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

SLA, ALA urge Sandia to rethink closing its technical library
One week after Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, sent out an internal memo October 15 announcing that it was closing the physical stacks of its Technical Library in order to go completely virtual, the Special Libraries Association sent SNL Director Thomas O. Hunter a strongly worded letter (PDF file) calling the move a “short-sighted” decision that could “cause irreparable damage in the future.” ALA Washington Office Executive Director Emily Sheketoff also wrote a letter (PDF file) November 6 urging Sandia to reconsider....

Federal library funding numbers announced
The conference report was filed November 6 on the FY2008 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies appropriations bill. The report funds the Institute of Museum and Library Services at $277.1 million, an increase of $29.9 million. The Library Services and Technology Act was funded at $224 million, with $171.5 million for the State Grant program. However, President Bush has announced he plans to veto the conference agreement....
District Dispatch blog, Nov. 6

Sacramento PL sues contractor for $1.3 million
Following an investigation initiated by Sacramento (Calif.) Public Library Director Ann Marie Gold, SPL filed suit October 30 against a local contractor, asking for more than $1.3 million in restitution and damages and accusing Hagginwood Services of an estimated $650,000 in repair and maintenance overbilling during the past four years. The alleged perpetrator is also under investigation by a Sacramento County grand jury, the Internal Revenue Service, and the FBI....

Warner Bros., Rowling sue school librarian over Potter project
Warner Brothers Entertainment and J. K. Rowling filed suit October 31 for copyright infringement against independent publisher RDR Books based in Muskegon, Michigan, demanding that it halt plans to publish The Harry Potter Lexicon, a book version of the website created by school librarian Steve Vander Ark. The unauthorized 412-page encyclopedia of all things Potter is scheduled to be released in the United States at the end of November....

NYPL acquires Hepburn theatrical papers
The estate of actress Katharine Hepburn has donated 30 linear feet of her papers, all relating to her stage career, to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The collection includes journals, photographs, cast lists, scripts, contracts, fan letters, and other notes. The materials range from her first performances as a senior at Bryn Mawr (Pa.) College in the 1920s to her final stage show, 1981’s West Side Waltz....

Gay-positive program attracts negative press
The October 31 headline in the York (Maine) Weekly read: “Controversy Erupts over GLBTQ Program at York Public Library.” The coverage told of a community flap over a York Diversity Forum in the library meeting room because of its focus on tolerance for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or who are questioning the nature of their sexuality. But the November 3 program went off without a hitch, attracting about 20–30 attendees....

California quake shakes up San Jose stacks
The top four floors of San Jose, California’s, eight-story Martin Luther King Jr. Library, which serves as the public library system’s main branch and the San Jose State University library, were temporarily closed to reshelve books after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit the city October 30. The library building swayed during the earthquake, causing about 300,000 books to fall....

NBA legend to keynote Midwinter President’s Program
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the National Basketball Association’s all-time leading scorer and a prolific author, will be the keynote speaker for the President’s Program at the 2008 Midwinter Meeting, in Philadelphia. ALA President Loriene Roy chose Abdul-Jabbar, the author of On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance (Simon & Schuster, 2007), to deliver the address on Sunday, January 13....

Oprah continues support of ALA ’s Great Stories Club
Oprah’s Angel Network awarded $300,000 to ALA, continuing its support of the Great Stories Club, a national reading and discussion program launched in 2005 with an Oprah’s Angel Network Book Club Award. The program, a joint effort of the Public Programs Office and YALSA, was established to reach teens through books that are relevant to their lives. The 2008 theme, book titles, and online application will be available online beginning December 3....

Usability and the ALA website
At the Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., 194 persons visited a kiosk to comment on wireframes, or mock-ups, of a proposed ALA website redesign. Afterwards, revised wireframes incorporating the first round of critiques were offered online. Over the next two months, almost 1,500 people viewed the revised version and completed a survey. These results are summarized in a post on the Web Planning for ALA blog, with a link to the report provided. ALA is recruiting a new position for Senior Usability Officer....
ALA Marginalia blog, Nov. 1

Endowment trustee deadine extended
In an effort to increase the pool of potential candidates for the upcoming opening among the Endowment trustees, the ALA Executive Board has reopened and extended the search for candidates. The deadline for receiving applications is now February 1, 2008. Applications and nominations (PDF file) are now being accepted. The candidate will be selected by the ALA Executive Board at their 2008 Spring Meeting, to be held April 11–13 in Chicago....

