Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, this news, Justice Department Submits Views on Amended Google Book Search Settlement - Department Says Despite Substantial Progress Made, Issues Remain

News release: "After more than a decade of nationwide effort, the Digital Promise Project has achieved an essential goal – the creation of the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies. This year the Department of Education, as provided by their 2010 appropriations legislation, will make available the initial funding required to launch the National Center. In the words of the Center’s authorizing legislation, “The purpose of the Center shall be to support a comprehensive research and development program to harness the increasing capability of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy.” Congress voted overwhelmingly to establish this Center, the first new national research center in many years, as an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Authorized in 2008 by amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965, the National Center will have a governing board of nine members, which will include outstanding representatives from the public and private sectors and from varied professions and disciplines."

Endangered Species - News librarians are a dying breed [Preface - I certainly hope not, having been one and respecting the profession immensely]: "According to data collected by Michelle Quigley, a researcher at the Palm Beach Post, over 250 news librarians (sometimes called news researchers) lost their jobs in the U.S. since 2007. Membership in the Special Libraries Association News Division, an organization for news librarians, has fallen to below 400 from over 1,000 in the 1990s. Entire news libraries have been shuttered and replaced by consultants or outside vendors."

News release: "This report was written as a companion report to "A Comparative Review of Research Assessment Regimes in Five Countries and the Role of Libraries in the Research Assessment Process," a report commissioned by OCLC Research and produced by Key Perspectives Ltd, a UK library and scholarly publishing consultancy. Published in December 2009, the Key Perspectives report was written after studying the role of research libraries in higher education research assessment regimes in five countries: the Republic of Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia. This companion report provides a summary of the key findings of the Key Perspectives study, with some context for the recent increase in library involvement in research assessment, as well as recommendations for research libraries.

• Research Assessment and the Role of the Library
  
• A Comparative Review of Research Assessment Regimes in Five Countries and the Role of Libraries in the Research Assessment Process
  
• Survey of Current Practice in Research Assessment Activity

A Perfect Storm Brewing: Budget Cuts Threaten Library Services at Time of Increased Demand, January 2010.

"According to a new report prepared by the American Library Association (ALA), libraries of all types are feeling the pinch of the economic downturn while managing sky-high use. Compiled from a broad range of available sources, The Condition of Libraries: 1999-2009 presents U.S. economic trends (2009), and summarizes trends in public, school and academic libraries across several library measures, including expenditures, staffing and services. The report also highlights trends in services provided to libraries by library cooperatives and consortia."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search - Google & the Future of Books: An Exchange By Paul N. Courant, Laine Farley, Paula Kaufman, John Leslie King, Theodore Koditschek, Anthony Lewis et al.
"To the Editors: In his recent article criticizing the Google settlement [Google and the New Digital Future, NYR, December 17, 2009], Robert Darnton fails to acknowledge the significant role that libraries have had in the creation of Google Book Search as well as the concrete steps they are taking to address the sorts of concerns he raises. Libraries are using Google-digitized volumes to create the "truly public library" that he seeks, and these same libraries are taking responsibility for the preservation of Google-digitized volumes. More than thirty research libraries have made agreements with Google to digitize their collections as part of their long-standing tradition of providing the highest level of access to scholarly materials. These libraries have worked successfully with Google to ensure the integrity of their physical collections and to digitize those collections in accordance with broadly held standards for digital capture."

News release: Amazon.com, Inc. today announced [December 26, 2009] that Kindle has become the most gifted item in Amazon's history. On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. The Kindle Store now includes over 390,000 books and the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read, including New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases."

News release: "Nearly 60,000 books prized by historians, writers and genealogists, many too old and fragile to be safely handled, have been digitally scanned as part of the first-ever mass book-digitization project [which is called Digitizing American Imprints] of the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC), the world’s largest library. Anyone who wants to learn about the early history of the United States, or track the history of their own families, can read and download these books for free...digitized books can be accessed through the Library’s catalog Web site and the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free online digital library."

The Customer Is Always Right - Since founding Amazon in 1994, he has revolutionized retailing. Now he's out to transform how we read. By Daniel Lyons | NEWSWEEK.

Forbes: "If people can read this story a millennium from now, they may have Tadahiro Kuroda to thank. Kuroda, an electrical engineering professor at Keio University in Japan, has invented what he calls a "Digital Rosetta Stone," a wireless memory chip sealed in silicon that he says can store data for 1,000 years. As technology changes, storage goes stale. Can your computer read your old 51/4-inch floppies? Data typically has to be put on new storage systems every 20 years or less for it to be accessible. The digital migration costs time and money. Storing and maintaining a digital master of a very high-resolution movie, for example, costs $12,500 a year; archiving a standard film costs $1,000 a year."

LLRX.com: Understanding the Limitations - and Maximizing the Value- of eBooks: The holiday season is here, and many signs suggest that thousands of people are finding themselves new owners of electronic book ("eBook") readers. Whether it's an Amazon Kindle, a Barnes & Noble Nook, a Sony Reader, or any of the less heavily advertised devices currently on the market, electronic book readers are being trumpeted as a product that has finally hit the mainstream after years on the bleeding-edge. eBook readers, in fact, do have the potential to radically reshape how books are read. Equally important, according to Conrad J. Jacoby, they are already reshaping how books are bought and owned.

Project Management - A Law Librarian Survival Skill: Carol A. Watson discusses how effective project management requires considerable thought and preparation before actually initiating the work of the project. Although many of us are eager to jump into the tasks related to a project, it is important to remember that careful planning will provide the groundwork for a successful project outcome. Carol reminds us, "Remember, it takes time to save time," and she will be writing on this overall topic in forthcoming issues of LLRX.com

A Guide for the Perplexed Part III: The Amended Settlement Agreement - On Friday, November 13, 2009, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers filed an Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) in the copyright infringement litigation concerning the Google Library Project. The amendments proposed by the parties are designed to address objections made by the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to the original proposed settlement agreement. This paper by Jonathan Band describes the ASA's major changes, with emphasis on those changes relevant to libraries.

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book Search settlement,
this letter to DOJ Antitrust Division: "The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries (the Library Associations) write to express our views concerning how the United States should respond to the Amended Settlement Agreement filed by the parties on November 13, 2009. In brief, we believe that active supervision of the settlement by the court and the United States will protect the public interest far more than any additional restructuring of the settlement."

News release: "Newspaper publishers experienced a single-year decline in total revenue of 8.3 percent — from $47.9 billion in 2007 to $43.9 billion in 2008. This followed a more modest decline of 2.7 percent in 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. A major contributor to the overall loss in revenues for the industry was the decline in advertising space revenue for general newspapers, which dropped 10.2 percent — from $30.9 billion in 2007 to $27.8 billion in 2008. Revenue from newspaper subscriptions remained largely unchanged over the period, from $8.3 billion in 2007 to $8.2 billion in 2008. These estimates come from the 2008 Service Annual Survey: Information Sector Services. The survey provides national estimates of annual revenue and expenses for industries primarily engaged in producing, processing and distributing data, which range from motion picture production to libraries."

The Collections Search Center provides easy "one-stop searching" of more than 2 million of the Smithsonian's museum, archives, library and research holdings and collections. The access to more Smithsonian collections via this Search Center is increasing over time. Collections currently available include: 265,900 images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other resources from the Smithsonian's museums, archives & libraries."

Access to Social Websites in The Legal Environment - Fall 2009 - Part 1: Survey of Law Librarians in Selected Firms, County/State Law Libraries and Law Schools.

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search (GBS), Google and the New Digital Future, Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard

"The UT Libraries' Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) is committed to the long-term preservation of fragile and vulnerable records of human rights struggles worldwide, the promotion and secure usage of human rights archival materials, and the advancement of human rights research and advocacy around the world. The HRDI website highlights the following types of materials:

1. UT Collections: Primary source, archival materials related to human rights
   
2. Archived Web Resources: Websites, reports, audio, video, photographs on human rights struggles that are produced by individuals or small organizations who lack resources and opportunities for widespread distribution of their work
   
3. Audiovisual documentation (limited access): Fragile, born-digital, audiovisual documentation of human rights violations acquired through partnerships with human rights organizations worldwide (see About the HRDI, access to these materials is currently limited due to the sensitive nature of the information)

Support for the Research Process - An Academic Library Manifesto: This document by Chris Bourg, Ross Coleman, and Ricky Erway can serve as a pathfinder for those professionals seeking to focuses on roles that academic, law and special librarians could undertake in order to better support the research process.

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, news from the Authors Guild that 14 minutes before before midnight on November 13, 2009, "the parties filed with the Court an Amended Settlement Agreement and a motion for preliminary approval of the amended settlement. The parties' motion also seeks Court approval of a Supplemental Notice which, if approved, will be sent out in early December 2009." Here is a short FAQ.

"Through a national network of cooperating libraries, NLS administers a free library program of braille and audio materials circulated to eligible borrowers in the United States by postage-free mail."

As the book changes form, the library must champion its own power base—readers, By Tom Peters: "The future of reading is very much in doubt. In this century, reading could soar to new heights or crash and burn. Some educators and librarians fear that sustained reading for learning, for work, and for pleasure may be slowly dying out as a widespread social practice."

Who's in Big Brother's Database? By James Bamford - A review of The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid.

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, this insightful commentary from The American Lawyer - Scanning the Future, by Ben Hallman: "Lawyers familiar with the talks say the book publishing industry had watched in horror as the music business waged a scorched-earth campaign against file-sharing sites like Napster, only to see their profits plunge and antipathy to their tactics grow. They didn't want to follow the same path. In the spring of 2006, executives and lawyers began e-mailing various proposals about how a comprehensive settlement might work, say lawyers familiar with the negotiations. The authors were most interested in getting paid for their out-of-print works. The publishers, meanwhile, wanted to ensure nothing could be done with in-print books without their permission. Google wanted a deal that would incorporate the most troublesome class of books: in-copyright, out-of-print books, for which the rights holders cannot be determined."

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book Settlement, this New York Times Op-Ed today: A Library to Last Forever, by Sergey Brin/Google: "Because books are such an important part of the world’s collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago, when we were a fledgling startup. At the time, it was viewed as so ambitious and challenging a project that we were unable to attract anyone to work on it. But five years later, in 2004, Google Books (then called Google Print) was born, allowing users to search hundreds of thousands of books. Today, they number over 10 million and counting. The next year we were sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the project. While we have had disagreements, we have a common goal — to unlock the wisdom held in the enormous number of out-of-print books, while fairly compensating the rights holders. As a result, we were able to work together to devise a settlement that accomplishes our shared vision. While this settlement is a win-win for authors, publishers and Google, the real winners are the readers who will now have access to a greatly expanded world of books.

White House Proclamation: "Every American deserves an opportunity to study, understand, and contribute to the arts and humanities. This must begin in our schools, where children may have their first and most important exposure to these disciplines. Working on their own masterpieces and finding inspiration in the work of others, young people are opened to new means of expression that sharpen their creative faculties. An education in music, dance, drama, design, and fine art reinforces skills in fields like math and science, and it can help students reach their full potential. In an ever-changing world, we must prepare our students with the knowledge, creative skills, and an ability to innovate so they can compete and succeed on a global stage."

Follow up to previous postings on what is becoming the saga of the Google Book Settlement, the following articles, legal documents and commentary today:

• New York Times: Google Working to Revise Digital Books Settlement
  
• Author's Guild: "Beating their midnight deadline by about 90 minutes, the Justice Department on Friday filed a brief calling for modifications to the Authors Guild's class-action settlement with Google over Google's scanning of millions of library books without permission. The Justice Department said the parties to the settlement should modify the settlement to address certain copyright, antitrust, and class-action concerns. While it opposes the settlement agreement as it now stands, the Justice Department "strongly supports" the settlement's goals of creating new markets for out-of-print works and committed itself to working constructively with the parties on a revised settlement.."
  
• Google's Book Search Deal: 5 Pros and 5 Cons, JR Raphael, PC World
  
• ars technica - DOJ: Google book settlement needs major rewrite

News release: "With national unemployment topping 9 percent and many Americans seeking online information and new technology skills that can help keep them and their families afloat in hard times, U.S. public libraries are first responders in a time of economic uncertainty. Libraries Connect Communities 3: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2008-2009, a new report released by the American Library Association (ALA), says libraries are serving as crucial technology hubs for people in need of free Web access, computer training, and assistance finding and using E-Government and job resources. The study finds that more than 71 percent of all libraries (and 79 percent of rural libraries) report they are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their communities. Sixty-six percent of public libraries rank job-seeking services, including resume writing and Internet job searches, among the most crucial online services they offer – up from 44 percent two years ago. In a separate survey, 80 percent of New York libraries indicated they helped someone search for a job in late 2008."

eWeek.com: "Google agrees to provide 2 million non-copyrighted book titles for On Demand Books printing and cutting using its high-speed Espresso Book Machine. Google Books titles offered via the Espresso Machine will have a recommended sales price of $8 per copy, though the price is subject to change by retailers. On Demand may have access to sell more works if Google's Book Search deal with authors and publishers passes muster with the New York District Court in October." Wired also has the story.

Statement of Marybeth Peters, The Register of Copyrights before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives 111th Congress 1st Session, September 10, 2009

"reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows...A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs."

The relationship between public libraries and Google: Too much information, by Vivienne Waller. First Monday, Volume 14, Number 9 - 7 September 2009

Via Out of the Jungle, insightful commentary and content from a fee based Chronicle of Higher Education article, Choosing Up Sides to Hate or Love the Google Books Deal: "...And—this is what intrigues me the most—how will Judge Chin decide what role the federal courts can and should play in the creation and oversight of what almost everyone agrees will be a digital library the likes of which we have never seen before? Will he agree with Marybeth Peters, the U.S. Register of Copyrights, who told a late-to-the-game House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday that the settlement "inappropriately creates something similar to a compulsory license for works, unfairly alters the property interests of millions of rights holders of out-of-print works without any Congressional oversight, and has the capacity to create diplomatic stress for the United States" because of other countries' objections? (I wonder what the judge will make of the suggestion that Congress has a role to play here.)"

"CDT filed a "friend of the court" brief in the Southern District of New York [September 4, 2009] requesting that key privacy requirements be included in the Court's approval of the class-action settlement that would dramatically expand Google Book Search. CDT previously released a report in July analyzing the privacy implications of this settlement and is urging the judge to guarantee strong privacy safeguards for the exciting new services Google will be able to offer. The brief asks that the court approve the proposed settlement of the copyright infringement lawsuit between Google and authors and publishers, but to retain oversight in order to monitor implementation of a privacy plan."

• CDT's Amicus Brief in Google Books settlement
  
• CDT's Report on Google Book Service
  
• Related postings on Google Book Search
  
• New York Times: Google Book Project Coolly Received in Europe
  
• WSJ: Google Curtails Europe Book Plan

"Banned Books Week (BBW): Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where the freedom to express oneself and the freedom to choose what opinions and viewpoints to consume are both met. As the Intellectual Freedom Manual (ALA, 7th edition) states:

Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate; and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of the work, and the viewpoints of both the author and receiver of information. Freedom to express oneself through a chosen mode of communication, including the Internet, becomes virtually meaningless if access to that information is not protected. Intellectual freedom implies a circle, and that circle is broken if either freedom of expression or access to ideas is stifled.

