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

Nampa trustees intend no harm to Idaho minors
In the process of revisiting for the third time whether minors should be denied access to two Joy of Sex books, the board of the Nampa (Idaho) Public Library approved June 2 policy changes that restrict children’s access to any holdings that may fall under the state’s harmful-to-minors statute. Trustee Bruce Skaug also introduced a policy that barred the library from buying movies rated NC-17 or X. Skaug resigned from the board June 10, saying he had accomplished what he intended to do....

Wayne State may take over troubled county library
After enduring years of cutbacks and closure threats, the Macomb County (Mich.) Library may have found a savior in the form of Wayne State University in nearby Detroit, which is considering a deal to take over operations of the struggling library. Under the plan, WSU would lease the building and manage the facility, which specializes in research materials and items for people who have visual impairments....

Conference materials archive
Karen Muller and Valerie Hawkins write: “The new ALA Conference Materials Archive wiki includes links to last year’s materials, along with links to similar material from some of ALA’s units. The goal is for all collateral conference material to be linked in some way from this wiki. If you are a speaker at the ALA 2008 Annual Conference in Anaheim, here is the place for you to upload your handouts, or to publish links to your material if it is resident on another site.”...
ALA Marginalia, June 9

How READ posters get made
In addition to the hundreds of celebrity suggestions from librarians, teachers, readers, and fans, ALA Graphics staff seeks out celebrities from a wide range of occupations: movie and TV stars, comedians, athletes, musicians, innovators, heroic figures, and the like. They try to find highly recognizable—and therefore popular—celebrities. They also consider a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds to reach the diverse populations libraries serve....
I Love Libraries, June 5

ALA partners with RadioShack on DTV transition
ALA and RadioShack Corporation announced a nationwide initiative June 10 to help educate the public about the Digital Television Transition scheduled to begin in all 50 states and Puerto Rico on February 17, 2009 (and at noon, September 8, in the test market of Wilmington, N.C.). RadioShack’s 4,500 company stores and many of the 1,000-plus participating franchise stores will offer knowledgeable team members to 16,000 public libraries to host educational sessions for library patrons....

ALA volunteers will aid underfunded Anaheim libraries
100 volunteers from across the United States will gather for “Libraries Build Communities,” a one-day effort coordinated by the ALA Chapter Relations Office and the Anaheim (Calif.) Public Library, to take place 8 a.m.–4 p.m., Friday, June 27, at various locations in and around Anaheim. They will be bused to school and public libraries to illustrate the importance and influence local libraries can have on their communities....

Baseball trivia contest in English and Spanish
Libraries can encourage the whole family to step into the library this summer with Step Up to the Plate @ your library, the baseball trivia contest that encourages people of all ages to use the resources at the library to look up the answers to a series of baseball trivia questions. The website contains the program trivia questions in English and Spanish and a complete program toolkit....

Reserve your spot at the Advocacy Institute
Space is still available for the Advocacy Institute at the ALA 2008 Annual Conference. “School Libraries in Crisis: Why Everyone Should Care” will take place June 27, 9:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m., at the Hyatt Regency Orange County. Registrations will be accepted through June 20....

Tastes for all tastes
Eating at Annual Conference is easy: The Anaheim Resort District, centered around Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center, is home to dozens of options, and there are plenty of exciting meals to be had for those willing and able to travel further afield. This guide contains recommendations from several local librarians, as well as a roundup of restaurants based in or near the district....
American Libraries 39, no. 6 (June/July): 80–85

Do the Time Warp after the Scholarship Bash
You may wish to join some other celluloid-jamming librarians in attending a midnight viewing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro at midnight Saturday, June 28. Midnight Insanity will be the theater cast. Sign up on the Annual Conference wiki if you can give someone a ride. Contact Karin Dalziel for more info....
Annual Conference wiki

Art-a-Fair Festival
Featuring a Venetian theme, the Art-a-Fair festival in Laguna Beach gives you the opportunity to stroll the festive streets of Palazzo Laguna and see the world through an artist’s eyes. The festival begins Friday, June 27, and features 125 internationally juried artists and master craftsmen. Increasingly popular as a showcase for emerging talent, it has become one of Laguna’s must-visit summer affairs....
Art-a-Fair Festival

Michelle Frisque is LITA president-elect
Michelle Frisque, head of Information Systems at Galter Health Sciences Library at Northwestern University, is the new LITA vice-president/president-elect. She has extensive experience with the Web, having served as chair of the ALA Web Advisory Committee and the LITA Web Coordinating Committee and as a member of the Web Policy Task Force....

