA cosponsors Advocacy Institute
The Maryland Library Association has joined the list of regional cosponsors of the June 22 Advocacy Institute at ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The Institute will feature topics on message development, coalition-building, and resources....

YALSA city guide (PDF file)
The YALSA Local Arrangements Committee has put together a Washington, D.C., city guide with the inside scoop on how to get around, what to see, what to do, and where to eat. Here’s one tip: “You may be surprised to find that there aren’t a whole lot of casual lunch restaurants located near the National Mall. That’s why it’s worth it to head over to the National Museum of the American Indian and have lunch in the Mitsitam Café (above, $-$$). Traditional foods of the various native peoples are featured, and while the price may seem a little high, the quantity and quality of the food more than make up for it.”...
YALSA City Guide

Plan your subway and bus routes
Transit planner HopStop plots directions and estimates travel times by foot and public transit (subway and bus) between two addresses in Washington, D.C. If you don’t know the addresses, you can pinpoint them on a handily provided Yahoo map or search for them in HopStop’s city guide. The site also works for New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco transit....
HopStop

YALSA appoints YAttitudes editor
YALSA has appointed Erin Downey Howerton as editor of its quarterly newsletter, YAttitudes. Howerton, school liaison for the Johnson County (Kans.) Library, will serve for a three-year term beginning with the Fall 2007 issue....

Kids! @ your library continues to grow
ALSC has added new resources to its Kids! @ your library online tool kit. The latest materials added to the kit include Spanish-language resources, top ten ways to use Bill Harley’s “At Your Library” song in your library and community, and a story theater script for The Chicken and the Librarian....

Desch elected ASCLA president
Carol Ann Desch, coordinator of statewide library services and director of the New York State Library’s Division of Library Development in Albany, has been elected vice president/president-elect of ASCLA. She has served as a director-at-large for the ASCLA Board, chair of the State Library Agencies Section, and member of the Standards Review Committee and Website Task Force....

Wyatt elected RUSA president
Neal Wyatt, collection development manager for Chesterfield County (Va.) Public Library, has been elected vice president/president-elect of RUSA. She has served as chair of the RUSA Awards Committee, as the division councilor to ALA Council, and as chair of the RUSA Access to Information Committee....

Martin elected AASL president
Ann M. Martin, educational specialist in library information service for the Henrico County (Va.) Public Schools, has been elected vice president/president-elect of AASL. As an ALA member, Martin has held posts as director of Region IV and chair of the Awards Committee....

PLA updates Service Responses
Revised Service Responses are now available for downloading. The PDF document includes comprehensive descriptions of 18 new and revised Service Responses, defined as “what a library does for, or offers to, the public in an effort to meet a set of well-defined community needs.” In 2006, PLA Results series editors Sandra Nelson and June Garcia initiated a process to revise the 1997 Service Responses by soliciting input on the PLA Blog....

Barbara Gittings remembered (PDF file)
The Spring newsletter of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered Round Table has reminiscences about the late Barbara Gittings, longtime leader of the GLBT community, who died February 18 after a long battle with breast cancer. Not a librarian herself, she nonetheless championed the cause of getting GLBT literature into libraries around the country....
GLBTRT Newsletter 19, no. 1 (Spring): 4–5

Marshall Cavendish Award winner
The Calgary (Alberta) Public Library has been chosen from among 29 entries to receive the 2007 ALA Marshall Cavendish Excellence in Library Programming Award. The winning project, “It’s Not a Crime to Read,” pairs libraries, schools, and police officers in an effort to encourage at-risk children to read. It also develops positive collaboration between librarians and teachers....

Bell and Yamashita receive Equality Award
Gladys Smiley Bell, Peabody librarian at Hampton (Va.) University, and Kenneth A. Yamashita, library division manager at Stockton–San Joaquin County (Calif.) Library, are the 2007 recipients of the ALA Equality Award, which recognizes contributions toward promoting equality in the library profession. They are recognized for their work as cochairs of the first Joint Conference of Librarians of Color, held October 12–15, 2006, in Dallas....