Google Books Privacy Policy, September 3, 2009

bizjounrals: "Amazon.com Inc. this week joined the groups filing objections in court against Google Inc.'s settlement with authors and publishers. Amazon said in its 41-page brief filed in federal court that Google will stifle competition if the settlement is approved."

Law Librarians Survey: No More Sacred Cows - Librarians trim budgets, head count, and much-loved research tools.
The Full Survey:

• The Librarian's Expanding Role
  
• Electronic Resources
  
• Staffing
  
• Finances

Re-Hashing the Hash Tag - Crowd Competition and Community Standards at the #AALL2009 Conference: Roger V. Skalbeck and Meg Kribble describe how the majority of social media activity during the 2009 AALL conference took place on Twitter, and how this technology impacts the profession and the free exchange of information, moving forward.

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book settlement, BBB News reports - Tech giants unite against Google - "Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works."

As reported in the Concorde Monitor (New Hampshire), Justice Souter's longtime neighbor said "Souter told him one of the reasons he decided to move was because his Weare house wasn't structurally sound enough to hold the thousands of books that make up his library."

Law Practice Technology Information Sources and Tools - Ken Strutin identifies core sources to learn about new technologies that apply to legal research and law practice. In addition, he has identified specific tools that will contribute to managing research, communication and information-based tasks.

"Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's outstanding manuscripts. Together with Codex Vaticanus, it is one of the earliest extant Bibles, containing the oldest complete New Testament. This treasured codex is indispensable for understanding the earliest text of the Greek Bible, the transmission of its text, the establishment of the Christian canon, and the history of the book. Over 400 leaves survive and are held across four institutions: the British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monastery and the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg. To celebrate the virtual re-unification of all extant leaves of Codex Sinaiticus, on 6-7 July 2009, the British Library is hosting an academic conference on topics relating to Codex Sinaiticus. A number of leading experts have been approached to give presentations on the history, text, conservation, paleography and codicology, among other topics, of Codex Sinaiticus. Selected conference papers will be edited and published as a collection of articles."

News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice [on June 24, 2009], demanding the public release of the surveillance guidelines that govern investigations of Americans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI's Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines went into effect in December of 2008 and detail the Bureau's procedures and standards for implementing the Attorney General's Guidelines on approved surveillance strategies...The FBI's general counsel has acknowledged that "the expansion of techniques available [to the Bureau] has raised privacy and civil liberties concerns." Investigations can include the electronic collection of information from online sources and computer databases, as well as the use of grand jury subpoenas to obtain telephone and email subscriber information. Other recent policy changes allow the FBI to engage in free-ranging investigation of Internet sites, libraries, and religious institutions." [Darlene Fichter]

Best Practices for Government Libraries - 2009 - Change: Managing It, Surviving It, and Thriving On It - "The 2009 edition includes 60 articles and other submissions provided by more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more." Compiled by Marie Kaddell, LexisNexis.

Vendor Pitfalls in Negotiating Large Multi-Year Contracts - or How to Lose a Million Dollar Contract: A veteran of several decades of vendor negotiations for law firm online and print contracts, law librarian Elaine Billingslea Dockens' thoughtful, detailed and illustrative pathfinder is an asset to all engaged parties whose goal is to obtain a contract that is appropriately balanced, in cost and content, to meet the specific organizational requirements.

TIME: "In a complex settlement agreement, which took three years to hammer out and spans 135 pages excluding attachments, Google will be allowed to show up to 20% of the books' text online at no charge to Web surfers. But the part of the settlement that deals with so-called orphan books — which refers to out-of-print books whose authors and publishers are unknown — is what's ruffling the most feathers in the literary henhouse. The deal gives Google an exclusive license to publish and profit from these orphans, which means it won't face legal action if an author or owner comes forward later. This, critics contend, gives it a competitive edge over any rival that wants to set up a competing digital library. And without competition, opponents fear Google will start charging exorbitant fees to academic libraries and others who want full access to its digital library. "It will make Google virtually invulnerable to competition," says Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system."

The End of Institutional Repositories & the Beginning of Social Academic Research Service: An Enhanced Role For Libraries - Stuart Basefsky advocates broadening the concept of institutional repositories (IRs) to serve as full-fledged electronic libraries and documents how they can then serve the greater purpose of collecting, disseminating, analyzing and exchanging useful digital information for academic purposes.

There are a number of session handouts available in advance of the sessions.

The Decline and Fall of the Dominant Paradigm: Trustworthiness of Case Reports in the Digital Age, by William R. Mills, New York Law School Law Review, volume 53, 2008/2009.

Follow-up to previous postings on Google Book Search, Deal or No Deal: What if the Google Settlement Fails? by Andrew Richard Albanese, Publishers Weekly.

Follow up to previous articles on Google Book Search: "The University of Michigan today announced that it has expanded its historic agreement with Google Inc. to create digital copies of millions of U-M library books and journals. The amended agreement, which strengthens library preservation efforts and increases the public's access to books, is possible because of Google's pending settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers. The U-M library is the first in the nation to expand its partnership with Google."

Progressive Librarians Guild Calls for Elsevier to End Corrupt Publishing Practices and for Library Associations to Take Advocacy Role on Behalf of Scientific Integrity

Can Collaboration Solve Copyright Status Questions? The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry - As Roger V. Skalbeck documents, one of the underlying obstacles to reproducing older books is a central place to look for information about what is protected by copyright and what may have passed into the public domain is lacking. Responding to this need, OCLC recently introduced a beta service, the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry (CER). It could be a very valuable resource for recording and sharing copyright status information."

News release: "Recommind...search-powered information risk management (IRM) software....released the results of its recent research into the information access and search habits of UK organisations. With businesses capable of searching just 50 percent of the information that their employees need for their daily tasks, the findings indicate that legacy, one-size-fits-all ‘Enterprise Search 1.0’ systems are no longer suitable for modern enterprises that require instant, automated and highly relevant access to all kinds of information – from documents and email to fellow colleagues’ expertise and knowledge to project-specific information. The impact on businesses from this technology failure includes staff spending many hours searching fruitlessly for the information they need to do their daily jobs – with approximately a quarter of those surveyed admitting that employees typically spend more than half a day a week on this task. For a company with 1,000 employees, this equates to upwards of £50,000 worth of lost time a week or £2,600,000 a year."

Follow up to Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement, from the Authors Guild: "The court overseeing Authors Guild v. Google extended the time for authors and publishers to opt out of the settlement by four months, to September 4th (Judge Chin's order). The fairness hearing will be on October 7th."

"In 2008, OCLC conducted focus groups, administered a pop-up survey on WorldCat.org—OCLC’s freely available end user interface on the Web—and conducted a Web-based survey of librarians worldwide. The report, Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want, presents findings from these research efforts in order to understand:

• The metadata elements that are most important to end users in determining if an item will meet his or her needs
  
• The enhancements end users would like to see made in online library catalogs to assist them in consistently identifying appropriate materials
  
• The enhancements librarians would recommend for online library catalogs to better assist them in their work
  
• The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often thought of as discovery tools, the catalog’s delivery-related information is just as important to end users.

"The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research."

News release: "The value of libraries in communities across the country continued to grow in 2008—and accelerated dramatically as the national economy sank and people looked for cost effective resources in a time of crisis, according to the American Library Association’s (ALA) annual State of America’s Libraries report, released today as part of National Library Week, April 12-18, 2009. U.S. libraries experienced a dramatic increase in library card registration as the public continues to turn to their local library for free services. More than 68 percent of Americans have a library card. This is the greatest number of Americans with library cards since the American Library Association (ALA) started to measure library card usage in 1990, according to a 2008 Web poll conducted by Harris Interactive. The report also says library usage soared as Americans visited their libraries nearly 1.4 billion times and checked out more than 2 billion items in the past year, an increase of more than 10 percent in both checked out items and library visits, compared to data from the last economic downturn in 2001."

Proactive Leadership & The Role of Information: Identifying Strategic Networks of Information - Networking is supposed to be essential to successful leaders. But what is the importance of networking conceptually? People are only one form of this vital leadership resource. Stuart Basefksy explains how would one go about developing expanded networks of information and sources.

News release: "Acting Archivist of the United States Adrienne Thomas announced [April 10, 2009] that 245,763 pages of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Presidential records will be opened for research on Monday, April 13, 2009, at their respective libraries. These records, which were still pending with the George W. Bush Administration as of January 20, 2009, today cleared the review process established by President Barack Obama under Executive Order 13489.

• "On Monday, April 13, 2009, the Ronald Reagan library will open 244,966 pages of records processed in response to hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. These records include the Presidential Briefing Papers collection, Office of Speechwriting research material, and approximately 13,000 pages of declassified records on numerous foreign policy topics. To date, more than ten million pages of Presidential records have been processed at the Reagan library."
  
• On Monday, April 13, 2009, the George H. W. Bush library will open 797 pages of records that deal with Saudi Arabia. To date, more than six million pages of Presidential records have been processed at the Bush library..."

News release: "Organizations representing booksellers, librarians, publishers, and writers today launched the latest phase in their five-year campaign to restore the reader privacy safeguards that were stripped away by the USA Patriot Act. Since 2003, the Department of Justice has used its expanded power under the Patriot Act to issue more than 200 secret search orders under Section 215 and more than 190,000 National Security Letters (NSLs). Despite several efforts to reform the Patriot Act, the FBI can still search any records it believes are "relevant" to a terrorism investigation, including the records of people who are not suspected of criminal conduct."

Burney's Legal Tech Reviews: Verizon Wireless USB760 Modem and the Cradlepoint CTR500 Mobile Broadband Travel Router - For consistent, resilient mobile internet connectivity, Brett Burney recommends these three small, versatile products that are cost effective and reliable.

Follow up to March 19, 2009 - New Attorney General Guidelines on FOIA Released - CJR: "In a bit of Congressional commemoration, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Cornyn, his Texan Republican colleague, have introduced S. 612, new legislation that would require any new b(3) exemptions to specifically reference the Freedom of Information Act, so that these exemptions would be easier to spot. The senators have frequently collaborated on legislation designed to improve FOIA, and this is the third consecutive Sunshine Week in which Cornyn and Leahy have introduced this legislation. In 2007, it passed the Senate unanimously...Because the law only applies to future b(3) exemptions that Congress might write, it does nothing to address those already in the US Code. Like Title 7, Chapter 77, Sec 4608, Subsection G, Paragraph 1, which protects certain information about honeybee handlers, or Title 7, Chapter 80, Section 4908, Subsection c, which does something similar for watermelon producers and handlers submitting information quantifying the size of their business in order to participate in the National Watermelon Promotion Board."

News release: "Starting today, The eBook Store from Sony will provide access to more than a half-million public domain books from Google optimized for current models of the Reader. At Sony’s eBook store (ebookstore.sony.com), a button on the front page leads to the books from Google, which people can transfer to their PRS-505 or PRS-700 Reader at no cost. The process is seamless for Reader owners who have an account at the store. Those new to the store will need to set up an account and download Sony’s free eBook Library software. To start, people can access more than a half-million public domain books from Google, boosting the available titles from the eBook Store to more than 600,000."

New York Times: Times Are Tough, and Libraries Are Thriving

News release: "The American Civil Liberties Union released a comprehensive report today examining widespread abuses that have occurred under the USA Patriot Act, a law that was rushed through Congress just 45 days after September 11. In the almost eight years since the passage of the controversial national security law, the Patriot Act has led to egregious government misconduct."

Mother Jones: "By slipping a simple, three-sentence provision into the gargantuan spending bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, a congressman from Silicon Valley is trying to nudge Congress into the 21st Century. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) placed a measure in the bill directing Congress and its affiliated organs—including the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office—to make its data available to the public in raw form. This will enable members of the public and watchdog groups to craft websites and databases showcasing government data that are more user-friendly than the government's own."

Post-Conference Workshop on Competitive Intelligence, April 2, 2009 - 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM, Sabrina I. Pacifici, Law Librarian, & Founder/Editor/Publisher, LLRX.com and beSpacific.com

ARRA 101: "Completing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was a long and arduous process for the Obama Administration and the new Congress. Now that President Obama has signed the bill into law, our nation can begin the journey of restoring our economic stability through the programs and initiatives this law will make possible.

Throughout the process of creating this law, the library community demonstrated a steadfast commitment to the American public by working to inform our leaders in Washington about the programs and services libraries across the country are providing to help America get back to work, such as assistance with resume building and online job searching as well as free classes to teach the public 21st century job skills.

With many opportunities available to libraries through the stimulus bill, the library community must continue our efforts to educate our elected officials on the benefits of investing in libraries – focusing now on the state level."

Timothy B. Lee: "Speaking at Princeton on Thursday, Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Association of American Publishers, discussed the landmark settlement in the Google Book Search case. Sarnoff speculated that the agreement could effectively give Google and Amazon a "duopoly" in the online book market."

"The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas."

"The Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL), a comprehensive civil rights Web site and portal hosted by the University of Georgia, saw an enormous spike in the number of hits during the week of January 19 when the nation celebrated the inauguration of President Barack Obama and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. Among CRDL’s many video selections, users could watch a prophetic 1971 clip of civil rights activist Andrew Young predicting the election of an African American president in his lifetime, a 1962 clip of African American students turned away from the public library in Albany, Georgia, and a 1960 clip of African American first-grade girls integrating an elementary school cheered on by African Americans in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded the University of Georgia a National Leadership Grant (NLG) to create the digital library in 2005. The project was selected in part because it provides a portal for many of the nation’s civil rights collections, resulting in much greater public access and the ability to search across many collections as if they were a single collection. It also harvests metadata from the collections, which are physically scattered throughout the country, and has contributed significantly to audio-visual metadata standards." [Institute of Museum and Library Services]

"The Law Library of Congress is pleased to present a newly digitized collection to celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The collection covers three eras including nine items in the Lincoln the Lawyer collection, five on Habeas Corpus and the War Powers of the President, and eight covering The Assassination: Trials. Lincoln's effort to restore the Union and his contributions to American political thought and its ideals of freedom often obscure the fact that he had been a successful attorney. Lincoln himself admitted his ambition lay in politics and not in the law, "My forte is as a Statesman, rather than a Prosecutor." Even if the law was Lincoln's "secondary" avocation, it was indelibly linked to him in life... and death." [Donna Scheeder]

Six Questions and a Strategy for Campus-wide Information Competence. At Cornell University Library (CUL) a committee was established in 2005 to address the issue of information literacy at the university. The committee did extensive research on this topic and developed an approach for seeking solutions. Stuart Basefsky presents three exhibits to accomplish this objective.

Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program - Back Issues available from 1996-2008, HTML Version (and PDF from 2001).

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book search project, from the New York Review of Books, Google & the Future of Books, by Robert Darnton

George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum: "The George W. Bush Library holds millions of pages of official records documenting the two-term administration (2001-2009) of the nation's forty-third president, as well as donated historical materials that document Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and his personal papers as Governor of Texas. In addition to these textual records, the Bush Library has an extensive audiovisual collection containing photographs and videotapes, as well as an extensive artifact collection containing presidential and gubernatorial domestic and foreign gifts."

• Executive Orders Signed by George W. President Bush
  
• Public Papers of President George W. Bush
  
• Browse the George W. Bush White House Web Site

WSJ - Folks Are Flocking to the Library, a Cozy Place to Look for a Job Books, Computers and Wi-Fi Are Free, But Staffs Are Stressed by Crowds, Cutbacks: "A few years ago, public libraries were being written off as goners. The Internet had made them irrelevant, the argument went. But libraries across the country are reporting jumps in attendance of as much as 65% over the past year, as newly unemployed people flock to branches to fill out résumés and scan ads for job listings."

