If you’re like me, you work in a library that is facing tough decisions (no irony intended by that cliché phrase) as a result of budget cuts during the economic crisis. The choice between cutting staff and cutting the budget for materials is the easy one – protect the people who work in the library … Read more The economic crisis and the preservation function of libraries
From the Izzy Award site: The first annual Izzy Award for “special achievement in independent media” was presented March 31, 2009, to blogger Glenn Greenwald and Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman. Roughly 800 people attended the award ceremony at Ithaca’s State Theatre – including Izzy Stone’s son Jeremy, who spoke briefly. The … Read more Goodman & Greenwald win Izzy indy media award
Gathering at the Waters: Embracing Our Spirits, Telling Our Stories Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC) October 11-15, 2006, Dallas, Texas Edited by Gladys Smiley Bell I made a bid to publish this in book form, but the preference was to do it online, and they have obviously done … Read more JCLC Conference Proceedings
Since the second half of last year I’ve been reading a lot of financial news, where the major theme of the financial crisis is the “crisis of trust” – banks not wanting to take the risk of extending credit to counterparties. But we’ve been living through a worsening crisis of trust in another sense for … Read more The Other Crisis of Trust (and a question about what it means for Info Lit)
The Fair Copyright Act is to fair copyright what the Patriot Act was to patriotism. It would repeal the OA policy at the NIH and prevent similar OA policies at any federal agency. The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where Conyers is Chairman, and where he has consolidated his power since … Read more The Conyers Bill is Back (copyright)
You may have seen this already, but I have to share it: Bound to the Word: Guardians of truth and knowledge, librarians must be thanked for their role as champions of privacy, literacy, independent thinking, and most of all reading. “President -Elect Barack Obama keynoted the opening general session at the ALA Annual Conference in … Read more Barack Obama on libraries
New article by Lincoln Cushing: Privatizing the Commons: The Commodification of New Deal Public Art. Lincoln Cushing is an important person in the world of political graphic art, having put together books on Cuban poster art and Chinese propaganda posters, both very enjoyable and interesting books. Lincoln is a librarian who had an earlier career … Read more Privatizing the Commons: The Commodification of New Deal Public Art
President-elect Obama’s letter declaring intentions regarding the EPA, including EPA libraries: October 20, 2008 John Gage National President American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO 80 F Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 Dear President Gage, I am writing to share my views with you regarding the importance of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an Obama … Read more Obama’s letter on the EPA
I have not been following this, but apparently OCLC has issued proposed new policy guidelines that would allow it to claim ownership of its catalog records, with serious consequences for libraries and other organizations that use information about books. Aaron Swartz (of Open Library) puts it in context on his blog in a post from … Read more OCLC Powergrab?
From Lincoln Cushing to the PLG list: The “Archives of Dissent” panel held at U.C. Berkeley 9/18/2008 can now be seen on YouTube: It includes presentations by: • Julie Herrada, Labadie Collection Librarian, University of Michigan, and curator of a “1968” special exhibit. The Labadie Collection is an internationally renowned archive of social protest materials. … Read more Archives of Dissent – video of conference
Media in Transition 6: stone and papyrus, storage and transmission International Conference April 24-26, 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology CALL FOR PAPERS (MIT site) In his seminal essay “The Bias of Communication” Harold Innis distinguishes between time-based and space-based media. Time-based media such as stone or clay, Innis agues, can be seen as durable, while … Read more Call for papers: Media in Transition 6: stone and papyrus, storage and transmission
Minerva Research Initiative: Searching for the Truth or Denying the Iraqis the Rights to Know the Truth? by Saad Eskander, Iraq National Library and Archives “What has prompted me to write this paper is the continuing refusal of the U.S. to pay serious attention to Iraqi calls for the repatriation of the Iraqi records illegally … Read more The Minerva Controversy (Saad Eskander, Iraq National Library)
Call for Papers Digital Labour: Workers, Authors, Citizens. A conference hosted by the Digital Labour Group (DLG), Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, October 16-18, 2009, London, Ontario, Canada. ‘Digital Labour: Workers, Authors, Citizens’ addresses the implications of digital labour as they are emerging in practice, politics, policy, and theoretical enquiry. … Read more Call for Papers: Digital Labour: Workers, Authors, Citizens
Kevin Arthur has posted a few paragraphs from recent article by Lewis Lapham on the education and intellectual life in the United States. Kevin picked out a few choice parts that concern the place of the humanities in the technological age (this being the focus of his blog), but Library Juice readers may be interested … Read more Lewis Lapham on education and intellectual life in the postmodern USA
Over time, Radical Reference moved from being simply an experimental virtual reference service for political radicals to being an activist organization sharing the same space as PLG and SRRT, but offering a different flavor and a different set of political ideas. Its primary activity, however, remains what it was when the group was originally formed … Read more A question for Radical Reference
Nanette Perez of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom sent out a link to this AOL study on web users’ behavior and statements regarding data privacy. The study finds, unsurprisingly, that most web users say they highly value privacy online but routinely give it up in exchange for convenience or small rewards. This study illustrates a … Read more Privacy and markets
Public Knowledge, the DC public interest group, has a very informative discussion of ACTA – the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA is an international trade agreement now being worked out behind closed doors, outside of the relatively open framework of the the World Intellectual Property Organization. It is a so-called “executive agreement,” rather than a treaty, … Read more ACTA – Policy laundering IP
Jon Wiener has an editorial in Friday’s Los Angeles Times: “Pillaging Iraqi history: Shortly after Baghdad fell in 2003, the Baath Party archives were shipped to the U.S. It’s time to return them.” The editorial is a very informative summary of this important issue.
A Marxist Analysis of the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (PDF) Policy Futures in Education Volume 4 Number 4, 2006 RUTH RIKOWSKI London South Bank University, United Kingdom This article examines the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). There are many WTO … Read more Ruth Rikowski on the WTO and intellectual property rights
ALA has an important policy, Policy 61, on library services to poor people. This policy was brought about in the mid-90s through the dedicated work of SRRT’s Homelessness, Hunger, and Poverty Task Force (HHPTF), with the leadership of Sandy Berman. The HHPTF is still going strong as one of SRRT’s more active Task Forces, and … Read more Survey report on library services to the poor