Public Programs to collaborate with Fetzer Institute
The Public Programs Office will collaborate with the Fetzer Institute’s Campaign for Love and Forgiveness on “Let’s Talk About It,” ALA’s 25-year-old national reading and discussion program. Fetzer’s funding of $277,440 will support the development of Let’s Talk About It: Love and Forgiveness, the latest theme in the program. Thirty public libraries will eventually be selected to receive $2,500 program grants each through a competitive application process....

AL’s architectural showcase
Every year, American Libraries’ April issue features articles and photographs spotlighting new, expanded, and renovated library buildings. The editors invite librarians, architects, and interior designers to share their treasures with AL readers. Send the completed submission form (PDF file), along with high-res color images to American Libraries....

The California wildfires and libraries
The October 2007 wildfires in southern California burned hundreds of thousands of acres and destroyed thousands of buildings, and libraries were among those threatened. Helen Fried of the Orange County Public Library and Margaret Todd of the County of Los Angeles Public Library spoke (3:19) to AL Focus on October 26, as the fires were still raging....

NFT’s ultimate Philadelphia web index
Not For Tourists offers a potpourri of websites that help you find what you might be looking for in Philadelphia, from arts and literature to education, gay and lesbian activities, parks and other destinations, and transit information....
Not For Tourists

SPARC-ACRL interviews on open-access publishing
ACRL and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition have released interviews and analysis exploring in depth the views of three major open-access publishers on the challenges of sustainability. The materials were produced in conjunction with the 15th SPARC-ACRL Forum on Emerging Issues in Scholarly Communication, which took place on June 23. Podcasts, transcripts, and slides from the event are now available....

Create Your Own Avatar contest
YALSA invites librarians to showcase both their creativity and their library’s technological resources in its Create Your Own Avatar contest. The winner and up to five finalists will win $100 in books and other materials from YALSA. Librarians are encouraged to team up with their Teen Advisory Group members or other teens in creating an award-winning avatar....

LAMA selects Emerging Leaders
Shorlette Ammons-Stephens, Wayne County (N.C.) Public Library, and Reese Evenson, Jefferson County (Colo.) Public Library, have been selected as the 2008 Emerging Leaders sponsored by LAMA. Evenson and Ammons-Stephens will each receive $1,000 for travel expenses to the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference....

Joint GODORT/SLA-DGI meeting
New York Times reporter Scott Shane and Washington Post research editor Alice Crites educated and entertained the crowd at a joint meeting of the SLA Government Information Division and the ALA Government Documents Roundtable in Arlington, Virginia, on October 15. Scott and Alice discussed how they find and use government information, what their favorite sources are, and which documents even they have trouble tracking down....
LLRX, Oct. 30

Five libraries receive national public service medal
Five libraries and five museums have been selected for the 2007 National Medal for Museum and Library Service (formerly called the National Award), the nation’s highest honor for extraordinary public service. The libraries are the Georgetown (S.C.) County Library, the Kim Yerton branch of the Humboldt (Calif.) County Library, the Memphis (Tenn.) Public Library and Information Center, the Newberry Library in Chicago (above), and the Ocean County (N.J.) Library....
Institute of Museum and Library Services, Nov. 6

New York Public Library names four Library Lions
Movie director Martin Scorsese and three others have been named Library Lions by the New York Public Library. Scorsese, a native New Yorker who won his first Oscar last year for The Departed, was honored November 5 along with historian John Hope Franklin, author Jhumpa Lahiri (right), and playwright Tom Stoppard. “Library Lions honorees were chosen for their exceptional contributions to scholarship, literature, science, history, and the visual and performing arts,” library president Paul LeClerc said....
Associated Press, Nov. 6; New York Public Library

Ingenta Research Award
The Library Research Round Table encourages applications for the Ingenta Award, a grant of up to $6,000 for a research study on the acquisition, use, and preservation of digital information, and $1,000 for travel to a conference to present the results. The deadline is January 31....

ALSC scholarships
Applications are now being accepted for the 2008 Frederic G. Melcher and Bound to Stay Bound Books scholarships administered by ALSC. Four Bound to Stay Bound Books scholarships at $6,500 each and two Frederic G. Melcher scholarships at $6,000 each will be awarded....