News release: "For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature, according to a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts. Reading on the Rise documents a definitive increase in rates and numbers of American adults who read literature, with the biggest increases among young adults, ages 18-24. This new growth reverses two decades of downward trends cited previously in NEA reports such as Reading at Risk and To Read or Not To Read."

Presidential Libraries: The Federal System and Related Legislation, Updated November 26, 2008.

News release: The staff of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service has released its most recent Monitoring Report on Universal Service. This report reflects information on the telephone industry filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) through June 2008. This report, with a few exceptions, reflects data filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by the telephone industry for the year 2007 and prior years..Schools and Libraries Support – Schools and libraries support disbursements in 2007 increased to $1.8 billion from $1.7 billion in 2006."

News release: "After the 2008 presidential election, the Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) Advisory Committee and the Committee on Legislation (COL) held meetings with the ALA Washington Office to discuss the key issues and concerns the library community must communicate to the new Administration during this time of transition and throughout Obama’s presidency. Following these meetings, the ALA Washington Office compiled a report, Opening the “Window to a Larger World,” Libraries’ Role in Changing America, which was submitted to the Obama-Biden Transition Team on Wednesday, December 17. The Washington Office is communicating with the Transition Team and hopes to continue this open dialogue over the next four years."

News release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Statistics 2006–2007, the latest in a series of annual publications that describe the collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities of ARL’s 123 member libraries. Of these member libraries, 113 are university libraries (14 in Canada, 99 in the US); the remaining 10 are public, governmental, and private research libraries (2 in Canada, 8 in the US)."

A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement: Jonathan Band's article outlines the settlement’s provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries. The settlement is extremely complex (over 200 pages long, including attachments), so this paper of necessity simplifies many of its details.

Best Careers, 2009: "U.S. News profiles 30 careers that offer strong outlooks and high job satisfaction. Here's what's new in 2009...as well as a look at 13 cutting-edge careers, viable now and poised for future growth. They stem from megatrends like globalization, digitization, and the wave of environmentalism sweeping the world." See the entry for Librarian.

How to Publish Without Perishing, by James Gleick: "As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars...Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it."

100 Notable Books of 2008 - New York Times: "The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since Dec. 2, 2007, when we published our previous Notables list." Includes Fiction and Poetry, and Nonfiction.

The Fast-Food Information Age: We Are What We Read, Michael Ross - November 10, 2008

Hull D, Pettifer SR, Kell DB 2008 Defrosting the Digital Library: Bibliographic Tools for the Next Generation Web. PLoS Computational Biology 4(10): e1000204 doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000204 [Gerry McKiernan]

Follow up to October 28, 2008 posting, Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement, from the Harvard Crimson: "Harvard University Library will not take part in Google’s book scanning project for in-copyright works after finding the terms of its landmark $125 million settlement regarding copyrighted materials unsatisfactory, University officials said yesterday."

E-Discovery Update: Pushing Back Against Hardcopy ESI Productions - Conrad J. Jacoby addresses how critical technology issues related to document authenticity and document-associated metadata have left fewer lawyers willing to accept e-mail messages and other electronic documents in print format. He argues that litigants choosing to produce electronically stored information in hardcopy format should be prepared to provide more complete electronic copies of their production, even when it isn’t initially requested by opposing counsel.

News release: "The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search...Under the agreement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million. The money will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees. The settlement agreement resolves Authors Guild v. Google, a class-action suit filed on September 20, 2005 by the Authors Guild and certain authors, and a suit filed on October 19, 2005 by five major publisher-members of the Association of American Publishers: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.; Pearson Education, Inc. and Penguin Group (USA) Inc., both part of Pearson; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; and Simon & Schuster, Inc. part of CBS Corporation. These lawsuits challenged Google’s plan to digitize, search and show snippets of in-copyright books and to share digital copies with libraries without the explicit permission of the copyright owner."

Follow up to previous postings on EPA library closures, from the September 24, 2008 Federal Register: "EPA is enhancing access to library services for the public and Agency staff. EPA will open previously closed libraries in its National Library Network, with walk-in access for the public and EPA staff. Other library locations will expand staffing, operating hours, or services. This notice provides information regarding how members of the public can access the libraries and services beginning September 30, 2008."

WSJ (no fee) - Why Libraries Are Back in Style: "In the latest annual National Association of Home Builders consumer survey, 63% of home buyers said they wanted a library or considered one essential, a percentage that has been edging up for the past few years. Many mass-market home builders are including libraries in their house plans, sometimes with retro touches like rolling ladders and circular stairs."

News release: "A new study clearly finds that America’s public libraries are breaking through traditional brick-and-mortar walls to serve more people online and in person. America’s 16,543 public library buildings are leveraging technology to help children succeed in school and support lifelong learning. More than 83 percent now offer online homework resources, including live tutors and collections of reliable Web sources – up 15 percent in one year, according to Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2007-2008...The study, conducted by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University (FSU), shows today’s libraries are partners in learning – providing free access to expensive online resources that would otherwise be out of reach for most families..."

Pew Internet and American Life Project - Podcast Downloading 2008, 8/28/2008, Mary Madden Sydney Jones

The Kindle for Professional Researchers: DC based journalist Cheryl Miller offers seven good reasons to buy this gadget seemingly tailor-made for dedicated readers, but she also provides caveats worth your attention.

The Government Domain: Back to School for Constitution Day 2008 - E-gov expert Peggy Garvin guides researchers, educators and librarians to key online resources available for teaching, training and educational activities associated with the September 17, 2008 celebration of Constitution Day in the United States.

"Gannett News Service compiled 2002 data from the National Center for Education Statistics on more than 9,000 public library systems nationwide. To make a five-year comparison, GNS also obtained 2006 data from each state and the District of Columbia that were not available from NCES.

The federal government requires states to report library information in a number of categories. GNS focused on four key yardsticks: visits, circulation (number of items checked out), operating expenses and number of public computers with Internet access.

"Each year, more than 1 billion people visit libraries to borrow books or videos, log onto the Internet or participate in various community programs." Link to databases and related resources on the right sidebar of this page

• Library spending across the U.S.
• Public library systems with the highest circulation per capita
• Public library systems with the most Internet-capable public computers per capita
• Public library systems with the largest operating expenses per capita

News release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Social Software in Libraries, SPEC Kit 304, which provides an overview of ARL libraries’ implementation of software that people use to connect with one another online...In the last few years, the use of social software has grown enormously. While a growing number of libraries have adopted social software as a way to further interact with library patrons and library staff, many things are unclear about the use of social software in ARL member libraries. This SPEC survey was designed to discover how many libraries and library staff are using social software and for what purposes, how those activities are organized and managed, and the benefits and challenges of using social software, among other questions.

For this study, social software was broadly defined as software that enables people to connect with one another online. The survey asked about 10 types of applications: (1) social-networking sites; (2) media-sharing sites; (3) social-bookmarking or tagging sites; (4) wikis; (5) blogs; (6) sites that use RSS to syndicate and broadcast content; (7) chat or instant messaging services; (8) VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) services; (9) virtual worlds; and (10) widgets."

The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC Kit are available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec304web.pdf.

Technology Tools for Information Management - Roger V. Skalbeck and Barbara Fullerton's share a fast paced presentation of 19 practical, low cost and innovative tech tools they respectively use on a regular basis. So if you are looking for ideas to improve your use of Outlook, RSS, Adobe, and enhance your presentations and collaborative goals, this article is a must read.

Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Country Profiles: Turkey and Yemen.

Project will preserve Bush administration Web sites, By Jill R. Aitoro: "More than 100 million Web pages from President Bush's second term will be preserved for historians, researchers and the public, thanks to a joint effort announced on Thursday of government agencies and non-profit libraries. The Library of Congress and Government Printing Office, in partnership with the California Digital Library, University of North Texas Libraries and Internet Archive, will harvest and archive all Web sites that could change under a new presidential administration. The total amount of data in the collection, which will focus on executive and legislative branch sites, is expected to reach 10 to 12 terabytes."

Council on Library and Information Resources, pub 142 - No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century, August, 2008 (74 pages, PDF)

Follow up to previous postings on the EPA library closures, today this news release from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER): "The Memorandum of Agreement between the EPA and the American Federation of Government Employees becomes final today....EPA will not, however, re-open its specialized library for research on the properties and effects of new chemicals which held one of the world’s most comprehensive technical collections on pesticides and other compounds. EPA did pledge to reopen a Chemical Library as part of its re-opened Headquarters Library in Washington, D.C. with a “professional librarian with knowledge of chemical information” and access to an unspecified “specialized chemical collection."

Google Still Not Indexing Hidden Web URLs, by Kat Hagedorn
Metadata Harvesting Librarian, Digital Library Production Service, University of Michigan Libraries, Ann Arbor, MI and Joshua Santelli
Applications Programmer, Digital Library Production Service, University of Michigan Libraries, Ann Arbor, MI. D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2008, Volume 14 Number 7/8.

Treasury Economic Update 8.1.08: "Job Growth: Payroll employment fell by 51,000 in July, following a decrease of 51,000 in June. The United States has added about 7.8 million jobs since August 2003. Employment increased in 33 states and the District of Columbia over the year ending in June. (Last updated: August 1, 2008). Unemployment: The unemployment rate was 5.7 percent in July, up from 5.5 percent in June. (Last updated: August 1, 2008)
See also:

• Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary, July 2008
  
• Economy gets people out of the house, into libraries - "Study shows more checkouts in hard times," Newhouse News Service

News release: "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking suggestions from the public on how it can increase its level of openness related to security at nuclear power plants and certain other facilities while still protecting sensitive information. A summary of the feedback will be posted on the NRC’s Web site, provided to the Commission and considered in the development of new openness policies.

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the Commission implemented a new policy of withholding certain information. Some information previously available to the public was withheld and new information, such as certain orders to NRC licensees on security measures, was designated as classified, safeguards information or sensitive unclassified information and withheld from the public.

In 2007, the NRC began redacting and releasing many of the safety documents previously withheld, and the agency is interested in taking additional action regarding security-related inspection and license performance information. Under consideration are several approaches, including adding more detail to an annual report to Congress on security oversight and to the cover letters for security inspection reports, and by making more information available on the NRC Web site."

Related postings on Disappearing Docs. From Gov't Websites

"Taking Care of Business - Librarians have become tougher advocates, savvier negotiators, and key contributors to their firm's growth."

Reference from Coast to Coast: Summer Musings - Jan Bissett and Margi Heinen provide a timely and valuable refresher on a range of well-sourced, reliable, topical websites, guides, print and program materials useful for summer associate legal research training.

New York Times: Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?: "Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Pride and Prejudice” for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or mashing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs...Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends."

News release, July 11, 2008 [thanks to Jennifer Eckel]: "American Federation of Government Employees National Council of EPA Local #238 President Charles Orzehoskie today announced that AFGE Council 238 has reached agreement with EPA to reopen its libraries... Orzehoskie went on to note that this agreement must still go through. "Agency Head Review" pursuant to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, and may not be effective until on or about August 10, 2008...Orzehoskie and Roy point out that the MOA could only get to a reasonable level of detail in committing the Agency to provide EPA libraries with "adequate space and resources". Therefore, AFGE Council 238 has asked Congress to oversee the adequateness of "...space and resources..." proposed by the Agency for each reopened library...EPA received $1,000,000 in the Department of Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2008. These monies were to be spent "...to restore the network of EPA libraries recently closed or consolidated by the Administration...." Orzehoskie stated that it remains unclear to the Council just how EPA has allocated these monies to restore the EPA Library Network, but he is sure that Congress will require an accounting of the monies..."

"This is the companion website for the following book. Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schütze, Introduction to Information Retrieval, Cambridge University Press. 2008. This "is the first textbook with a coherent treatment of classical and web information retrieval, including web search and the related areas of text classification and text clustering. Written from a computer science perspective, it gives an up-to-date treatment of all aspects of the design and implementation of systems for gathering, indexing, and searching documents and of methods for evaluating systems, along with an introduction to the use of machine learning methods on text collections. Designed as the primary text for a graduate or advanced undergraduate course in information retrieval, the book will also interest researchers and professionals. A complete set of lecture slides and exercises that accompany the book are available on the web."

Microsoft Live Search Blog: "Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes. This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users."

• International Review of the Red Cross (1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970): "The International Review of the Red Cross has been continuously published by the International Committee of the Red Cross since 1869, and jointly with Cambridge University Press since 2006. It was first published as Bulletin international Sociétés de secours aux militaries blesses and later as Bulletin international des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge. The English edition began in April 1961. The Review is “a forum for debate on international humanitarian law and humanitarian action and policy, during armed conflict and other situations of violence."
• Reports Prepared for the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves

"The Chesapeake Project began as a two-year (2007-2008) pilot digital preservation program established to preserve and ensure permanent access to vital legal information currently available in digital formats on the World Wide Web. The purpose of The Chesapeake Project is to successfully develop and implement a program to stabilize, preserve, and ensure permanent access to critical born-digital legal materials. The goal is to establish the beginnings of a strong regional digital archive collection of U.S. legal materials as well as a sound set of standards, policies, and best practices that have the potential to serve as a model for the future realization of a nationwide digital preservation program. See Legal Information Archive: The Chesapeake Project, First Year Evaluation." [via Sarah J. Rhodes]

Real Job Titles for Library and Information Science Professionals - directory of "job titles...found in job listings in American Libraries, College and Research Libraries News, or have been sent to Michelle Mach by employed "librarians." [via Phil Bradley]

Library of Congress Federal Research Division: "The profiles offer brief, summarized information on a country’s historical background, geography, society, economy, transportation and telecommunications, government and politics, and national security."

• A Little Grafting of Second Life into a Legal Research Class: Rob Hudson discusses how Second Life can be used to enhance legal research instruction. Experiments in full class lectures and other uses of Second Life in higher education offer a mixture of hype and excitement. Published May 9, 2008
• CongressLine: Running for Congress: Paul Jenks recounts how for the past two years he has run marathons and monitored Congress at the same time, describing how the two experiences are very similar. Published May 9, 2008
• LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - A Guide to HIPAA Security and the Law: Heather A. Phillips reviews Stephen S. Wu's book whose focus is coming into compliance with the recent and complex new HIPAA requirements. Published May 7, 2008
• Conrad Jacoby's E-Discovery Update: Attorneys, Experts, and E-Discovery Competence: Conrad J. Jacoby focuses on two recent cases that emphasize the credibility problems counsel can face in the context of e-discovery - and suggest that outside assistance may be the only way for some counsel to demonstrate that these materials are being managed in a competent and trustworthy way. Published May 7, 2008
• FOIA Facts - My Proposal: FOIA Litigation Reporting Requirements: Scott A. Hodes makes the case that there should be a reporting requirement for all FOIA lawsuits requiring agencies to inform a central FOIA Office the outcome of FOIA lawsuits. Published May 7, 2008

"On May 7, Mary Alice Baish of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) gave testimony [Statement on behalf of GPO funding] before the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, Legislative Branch Subcommittee, in support of the fiscal year (FY) 2009 budget request of the U.S. Government Printing Office. She testified on behalf of AALL, the American Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association." [via ALA District Dispatch]

"Our communities have a very strong interest in Federal information policy and a fervent commitment to public access to government information and a robust FDLP for the 21st Century. The mission of the Government Printing Office (GPO) is uniquely important. GPO provides the three branches of the Federal government with expert publishing and printing services and electronic access to government information through GPO Access. In addition, GPO ensures perpetual, no-fee, ready public access to the printed and electronic information published by the Federal government, in partnership with federal depository libraries.