Bookmarks to Create Change
ACRL, the Association of Research Libraries, and SPARC have released a new series of bookmarks (PDf file) in the Create Change campaign, which targets scholars in different disciplines with messages about the benefits of wider research sharing. Librarians can use these freely available files to enhance their efforts to engage faculty interest in changing the way scholarly information is shared....

Anaheim program looks at libel terrorism
“The Biggest Threat to Free Speech You May Never Have Heard Of!” at the Anaheim Convention Center, 1:30–3:30 p.m., June 30, will look at the use of foreign libel laws as a weapon to intimidate and silence American journalists and authors. The program, cosponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Committee, will feature Rachel Ehrenfeld (right), the New York-based author whose battle to have a British libel judgment against her book Funding Evil declared unenforceable resulted in New York’s newly enacted Libel Terrorism Protection Act....

ALCTS forum series at Anaheim
ALCTS is offering a number of events at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, California, as part of its continuing forum series of “hot” topics. Included are sessions on international authority issues, RDA, and serials standards....

LITA program explores possible futures
The LITA President’s Program, “Isn’t It Great to Be in the Library . . . Wherever That Is?,” will take place 4–5 p.m., June 29, at the Hilton Anaheim Hotel. American Libraries columnist Joe Janes will present, and members of OCLC’s “It’s All Good” blogging group will serve as the reactor panel for a lively exploration of possible futures....

Get intense at PLA Results Boot Camp
PLA is now accepting applications for PLA Results Boot Camp 4: Intensive Library Management Training. This five-day immersion program will be held October 20–24 in Cleveland, Ohio, and will cover strategic planning, data-based decision-making, effective resource allocation, and other topics related to management training....

LSSIRT turns 15 (PDF file)
The Library Support Staff Interests Round Table is celebrating its 15th birthday with an informational session in Anaheim. There will be cake and giveaways. Join them in the Exhibit Hall at the ALA Pavilion, June 29, at 2 p.m....
LSSIRT Newsletter, May, p. 2

Feminists’ night at the movies (PDF file)
Join the SRRT Feminist Task Force in Anaheim for a Feminists’ Night at the Movies, June 28, 8–10 p.m. Two movies will be shown. I Was a Teenage Feminist by Therese Shechter is a funny, moving, and personal journey into the heart of feminism, which begins as a quest to find out whether feminism can still be a source of personal and political power. The Noble Struggle of Amina Wadud by Elli Safari is a fascinating and powerful portrait of an African-American Muslim woman who was the first to lead a mixed-gender prayer congregation....
SRRT Newsletter, June, p. 2

2008 W. Y. Boyd Literary Award
Robert N. Macomber’s novel, A Different Kind of Honor, has won the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction for 2008. The $5,000 award and citation, donated by author W. Y. Boyd, honors the best fiction set in a period when the United States military was engaged in an armed conflict or during peacetime. The book is set during the 1879–1884 War of the Pacific, with the combatants Bolivia and Peru against Chile....

2008 Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award
Christopher M. Finan has been chosen the winner of the 2008 Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award, presented by the Intellectual Freedom Round Table. Finan was selected for his book From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America (Beacon Press Books, 2007). He is also president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression....

Freedom to Read Foundation Roll of Honor
Burton Joseph, a prominent First Amendment attorney in Chicago, is the recipient of the 2008 Freedom to Read Foundation Roll of Honor Award. Joseph has served several terms on the FTRF board, including a number of terms as vice president. In addition to his work in private practice with his firm, Joseph, Lichtenstein & Levinson, Joseph serves as counsel to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and special counsel to Playboy Enterprises....

2008 Ingenta Research Award
Grace A. Ajuwon and Prince B. Olorunsaye, from the E. Latunde Odeku Medical Library at the University of Ibadan College of Medicine in Nigeria, have won the 2008 Ingenta Research Award, which will fund their study of health resources in southern Nigeria. Sponsored by Ingenta, the award is granted by the Library Research Round Table to support research projects in the fields of acquisition, use, and preservation of digital content....

New great websites for kids
ALSC has added 17 new websites to Great Web Sites for Kids, its online resource containing hundreds of links to commendable websites for children. GWS features links to interesting websites, organized by subject. There is also a special section with sites of interest to parents, caregivers, and teachers, and an area devoted to sites in Spanish....