Trustees to replace Boston’s Margolis
Boston Public Library trustees are planning to remove president Bernard A. Margolis (right), who has served for the last 10 years at the helm of one of the nation’s oldest public libraries. Margolis, who has clashed on several occasions with Mayor Thomas M. Menino (left), will not have his contract renewed when the nine-member board of trustees meets November 13, according to a copy of the agenda obtained by the Boston Globe....
Boston Globe, Nov. 4

NYPL’s Donnell branch to sprout a hotel
The New York Public Library said November 6 that it had signed an agreement to sell the property and the building housing its Donnell branch in Midtown to Orient-Express Hotels for $59 million. The five-story building on West 53rd Street will be razed to make way for an 11-story hotel, but the library will own and occupy space on the first floor and underground under the terms of the deal. The branch, built in 1955, is in dire need of renovations that the library system can ill afford....
New York Times, Nov. 7

Librarians say surveillance bills lack adequate oversight
A little-remarked feature of pending legislation on domestic surveillance has provoked alarm among university and public librarians who say it could allow federal intelligence-gathering on library patrons without sufficient court oversight. Draft House and Senate bills would allow the government to compel any “communications service provider” to provide access to emails and other electronic information within the United States—and that could well include libraries....
Washington Post, Nov. 2

Hovering college parents get extra credit
Despite the negative reputation of “helicopter parents”—those moms and dads who hover over children in college and swoop into their academic affairs—they appear to be doing plenty of good. Data from 24 colleges and universities gathered for the National Survey of Student Engagement show that students whose parents were very often in contact with them “were more satisfied with every aspect of their college experience, gained more in such areas as writing and critical thinking, and were more likely to talk with faculty and peers about substantive topics,” said survey director George D. Kuh....
Washington Post, Nov. 5

Substantial gift to Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library
When the anonymous gift of 13 trunks full of documents and artifacts, measuring about 5 by 3 feet each, arrived at the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia, recently, Eric Vettel, the library’s executive director, said the excitement in the air was tangible. The donors of the collection of trunks had kept them stored in a house for years. No one opened them up because of the sheer number of documents inside. The library plans to reveal some of the finds at its annual luncheon on November 16....
Staunton (Va.) News Leader, Nov. 5

Sacramento pushed to change filtering policy
A contingent of conservative library board members is pushing the Sacramento (Calif.) Public Library to adopt a new policy aimed at ensuring library computer users do not access pornographic images. Arguing that the need to protect children outweighs any concerns over the constitutionality of a more restrictive policy, some board members say library users should not be allowed to bypass an internet filtering system. The board is likely to address the issue early next year....
Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, Nov. 3

Oprah pulls disputed book from her website
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey has pulled a discredited children’s book, Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree, from a list of recommended titles on her website, blaming an archival error for including a work considered to be the literary hoax of a white supremacist. First published in 1976, the book was supposedly the real-life story of an orphaned boy raised by his Cherokee Indian grandparents. Carter was later identified as Asa Earl Carter, a KKK member and speechwriter for former Alabama governor George Wallace. “I am surprised, of course, that Winfrey would recommend it,” said ALA President Lorene Roy....
Associated Press, Nov. 6

Seattle Public Library popularity booming since 1998
The Seattle Public Library is having a popularity problem. Thanks to its “Libraries for All” building expansion program and an unprecedented increase in use of the library’s online catalog, the number of holds placed on books and other library materials has tripled, from about 1.01 million in 1998, when voters approved the program, to 3.35 million in 2006. But the budget for books, DVDs, CDs, and other materials has stagnated at roughly 2002 levels....
Seattle Times, Nov. 6

Complaints against filters grow in U.S. Defense schools
Pacific-wide concern among teachers about U.S. Department of Defense Dependents Schools internet filtering software grew November 2 with two more grievances filed against school administrations on Okinawa. Teachers contend the Blue Coat WebFilter software is so restrictive that it hampers teaching as well as learning. The complaints come on the heels of one recently filed by DoDDS teachers at Seoul American High School in South Korea for the same reasons....
Stars and Stripes (Pacific edition), Nov. 4

Librarian rides a new wave
Ohio University students walking in and out of Allan Pollchik’s glassed-in office on the Chillicothe campus don’t blink an eye at their library director’s surfing simulations—an attempt to explain the rush he got when he surfed professionally more than 20 years ago during his previous lives as a psychologist and a high-powered fundraiser. Starting only his third year as a librarian, Pollchik says this reinvention of himself is the best yet....
Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, Nov. 5

British libraries become a direct marketing outlet
A scheme to put thousands of advertisements into library books will find UK borrowers taking home a little more than they had bargained for. Up to 500,000 inserts a month are due to be handed out by libraries in Essex, Somerset, Bromley, Leeds, and Southend. It’s a scheme that direct-marketing company Howse Jackson is looking to take nationwide over the next few years, a development that dismayed the director of policy at the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Guy Daines....
The Guardian (U.K.), Nov. 5