The public’s ability to access e-government information, either at their local depository library, neighborhood library or directly from their desktop, has grown exponentially since the enactment of the GPO Access Enhancement Act in 1993 and the move towards greater e-government by agencies, Congress and the courts. While e-government brings us many opportunities for enhanced public access, many difficult challenges remain unresolved as government moves away from producing its information in print and relies increasingly on “born digital” government information. We believe that GPO has a critical leadership role in helping the Federal government meet these unique challenges."

News release: "The FBI has withdrawn an unconstitutional national security letter (NSL) issued to the Internet Archive after a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As the result of a settlement agreement, the FBI withdrew the NSL and agreed to the unsealing of the case, finally allowing the Archive's founder to speak out for the first time about his battle against the record demand...The NSL was served on the Archive -- a digital library recognized by the state of California -- and its attorneys in November of 2007. The letter asked for personal information about one of the Archive's users, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication transactional records pertaining to the user. Kahle, who is also a member of EFF's Board of Directors, decided to fight the NSL because it exceeded the FBI's limited authority to issue such demands to libraries."

• For the newly unsealed documents (still partially redacted)
  
• For more information about this case
  
• Related postings on National Security Letters

The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (HR 5889 and S 2913) "attempts to create a system where new creators can use old works without fear of massive lawsuits, provided that a good faith effort has been made to find out if the work in question is copyrighted." [Link]

• Public Knowledge resource guide to Orphan Works and related posting.
  
• beSpacific postings on orphan works

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online: "For decades available only to scholars at Cambridge University Library, the private papers of Charles Darwin, one of the most influential scientists in history, can now be seen by anyone online and free of charge. This is the largest ever publication of Darwin papers and manuscripts, totalling about 20,000 items in nearly 90,000 electronic images. This vast and varied collection of papers includes the first draft of his theory of evolution, notes from the voyage of the Beagle and Emma Darwin's recipe book." Readers may also browse the papers here.

"This presentation [April 7, 2008] is an overview of recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project about internet use and Web 2.0 activities. It also focuses on the Project's findings about the role of libraries when Americans are trying to solve problems...This presentation covers the highlights from the report issued late last year about library use and the experiences people had at libraries when they went there for problem-solving help."

Inside the Experience: "Opening April 12, interactive technologies will make the Library of Congress and its collections more dynamic and accessible than ever. This Library of Congress Experience will offer “hands-on” interaction with rare cultural treasures in ways that inspire and engage. Artifacts like the Waldseemüller map (the first to include the name “America”), the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, the Gutenberg Bible and original volumes from Thomas Jefferson’s Library will be virtually at your fingertips. You’ll be able to flip through their pages, magnify sections of interest and access commentary from the Library’s top experts-all on the same touch screen."

FDLP Desktop: "The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) was directed by the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) to conduct a study on the conditions of regional depository libraries. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the extent to which public access to Federal depository resources may be impaired by current or projected organizational, financial, technological, or other conditions affecting regional libraries. The findings are to be delivered to the JCP by June 1, 2008. The Draft Outline."

News release: "Together with its supporting documentation, the PREMIS Data Dictionary provides a comprehensive, practical resource for implementing preservation metadata in digital archiving systems. Preservation metadata is defined as information that preservation repositories need to know to support digital materials over the long term. This document is a revision of Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata: Final report of the PREMIS Working Group, issued in May 2005. The PREMIS Data Dictionary is a specification that emphasizes metadata that may be implemented in a wide range of repositories, supported by guidelines for creation, management and use, and oriented toward automated workflows. It is technically neutral in that no assumptions are made about preservation technologies, strategies, syntaxes, or metadata storage and management."

• The Personal Information Trainer, by Stuart Basefsky
• Criminal Law Resources: Fingerprint Evidence Challenges, by Ken Strutin
• The Social Networking Titans: Facebook and MySpace, by Deborah Ginsberg and Meg Kribble
• Update to Choosing Law Librarianship: Thoughts for People Contemplating a Career Move, by Mary Whisner
• Living With the Asus Eee PC, by Conrad J. Jacoby
• Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide, by Sabrina I. Pacifici, completely revised and updated.
• Doing Legal Research in Canada - revised and updated, by Ted Tjaden
• The Tao of Law Librarianship: If the Books Go, Will They Still Want Us? by Connie Crosby
• E-Discovery Update: Minimizing E-Mail Archive Data Conversion Issues, by Conrad J. Jacoby
• Reference from Coast to Coast: Making A Federal Case Out of It, by Jan Bissett and Margi Heinen
• FOIA Facts: Increasing the Quality of FOIA Releases, by Scott A. Hodes
• The Government Domain: Rich Resources from the Librarians of the Fed, by Peggy Garvin
• LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - Jerome Neu’s Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults
• Commentary: Waterboarding, Congress and the President, by Beth Wellington

EPA National Library Network News - Update on EPA's Library Network - March 2008

"EPA submitted a National Library Network Report to Congress (PDF, 8 pages) on March 26 as requested in the Explanatory Statement accompanying the FY 2008 consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2764).

In the Report, EPA commits to reestablish physical libraries in EPA Regions 5, 6, and 7, as well as the Headquarters and Chemical libraries by September 30, 2008 to complement existing library services. The report was transmitted to the Honorable Todd Tiahrt, the Honorable Wayne Allard, the Honorable Norman Dicks and the Honorable Dianne Feinstein.

The Report lays out the general approach EPA plans to take for each location to reopen, and establishes operational standards applicable to every library in the EPA Network. More specific planning for each site continues.

EPA will allocate the Congressional appropriation of $1 million using the following priorities:

• Re-establish on-site libraries in Region 5 in Chicago, Region 6 in Dallas, Region 7 in Kansas City, and the consolidated EPA Headquarters Repository and Chemical Library in Washington, DC.
  
• Enable Regional EPA libraries to update their collections, facilities, and equipment to meet Network standards.
  
• Conduct a formal needs assessment for EPA library services to support future development.
  
• Over the next few months, EPA will continue to engage with internal and external stakeholders on developing final plans for each library. The Agency is committed to working with its employees and outside parties on its future digitization plans (based on the third party review), a customer needs assessment, and long term strategic planning efforts.

Follow up to previous postings on the EPA library closures, news today via AP: "The Environmental Protection Agency plans to reopen five closed libraries to the public by this fall, the agency said in a report Thursday. Three of the EPA's 10 regional libraries and two libraries at the agency's Washington headquarters were closed because of limited public use and resources being available online, EPA officials had said. The closings prompted criticism from lawmakers. The EPA said in a report to Congress that it expects the closed agency libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, Mo., as well as at its Washington headquarters to be reopened by Sept. 30 and possibly earlier. Congress added $1 million to the EPA's budget so that the libraries could be reopened. It also required the agency to provide the report on its library plans."

News release: "The Special Libraries Association (SLA) today met with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials to review the agency's report to the U.S. Congress on the future direction of its library network. The report, EPA National Library Network Report to Congress (March 26, 2008), explains the steps EPA intends to take to reopen libraries closed over the last two years, and details how the agency will allocate an additional $1 million dollars for libraries provided in the FY08 EPA budget earmarked for that purpose."

Workshop 8 – Monitoring & Current Awareness: Mining Blogs & RSS for Research, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Sunday April 6, 2008 - Sabrina I. Pacifici, Law Librarian, Founder/Editor/Publisher, LLRX.com and Author, beSpacific.com.

Environmental Protection: EPA Needs to Ensure That Best Practices and Procedures Are Followed When Making Further Changes to Its Library Network, GAO-08-304, February 29, 2008.

• "Established in 1971, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) library network provides staff and the public with access to environmental information. Its 26 libraries contain a wide range of information and resources and are located at headquarters, regional offices, research centers, and laboratories nationwide. In 2006, EPA issued a plan to reorganize the network beginning in fiscal year 2007. The plan proposed closing libraries and dispersing, disposing of, and digitizing library materials. GAO was asked to assess (1) the status of, and plans for, the network reorganization; (2) EPA's rationale for reorganizing the network; (3) the extent to which EPA has communicated with and solicited the views of EPA staff and external stakeholders in conducting the reorganization; (4) EPA's steps to maintain the quality of library services after the reorganization; and (5) how EPA is funding the network and its reorganization. For this study, GAO reviewed pertinent EPA documents and interviewed EPA officials and staff from each of the libraries.

  Since 2006, EPA has implemented its reorganization plan to close physical access to 4 libraries. In the same period, 6 other libraries in the network decided to change their operations, while 16 have not changed. Some of these libraries have also digitized, dispersed, or disposed of their materials. Since the reorganization, EPA has begun drafting a common set of agencywide library procedures and has hired a program manager for the network. While these procedures are under development, however, EPA has imposed a moratorium on further changes to the network in response to congressional and other expressions of concern. EPA's primary rationale for the library network reorganization was to generate cost savings by creating a more coordinated library network and increasing the electronic delivery of services. However, EPA did not fully follow procedures recommended in a 2004 EPA study of steps that should be taken to prepare for a reorganization. In particular, EPA did not fully evaluate alternative models, and associated costs and benefits, of library services. EPA officials stated that they needed to act quickly to reorganize the library network in response to a proposed fiscal year 2007 funding reduction. EPA did not develop procedures to inform staff and the public on the final configuration of the library network, and EPA libraries varied considerably and were limited in the extent to which they communicated with and solicited views from stakeholders before and during the reorganization effort. In particular, EPA's plan did not include information that the Chemical Library was to close, and EPA did not inform staff or the public until after the fact. EPA's communication procedures were limited or inconsistent because EPA acted quickly to make changes in response to a proposed fiscal year 2007 funding reduction, and because of the decentralized nature of the library network."
  

• Related postings on EPA Library Closures

Follow up to previous postings on EPA library closures, this news release dated February 28, 2008: "A federal arbitrator has found the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guilty of unfair labor practices and acting in bad faith in its national series of library closures, according to a ruling posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). EPA is ordered to bargain with affected public employee unions before making any further changes in its library network. During the past two years, EPA has closed or reduced access to much of its network of libraries which serve both its own specialists and the public. Altogether, access to EPA libraries in 23 states has been completely lost, and several specialized collections have been shuttered, including its headquarters library."

Press release: "New York State schools with certified librarians have higher scores on average on the fourth grade English Language Arts (ELA) test than those who don’t, according to the findings of researchers at Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool).

Preliminary findings of research conducted by Professor Ruth Small and graduate students in the Center for Digital Literacy (CDL) show a statistically significant increase—with an almost 10 point difference—in the ELA test scores among fourth-grade students whose schools had certified librarians over students in schools without certified librarians." [via ALA]

"First Book is a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. We provide an ongoing supply of new books to children participating in community-based mentoring, tutoring, and family literacy programs.

First Book was founded in 1992. The First Book model was developed to leverage the work of local heroes who reach children through existing literacy programs in a variety of settings, such as Head Start centers, libraries, soup kitchens, churches, housing projects, and afterschool initiatives. Working through this vast network of organizations, First Book plays a critical role in transforming the quality of preschool and after-school programs nationwide.

First Book's model is national in scope and local in impact. In our first year, First Book distributed approximately 12,000 books in three communities. Since that time, First Book has distributed more than 50 million books to children in over 3,000 communities around the country."

"Through Government Information Online (GIO) you can ask government information librarians who are experts at finding information from government agencies of all levels (local, state, regional, national international) on almost any subject from aardvarks to zygomycosis. GIO is a free online information service supported by nearly twenty public, state and academic libraries throughout the United States. All participants are designated Federal depository libraries in the U.S. Government Printing Office's Federal Depository Library Program. Many are also official depository libraries for their other types of governments and public agencies."

Google Book Search: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, 1/1/2008, By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology.

Press release: "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) today called for the papers of the Founding Fathers Project [Pew Charitable Trusts: "The Project was established more than a half century ago to publish the complete, annotated writings of the country’s founding fathers—including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin—and to make these historical treasures available to the public."] to be made available to all Americans through the Internet, at a hearing to examine the program. Established more than 50 years ago to catalogue, annotate and public the writings of some of the country’s Founders, the program has been criticized because of slow progress and high costs."

Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization, A White Paper by Oya Y. Rieger, February, 2008. 52 pp. Published by the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Press release: "The President's budget request for fiscal year 2009 seeks $271,246,000 for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The request, which was released by the White House today, represents an increase of $26,023,000 or 10.6 percent, over the FY 2008 enacted level for the Institute’s programs and administration."

"The University of Michigan's University Library has just put the millionth book from its collection on-line. That's one million out of the 7.5 million volumes in the library's current holdings. Digitized materials are made available publicly via the Mirlyn library catalog and MBooks. MBooks provides full text of works that are in the public domain, creating new ways for users to search and access U-M Library content. Materials that are currently in copyright are available for searching on-line, allowing users to assess the contents of a book before deciding whether to purchase it or borrow it from the library."

Press release: "The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced that three universities - [text of the guidelines linked as follows] Hofstra, Syracuse and Marquette — have reached agreement with the AAP on new copyright guidelines affirming that educational content delivered to students in digital formats should be treated under the same copyright principles that apply to printed materials. The guidelines, which were developed separately by the three universities, govern how librarians and faculty members distribute copyrighted content through library electronic course reserves systems, course management systems, faculty and departmental web pages and other digital formats. AAP worked with each of the three universities in cooperative efforts to establish easily understood and common-sense standards that help faculty and staff understand and interpret their rights and responsibilities when using copyrighted content in educational settings. Each of the guidelines reflects the specific needs of the particular university and is consistent with the principles of fair use while providing helpful guidance as to when permission from the copyright holder is required to copy or post materials in digital formats. AAP believes the guidelines, which are similar to those adopted by Cornell University last year, will serve as models for others colleges and universities."

Do you need to read books to be clever? By Denise Winterman, BBC News Magazine: "...books are hyped as life changing and a way out of crime, poverty and deprivation by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who launched the National Year of Reading on Wednesday. Quite simply, they have the potential to open up new worlds for the reader...book sales in the UK are huge and on the rise. Last year we bought an estimated 338 million books, at a cost of £2,478m. This was 13% higher by both volume and value than five years ago, according to the Book Marketing Limited's latest Books and the Consumer survey."

Report of The Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, January 9, 2008.

"The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit journal articles that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central. The Policy requires that these articles be accessible to the public on PubMed Central to help advance science and improve human health."

The Law:

Press release: "A new report, commissioned by the UKL JISC [Joint Information Systems Committee] and the British Library, counters the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – young people born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most adept at using the web. The report by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web. The report Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future [11 January 2008] also shows that research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors. 'These findings add to our growing understanding of subjects that should concern all who work in further and higher education – the changing needs of our students and researchers and how libraries can meet their needs.'

The study calls for libraries to respond urgently to the changing needs of researchers and other users and to understand the new means of searching and navigating information. Learning what researchers want and need is crucial if libraries are not to become obsolete, the report warns."