Paul Howard Award for Courage winners
George Christian, Jan Nocek, Barbara Bailey, and Peter Chase are the 2007 recipients of the ALA Paul Howard Award for Courage. The four are being recognized for their challenge to the National Security Letter and gag order provision of the USA Patriot Act. The $1,000 bi-annual award and citation honors a librarian, library board, library group or an individual who has exhibited unusual courage for the benefit of library programs or services....

YALSA receives World Book–ALA Goal Award
YALSA has been named the recipient of the 2007 World Book–ALA Goal Award, consisting of a $10,000 grant to improve teen library services in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Using Teen Read Week as its focal point, the grant will fund increased professional development in the targeted states to significantly boost teen library use, teen reading, and literacy....

Cornell’s Saylor wins engineering award
John M. Saylor, director of the Cornell University Engineering Library, has won the 2007 Homer I. Bernhardt Distinguished Service Award, presented at the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference to recognize work that contributes to the advancement and development of excellence in engineering libraries. The awards committee cited as determining factors Saylor’s more than 35 years of leadership in engineering librarianship....
Cornell University Libraries, Apr. 28

Donna Hanus wins New York State service award
Donna Hanus, director of the Franklin-Essex-Hamilton School Library System in Malone, New York, received the 2007 Distinguished Service Award from the School Library Systems Association of New York State. The award is given to a director who has made an outstanding contribution to school librarianship and the association....
School Library Systems Association of New York State, May 4

Mount Prospect recognized for its construction
The Mount Prospect (Ill.) Public Library was honored April 28 by the Illinois Masonry Institute Promotion Trust for the outstanding composition of its brick and glass work. Selected from 99 entries, the library was one of only four silver award winners. The 2002 referendum for $20.5 million allowed the library to undergo the expansion and physical transformation that resulted in this award....
Mount Prospect Public Library, May 14

Jackson County rejects library levy
Dejected library supporters were stunned May 15 by the overwhelming defeat of a levy that would have reopened all 15 branches of the Jackson County (Oreg.) Library. The property tax levy, which would have raised $8.3 million annually, received 31,876 no votes and 21,906 yes votes as of 11 p.m. Joe Davis, chairman of the Save Our Library System campaign, said he believes residents voted against the levy not because they don’t support the libraries, but because they don’t support this method of funding them....
Medford (Oreg.) Mail Tribune, May 16

Illinois libraries stage day of protest over filter law
The computers were not dead May 14 at the Zion-Benton (Ill.) Public Library, but they were decorated as if they were ready to host a funeral. The black fabric arranged like mourning bunting on the internet terminals was intended to protest a proposed state law (H.B. 1727) calling for libraries to purchase and install filters to screen against child pornography and other obscene material. Other libraries across the state showed a unified opposition to the bill and described their strategies on the Day of Unity blog....
Lake County (Ill.) News Sun, May 15

New postal rates favor larger mailers
A first-class stamp costs two cents more starting May 14, but that’s nothing compared to what small magazine publishers are facing. Starting in July, postal rates for some publications will rise by as much as 30%, and a growing number of critics say the new rates will saddle small, independent publishers with inflated costs and betray protections granted by the founding fathers to the press....
Madison (Wis.) Capital Times, May 14

Maine Historical Society to renovate library
Nicholas Noyes, the head of the Maine Historical Society’s research library, is helping to orchestrate the move of one of the state’s largest historical repositories to a temporary site while the building tucked behind Portland’s Longfellow House undergoes a year-and-a-half-long renovation and expansion. Construction crews will build a glass-and-brick addition that will provide 7,000 more square feet of storage space than the 13,000 square feet the library now has....
Portland (Me.) Press Herald, May 9