Wooden library pins were the lure to keep kids reading
Back in the late 1940s and 1950s, kids had a good incentive to take part in the Fergus Falls (Minn.) Public Library summer reading program. That incentive was a wooden pin each youngster received after reading at least 10 books. Examples are a wagon from 1949, clown from 1950, cowboy from 1953, Liberty Bell from 1955, canoe from 1956, and wooden earth (globe) figure from 1957. Others included bookworms and other wooden emblems, with FFPL denoted on some of the pins....
Fergus Falls (Minn.) Daily Journal, Nov. 3

Chile returns thousands of books stolen from Peru
On November 5, Chile returned to Peru 3,788 books, antique texts, and a variety of other artifacts dating back to the 16th century. The items were originally stolen from Lima’s National Library and taken to Santiago during the War of the Pacific in 1879–1883. The gesture was the result of a four-year-long review of the catalogs at both Chile’s National Library and the Santiago Severin Library in Valparaíso....
Santiago (Chile) Times, Nov. 7

China’s National Library reprints its rare treasures
The National Library in Beijing has reprinted nearly 30,000 volumes of ancient and other rare books in its collections over the past three decades to ensure the original information is not lost. The library keeps in its collection about 126,000 volumes of rare books dated before 1911—the year marking the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). An exhibition featuring 15,000 volumes of the reprinted books at the library opened this week....
China Daily (Beijing), Nov. 7

Windows XP: Still the one
Sascha Segan writes: “Every day, I find myself swiveling back to get tasks or hobbies done on the greatest operating system out there right now—Windows XP. We’ve all got a love-hate relationship with XP, but it’s the only PC OS that can satisfy 100% of the people, 100% of the time. I love Mac OS, but almost every day, I run into various applications that I need but can’t find on the platform. And Vista’s new features just aren’t enticing enough to compel people to spend money on them.”...
PC Magazine, Oct. 31

Become a del.icio.us power user
Chris Poteet writes: “As a web developer, how we retain, organize, and use information is a high priority. One web application that has revolutionized the way I retain information is del.icio.us. I originally used it just to save the occasional link. I realized that it’s much more than that. Here are a few power tips to make the most of the social bookmarking application.”...
Web Worker Daily, Nov. 1

279 things to do with Flickr
This list of mashups should give you some idea of the variety of social networking, search, and image sites that let you do many things with Flickr....
Programmable Web

Free stuff from database vendors
Shirl Kennedy writes: “Since we worship at the Church of Free here on ResourceShelf, we thought we’d take a look at some of the gratis content lurking on database vendor websites. We have found that if you’re exploring vendor websites on your own, you’ll often find the good free stuff in the press/media area or possibly in a special area for librarians.”...
ResourceShelf, Nov. 5

17 specialty search engines
Christina Laun writes: “Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com aren’t the only search engines out there. There are many smaller, more customized search options that can help you quickly find what you’re looking for by only searching through a few sites rather than through everything. After all, you’ve got enough on your mind with hosting, design, and programming to do. Try out these 17 search engines designed with web developers in mind.”...
Virtual Hosting blog, Nov. 6

Internet2 and libraries
James Werle and Louis Fox offer a few ideas on how librarians can use Internet2 connectivity to build upon their core strengths and to heighten their increasing roles within communities: “As we begin considering a few advanced-networking usage scenarios, reflect on how the role of the library in your community would change if many of the limitations imposed by the commodity internet were to disappear.”...
Computers in Libraries 27, no. 10 (Nov./Dec.)

21st-century skills: Now online
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills on November 7 launched Route 21—an online, one-stop shop for 21st century skills–related information, resources, and tools. Route 21 demonstrates how these skills can be supported through standards, assessments, professional development, curriculum, and instruction and learning environments. Users can tag, rank, and share content based on their personal interests. Content is divided into sections on skills, support systems, resources, and partner states....
Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Nov. 7

Denver votes yes for libraries
The Denver Public Library today announced victory November 7 in the municipal campaign championed by Mayor John Hickenlooper. The nine-point ballot initiative allows DPL to make critical building improvements and upgrades and further its service to the community by adding three new branch libraries....
Denver Public Library, Nov. 7

Native American booklist
To mark the 13th anniversary of Native American Heritage Month in November, the National Educational Association has released a recommended reading list that includes titles ranging from such pre-K classics as Mama, Do You Love Me to Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn Series that has been thrilling young (and older) adults for more than a decade. Titles are listed by grade level and include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. But Debbie Reese (Nambé Pueblo) says some of the selections are problematic....
National Education Association; American Indians in Children’s Literature, Oct. 30