Follow up to postings on EPA library closures, this press release from January 10, 2008: EPA To Set Up Human Resources Shared Service Centers: "The Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to establish shared service centers in three locations, beginning in June 2008, to process personnel and benefits actions for the agency's 17,000 employees. The centers, to be located in current EPA facilities in Cincinnati, Ohio, Las Vegas, Nev., and Research Triangle Park, N.C., also will process vacancy announcements throughout the agency. The move will improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and customer service of agency human resources operations. It is expected to take 12-24 months to complete. Staff affected by the creation of the shared service centers will continue their employment at one of the centers or elsewhere in the agency. The centers will enhance the timeliness and quality of customer service and standardize work processes."

Press release: "The Library of Congress and the Foundation Center, in a joint partnership, have recently compiled a new Web-based fundraising guide to help the preservation community save the nation’s millions of at-risk artifacts for future generations. The guide, titled Foundation Grants for Preservation in Libraries, Archives and Museums, is available for free download at the Library of Congress."

Follow up to December 27, 2007 posting Mandate for Public Access to NIH-Funded Research Now Law, see this press release: "The Association of American Publishers [January 3, 2008] criticized a controversial new NIH research publication policy that was enacted as part of the omnibus appropriations package for 2008, and reaffirmed that journal publishers who have opposed the policy will continue to pursue their concerns with Congress regarding the policy’s negative impact on science publishing and the protection of related intellectual property rights. Publishers will also urge NIH to conduct a rulemaking proceeding, with opportunity for public comment, before implementing the new policy."

Perceptions 2007: An International Survey of Library Automation
by Marshall Breeding. January 9, 2008: "Introduction - The year 2007 saw considerable upheaval in the library automation industry. To get some sense of the aftermath of the recent rounds of mergers, acquisitions, product consolidations, and to gauge interest in open source automation systems, I created and executed a survey that aims to measure the prevailing perceptions in libraries."

Press release: "The Library of Congress and Microsoft Corp. have signed a cooperative agreement that will change the way Library visitors experience history. The joint technology initiative will electronically deliver the Library’s immense collection of historical artifacts to patrons visiting its Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C., and will allow unparalleled and immersive interactive experiences that will bring the institution’s vast historical collections and exhibits to life–on-site and online–through the upcoming myloc.gov Web site."

The buslib-l archives are now available from 1998 to present at http://list1.ucc.nau.edu [Tina Adams (BusLib Moderator)]

"The European Library launched a new version of its website on the 4th of December; the changes involve significant lay-out improvements and reflect a constant care for understanding user needs. It also introduces the latest partners’ collections and the first The European Library web-exhibition."

Internet2 and Libraries - Serving Your Communities at the Speed of Light, by James Werle and Louis Fox.

The Secret Library of Hope, by Rebecca Solnit, The Nation: "Hope is an orientation, a way of scanning the wall for cracks--or building ladders--rather than staring at its obdurate expanse. It's a world view, but one informed by experience and the knowledge that people have power; that the power people possess matters; that change has been made by populist movements and dedicated individuals in the past; and that it will be again. Dissent in this country has become largely a culture of diagnosis rather than prescription, of describing what is wrong with them, rather than what is possible for us. But even in English, a robust minority tradition can be found. There are a handful of books that I think of as "the secret library of hope." None of them deny the awful things going on, but they approach them as if the future is still open to intervention rather than an inevitability. In describing how the world actually gets changed, they give us the tools to change it again..."

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Information Searches That Solve Problems, 12/30/2007

Follow up to previous postings on EPA Library Closures, news from Library Journal: "Reversing a policy bitterly opposed by library advocates, many Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees, and the watchdog Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Congress in its omnibus appropriations bill sent to President George W. Bush has earmarked $3 million to restore service at the EPA’s technical and research libraries."

Press release: "...in a statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the American Library Association (ALA) addressed the critical yet unacknowledged role public libraries play in delivering E-government services to the American people. Increasingly, government agencies refer individuals to their local public libraries for assistance and access to the Internet for citizen-government interactions. Yet public libraries are not considered members of the E-government team. ALA's statement (PDF), for the Committee's hearing on E-government, highlighted the stress these E-government services are placing on public libraries' infrastructure and suggested taking steps toward creating a partnership between public libraries and the government in order to improve E-government delivery to citizens."

Acceptance Speech, Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature 2007, December 7, 2007: "...We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc."

The Looming Infrastructure Plateau? Space, Funding, Connection Speed, and the Ability of Public Libraries to meet the Demand for Free Internet Access [First Monday], December 2007.

Library of Congress: The period for public comment on the report is open until December 15, 2007. Comments can be submitted via the Web site at http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/contact/. Electronic submission of comments is encouraged.

News.com: "The Universal Digital Library, a book-scanning project backed by several major libraries across the globe, has completed the digitization of 1.5 million books and on Tuesday made them free and publically available. The online library offers full text downloads of works that are in the public domain, or for which the copyright holder has been given permission to make available. Having the backing of prominent institutions such as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, however, the collection goes far beyond the widely available classics, though those are there, too..." According to the director of intellectual property for the Universal Digital Library, Michael Shamos, "But once books are digitized and stored on servers around the world, it becomes impossible for any one government to destroy all the copies of a book. Once it's there it remains immortal."

LC press release: "The Library of Congress, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and OCLC have signed a memorandum of understanding to extend and enhance the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), a project that virtually combines multiple name authority files into a single name authority service. Building on a previous proof-of-concept research project by the Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (the German national library) and OCLC, the new agreement adds the Bibliothèque nationale de France (the French national library) as a principal partner in VIAF and will lead to the inclusion of content from name authority files maintained by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The French name authority records will be added to the existing VIAF files built from authority data from the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and the Library of Congress. VIAF’s matching routines were developed by OCLC research."

Press release: "The New York Public Library has acquired the papers of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the late American historian, social critic, and advisor to President John F. Kennedy, announced Paul LeClerc, President of The New York Public Library. "Arthur Schlesinger was a pivotally important American in the last century. He was both a brilliant historian and also a witness to, and participant in, most of the significant events of his era," said Dr. LeClerc...The Arthur Schlesinger papers consist of almost 300 linear feet of correspondence, journals, manuscripts of his writings, research files, phone logs, sound recordings, videos, date books, and clippings and will be housed in the Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division. The correspondence in Schlesinger's papers includes letters from nearly every significant figure in American politics, as well as many prominent scholars, thinkers, writers, and artists. Examples of prominent correspondents include Kofi Annan, Brooke Astor, Truman Capote, Bill Clinton, Marlene Dietrich, Allen Ginsberg, Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javitz, Edward Kennedy, Edward Koch, Norman Mailer, Walter Mondale, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ralph Nader, I.M. Pei, John D. Rockefeller IV, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and Caspar Weinberger."

Reinventing the Law Library - Year is 2020, NE2007: Law Libraries Without Borders II: 4th Northeast Regional Law Libraries Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Claire M. Germain, Professor of Law & Edward Cornell Law Librarian, Cornell University Law School, October 19, 2007.

AP: "The papers of two of Arkansas' most prominent political leaders former Govs. Clinton and Huckabee remain locked in storage four years after both promised to donate them to two separate archival projects."

Documents Center, University Library, University of Michigan, Guide to Elections 2008. Choose this web guide as your basis for any aspect of election related research. It is comprehensive, current, and presents a wide spectrum of state and federal resources, as well as annotated links to free and fee-based publications, subscription services, and online guides maintainted by government, newspapers, campaigns, advocacy groups, lobbying groups, and academics.

National Endowment for the Arts Report: To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence: "This report is a new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns of children, teenagers, and adults in the United States. To Read or Not To Read assembled data on reading trends from more than 40 sources, including federal agencies, universities, foundations, and associations. The compendium expands the investigation of the NEA's landmark 2004 report, Reading at Risk, and reveals recent declines in voluntary reading and test scores alike, exposing trends that have severe consequences for American society. November 2007. (100 pages, PDF)

Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age, James Waldo, Herbert S. Lin, and Lynette I. Millett, Editors, Committee on Privacy in the Information Age, National Research Council.

"Health Policy Picks is a monthly selection of recent publications, such as technical reports, conference proceedings, and other material produced by organizations and government agencies that conduct health care policy analysis and research. Health Policy Picks is a partnership between KaiserEDU.org and the New York Academy of Medicine Library's Grey Literature Collection...This month's Health Policy Picks presents recently released publications on Medicare, Medicaid, the Uninsured, and Health Systems."

The Future of Reading, by Steven Levy, Newsweek, November 17, 2007: "...the Kindle...has the dimensions of a paperback, with a tapering of its width that emulates the bulge toward a book's binding. It weighs but 10.3 ounces, and unlike a laptop computer it does not run hot or make intrusive beeps....with the use of E Ink, a breakthrough technology of several years ago that mimes the clarity of a printed book, the Kindle's six-inch screen posts readable pages... (The Kindle gets as many as 30 hours of reading on a charge, and recharges in two hours.)...E-book devices like the Kindle allow you to change the font size: aging baby boomers will appreciate that every book can instantly be a large-type edition. The handheld device can also hold several shelves' worth of books: 200 of them onboard, hundreds more on a memory card and a limitless amount in virtual library stacks maintained by Amazon. Also, the Kindle [costs $399] allows you to search within the book for a phrase or name...Some of those features have been available on previous e-book devices, notably the Sony Reader. The Kindle's real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It's based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.)"

"The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) issued its first library statistics report on state library agencies, on state library agencies in the 50 states and the District of Columbia for state fiscal year (FY) 2006. The State Library Agency Report for FY 2006 [released November 2007] includes a wide array of information on topics such as libraries’ Internet access, services, collections, staff, and revenue, and is used by state and federal policymakers, researchers, and others."

A Tribute to Carl Linnaeus - November 13 and 14, 2007: "Scientists around the world are celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. He is best known for instituting a two-name method for identifying plants and animals, called binomial nomenclature. Considered the “father” of modern taxonomy, Linnaeus named approximately 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants. Today, many museums, including this one, continue to research the relationships between species, and rely on Linnaeus’ classic works. For two days in November we will celebrate this 300th anniversary with an exhibition of Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae and symposium."

US Courts press release: "Free public access to federal court records is available at 16 libraries in 14 states [the list is included with this release] under a joint pilot project of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and the Government Printing Office. The project offers free access, at the participating 16 federal depository libraries, to the federal judiciary's Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. PACER allows users to obtain case file documents, listings of all case parties, judgments, and other information from district, bankruptcy and appellate courts online, with the data immediately available for printing or downloading."

Press release - "In a statement issued on Thursday, November 8, 2007, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein said: I welcome the Inspector General’s recommendations included in the ‘Audit of the Process of Safeguarding and Accounting for Presidential Library Artifacts’. This audit which was completed on October 26, 2007, examined the management of Presidential artifacts at six Presidential Libraries: The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the John F. Kennedy Library, the Gerald R. Ford Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, the George Bush Library, and the William J. Clinton Library."

2007 Global Faculty e-Book Survey Sponsored by ebrary

National Center for Education Statistics, Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2005: "This report includes national and state summary data on public libraries in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, with an introduction, selected findings, and several tables. The report, based on data from the Public Libraries Survey for fiscal year 2005, includes information on population of legal service area, service outlets, library collections and services, full-time equivalent staff, and operating revenue and expenditures. The report includes several key findings: Nationwide, visits to public libraries totaled 1.4 billion, or 4.7 library visits per capita. The average number of Internet terminals available for public use per stationary outlet was 11.2."

Press release: "According to the latest Harris Poll, the number of adults who are online at home, in the office, at school, library or other locations continues to grow at a steady rate. In the past year, the number of online users has reached an estimated 178 million, a ten percent increase."

The New Yorker: Digitization and its discontents, by Anthony Grafton, November 5, 2007

UNESCO launches new Literacy Portal: "In today’s world, one in five adults is still not literate (two-thirds of them women) while 72 million children are out-of-school. Since its foundation in 1946, UNESCO has been at the forefront of global literacy efforts and is dedicated to keep literacy high on national, regional and international agendas. However, with some 774 million adults lacking minimum literacy skills, literacy for all remains an elusive target. UNESCO’s literacy programmes aim to create a literate world and promote literacy for all."

OCLC press release and related links: "The practice of using a social network to establish and enhance relationships based on some common ground—shared interests, related skills, or a common geographic location—is as old as human societies, but social networking has flourished due to the ease of connecting on the Web. This OCLC membership report explores this web of social participation and cooperation on the Internet and how it may impact the library’s role, including: The use of social networking, social media, commercial and library services on the Web; How and what users and librarians share on the Web and their attitudes toward related privacy issues; Opinions on privacy online; Libraries’ current and future roles in social networking."

"A new Web page designed to keep libraries informed of weekly depository shipments has been released and is available at http://www.fdlp.gov/distribution/index.html."

A mission to remember: Volunteers for the Library of Congress are racing against time to collect oral histories of America's remaining World War II veterans. By Deborah Horan, Chicago Tribune staff reporter, October 14, 2007: "Since 2000, volunteers working with the library's American Folklife Center have collected more than 50,000 taped interviews as part of the Veterans History Project...Between 1,000 and 1,500 World War II veterans are dying every day, according to estimates at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Of the estimated 17 million U.S. veterans still living, about 2.9 million served in World War II. Unless volunteers hurry to interview others who fought in World War II, participants in the project worry that servicemen...will slip away without leaving their memories for posterity."

"This Wise Guide portal was designed to introduce you to the many fascinating, educational and useful resources available from the nation's library and one of the most popular Web sites of the federal government. The "Wise Guide" will be refreshed monthly, much like a magazine, offering links to the best of the Library's online materials. Each of these "articles" is based on items contained in a collection, database, reading room or other area of the Library's online offerings. You will see that we are "more than a library," and our holdings range from prints, photographs, films, audio recordings, maps, manuscripts, music and digital materials to (of course) books. We are also a place that sponsors concerts, lectures, dance performances, film screenings, and poetry readings. We hope the Guide's monthly "articles" will encourage you to explore the millions of items we make available at www.loc.gov."

Nixon's Library Now a Part of NARA - California Facility Will Hold All Documents and Tapes From a Half-Century Career in Politics, by James Worsham, NARA, Prologue, Fall 2007, Vol. 39, No. 3.

GPO: "Library Services and Content Management (LSCM) and volunteers from the Federal depository community worked to consolidate and update the Instructions to Depository Libraries and the Federal Depository Library Manual, including its supplements, into one online publication. All the chapters were reviewed by key stakeholders, including the Depository Library Council and the professional library associations. Each chapter was also posted for public comment. LSCM staff reviewed comments, integrated them as appropriate, and served as final editors. The resulting publication is the Final Draft Version - Federal Depository Library Handbook."

European Parliament: Resolution i2010: towards a European digital library, September 27, 2007

Rising Journal Costs Limit Scholarly Access, Emory University:
"Are publishers getting rich publishing your research? A Bear-Stearns evaluation of Reed-Elsevier (one of the world's largest publishers of scholarly journals) recently rated the company, which earns profits of almost 40% annually, "a stockholder's dream." Should private publishers be getting rich selling information generated by research that is funded by academic institutions and the public? What's happening and how does it affect scholars? This article looks at one university’s experience."

Cyberinfrastructure, Data, and Libraries, Part 1 - A Cyberinfrastructure Primer for Librarians, by Anna Gold, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, D-Lib Magazine, September/October 2007, Volume 13 Number 9/10.

