j’s scratchpad

The Recording Industry Association of America has filed 261 lawsuits against copyright violators.

Gary Price raises good questions about the librarian action figure’s shushing motion: it’s a joke for librarians, but will non-librarians get it? How is this toy and the press attention it’s getting going to influence the librarian stereotype?
I showed the AP article with my quotes to two nonlibrarian friends last night. Both asked [...]

A “friendly fire” incident resulting in the death of a Reuters cameraman inspired this essay in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Seventeen journalists have died in Iraq, according to the author, which is a high number considering the number of soldier deaths (unspecified in this article). Orville Schell uses Mazen Dana’s death to [...]

The Vermont Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Vermont’s public colleges do not have to release student disciplinary records because they are protected under the 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and some disciplinary hearings do not qualify as open meetings. A St. Johnsbury, Vermont, newspaper sued Lyndon State College under the [...]

This subscriber-only Chronicle of Higher Education article discusses the financial woes of Questia, a subscription-based online library that markets its “humanities and social-sciences collection of 45,000 books and 360,000 articles from journals and periodicals” to high school and college students. When Questia began a few years ago, founder Troy Williams had big ambitions for [...]

Today’s Boston Globe has a piece about why librarians are against the USA Patriot Act in regards to library records. It includes some thoughts of library patrons, too.

Here are my notes on the forum organized by the Progressive Democrats of Somerville for the mayoral candidates.