LITA Ex Libris Student Writing Award
Robin Sease, currently enrolled in the Information School at the University of Washington, has been named the winner of LITA’s 2008 Ex Libris Student Writing Award. Her paper, to be published in ITAL, explores the literature on metaphor in the fields of linguistics and cognitive science and examines metaphors in Human Computer Interaction to gain insight into human information behavior....

Haipeng Li wins CALA award
The Chinese American Librarians Association has presented its 2008 Distinguished Service Award to Haipeng Li, reference librarian and outreach coordinator at the Oberlin (Ohio) College Library. Li had established the CALA 21st Century Librarian Seminar series that provides professional development opportunities for librarians in the United States and abroad....
Chinese American Librarians Association, June 4

NYPL’s outstanding books to remember from 2007
The New York Public Library has selected 25 Books to Remember from 2007. Chosen by a group of librarians who are specialists in their genres, these outstanding works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry provide an informative or transformative reading experience, and are chosen for their literary excellence, uniqueness of concept, and command of subject matter. Among this year’s choices are the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books) by Junot Díaz and Time and Materials: Poems 1997–2005 (Ecco) by Robert Hass....
New York Public Library, June 3

Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award
The University of Illinois GSLIS seeks nominations for the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award, which acknowledges individuals or groups who have furthered the cause of intellectual freedom, particularly as it impacts libraries and information centers and the dissemination of ideas. The deadline for nominations is October 15....
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June 9

Former Mount Vernon director investigated
Rodney Lee, the former director of the cash-strapped Mount Vernon (N.Y.) Public Library is the subject of an investigation into missing computers and cell phones that he purchased for the library. The investigation was prompted by an audit conducted in 2007 by the city Comptroller’s Office, which was critical of Lee’s “almost total control of the ordering, purchasing, and receiving of supplies and equipment; a clear violation of standard internal controls.”...
White Plains (N.Y.) Journal News, June 9

Couple sues library over meeting-room policy
The Clermont County (Ohio) Public Library has been sued in federal court on behalf of a couple who claim they were barred from holding a free financial planning seminar at the Amelia branch because they planned to quote the Bible. Lawyers for the defense fund, which was founded by leaders of Christian ministries, filed the suit on behalf of George and Cathy Vandergriff and the Institute of Principled Policy June 6 in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati....
Cincinnati Enquirer, June 7

Utah Valley’s new green library praised
Utah Valley State College’s new energy-efficient library in Orem is the first building in the state to be constructed under Utah’s High Performance Building program, announced Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. during a June 3 ceremony. The library is 65–90% more energy efficient than buildings constructed to former ordinary building codes and will save $100,000 per year in utility costs. A ribbon cutting is scheduled for July 1 after an all-night celebration of the school’s new status as a university....
Salt Lake City Deseret News, June 4; Provo Daily Herald, June 4

School librarian plays different roles to get kids to read
Sacramento (Calif.) Country Day School librarian Cary Kelly puts on multiple personas and costumes to inspire children to embrace the joys of reading. For the annual book sale, she becomes Mrs. Teaselpaw, a member of the British aristocracy she describes as a cross between Miss Marple and Mrs. Doubtfire. On Read Across America Day she is the Cat in the Hat. At a pretend coffeehouse poetry event, she comes as a beatnik....
Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, June 9

The art of librarianship at the Ringling Museum
After decades of cramped storage in an old facility, the art books owned by circus entrepreneur John Ringling (1866–1936) now have a glorious home inside the 13,000-square-foot art library that opened last year in the Education and Conservation Building at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. The new library, home to 70,000 volumes and exhibition catalogs and 100 periodical titles, is a sweet reward for Linda McKee, who has served as the head librarian at Ringling since 1994....
Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, June 8

Emoticons have medieval roots
For all their slick sheen of modernity as a byproduct of the computer age, the roots of the emoticon can be traced as far back as the days of dank medieval castles. New Zealand scholar Sydney Shep, who set out to track the emoticon’s prehistory, found reports of similar “pictorial reading cues” in medieval times, and stumbled on her first emoticons in a 19th-century typographic journal at St. Bride’s Printing Library in London....
National Post (Canada), June 2