"GPO is pleased to announce the renewal of its partnership with the Troy H. Middleton Library of Louisiana State University through 2010.
Originally signed in 2001, this partnership provides for Federal
depository library access to the List of Federal Agency Internet Sites Web site. Based on the U.S. Government
Manual, the List directs users to the Web sites of active Federal
agencies, and can be searched in several ways. Users can view a
hierarchical or an alphabetical list of all agencies. The agencies are
also listed by broad category, such as boards/commissions, legislative, and quasi-official. The entire list is searchable by agency keyword as well."

"The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce the release of its newly designed web site. The web site includes information on a range of legal issues and research topics as well as our services and logistics of using the Reading Room. In addition to established products such as the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), Guide to Law Online and the Global Legal Monitor, new Law Library products are available as well." [Emily Carr, Law Library of Congress]

Highlights include:

"Fair Use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws are responsible for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the United States, according to the findings of an unprecedented economic study released today. According to the study commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and conducted in accordance with a World Intellectual Property Organization methodology, companies benefiting from limitations on copyright-holders’ exclusive rights, such as “fair use” – generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006, represented one-sixth of total U.S. GDP. The exhaustive report, released today at a briefing on Capitol Hill, quantifies for the first time ever the critical contributions of fair use to the U.S. economy. The timing proves particularly important as the debates over copyright law in the digital age move increasingly to center stage on Capitol Hill."

ALA: "Ever-growing patron demand for computer and Internet services in U.S. public libraries has stretched existing Internet bandwidth, computer availability, and building infrastructure to capacity, according to a new study “Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2006-2007,” conducted by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University (FSU). The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and ALA, found that more than 73 percent of libraries report they are the only source of free public access to computers and the Internet in their communities. Surveyed libraries said that the top three Internet services most critical to their community are online educational resources and databases for K-12 students (67.7 percent); services for job seekers (44 percent); and computer and Internet skills training (29.8 percent)."

Reading Books in the Digital Age subsequent to Amazon, Google and the long tail by Terje Hillesund, Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger, Norway. First Monday, volume 12, number 9 (September 2007),

"Between 1971 and 1973, President Richard Nixon secretly recorded 3,700 hours of his phone calls and meetings. These recordings were made in the Oval Office (commonly designated by the abbreviation "OVAL"), his hideaway office in the Executive Office Building ("EOB"), the Cabinet Room ("CAB"), Camp David ("CDHW"), and on various White House telephones ("WHT"). Currently, approximately 2,100 hours of these tapes have been declassified, released, and are available to the public. However, neither the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) nor the Nixon Presidential Library has made official transcriptions. Instead, they have left this monumental task--a task that NARA once estimated took 100 hours of staff time to transcribe 1 hour of tape--to researchers. The purpose of this website is to make these transcripts available, side-by-side multiple audio formats, to members of the public who are not able to travel to the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland, or to the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, to listen to and transcribe the conversations for themselves."

Foreign Law Research: "FLARE is a collaboration between the major libraries collecting law in the United Kingdom: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Bodleian Law Library, Squire Law Library, British Library, and School of Oriental and African Studies. It is working to improve the coverage and accessibility of foreign legal materials at the national level and to raise expertise in their use."

"LibWorm Beta is intended to be a search engine, a professional development tool, and a current awareness tool for people who work in libraries or care about libraries. LibWorm collects updates from about 1400 RSS feeds (and growing). The contents of these feeds are then available for searching, and search results can themselves be output as an RSS feed that the user can subscribe to either in his/her favourite aggregator or in LibWorm's built-in aggregator...Each feed searched by LibWorm has been assigned a category, so when you browse by Feed Category, you're seeing all the content from the feeds that have been assigned to that category. Subjects are pre-built searches, usually of greater complexity than the user interface currently supports, for common subjects of interest to libraryfolk." This site is free.

"Lawyers Without Borders (LWOB), an organization that coordinates volunteer lawyers with nonprofit groups, rule of law initiatives, and other human rights work, is seeking donations of law books for courts and lawyers in Albania and Liberia.

The law library of the Supreme Court of Albania in the capital of Tirana, which is accessed by judges, practitioners, and law students, is seeking English-language major treatises, hornbooks, and other publications focusing on American law and legal institutions.

Donations to Albania should be sent to Paramount Stamping and Welding, 1200 West 58th Street, Cleveland, OH 44102, with a marking that reads, Attention: Peter Kole–LAW BOOKS. Another donor has underwritten the costs of shipping to Albania from that address.

LWOB also is seeking donations for the University of Liberia Louis Arthur Grimes Law School, as well as for judges, students, and lawyers in Liberia. In particular, complete sets of the AmJur series are requested. These include any edition of AmJur, AmJur Forms, and AmJur Trials.

These donations should be sent to Mr. Ray Fallon, Fallon Moving and Storage, 800 Marshall Phelps Road, Building 3, Unit A, Windsor, CT 06095, with a marking that reads, Attention: Lawyers Without Borders, Book Donation Project Liberia."

Press release: "NASA and Internet Archive of San Francisco are partnering to scan, archive and manage the agency's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video. The imagery will be available through the Internet and free to the public, historians, scholars, students, and researchers. Currently, NASA has more than 20 major imagery collections online. With this partnership, those collections will be made available through a single, searchable "one-stop-shop" archive of NASA imagery."

The Associated Press Poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affaird Project, Interview dates August 6-8, 2007:

Press release: "Since its launch earlier this year, the WorldCat Registry continues to help libraries manage and share essential data that define their organizations, such as institution type, location, URLs for electronic services, circulation statistics and population served. National libraries in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa recently agreed to load their files into the WorldCat Registry, enhancing and extending the global reach of this Web-based directory. OCLC just loaded 1,200 records from the National Library of South Africa and is preparing to load more than 8,000 records from the National Library of Australia."

Knowledge Networks pays $300,000 to settle internal copyright complaint - "Firm's marketing group distributed press packets to employees containing newspaper and magazine articles under copyright."

"The European Library is a non-commercial organisation. It provides the services of a physical library and the opportunity to benefit from a virtual environment in 20 languages. This website allows to search through the resources of 30 of the 47 national libraries involved in The European Library. Resources can be both digital or bibliographical (books, posters, maps, sound recordings, videos, etc.). Currently The European Library gives access to 150 million entries across Europe. The amount of referenced digital collections is constantly increasing. Quality and reliability are guaranteed by the 47 collaborating national libraries of Europe." [via Gerry Mckiernan]

The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce the following new resource: Webcast: A Panel Discussion - "Torture, Detainees, & the U.S. Military" [via Emily Carr/Law Library of Congress]
TITLE: A Panel Discussion: "Torture, Detainees, and the U.S. Military"
SPEAKERS: Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, United States Army; Brigadier General James C. Walker, United States Marine Corps; Ms. Jacki Northam, National Public Radio Correspondent; Professor Gary Solis, Law Library Scholar in Residence; Mr. Lee A. Casey, Baker Hostetler
EVENT DATE: July 11, 2007
RUNNING TIME: 1:31:03
DESCRIPTION: On July 11, 2007, The Law Library of Congress hosted its first program in its new multimedia room. Law Library Scholar in Residence, Gary Solis, moderated the panel discussion touching upon several current topics of national interest and concern: Guantanamo; "high value" detainees; military commissions; fair trials; and allegations of torture by agents of the U.S., including military personnel. With their extensive personal involvement in combatant operations, expertise in legal issues relating to prisoner torture and mistreatment, and their association with legislative concerns, the panelists provided tremendous insight to these timely subjects. The discussion was followed by a questions and answer session with the audience."

The Guardian: "Thousands of rare books and manuscripts in Iraq's national library and archive, one of the country's most important cultural institutions, are in peril after the occupation of the building by Iraqi security forces, the library's director said yesterday."

Electronic 2007 Law Librarian Survey from ALM Research - Survey Says Librarians Like Their Jobs but Are Displeased With Vendors - "Electronic research was supposed to replace books and lower costs, but it's done neither -- and librarians aren't happy about it."

THE CHARTS

"I would like to announce the launch of the Texas Digital Library's (TDL) blog, The Scholar's Space, featuring a team of four contributors (including me), with more to come over the next few months. The Scholar's Space joins scholarly communications blogs sponsored by friends at other colleges and universities, and national and international organizations. We'll be providing commentary on newsworthy items related to TDL participants' local and global interests in academic processes and systems of research -- from providing access to data and information, to online collaboration and new approaches to reporting out results and public archiving of papers and data." [Georgia Harper, Scholarly Communications Advisor, University of Texas at Austin Libraries]

Press release: "A new collection of handy tools designed especially for libraries, archives, museums, historic sites, and historic preservation and arts organizations has been released by the Heritage Emergency National Task Force. The tools are the result of the Task Force’s “Lessons Applied” initiative to develop practical applications for the lessons from Hurricane Katrina, such as helping cultural institutions apply for disaster aid and developing relationships with emergency responders...The new tools are available as free downloads." See Lessons Applied: Katrina and Cultural Heritage.

Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing, Protecting Children on the Internet, July 24, 2007.

Press release: "...on July 14...the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Apostolic Library) in Rome [closed] for at least three years of extensive renovation. For the Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University, however, the world might just open up a little wider. The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, located in Pius XII Memorial library, holds microfilm copies of approximately 37,000 of the Vatican Library's 70,000 manuscript codices. Holding major portions of the Vatican's Greek, Latin and Western European vernacular collections as well as materials in Arabic, Ethiopic and Hebrew, it is one of the largest and most comprehensive libraries in the world for medieval and Renaissance manuscript studies."

Press release: "The College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland is pleased to announce the launching of the Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government (CIPEG). CIPEG is a multidisciplinary research and educational center that focuses on the intersections between public policy and law, ethics, and trust as they affect the uses of information in society by individuals, organizations, and governments. Originally established in 1998 as the Center for Information Policy (CIP), CIPEG is jointly sponsored by the College of Information Studies and the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland. The Center principals are Director Dr. Paul T. Jaeger, Associate Director for Educational Programs Stephen Hannestad, and Assistant Directors Dr. Ken Fleischmann and Dr. Jennifer Golbeck. The Center also has more than twenty members from within the University community. CIPEG draws on the expertise of its members in areas such as archival science, computer and information science, education, international relations, knowledge management, public policy, and science and technology studies. Research at CIPEG spans six key areas - Information Policy, Electronic Government, Information Ethics, Social Networks, Emergency Response and Recovery, and Equal Access to Information. Center faculty and staff have researched and published extensively in these areas. Research at CIPEG is grant-based, with Center principals having received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Department of Defense, the Information Security Oversight Office, the American Library Association, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. [beSpacific author Sabrina I. Pacifici is an adjunct professor with CIPEG]

Follow up to postings on EPA library closures, this June 29, 2007 posting from the ALA District Dispatch blog: "After considerable pressure by librarians, researchers and the public, Congress has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restore its library network. In the fiscal year (FY) 2008 Interior Appropriations bill, the Senate Appropriations Committee orders EPA to reopen the closed libraries. Last year, EPA closed its Headquarters Library in Washington, DC, to visitors and walk-in patrons. EPA also closed several regional libraries, the toxics and pesticides library and the Ft. Meade Environmental Science Center Library."

Press Release, June 28, 2007: Nixon Library to Become Part of the National Archives Presidential Library System and to Release Formerly Withheld Nixon Special Political Documents and Tapes
"The legal transfer on July 11, 2007, of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace from the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation to the National Archives. The new Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum joins the existing 11 presidential libraries within the federal system, from President Hoover through President Clinton. The Nixon Library will open at 8 AM (PDT) for remarks by Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and others, followed by the opening of the research room and media tours. Newly-released tapes and documents will be available in Yorba Linda, CA. Newly-released tapes will also be available in College Park, MD.

Follow up to previous postings on Connecticut librarians and FBI NSL gag order, via Wired Blog, Librarians Describe Life Under An FBI Gag Order: "Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday [at the 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC] described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order."

"How trustworthy are state-level primary legal resources on the Web? The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is pleased to announce the publication of the State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources that answers this very important and timely question. The comprehensive report examines the results of a state survey that investigated whether government-hosted legal resources on the Web are official and capable of being considered authentic."

SLA Annual Meeting 2007: Programming for SLA Legal Division, Saturday, June 2, 2007 - Thursday, June 7, 2007. Selected presentations and handouts are available here.

Government Information Division, 2007 Annual Conference Recaps Denver, Colorado, June 3-6, 2007: "The Government Information Division will be recapping all its sponsored and co-sponsored events. In addition, DGI will offer recaps of other events that impact government information. This page will be updated as new recaps are made available."

Press release: "Program to Put Digitized Newspapers Online Makes Eight Awards - "Approximately 310,000 digitized newspaper pages, dating from 1900 to 1910, are now accessible through the Chronicling America Web site...New features in Chronicling America include: 80,000 pages have been added (including 11 new titles); The page display has been revised. Adobe Flash Player is no longer needed for viewing; Persistent links are now displayed for every title record and page view; The persistent link enables a user to always return to the same place on the site, and it can be used for citations and hyperlinking to specific newspaper pages or newspaper title information; and Searches can be saved."

Talking Books for the Blind, GAO-07-871R, June 12, 2007.

"The number of libraries participating in the Google Book Search Library Project just got a whole lot bigger with today's addition of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). The CIC is a national consortium of 12 research universities, including University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Google will work with the CIC to digitize select collections across all its libraries, up to 10 million volumes."
Project Related Documents:

"The Federal Trade Commission has informed GPO that they will cease the print publication of FTC Decisions. These will be available in
electronic format only beginning with Volume 129. Access to the Decisions is available at: http://www.ftc.gov/os/decisions/index.shtm or via http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS81899. The last volume distributed in print to the FDL's was Volume 128 (FT 1.11:128, item no. 0534) and distributed on Shipping List 2004-0019-S dated 01/12/2004."

American Library Association: "As part of its effort to support libraries and librarians seeking to improve their protection of library users’ privacy, ALA is making available new tools to help libraries conduct audits of its privacy policies and procedures. Developed by ALA during its own 2003 privacy audit, each tool is a document template that can be adopted and changed to serve the needs of the individual institution."

Press release: "As the world pauses to remember the 62nd anniversary of the Allies' victory in Europe during World War II (May 8, 1945), the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is joining with Southern Methodist University (SMU) Central University Libraries to provide the public with a digital collection of more than 300 U.S. Government publications distributed during the course of the war...SMU Central University Libraries, which are part of GPO's Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), have digitized hundreds of historical World War II publications that are available to the public. With just a few keystrokes, Americans can access World War II reports and documents such as: Choosing Women for War - Industry Jobs, America's Biggest War Plant and Air Raid Shelters in Buildings. These documents and many others are accessible here."

Follow up to previous postings on EPA library closures, this May 2, 2007 press release: "Despite promises to consult with Congress before proceeding with dismantlement of its library system, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered its libraries to “disperse or dispose of their…contents,” according to agency directives released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The move to eliminate physical collections comes as EPA’s own enforcement branch warns about the risks of hampering environmental prosecutions."

OCLC's WorldCat Local: A Promising Development for Library Patrons, by Barbara Quint,Posted On April 23, 2007: "...Local libraries adopting WorldCat Local will have a locally branded interface presented to their patrons through the library’s Web site. Options will make it possible to integrate the services with circulation records, resource sharing, and licensed full-text collections. Cooperative efforts are already underway with three major integrated library system/OPAC vendors—Innovative Interfaces, SirsiDynix, and Ex Libris Voyager. When fully interoperable, it should allow WorldCat Local to support users’ requests for items from library collections, including interlibrary loan and accessing online resources. In time, OCLC hopes to add connections to social networking services."

