Archive for August, 2003

Blogging Feature Article in News Library News

Tuesday, August 19th, 2003

The Summer issue of News Library News’ cover story is “Blogging for research” by blogger and Miami Herald librarian Liz Donovan. As well as talking about blogging, Liz lists a number of blogs (including this one) and blogging software. Addendum 8/20: At least three people have hit this blog from that article. Hello!

File Sharing a Felony?

Monday, August 18th, 2003

There seems to be a movement afoot to make file sharing a felony. That means five years in prison and a lost right to vote, among other punishments, for swapping one file digitally. Vote now, while you still can.

Survey of News Librarians about Interaction with the Public

Monday, August 18th, 2003

Tom Arnold of Summit Media Partners is hoping some news librarians will complete this survey about how the public has access to their newspaper archive. He’s hoping to gather “some information about how archives fit into your newspaper’s strategy on the web as well as serving the public in the course of your job.” It’s [...]

How a Library Dealt with the Power Outage

Friday, August 15th, 2003

I think this e-mail on the Archives and Archivists listserv about how a library handled the power outage on Thursday adds some interesting points to the debate about whether collections should move to digital formats or remain in print. Credit for this piece–though unattributed here–should go to Michael McGrorty.

Courses on USA PATRIOT Act

Friday, August 15th, 2003

The College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland is offering courses in response to recent government legislation and the concern about the USA PATRIOT Act and government subpoenas and search warrants. “Government intrusion vs. Individual Liberty: Understanding the 4th Amendment and the USA Patriot Act” and “Responding to Judicial Process: A Guide to [...]

Google News Alerts

Thursday, August 14th, 2003

Well, I did it. After reading some of the discussion on Newslib, a news librarians’ discussion group, I signed up for Google News Alerts. I was a little surprised to go to Google’s alerts and just have a simple box for a search string, another for an e-mail address, and the choice of having e-mails [...]

Senator Feingold’s USA PATRIOT Act Fix

Thursday, August 14th, 2003

This is news from the end of July that I missed somehow: “The Library, Bookseller, and Personal Records Privacy Act would restore the privacy of Americans, while also allowing the FBI to follow up on legitimate leads,” [Senator Russ] Feingold said. “This legislation recognizes that under certain circumstances the FBI should have access to library, [...]

Rebuilding Libraries in this Week’s Chronicle of Higher Education

Wednesday, August 13th, 2003

The August 15 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education has several articles in it about rebuilding libraries after war or political oppression. In 1981, government supporters burned the Jaffna Library in Sri Lanka because of its collection of Tamil materials, causing the loss of 97,000 items, including many unique materials important to Tamil culture. [...]

Indirect Compliment

Wednesday, August 13th, 2003

The Library of Congress links to some of the pages I help to maintain as volunteer Webmaster for the Special Libraries Association News Division. I had forgotten about that until I was in an instructional session about finding newspapers and newspaper articles at Harvard this morning. One of the sites a presenter visited was the [...]

Searching for News using the Web

Monday, August 11th, 2003

I wasn’t going to say anything about Google News Alerts because I figured everyone had already said what needed to be said. But, some of my recent uses of Google News makes me question the efficiency of Google News Alerts. Google News is a resource I use at least three times a day as part [...]