This has been available online for a while, but I just recently found it: Language: A Key Mechanism of Control: Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo. In retrospect it is clear how the GOP’s rhetorical strategy and their discipline in using it was a major part of their surge of power and control through the last … Read more Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo
…Directing your attention to an article in yesterday’s Washington Post by Michael Grunwald: The Education Issue, which examines the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. Regarding the $1 billion per year Reading First program, Grunwald writes, “Five years later, an accumulating mound of evidence from reports, interviews and program documents suggests that Reading … Read more No Child Left Behind: $55 Billion Boondoggle?
There’s a brief article in Counterpunch about the National Book Festival, which features our very non-warlike First Lady. It is intended as a happier source of news than the complete disaster we have created in the Middle East, from which news consumers and election-hopeful Republicans would understandably like some relief. The main things that Russell … Read more Are you proud of our “National Book Festival?”
For years the IMLS has been offering grants for LIS research and the education of librarians not appreciably different the one announced today on the IMLS website, except that this year’s grant program (and last year’s?) is called the “Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Grant,” as though the grant were her idea or funded by … Read more Laura Bush appropriates title of IMLS grant for librarians
From the AP story: WASHINGTON – The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says. The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for … Read more FCC study on media ownership ordered destroyed
Ben Vershobow in if:book just now posted a brief discussion of the University of California’s just-released contract with Google to digitize its library holdings. The contract reveals that Google has asked for and has apparently gotten certain exclusive rights to the use of the digital copies of UC’s books, à la The Smithsonian’s deal with … Read more Showtiming our libraries (if:book)
The Committee on House Administration is taking up some of the controversial questions related to proposed changes in cataloging practice at the Library of Congress, and ALA has submitted testimony criticizing LC for announcing some of these changes without sufficient discussion with the library community. (Admittedly, the Calhoun report was merely a presentation of an … Read more ALA Congressional testimony against LC proposed changes
I found this on the Librarian 2 blog: New Orleans Public Library has set up a wish list through the online book vendor Alibris, to help channel people’s desire to help them rebuild in more productive ways than sending them all kinds of random, falling-apart, donated books that NOPL has no need for anyway. NOPL … Read more New Orleans Public Library Wish List at Alibris
Libraries in the UK have been in a state of crisis for the last decade or more far beyond the degree of troubles we’ve seen in the U.S. Library use is way down and so are budgets, and the cutbacks in hours and the closures of branches have been much worse than here. Part of … Read more The “Love Libraries” campaign (UK)
Fred Stoss of the SRRT Task Force on the Environment has an editorial in the Spring 2006 issue of Electronic Green Journal on the threatened defunding of the EPA National Library Network. It’s an informative article with a useful webliography at the end.
The Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty Task Force of ALA/SRRT has a new web page collecting resources for libraries in providing service to poor people. We could all do a better job serving poor people, couldn’t we?
I would like to turn your attention to a thoughtful post by Argentinian librarian Edgardo Civallero on Cuba and the debate surrounding the “independent library movement.” Edgardo blogs mostly in Spanish, but also in English, for our benefit. Though he is a self-identified anarchist and anti-authoritarian he’s sympathetic toward Cuba and sees that society from … Read more Argentinian library blogger on Cuba
A preprint of a paper by Charles W. Bailey, Jr., to be published in Information Technology and Libraries 25, no. 3 (2006): “Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia?” (pdf) The title kind of says it.
The Smithsonian Institution has made an exclusive deal with Showtime Networks, Inc., allowing the cable TV content company to create a private cable station for documentaries that use footage from the Smithsonian’s collections. Part of the deal is that any documentarians using any Smithsonian footage will be limited to this new Showtime channel as the … Read more Smithsonian Sellout
Resolution Against Anti-Immigrant Legislation 2006 Whereas, the Progressive Librarians Guild supports immigrants’ rights, Whereas, anti-immigrant measures deleteriously affect the immigrant community, regardless of legal status or citizenship status, Whereas, the Sensenbrenner Bill – H.R. 4437 is totally punitive in trying to make felons out of undocumented immigrants, denying them any human, civil, working, or due … Read more PLG Resolution Against Anti-Immigrant Legislation 2006