"The Report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and Out-of-Print Works, Selected Implementation Issues is an advisory report on copyright issues to the European Commission, presented on 19 April by the EU's High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries - which includes, inter alia, stakeholders from the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Federation of European Publishers and Google."

Press release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) European Office today announced a broad coalition aimed at fixing a poorly drafted intellectual property enforcement proposal that could make criminals of thousands of people in the European Union. The Second Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) -- set for vote in the European Parliament early next week -- makes "aiding, abetting, or inciting" intellectual property infringement on a "commercial scale" a criminal offence. However, IPRED2 defines criminal offences so vaguely that creators of legitimate websites, Internet service providers, and even librarians could be investigated by the police and face criminal records as well as fines of hundreds of thousands of euros. The coalition battling against IPRED2 includes the Brussels-based European Consumers Organisation (BEUC), the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA), the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII). The group sent an open letter to the European Parliament today, urging members to support amendments that would protect consumers, innovators, and researchers."

"Following 9/11, the U.S. government adopted some controversial new tactics intended to prevent future terrorist attacks, including warrantless eavesdropping on Americans' phone calls, secret demands for records under the Patriot Act, and FBI sting operations against people thought to be potential terrorists. The Bush Administration contends these tactics have helped to save American lives, but critics say they have severely damaged our individual liberties. Three stories illustrate the issues of security and liberty: In a Public Library / At the National Security Agency / An FBI sting operation. SECURITY VERSUS LIBERTY explores this urgent national debate by talking with leading critics and advocates of the new policies, and telling the stories of people whose lives have been directly affected. If the war against terror is truly the long struggle our leaders say it will be, then so too will be the struggle to set the right balance between security and liberty. This program provides valuable information that will help Americans come to grips with the difficult choices we face."

On April 16, 2007 Barbara Fullerton, Manager, Librarian Relations, 10-K Wizard, Sabrina Pacifici, Editor & Publisher, LLRX.com and beSpacific.com and Aaron Schmidt, Director, North Plains Public Library, presented their always popular round-robin Gadgets presentation at Computers in Libraries 2007.

ALA press release: "New data on U.S. libraries shows almost two billion served - Predicted demise due to Internet fails to materialize: Ten years after some experts predicted the demise of the nation's system of libraries as a result of the Internet explosion, the most current national data on library use shows that the exact opposite has happened. Data released today by the American Library Association (ALA) indicates that the number of visits to public libraries in the United States increased 61 percent between 1994 and 2004. According to the 2007 State of America's Libraries report, there were nearly two billion visits to U.S. libraries in fiscal year 2004. The study was released today by the ALA as the nation begins its observance of National Library Week, April 15-21. In the case of academic libraries, the number of visits exceeded more than one billion for the first time in 2004, up more than 14 percent in just the previous two years."

"The Tarlton Law Library has compiled an Actual Innocence awareness database which contains citations (and links, where possible) to current articles, scholarship, legislation and other materials in the dynamic world of wrongful convictions. The materials are classified into what are considered the primary causes of wrongful conviction: forensics/DNA; eyewitness identification; false confessions; jailhouse informants; police and/or prosecutorial misconduct; and ineffective representation. There is also a “general” category for those items which defy further categorization. The website will be updated as new resources become available. Please direct any questions or comments about this service to Melissa Bernstein."

The AALL Document Delivery Caucus maintains a list of law library document delivery suppliers.

Press release: "How trustworthy are state-level primary legal resources on the Web? The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is pleased to announce the publication of the State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources that answers this very important and timely question. The comprehensive report examines the results of a state survey that investigated whether government-hosted legal resources on the Web are official and capable of being considered authentic."

State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources Report (254 pages, PDF)

Eight Million Pages of New Material for Researchers on Nazi and Japanese War Crimes, Washington, D.C.: "The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), the group tasked with locating, declassifying, and making publicly available U.S. records of Nazi and Japanese war crimes, will conclude its work on March 31, 2007. The IWG was formed under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act of 2000. Its membership consists of representatives of seven Executive Branch agencies and three Presidentially appointed public members: Thomas H. Baer, Richard Ben-Veniste, and Elizabeth Holtzman. The IWG was extended twice, most recently in March 2005, to complete the largest ever congressionally mandated single-subject declassification effort. The group’s Final Report to Congress will be issued in mid-April. It will describe the history of the legislation that brought about the declassification effort; agencies’ implementation of the act; the declassification results; and recommendations for future declassification policies...The seven-year, roughly $30 million declassification effort resulted in the opening of more than 8 million pages of U.S. records—not all of them directly linked to war crimes. Notably, the records include the entirety of the operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor agency of the CIA), and more than 163,000 pages of CIA materials of a type never before opened to the public."

"The Copyright Renewal Database makes searchable the copyright renewal records received by the US Copyright Office between 1950 and 1993 for books published in the US between 1923 and 1963. Note that the database includes ONLY US Class A (book) renewals. The period from 1923-1963 is of special interest for US copyrights, as works published after January 1, 1964 had their copyrights automatically renewed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and works published before 1923 have generally fallen into the public domain. Between those dates, a renewal registration was required to prevent the expiration of copyright, however determining whether a work's registration has been renewed is a challenge. Renewals received by the Copyright Office after 1977 are searchable in an online database, but renewals received between 1950 and 1977 were announced and distributed only in a semi-annual print publication. The Copyright Office does not have a machine-searchable source for this renewal information, and the only public access is through the card catalog in their DC offices."

From First Monday this month, What open access research can do for Wikipedia, by John Willinsky: "This study examines the degree to which Wikipedia entries cite or reference research and scholarship, and whether that research and scholarship is generally available to readers. Working on the assumption that where Wikipedia provides links to research and scholarship that readers can readily consult, it increases the authority, reliability, and educational quality of this popular encyclopedia, this study examines Wikipedia’s use of open access research and scholarship, that is, peer-reviewed journal articles that have been made freely available online."

Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, March 28, 2007

ACLU v Gonzales [originally ACLU v. Reno, then ACLU v. Ashcroft], Final Adjudication on the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, March 22, 2007 (84 pages, PDF)

"The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress today announced that Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers is debuting online with more than 226,000 pages of public domain newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia, and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910. The text of the newspapers is fully searchable, and search terms can be limited to a particular state, a specific newspaper, by year or years of publication and even by months."

New site on the Library's leadership in preserving digital assets: "The Library of Congress has taken a collaborative approach to the collection and preservation of digital information in order to remain relevant and useful to Congress and its constituents in the digital age. No single institution can do the job of collecting, preserving and making available all the information in digital form that that students, teachers, researchers and lifelong learners have come to expect will be available at the touch of a mouse. In December 2000, Congress asked the Library to lead a collaborative project, called the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), in recognition of the importance of preserving digital content for future generations. Congress passed special legislation (Public Law 106-554) appropriating $100 million to the Library of Congress to lead this effort. The goal of the program is to develop a national strategy to collect, archive and preserve the growing amounts of digital content, especially materials that are created only in digital formats, for current and future generations."

Press release: "The Center for Research Libraries and RLG Programs (a unit of the OCLC Programs and Research division) announce the publication of Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist."

The Blotter (ABC News): "The FBI repeatedly failed to follow the strict guidelines of the Patriot Act when its agents took advantage of a new provision allowing the FBI to obtain phone and financial records without a court order, according to a report to be made public Friday by the Justice Department's Inspector General."

News: "Item records in WorldCat.org, WorldCat’s open-Web interface, now include a Cite this Item link that provides bibliographic citations in five common styles: APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA and Turabian. Displayed in a separate pop-up window, the citations follow the reference standard for each style. The citations window cautions users that "formatting rules within a style can vary widely between applications and fields of interest or study," and that they should apply the specific requirements of a reviewing body."

Notice of the Removal of the Paper Search Collection of Registered Word-Only Marks From Trademark Search Library in Arlington, VA - March 6, 2007 Federal Register.

Google Librarian Center posting: "Today we announced our 13th Library Project partner, the Bavarian State Library. With the announcement of a fourth library partner located outside the U.S., we're making headway towards our goal of helping people find books from libraries all over the world through Google Book Search. We're making a good deal of headway elsewhere, too. Let's take a look at some of our numbers as they stand right now:
Publisher partners: Over 10,000 from around the world
Library partners: 13 today
Books in the index: Over a million
Book Search interfaces: 9 (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese)".

SFGate.com reports that on April 7, Jackson County Oregon will closed "its entire public library system...as the 15 libraries serving this rural forest community lost $7 million in federal funding this year -- nearly 80 percent of the system's budget."

News.com: "The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned. That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism...and other crimes...At the very least, the companies would be required to keep logs for police of which customer is assigned a specific Internet address. Only universities and libraries would be excluded, one participant said. "There's a PR concern with including the libraries, so we're not going to include them," the participant quoted the Justice Department as saying. "We know we're going to get a pushback, so we're not going to do that."

Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal. Nuremberg. ("Blue Series"), Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 - 1 October 1946 - released by the Library of Congress, February 28, 2007.

"World Book Day was designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and is marked in over 100 countries around the globe. The origins of the day we now celebrate in the UK and Ireland come from Catalonia, where roses and books were given as gifts to loved ones on St. George’s Day – a tradition started over 80 years ago...It is a partnership of publishers, booksellers and interested parties who work together to promote books and reading for the personal enrichment and enjoyment of all. A main aim of World Book Day is to encourage children to explore the pleasures of books and reading by providing them with the opportunity to have a book of their own."

Library of Congress - U.S. Army Field Manuals, War Department/Department of the Army Pamphlets: "The full text of selected U.S. Army Field Manuals (FMs), War Department Pamphlets (WD PAMs), and Department of the Army Pamphlets (DA PAMs), which particularly address some of the current research needs and interests of The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center & School Library, U.S. Army, Charlottesville, Virginia, will be added regularly to this site."

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing: Reforming the Presidential Library Donation Disclosure Process, February 27, 2007. "This hearing will examine the need for public disclosure of donations made to private foundations established to fund presidential libraries and related facilities. The committee will consider possible legislative proposals to require such disclosure."

Envisioning the Whole Digital Person, by Jonathan Follett, Published February 20, 2007: "Our lives are becoming increasingly digitized—from the ways we communicate, to our entertainment media, to our e-commerce transactions, to our online research. As storage becomes cheaper and data pipes become faster, we are doing more and more online—and in the process, saving a record of our digital lives, whether we like it or not." [via Darlene Fichter]

CRS Report, RS22605, FY2008 Budget Documents: Internet Access and GPO Availability, February 13, 2007: "This report provides brief descriptions of the budget volumes and related documents, together with Internet addresses, Government Printing Office (GPO) stock numbers, and prices to obtain these publications. It also tells how to find locations of government depository libraries, which can provide both printed copies for reference use and Internet access to the text. This report will be updated as events warrant."

"The Presidential Timeline provides a single point of access to an ever-growing selection of digitized assets from the collections of the twelve Presidential Libraries of the National Archives. Among these assets you'll find documents, photographs, audio recordings, and video relating to the events of the presidents' lives. The goal of the project is to make these resources readily and freely available to students, educators, and adult learners throughout the world."

Google's Moon Shot, by JEFFREY TOOBIN - The quest for the universal library. New Yorker, Posted 2007-01-29

"Founded in 1832, the Law Library of Congress is the de facto national law library. Its mission is to provide research and legal information to the U.S. Congress, U.S. federal courts and executive branch agencies, and to provide reference service to the public. To accomplish this mission, the Law Library has amassed the world's largest collection of law books and other legal resources from all countries, now comprising more than 2.5 million items. The Law Library is playing a leadership role in the creation of a Global Legal Information Network, a consortium of 46 government agencies and international institutions that contributes and shares global legal resources online." [Link]

"This morning, February 6, 2007, ALA President Leslie Burger testified before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), concerning the recent closure of several libraries in the Environmental and Protection Agency (EPA). Link to Burger’s full testimony.

Inside Higher Ed - Broadening the Bush Library Debate: "As professors at Southern Methodist University have mobilized against the plans to build President Bush’s library there, their focus has not been the library, but a policy institute to be affiliated with it that would have as its mission promoting the Bush philosophy."

"The Cornell Law Library is pleased to announce its new Legal Research Engine This specialized search engine helps users easily find authoritative online legal research guides on every subject. It searches approximately 20 different web sites that either prolifically publish guides, or index and link to guides." [Julie M. Jones]

Via Spencer L. Simons, Director of the Law Library and Assistant Professor of Law University of Houston Law Center:

Library Workflow Redesign: Six Case Studies, by Marilyn Mitchell, editor, January 2007. 81 pp.

Supplemental Information (these documents are not in the published report):

Stanford Center for Internet and Society: " Kahle v. Gonzales - In this case, two archives ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally — the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)— are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and that the Copyright Renewal Act and CTEA together create an "effectively perpetual" term with respect to works first published after January 1, 1964 and before January 1, 1978, in violation of the Constitution’s Limited Times and Promote...Progress Clauses. The Complaint asks the Court for a declaratory judgment that copyright restrictions on orphaned works — works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available — violate the constitution."

Table of Contents for LLRX.com - January 15, 2007 issue:

Press release: "As the Nation pauses to remember the achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) teams up with the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) and the Thurgood Marshall Law Library, University of Maryland School of Law, to provide the American public a website of authentic Civil Rights historical publications...The Thurgood Marshall Law Library..has been scanning hundreds of historical Civil Rights publications to make this digital collection possible. These documents are provided by USCCR. With a couple strokes of the keyboard, Americans can access Civil Rights documents such as The Civil Rights Act." These documents are accessible on the Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights website.

Follow up to a series of postings on the EPA library closures, this new posting indicates states that the EPA "...has no plans to shut down more of its libraries and has ceased destroying duplicative research materials until it answers questions from Congress, a spokesperson said Friday."

Eliminating Series Authority Records and Series Title Control: Improving Efficiency or Creating Waste? Or, 12 Reasons Why the Library of Congress Should Reconsider Its SARs Decision, prepared for AFSCME 2910 by Gary M. Johnson, January 11, 2007.

The Justice Served 2006 Top 10 Court Website Award winners. Among the winners is the Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Libraries.

Follow-up to previous postings on EPA library closings, via FAS, this recent CRS report, Restructuring EPA's Libraries: Background and Issues for Congress, updated January 3, 2007.

Press release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announces the availability of the ARL Academic Law Library Statistics 2004–05. This publication presents compilations and rankings of data that describe collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 77 law libraries at ARL member institutions throughout North America. In 2004–05, the reporting law libraries held a median of 313,574 volumes, had total expenditures of $200,223,137, and employed 2,259 FTE staff. Expenditures for materials and staff accounted for the bulk of total expenditures, at 46% and 45% respectively. Respondents reported spending a total of $11,858,683 for electronic materials; this includes a total of $10,235,586 for electronic serials."

Press release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announces the availability of the ARL Academic Health Sciences Library Statistics 2004-05. This publication presents compilations and rankings of data that describe collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 67 medical libraries at ARL member institutions throughout North America. In 2004-05, the reporting health sciences libraries held a median of 243,011 volumes, had total expenditures of $229,669,155, and employed 2,537 FTE staff. Expenditures for materials and staff accounted for the bulk of total expenditures, at 45% and 42% respectively. Respondents reported spending a total of $40,211,607 for electronic materials, or a median of 43% of their total materials budgets; this includes a total of $36,656,698 for electronic serials."