Books, tears, and blood
Stuart Jeffries writes: “When Saad Eskander talks about the National Library of Iraq, he makes it sound a combination of a national healing process, a social crucible for establishing a more egalitarian society, and a center of free inquiry that Iraqi intellectuals have been denied for decades. This was the vision he brought to his job as its director in 2003.”...
The Guardian (U.K.), June 9

Yakima Valley Regional Library director fired
Hoping to end a contentious era in its history, the Yakima Valley (Wash,) Regional Library board fired Executive Director Monica Weyhe June 10. Weyhe, director since 2002, was accused by two board members of overstepping her authority. Despite support from the five-member board’s majority, Weyhe requested last week to be “terminated without cause.”...
Yakima (Wash.) Herald-Republic, June 11

Cornell libel lawsuit dismissed
A federal judge has dismissed a Cornell graduate’s $1-million lawsuit over a 1983 Cornell Chronicle report that he had been charged with burglary in the third degree, a felony, in the spring of 1983, when he was a student. The plaintiff, now a practicing California lawyer, had sought damages for libel and public disclosure of private facts in an alleged “republication” of the Chronicle article through the university library’s digitization program....
Cornell Chronicle, June 9

Friends to sue county for failure to fund library
A library Friends group expects to file a complaint in court to force Polk County, Tennessee, commissioners to fund a full-service public library. Friends president Sally Love said court action would be coming soon. Their attorney Roger Jenne said the commission had refused to accept donations and pledged grants or uphold its 2001 commitment to build public libraries in Benton and Ducktown....
Cleveland (Tenn.) Daily Banner, June 6

Humble School District mulls librarian layoffs
The Humble (Tex.) Independent School District is predicting a budget deficit of $23 million during the upcoming school year and must cut $9–$10 million from its budget by the end of June. The district said eliminating all 39 of its librarians would result in a savings of more than $2 million....
KPRC-TV, Houston, June 4

Employment discrimination in Jackson, Alabama
The Justice Department announced June 10 the filing of a lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Alabama, in district court in Mobile, alleging that the city discharged Virginia Savage, an African American, from her employment as a circulation clerk at the White Smith Memorial Library in retaliation for her complaints of racial discrimination and harassment by her supervisors....
Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald, June 10

Evergreen and Equinox with Karen Schneider
Karen Schneider’s new job as community librarian for Equinox Software involves working to expand librarians’ knowledge about the Open Source ILS, Evergreen. Jason Griffey was able to track her down and ask her a few questions about Evergreen, libraries, and the ILS. As always, she never fails to inform....
ALA TechSource blog, June 3

Here come the new iPhone apps
Erick Schonfeld writes: “As Apple gears up for the launch of its 3G iPhone, outside developers and startups are finally going to get to sell or give away their own applications that run natively on the phone. These apps, which are built on the iPhone SDK announced last March, will be distributed through the upcoming iPhone App Store.”...
TechCrunch, June 9

50 ways to implement user-generated content
Jessica Merritt writes: “In the internet age, everyone’s a content creator. Embracing the trend of user-generated content allows you to spread more information and engage library users at the same time. Read on to find out how to go about doing this, and pick up some handy resources along the way.”...
College Degrees, May 29

Gaming enhancements to Google
Stephen Shankland writes: “Who would have believed Google’s geographic web services could actually get your adrenaline going? Granted, these aren’t real video games, but two websites are pushing what can be done with interactive interfaces to Google Maps and Google Earth. GeoQuake, taking advantage of Google Maps’ new ability to work with Flash applications, lets you drive a car, bus, or truck around Google Maps. Another novelty is a flight simulator (above) for the browser plug-in version of Google Earth.”...
Webware, June 10

Top 10 disruptive technologies
Social networking technologies, web mashups, multicore and hybrid processors, and cloud computing are among the 10 most disruptive technologies that will shape the IT landscape over the next five years, according to research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc. David Cearley says that business applications will start to mirror the features found in popular consumer social software, such as Facebook and MySpace, as organizations look to improve employee collaboration and harness the community feedback of customers....
eHomeUpgrade, May 28

BookExpo pix
Kicking off May 30 in Hollywood with the unlikely—but appealing—combo of wine and cookies at the Egyptian Theatre and running straight through to the final hours on the trade floor four days later, BookExpo America 2008 was a megaweekend for independent booksellers. Here are some of the highlights in pictures....
Bookselling This Week, June 5