Battle of the book reviews
More than at any time in the last 40 years, there is a bounty of news, features, criticism, and gossip about books in newspapers, magazines, and journals, blogs, radio and TV, podcasts, and an ever-growing number of book clubs and festivals. It’s by all appearances a flourishing literary moment in a culture that traditionally values other forms of entertainment, and it raises the question: Why should two key elements of that mosaic, litbloggers and book reviewers, be trading shots at all?...
Los Angeles Times, May 13

First Baltimore branch in 35 years opens
The opening on May 14 of the state-of-the art 27,000-square-foot, $16.2-million Southeast Anchor branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library was a boon to the struggling neighborhood of Highlandtown. As the first brand-new public library building to open in Baltimore in 35 years, it was symbolic of a turnaround for the city’s library system....
Baltimore Sun, May 14

NYPL Mulberry Street branch to open
The Mulberry Street branch of the New York Public Library, which will open to the public May 21, has been long in coming. Design work started nearly six years ago, right around 9/11, but the renovation did not begin until the fall of 2004. It will be the first new library branch in Manhattan since 1989, and the first ever in SoHo....
New York Times, May 15; New York Public Library

Vet prosecuted for opposing military recruitment in Ohio library
Gulf War veteran Tim Coil and his wife Yvette were arrested March 12 for causing a disturbance in the Stow–Munroe Falls (Ohio) Public Library after they protested the presence of two military recruiters in a meeting room. On May 10, Yvette said her lawyer was advised that the state would drop charges if they would pay $100 in court fees. “Tim said he should not have to pay for being harassed,” said Yvette. “No one has the right to take your freedoms away.”...
The Progressive, May 14

Historic volume added to East Carolina University Library
A 16th-century edition of Thomas Harriot’s report on his voyage to Virginia was recently acquired by East Carolina University’s Joyner Library. ECU’s College of Arts and Sciences is named for the explorer and scientist. The library spent $50,000 to purchase a copy of Theodor de Bry’s 1590 Latin edition of Harriot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia....
Greenville (N.C.) Daily Reflector, May 14

Bridgewater cuts school library jobs
Eight library assistants are losing their jobs as part of the Bridgewater-Raritan (N.J.) Regional School District’s $1.6 million in cuts from its $109.5-million budget. The assistants were told in person about the cuts and received a letter from Superintendent Michael Schilder on May 9 that their contracts would not be renewed “due to a reduction in force for reasons of economy.”...
Bridgewater (N.J.) Courier News, May 15

Historic diary damaged in British Library
A historic diary written by a prominent Jacobite as he plotted the 1715 rebellion has been severely damaged while in the care of the British Library. Its private owner, a descendant of Thomas Tyldesley, the diary’s author, has described how he “wanted to weep” when he collected the 96-page manuscript last week and discovered that someone had spilled oil across its pages—staining them and making some of them completely illegible....
The Times (U.K.), May 14

Swift Current librarian expands services
A library should be more than just about books, according to Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Librarian Manisha Khetarpal. Khetarpal, who is a few months into her second year as librarian, has helped turn the library into a hub of learning, with classes, sessions, and presentations for people of all ages....
Swift Current (Sask.) Southwest Booster, May 11

National library “Octopus” design stirs up Czechs
A controversy has erupted in the Czech Republic over the design of a new national library building in Prague. The design, by the Czech-born architect Jan Kaplicky, seems to be loved and loathed in equal measure. Czechs have nicknamed it “the Octopus.” Kaplicky has come up with what can best be described as a nine-story green and purple blob. Even President Vaclav Klaus is against it...
BBC News, May 14; Radio Prague, May 9

AquaBrowser makes library resources findable
AquaBrowser, a library search tool and interface developed by Medialab Solutions in Holland, is opening up the library by making its resources visible on the web. AquaBrowser now allows all the item records in a library’s collection to be indexed and found by any internet search engine, as if to create a separate web page for every title. This means any item in the entire collection can be found as a search result when performing a regular web search, driving traffic to the library website....
Medialab Solutions, May 2