Google Book Search and LCSH
Jenn Riley writes: “The Inside Google Book Search Blog recently announced that they’ve added subject links in a left navigation bar as additional entry points into the index. At least some of those are Library of Congress Subject Headings. It’s my great hope that this sparks a great rethinking of how we provide subject access in the library community. We simply must be continually evaluating how well our vocabularies perform in ever-evolving systems and user expectations.”...
Inquiring Librarian blog, Oct. 23

Library consortia object to Science leaving JSTOR
The International Coalition of Library Consortia issued a statement October 30 strenuously objecting to the recent decision by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to withhold future issues of its premier publication, Science, from the JSTOR archive and prohibiting JSTOR from making issues of Science currently held in the archive available to new participants....
International Coalition of Library Consortia, Oct. 30

Digitization and its discontents
Anthony Grafton writes: “On many fronts, traditional periodicals and books are making way for blogs and other electronic formats. But magazines and books still sell a lot of copies. The rush to digitize the written record is one of a number of critical moments in the long saga of our drive to accumulate, store, and retrieve information efficiently. It will result not in the infotopia that the prophets conjure up but in one in a long series of new information ecologies, all of them challenging, in which readers, writers, and producers of text have learned to survive.”...
The New Yorker, Nov. 5

LC hosts Sousa website
To commemorate the birthday of world-renowned bandleader and composer John Philip Sousa on November 6, 1854, the Library of Congress launched a website dedicated to the composer of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” This presentation provides access to many music manuscripts from the John Philip Sousa Collection, which is housed in the Library’s Music Division. Also online are more than 450 pieces of printed music and historic recordings of the Sousa Band....
Library of Congress, Nov. 5

The academic library is no place for fun
Steven Bell writes: “Are there days at your academic library when it appears that a war is going to erupt between the students who just want solitude and quiet and those who want to do . . . well, whatever they feel like doing? The quiet versus noise battle brews daily in my own library. The last thing we want is for librarians to be perceived as noise cops. But I don’t doubt that some of our aggrieved patrons would like nothing better than to see little old Mr. Librarian pull out a big baseball bat to deal out some corporal punishment to a bunch of chatterbox undergrads.”...
ACRLog, Oct. 30

Malore Brown now with Sesame Workshop
The children’s television production company Sesame Workshop announced October 31 that former ALSC Executive Director Malore I. Brown has joined them as project director for The Electric Company, a 1970s show that will see a new multimedia relaunch next year. The program, designed for children aged 6 to 8, will foster literacy skills and involve activities for multiple platforms....
WorldScreen, Oct. 31

The altered book project
Books with pages missing. Torn books. Books with writing, underlining, and drawing in them. These are usually a librarian’s nightmare, but in a recent collaboration with art faculty and students, they have become the basis of a highly successful class project and library exhibit. Sylvia Rortvedt, associate director for learning resources at Northern Virginia Community College, tells how it came about....
I Love Libraries

How museums and libraries lose stuff
Samuel J. Redman writes: “Museums, libraries, and archives in the United States lose items in their collections on a regular basis. Why? The simple answer is that many of these institutions are grossly underfunded and understaffed. The more frustrating answer for those of us who care deeply about these collections is that they are cared for by human beings who are capable of making mistakes.”...
History News Network blog, Nov. 5

LibraryThing hits 20 million books
Tim Spalding writes: “We recently hit another big milestone—20 million books and 300,000 registered members! The exact 20-millionth book was All Day Every Day by David Armstrong (2002), added by Bernard Yenelouis October 31. Over 1.7 million books are singletons on LibraryThing, and five million books belong to a work in 10 or fewer members’ libraries. Sure we have 100,000 Harry Potters, but the long tail of books is very long.”...
LibraryThing blog, Nov. 4

Mustaches of the 19th century
University of Kentucky Photographic Archivist Jason Flahardy came up with the idea for this blog while brainstorming ideas for National Archives Month in October. The digital images of mustached gentlemen all come from the university’s collections. A glossary of specialized mustache terms (facespanner, underhand twist) accompanies the blog....
Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century blog

ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia, January 11–16. Find out what placement services will be available.

ALA’s Cultural Communities Fund is an endowment to support cultural programming in libraries. The campaign has a goal of raising $960,000, with yearly targets to receive matching funds from the NEH. Please join the list of CCF donors by making your own donation or pledge. Your gift will help us meet our final goal of raising $310,000 by July 31, 2008.