Is Kindle the iPod of e-books?
Carlin Romano writes: “Is the Kindle about to catch fire? Could Amazon.com’s seven-month-old wireless e-book reader—a rectangular wonder in antique iPod white, able to download any of 125,000 books adapted to its format—be the tipping point that marks the decline and fall of the paper book? At BookExpo America, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos did everything possible to suggest the answers were an almost Joycean yes, yes, and yes again.”...
Philadelphia Inquirer, June 10

Britannica goes wiki
In a bid to wed the comprehensive, grassroots information factory of Wikipedia with the authority of the traditional encyclopedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica announced June 3 it is opening the floodgates for online user submissions into its 240-year-old publication—a move it long resisted. What Britannica wants to do is create “a welcoming community for scholars, experts, and lay contributors.”...
Epicenter from Wired, June 9; Encyclopaedia Britannica, June 3

Films with limited release find a home on the Web
The nonprofit Tribeca Film Institute in New York is creating a digital marketplace for films and videos that have been stuck in archives with limited circulation or have been otherwise unavailable through conventional retail and web outlets. The service, called Reframe, launched June 9 and offers some 500 features, shorts, and documentaries, although it plans to provide about 10,000 over the next year or so. The service will act as a nonprofit clearinghouse for digitizing elusive works while giving rights holders a mechanism by which they can sell or rent downloads or DVDs through Amazon.com....
New York Times, June 9

Certifying online research
Gary A. Olsen writes: “How do we acknowledge and reward substantive electronic scholarship that genuinely furthers knowledge in a discipline, while avoiding the awarding of undue credit to less worthy work? As more and more electronic journals adopt peer-review processes that replicate the rigorous ones employed by established print journals, many e-journals are acquiring reputations for comparable rigor. Scholarly websites, however, present a unique set of challenges to college administrators.”...
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6

Tell EPA what you think about information access
The Environmental Protection Agency is holding a public online discussion through June 13 to foster collaboration on information access. Everyone is invited to use the its Partner Blog site to identify and share best resources, tools, and ideas for improving access to EPA’s environmental information. After June 13 the blog will close and a summary report will be posted on the “What We’ve Learned” section of the National Dialogue website by June 20....
Environmental Protection Agency, June 9

Kids still go for paper
A new study by Scholastic finds that 75% of kids age 5–17 agree with the statement, “No matter what I can do online, I’ll always want to read books printed on paper,” and 62% say they prefer to read books printed on paper rather than on a computer or a handheld device. The 2008 Kids and Family Reading Report, a national survey of children and their parents, also found that kids who go online to extend the reading experience—by going to book or author websites or connecting with other readers—are more likely to read books for fun every day....
Scholastic, June 11

101 job resources for librarians
Whether you just graduated or are an experienced professional looking for a change, the internet offers much in the way of job resources. Career searches can be done by geographical location, by specialty, or with no specifics required at all. In addition to job searches, you can also find information to prepare you for the search and how to accept that perfect position when you land your new job. Here you will find over 100 resources to help you along your journey....
College@Home, June 4

Is Google making us stupid?
Nicholas Carr writes: “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I think I know what’s going on. In Google’s view, the more pieces of information we can ‘access’ and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought.”...
Atlantic Monthly, July/Aug.

Do you trust Google’s data mining?
Marshall Kirkpatrick writes: “While almost no one takes the old phrase ‘Don’t be evil’ seriously anymore now that there are billions of dollars on the table and Chinese autocrats to satisfy—regular evaluations of Google’s ethical positions still seem advisable. We know the company scans our Gmail and uses the text there to sell ads, but is this a tactic being employed across services? Some people appear to believe it is.”...
ReadWriteWeb, June 10

Colorado library up for an Emmy
Douglas County (Colo.) Libraries received a regional Emmy nomination for its “Discover Your Library” PSA (0:37). The 22nd Annual Heartland Regional Emmy Awards and Silver Circle Presentations will be held in Lakewood, Colorado, July 19. The PSA was nominated for best single spot PSA, short form editor, and lighting....
Douglas County Television

What a course in academic librarianship should offer
Steven Bell writes: “A few weeks ago I invited ACRLog readers to participate in a survey which asked respondents to rate academic library course topics as essential, important, or marginal. Respondents were also able to make suggestions for additional topics. Over 100 readers responded to the survey. Here is what they had to say.”...
ACRLog, June 10