Thomson sells off library assets to buy Reuters
Thomson Corporation announced May 11 that it has agreed to sell the higher education, careers, and library reference assets of Thomson Learning for $7.75 billion. These assets include the Thomson Gale library reference company. The announcement came right before the company announced its purchase for $17.2 billion of British financial news publisher Reuters Group PLC. The new Thomson-Reuters will control 34% of the financial information market. Andrew Pace adds his thoughts....
Boston Globe, May 11, 15; Hectic Pace, May 16

WebJunction releases Blended Learning Guide
WebJunction, OCLC’s online community, has released a Blended Learning Guide (PDF file) that mixes online and in-person training methods to offer libraries new approaches to library staff instruction. The guide offers information on several different modes of blended learning—discussion boards, online instant messaging and chat sessions, podcasting, rapid e-learning software tools, and web conferencing....
OCLC, May 4

Web 2.0 can neglect good design
Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design and usability established over the last decade, web usability guru Jakob Nielsen claims. He said sites peppered with personalization tools were in danger of resembling the “glossy but useless” sites at the height of the dot-com boom....
BBC News, May 14

Google: 10% of websites contain malware
Google is warning web users of the increasing threat posed by malicious software that can be dropped onto a computer as a web surfer visits a particular site. The search giant carried out in-depth research (PDF file) on 4.5 million websites and found that about one in 10 could successfully “drive-by download” a Trojan horse virus onto a visitor’s computer. Such malicious software potentially enables hackers to access sensitive data stored on the computer or its network, or to install rogue applications....
C|Net news, May 15

Google layouts timeline
Colin Colehour writes: “Google has been testing new layouts for the past couple of years. Each layout seems to build upon what Google has tried in the past. This timeline reflects just some of the layouts seen from 2005 through today. There are several things that Google seems to be focusing on with these latest tests: Placement of the different search option links like Images, News, Video, etc.; placement of related search links; and finding new ways to get users to try their queries in other search verticals (Books, Products, Scholar, etc).”...
Google Blogoscoped, May 11

New WorldCat xISBN service
The WorldCat xISBN service, the OCLC service that supplies International Standard Book Numbers associated with individual intellectual works represented in the WorldCat database, is now available for commercial and high-use applications. The xISBN service helps a user find a resource when an ISBN assigned to any printing or edition of the work is known. Users submit an ISBN to the service to return a list of related ISBNs and selected metadata....
OCLC, May 11

Kodak: Winds of change
This Kodak commercial (3:41) was produced for internal use only, but it became so popular with employees that the company released it for general viewing. It demonstrates that Kodak not only understands it made some missteps early on with digital cameras, but also that the company has a sense of humor....
YouTube

Library valuation report
The Americans for Libraries Council has released a report (PDF file) on the new field of library valuation, or models for expressing a library’s multiple contributions to its community in dollars and cents. Worth Their Weight: An Assessment of the Evolving Field of Library Valuation was prompted by the recognition that new approaches to library advocacy must involve “making the case” for the public library in quantitative terms....
Americans for Libraries Council, May 5

Gonzales proposes a new crime: Attempted copyright infringement
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy. The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 would also allow computers to be seized more readily, and increase penalties for DMCA anticircumvention violations. What’s still unclear is the kind of reception this legislation might encounter on Capitol Hill....
C|Net news, May 15

Top 25 web hoaxes and pranks
Steve Bass writes: “Whether they take the form of a comic image of a giant cat or a desperate plea from a sick child, chain email messages and internet frauds are elements of the online landscape that we’ve all encountered. No topic is off-limits: a medical warning, a promise of free money, or a believably (or shoddily) Photoshopped image. But at the end of the day, they’re just elaborate hoaxes or clever pranks—and we’ve collected 25 of the most infamous ones ever to have graced the internet or our inboxes.”...
PC World, May 3

