From Lara Moore’s Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870 (pages 208-209): It … appears that the late Empire had strong political misgivings about the extension of libraries to the “popular” classes. In April 1864, Interior Minister Paul Boudet dispatched a circular marked “confidential” to department … Read more Napoleon III and public libraries
Popline, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a government-funded public database for research on population issues and reproductive health. I’ve been aware of it as an excellent resource for some time. The news: Gloria Won, a medical librarian at the University of California, San Francisco, noticed on Monday that the word “abortion” has … Read more Popline blocking searches on “abortion”
The March 20th issue of The New York Review of Books has a review of John Broughton‘s book, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, by Nicholson Baker: The Charms of Wikipedia. Nicholson Baker delights in writing about technology, as you may know, but if you’ve read Baker’s writings on card catalogs and microfilmed newspapers you might be … Read more Nicholson Baker on Wikipedia
Eric Alterman, who writes on the news media regularly in The Nation magazine, has an interesting article in the current issue of The New Yorker on the decline of the newspaper: Out of Print: the Death and Life of the American Newspaper. I thought I knew a bit about what was happening to American newspapers, … Read more Alterman on Journalism in the New Yorker
Candy Schwartz, a LIS professor at Simmons, is maintaining coverage of the discussion that has ensued in response to the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (and Tom Mann’s response). If you want to follow that, go here.
David Bade pointed me to this very interesting talk (in transcript form) by Andrew Abbott of the University of Chicago, given as the Windsor Lecture at the University of Illinois this month: Library Research and Its Infrastructure in the Twentieth Century. This paper is the author’s own ethnography of library research by scholars in the … Read more How library research is really done
Just for the record at this point; perhaps commentary later… Final Report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control ‚ÄúOn the Record‚Äù but Off the Track: A Review of the Report of The Library of Congress Working Group on The Future of Bibliographic Control, With a Further Examination of Library of Congress … Read more LC Working Group final report, Thomas Mann’s response
Book review sent to the RadCat discussion list. RESPONSIBLE LIBRARIANSHIP: LIBRARY POLICIES FOR UNRELIABLE SYSTEMS, by David Bade. Duluth, Minn.: Library Juice Press, 2008. xv, 172 p. $22.00. ISBN 978-0-9778617-6-7. To say that David Bade has a passion for the topic of which he writes would be a gross understatement. In the time since the … Read more Review of David Bade’s Responsible Librarianship
Let’s start from the common premise that an important part of being a librarian in this time of rapid change is to keep a close eye on trends. How are things changing? We need to know so that we can keep up, so that we can modify our services to meet society’s changing needs, to … Read more Library trendspotting if you happen to like Susan Jacoby
Byron Anderson is the compiler of Alternative Publishers of Books in North America, now in its sixth edition, from Library Juice Press. I asked Byron to talk a bit about this reference work for Library Juice Readers. Byron, why don’t you describe this resource and say how it got started? Byron: Alternative Publishers of Books … Read more Interview with APBNA compiler Byron Anderson
This is a great story; I just love this. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an exhibit by Wafaa Bilal, a suspected artist – I mean respected artist – was shut down by the institution amidst protests by the College Republicans. The exhibit involves a video game about assassinating President Bush. The art has a somewhat complex … Read more Bush assassination video game art censorship
I’m happy to announce that two more books from Library Juice Press are now on sale from Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. The reason this is good is that Powell’s is the only all-union bookstore in the U.S., employing over 400 people, represented by ILWU Local No. 5. The physical bookstore is one of the … Read more Two more LJP books available from Powell’s
New from Litwin Books Author: Lara Jennifer Moore Price: $32.00 Published: March 2008 ISBN: 978-0-9778617-9-8 Printed on acid-free paper Buy from Amazon Buy from Barnes and Noble Between 1789 and 1793, the revolutionary French state nationalized thousands of libraries and archival depositories, thus becoming the proprietor of many millions of books and documents, ranging from … Read more Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870
Google and Microsoft have both been working on new services to provide access to medical records. Pretty exciting huh? Microsoft’s thing is HealthVault and Google’s is Google Health. I’m sure it’s all very secure and only accessible to Microsoft and Google employees for serious purposes, as governed by those always-changeable privacy policies. What I’m wondering … Read more Get your medical records online, courtesy of Google and Microsoft
This is from today’s New York Times. Adam Liptak reports that the Treasury Department is shutting down websites that have to do with travel to Cuba, even if the websites belong to foreign travel agencies who are not offering services to U.S. citizens, but only to people in other countries who can travel to Cuba … Read more Treasury Dept.’s outrageous web censorship
Michael Zimmer is the guest editor for the just released special issue of the open access journal First Monday: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0. Here is the table of contents: Volume 13, Number 3 – 3 March 2008 Special issue: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0 edited by Michael Zimmer Preface: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0 … Read more First Monday Special Issue: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
A good start to the day: Cereals Solutions
Slate Magazine has an interesting photographic item featuring eight pictures of library buildings, with a bit of thoughtful discussion about the architecture of library buildings in the digital age. I caught this in the Livejournal community “Libraries.”
The new issue of Information for Social Change is on the web. This issue comes back to the topic of social exclusion, which has been a major direction for ISC over the years. Here is the table of contents: Social Exclusion ‚Äì where is it going? (John Pateman) Developing a Needs Based Library Service (John … Read more Information for Social Change – issue 26
In a purported effort to identify counterfeiters, the US government has succeeded in persuading some color laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information. That means that without your knowledge or consent, an act you assume is private could become public. A communication tool you’re using in everyday life could become a tool … Read more Laser printer privacy concern