Columbus summer reading features wacky librarians
When teens join the Summer Reading Club at the Columbus (Ohio) Metropolitan Library, they get to hang out with the YA library staff, who have pictured themselves in surroundings that accompany their reading materials. Wendy (right), from the Hilltop branch, reads Ellen Hopkins’s Glass behind a cracked windowpane....
Columbus (Ohio) Metropolitan Library, May 21

Games in the modern public library
Bill Sannwald writes: “This paper’s intended audience is individuals who know little to nothing about video games and have no idea how or why games can be an important part of any public library’s collection. Currently the library system I work for does not circulate video games to our patrons, which I find disappointing. The benefits of providing video games as part of a library collection is steadily becoming apparent as more and more libraries start offering gaming resources to patrons.”...
GameSetWatch, May 19

Sarah Long interviews Bruce Cole on Picturing America
For a discussion of the National Endowment for the Humanities initiative “Picturing America,” listen to North Suburban Library System Director Sarah Long’s podcast interview (#104) with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. They spoke as he traveled from the airport to the Chicago launch of the national project presented in partnership with ALA. Through this innovative program, students and citizens can gain a deeper appreciation of our country’s history and character through the study and understanding of its art....
North Suburban Library System, June 6

The Bodleian and ARTstor offer manuscript browsing
Oxford University’s Bodleian Library and ARTstor have collaborated on the digitization of more than 24,000 high-quality images of manuscript paintings and drawings from the library’s outstanding collection of Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts. ARTstor has digitized virtually all of the illuminated manuscript leaves from Bodleian manuscripts through the 16th century, as well as selected 19th- and 20th-century manuscripts in the Medieval tradition. ARTstor subscribers can browse the pages in the image gallery....
ARTstor, June 5

Digital preservation survey of academic directors
in January 2008, Portico and Ithaka invited 1,371 library directors of four-year colleges and universities in the United States to respond to a survey (PDF file) examining current perspectives on preservation of e-journals. The survey found that a large majority agree that the potential loss of e-journals is unacceptable, and a significant majority believe their own institution has a responsibility to take action to prevent an intolerable loss of the scholarly record....
Portico, June 5

Library book week in a Nazi prison camp
This postmark celebrates Dni Ksiazki, or Book Week, in Oflag II-C, the German World War II prisoner of war camp for Polish officers in Woldenberg (now Dobiegniew), Poland. Book Week in the camp took place from August 29 to September 4, 1943, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the printing of the first Polish book. The Articles of the Geneva Convention entitled POWs to the right of self-government, which led to the development of postal services and library services in some German camps. Roman Sobus is an expert on the postal history of the camp and has developed an outstanding exhibit on the topic....
Library History Buff; Polonus Philatelic Society

Off the library market
Maura A. Smale writes: “Sixteen job applications, five first-round interviews, three second-round interviews, and seven (or so) months after finishing my master’s in library science, I’ve landed a great position at an academic library in New York City. It’s a pleasure (and a relief) to be writing from the tenure track.” Smale has been chronicling her first search for a tenure-track position in an academic library....
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 4

$1.2 million awarded to Native American libraries
On June 10, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Native American tribes across the United States $1.22 million dollars to improve and sustain their library services. The grant monies will be distributed among 209 tribes, and will bolster library services offered by Native American tribal communities and Alaskan Native villages....
Institute of Museum and Library Services, June 10

From Russia with blog
Steven Bell writes: “Over the past few weeks I’ve corresponded with Katerina Efimova, a reference librarian at the Scientific Library of the Ural State University in Yekaterinburg—and Russia’s first academic librarian blogger! She has been working as a professional librarian for 3 years. I was intrigued by Katerina’s interest in information literacy and blogging, so I asked her if she would be willing to share some of her thoughts about these topics so that we might learn a bit more about our Russian colleagues.”...
ACRLog, June 4

ACURIL 2008 in Jamaica
Michael Sauers captured the essence of his experiences at the Association of Caribbean University, Research, and Institutional Libraries 38th annual conference in the Rose Hall Resort and Country Club, Montego Bay, Jamaica, June 1–7, in this video (5:25). Not only was there a great opener by the Hatfield Folk and Cultural Group (right), but he learned stuff about social networking and information overload, and caught a library talent show....
Blip.tv, June 9

ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, California, June 26–July 2. Get a preview of Anaheim from AL Focus. First time at an ALA Annual Conference? Find some tips here.

Registration for PLA’s Spring Symposium in Nashville, April 2–4, 2009, will open September 2 and features an early bird rate of $250 for PLA and Tennessee Library Association members through October 31.