Age verification won’t help
Jacqui Cheng writes: “Age verification has been a hot topic of late as a means for keeping children safe on the internet. But it’s when adults and kids play in the same space that things get sticky and the effectiveness of age verification seems to go out the window. Anyone can easily verify that they are over 18, as ex-investigator and CEO of Sentinel Tech Holding Corporation John Carillo has pointed out, even criminals and sexual predators.”...
Ars Technica, May 15

Ask the New Yorker librarians
New Yorker head librarians Erin Overbey and Jon Michaud reveal how the magazine collects all the newspaper clippings with funny typos, what Garrison Keillor wrote for the magazine, where founding editor Harold Ross is buried, the funniest and most mysterious pseudonyms in the archives, and when the first cartoon featuring a board of directors appeared....
Emdashes blog, May 14

LC and the future of bibliographic control
The second meeting of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control was held May 9 at ALA Headquarters in Chicago. The topic was “Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Control.” Blogger Mark R. Lindner offers extensive notes on the session, which featured a controversial presentation by University of Chicago cataloger David Bade....
Off the Mark, May 11

Prototypes for the library of the future
The public library in Aarhus, Denmark, established an experimental Transformation Lab that explored new visions for the public library of the future. With funding from the Danish National Library Authority and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the library examined new ways for users to participate in learning labs for literature, news, music, performance, and art. This English-language video (7:07) explains the project and what the library learned....
Aarhus Public Library

Minneapolis Public Library gets $193,000 in grants
The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library were recently awarded $193,000 in grant funds to be used to expand a variety of programs and services at the library, including Business Plan Builder, Live Homework Help, youth-focused activities, and world language collection materials....
Minneapolis Public Library, May 15

Fifth European library joins Google Book Search
The Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne in Switzerland is the latest university library, and the first French-language library, to partner with the Google Book Search program, the company announced yesterday. Swiss and French books will be digitized and made available online, including works from Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Benjamin Constant, and the personal library of economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto....
The Book Standard, May 16

Formula for academic library success
Steven Bell writes: “We struggle to get our user communities to actually use all the databases in which we invest significant funds, and to do so in ways that enable them to succeed academically. Well, I heard some new research findings last week that suggested a simple formula for achieving academic library success that puts our challenge into better perspective. This formula comes courtesy of John Law, Director, Strategic Alliances & Platform Management ProQuest CSA.”...
ACRLog, May 14

LC Veterans History Project launches web resource
A new section on the Veterans History Project website features background on Ken Burns’s upcoming film The War and details on how to support the campaign to collect oral histories of World War II. The section will be updated continually with event listings and related information. In addition, a newly revised and updated Veterans History Project field kit provides step-by-step instructions on collecting and preserving veterans’ stories....
Library of Congress, May 15

AAUP report on Katrina
In a report released May 15, the American Association of University Professors finds that there was “nearly universal departure from (or in some cases complete abandonment of) personnel and other policies” by five New Orleans institutions―the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, the University of New Orleans, Southern University at New Orleans, Loyola University New Orleans, and Tulane University―as they contended with the disaster that befell the city and its universities. The report faults the number, timing, and handling of post-Katrina faculty terminations....
American Association of University Professors, May 15

Get free audiobooks
Simply AudioBooks offers a selection of free public-domain books downloadable onto MP3 players or computers and suitable for burning onto a CD. Included are Jack London’s Call of the Wild, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Camel’s Back, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and others....
Simply AudioBooks

Digital collections best practices (PDF file)
The University of Maryland Libraries have issued a new edition of Best Practice Guidelines for Digital Collections at University of Maryland Libraries. The guide covers technical specifications for still images and text as well as audio and moving image formats. The library staff welcomes feedback and discussion on the content from the wider cultural heritage community....
University of Maryland Libraries Digital Collections and Resources, May 4