LA Times: College libraries: the condensed version - With millions of items to store, and research often done online, some schools pack little-used books into annexes.

Press Release - FBI Director's Comments to Senate Reveal Continued Hostility Toward Libraries, Privacy

Press release: "The Internet Archive Receives Grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to Digitize and Provide Open Online Access to Historical Collections from Five Major Libraries...The Sloan Foundation is proud to support the digitization of these high-value collections from five of the nation's leading cultural institutions and to ensure that these materials will always be available through public channels for future use...These collections include:

The December 2006 issue of ABA's Law Practice Magazine features a profile of Sabrina I. Pacifici, founder, editor, publisher of LLRX.com and author of beSpacific. After a decade of publishing the free webzine on law and technology resources, and with more than four years and 11,000 postings on beSpacific.com, I am delighted to continue my active participation in such a expert profession, both here and abroad, which values innovation, creativity, contribution and community. Thank you for all your support, and I look forward to publishing your articles in 2007.

The following articles are available in the December 2006 issue of LLRX.com:

List of Library of Congress RSS Feeds
News - A bulletin service of the latest news from the world's preeminent reservoir of knowledge, providing resources to Congress and the American people
Upcoming Events - Listing of the dozens of free concerts, lectures, exhibitions, symposia, films and other special programs offered at the Library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
New on the Web - Updates on new collections, features, reference materials and other services available on the Library's award-winning Web site New Webcasts: The latest webcasts and podcasts of lectures and events sponsored by the Library
What's New in Science Reference - new products and services on the subject of science and technology from the Library's Science, Technology & Business Division.

Follow up to my December 11, 2006 posting, EPA Responds to Protests Over Library Closures, see today's ALA Press release: "American Library Association (ALA) President Leslie Burger responded to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) update Monday on the status of agency libraries. "The teleconference raised more questions than it answered. It is a gross oversimplification to state that everyone benefits when libraries go digital. This is only true when there is a thoughtful digitization plan that ensures valuable information is not lost and public access is retained. We are still waiting for the EPA to disclose its digitization plan and budget," Burger said."

Subject Headings or Keywords? Google, Microsoft Join LC Working Group on Bibliographic Control

Follow up to recent postings on opposition by public interest groups, members of Congress, library associations, librarians, and scientists, to the closure of EPA libraries throughout the country, today this EPA press release stated: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is providing broader access to a larger audience by making agency library materials available through its public Web site. Retrieving materials will be more efficient and easier to locate by using EPA's online collection and reference services. "When libraries go digital, everyone benefits," said Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock. "By modernizing our libraries, EPA is bringing our cutting edge science to your fingertips, whether you live across the street, or on the other side of the world."

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) press release: "defiance of Congressional requests to immediately halt closures of library collections, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is purging records from its library websites, making them unavailable to both agency scientists and outside researchers, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of its shuttered libraries, including the hurried auctioning off of expensive bookcases, cabinets, microfiche readers and other equipment for less than a penny on the dollar...on December 1st, EPA de-linked thousands of documents from the website for the Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA's Washington D.C. Headquarters."

"Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, is a web-based collection of selected historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the US from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression...Concentrating heavily on the 19th century, Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, includes approximately 1,800 books and pamphlets as well as 6,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000 pages from manuscript and archival collections."

Press release: "...Internet Archive has successfully advocated for an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA prohibits circumvention of technological measures employed by or on behalf of copyright owners to protect their works ("access controls"). Specifically, 17 U.S.C. §1201(a)(1)(A) provides, in part, that “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” In order to ensure that the public will have continued ability to engage in noninfringing uses of copyrighted works, such as fair use, subparagraph (B) limits this prohibition. It provides that the prohibition against circumvention “shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding three-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title” as determined in a rulemaking proceeding." [thanks to Darlene Fichter]

The 12-1-2006 issue of Forbes includes a Special Report, simply titled, Books. The report includes a series of articles on endurance of books, and the role technology has and will play, in their evolving future role.

Committee on Government Reform Minority Office: "In an ongoing effort to protect and preserve the vast resources of the Environmental Protection Agency, Reps. Gordon, Dingell, Waxman, and Oberstar call on the agency to stop efforts to close libraries across the country pending a review by Congress. In a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, Ranking Members Reps. Bart Gordon (D-TN), John Dingell (D-MI), Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) and James Oberstar (D-MN) expressed their serious concerns over the current implementation of "library reorganization" plans and the "destruction or disposition" of library holdings."

Boston.com: Coffee's on, dusty books are out at UMass library - Extras aimed at drawing students, November 25, 2006: "Libraries are clearing out books for cafés, tutoring, and career advising, according to the Association of Research Libraries. UMass and four other area colleges are moving a total of 500,000 seldom-read books into an old mountainside military bunker. The University of Texas at Austin has probably gone the farthest, removing all 90,000 books from its undergraduate library in favor of more computers and group study areas."

"Description: The selected findings and tables in this report, based on the 2004 Academic Libraries Survey, summarize services, staff, collections, and expenditures of academic libraries in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The report includes a number of key findings: During fiscal year (FY) 2004, there were 155.1 million circulation transactions from academic libraries’ general collection. During a typical week in the fall of 2004, 1.4 million academic library reference transactions were conducted, including computer searches. The nation’s 3,700 academic libraries held 982.6 million books; serial backfiles; and other paper materials, including government documents at the end of FY 2004. Academic libraries spent $2.2 billion on information resources during FY 2004."

Follow-up to postings on the closure of EPA libraries around the country, see this related press release of November 3, 2006: "Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)...led a group of Senators in a letter to senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee requesting that the Committee direct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restore and maintain public access to its library collections. Despite an EPA report in 2004 showing that the monetary benefits of operating EPA libraries far outweigh the costs, the agency is shutting down libraries across the country that hold valuable information on important public health and environmental issues."

From the Official Google Blog, November 3, 2006: "The world's libraries are a tremendous source of knowledge, much of which has never been available online. One of our goals for Google Print is to change that, and today we've taken an exciting step toward meeting it: making available a number of public domain books that were never subject to copyright or whose copyright has expired. We can show every page because these books are in the public domain. (For books not in the public domain we only show small snippets of the work unless the publisher or copyright holder has given us permission to show more.)"

Library of Congress- Federal Research Division Country Profiles: Russia, October 2006 and Bulgaria, October 2006.

Press release, October 30, 2006: "Without any word to the public, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has closed its specialized library [Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library] for research on the effects and properties of chemicals, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The library’s unique technical collection is being offered for dispersal, with the remainder kept in storage."

Best Free Reference Web Sites 2006 - Eighth Annual List - RUSA Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS): "This is an annual series initiated under the auspices of the Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of ALA to recognize outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web."

New Search (BETA): "For the first time you can search the largest sections of the Library's site from one search box." Search individually or collectively, the following content: U.S. historical and cultural collections (American Memory); Library of Congress Online Catalog; Prints & Photographs Online Catalog; Library of Congress Web site.

"The Biennial Survey of Depository Libraries 2005 Results report has been posted. The survey results reflect conditions in depository libraries as of December, 2005. The 2005 Biennial Survey Significant Findings report was also posted..." [Link to both surveys]

Press release, October 13, 2006: President proclaim[s] October 15 through October 21, 2006, as National Character Counts Week...call[s] upon public officials, educators, librarians, parents, students, and all Americans to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs."

New on LLRX.com for October 15, 2006

Follow up to previous postings on closures of EPA libraries around the country, this October 9, 2006 press release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sharply reducing the number of technical journals and environmental publications to which its employees will have online access, according to agency e-mails released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). This loss of online access compounds the effect of agency library closures, meaning that affected employees may not have access to either a hard copy or an electronic version of publications...In addition to technical journals, EPA is also canceling its subscriptions to widely-read environmental news reports, such as Greenwire, The Clean Air Report and The Superfund Report, which summarize and synthesize breaking events and trends inside industry, government and academia. Greenwire, for example, recorded more than 125,000 hits from EPA staff last year."

Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation, Public DRAFT September 21, 2006, R. David Lankes, Joanne Silverstein. Produced for the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy. Information Institute of Syracuse. Syracuse University’s school of Information Studies.

Press release: "Together, the UW-Madison and Google will expand access to hundreds of thousands of public and historical materials from the UW-Madison libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library. Some wonderful examples from their collection can be found here. The combined 7.2 million holdings of these libraries comprise one of the largest collections of historical documents and books to be found in the United States."

Library of Congress, Federal Research Division, Country Profile on Jordan, September 2006.

FirstGov.gov: Government and Public Libraries - National, federal agency, and local libraries; online library databases; grants and benefits for libraries.

"The 2006 national study presents findings from both a national survey and case sites. The national survey provides provides longitudinal data regarding public library Internet connectivity and public access computing services and resources, but also explores the impacts and benefits that communities derive from public library connectivity. The case sites focused primarily on successfully networked public libraries and the issues, solutions, and approaches that these libraries faced and resolved in order to develop sustainable and high quality public access computing and Internet services.

Protection of Security-Related Information, September 27, 2006 (via FAS, 29 pages, PDF)

Press release: "Working together, Google and the University Complutense of Madrid will digitise the university's hundreds of thousands of public domain works, so that anyone, at anytime will be able to view, browse, read, and even download the full texts from the library's historic and special collections. The library of the Complutense University of Madrid is the largest university library in Spain."

Related news and postings:

Follow-up to previous postings, EPA Commenses Closure of Libraries Amid Protests and EPA Libraries And Unique E-Catalog Threatened by Budget Cutbacks, this September 21, 2006 rress release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is closing its Headquarters Library to the public, as well as its own staff, effective October 1. This shutdown is the latest in a series of agency library closures during the past few weeks, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As with the other library collections, the books, reports and research monographs in the EPA Headquarters Library have been boxed up and are currently inaccessible to anyone."

Press release: "When the Maryland State Law Library opens its new Special Collections Room September 21, the long treasured and newly restored Audubon bird prints will have a new home. The expanded and enhanced room, which houses rare books, documents, and articles collected since the library’s founding in 1827, was built to preserve the room’s wealth of American and Maryland history. The Special Collections Room’s star is its 1830s edition of John James Audubon’s “Birds of America,” one of fewer than 100 in existence today. The library acquired the four-volume set in 1834 in its largest, 'double-elephant folio' size format. Similar collections have been sold at auction for millions of dollars."

From Diane Kovacs:

Supreme Court press release: "Beginning with the October 2006 Term, the Court will make the transcripts of oral arguments available free to the public on its Web site on the same day an argument is heard by the Court...The Court's current contract reporting service, Alderson Reporting Company, will now utilize the services of a court reporter in the Courtroom and high-speed technology to transcribe the oral arguments more quickly. Transcripts can be located by clicking on the "Oral Arguments" prompt on the home page of the Court's Web site and selecting "Argument Transcripts." Transcripts will be listed by case name and the date of oral argument. Transcripts are permanently archived beginning with the 2000 Term on the Court's Web site. Transcripts prior to the 2000 Term are maintained in the Court's Library."

Inside Google Book Search Blog: "Starting today, you can visit http://www.google.com/bannedbooks to explore 42 banned or challenged books honored by the Radcliffe Publishing Course as among the Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. You can see which of these novels have been targeted for banning, find out where you can buy or borrow them, and check out what authors and critics have to say by browsing related books."

Follow-up to previous postings on EPA's closure of libraries, this press release: "Prosecution of polluters by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "will be compromised" due to the loss of "timely, correct and accessible" information from the agency's closure of its network of technical libraries, according to an internal memo released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). EPA enforcement staff currently rely upon the libraries to obtain technical information to support pollution prosecutions and to track the business histories of regulated industries."

National Archives Issues Progress Report on Declassification Initiatives: "The new NDI program will reduce redundancies in declassification review, will promote accurate and consistent declassification decisions, will improve equity recognition across the declassification community, develop centralized priorities and management controls around the priorities, and make the declassification process more transparent to the public."

Reclaiming Pieces of Camelot - How NARA and the JFK Library Recovered Missing Kennedy Documents and Artifacts, by James M. Roth: "Among the more celebrated individuals suspected of misappropriating presidential and federal documents is Evelyn Lincoln, former secretary to President John F. Kennedy. Through the efforts of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library staff, the National Archives general counsel, and the U.S. Department of Justice, many of these documents and items apparently taken by Lincoln have now been returned to their rightful place. This is the story of how that happened...Finding aids for the papers are online at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum web site."

CLIR: "A joint project of the Digital Library Federation (DLF) and OCLC, the registry provides a trusted service for the communication, coordination, and discovery of information about digital masters, their production, and the availability of use copies. The registry includes both digitally reformatted and born-digital objects. Hosted by OCLC and developed on the basis of recommendations from the DLF Registry of Digital Masters Working Group, the Registry of Digital Masters is a union catalog that uses MARC records to describe digital resources and provide details about their digitization and the preservation intentions of the institutions that are responsible for them."

Mazzone, Jason, "Copyfraud". Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 40 Available at SSRN [via Public Knowledge]

Google press release: "Starting today, readers can find new, and free, downloadable versions of some of the world's greatest books on Google Book Search. Working with our library partners, we're expanding access to books that are out of copyright and have become public domain material. Users can search and read these books on Google Book Search like always, but now they can also download and print them to enjoy at their own pace."

Related sources and information:

The Associated Press names 9 winners of Gramling Award for excellence: "The honorees include a video journalist who established a new bureau in North Korea, a department head whose team takes the lead in using research in everything from urgent breaking news to long-term investigative work, and editors who expanded AP's medical and science offerings and created a service targeted at the under-35 generation of readers."

Follow-up to my June 13, 2006 posting, New Searchable Database of Congressional and NJ Legislative Documents, this August 29, 2006 announcement from Rutgers: "The Law Library at the Rutgers-Camden law school now offers [free] the decisions of the New Jersey Supreme Court's Attorney Disciplinary Review Board from December, 1998 onward. These decisions are online here."

Center for History and New Media, George Mason University: "The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media and the University of New Orleans, in partnership with the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of American History and other partners, organized this project."

"25 August 2006 - The European Commission adopted on 24 August 2006 a Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation (PDF). The Recommendation aims at bringing out the full economic and cultural potential of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage through the Internet. It is part of the Commission's strategy for the digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation of Europe's cultural and scientific heritage as set out in the Commission Communication ‘i2010: digital libraries’. In the Recommendation, the Commission calls on Member States to act in various areas, ranging from copyright issues to the systematic preservation of digital content in order to ensure long term access to the material."

The Chronicle of Higher Education obtained a copy of the 13 page agreement between Google, Inc. and the Regents of the University of California that details the scope of the digitization project, as well as copyright and ownership issues.

Press release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead this summer to shut down libraries, end public access to research materials and box up unique collections on the assumption that Congress will not reverse President Bush's proposed budget reductions, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA's own scientists are stepping up protests against closures on the grounds that it will make their work more difficult by impeding research, enforcement and emergency response capabilities."

New York Times Editorial today: Where the Books Are. See also this related posting, NY Public Library Project to Update Access to Reference Works.

Can Our Culture Be Saved? The Future of Digital Archiving, by Diane Leeheer Zimmerman, New York University - School of Law, July 25, 2006

"The UNODC legal library is a unique source of the legislation adopted by States and territories around the world to put into effect the international drug control conventions. The library contains laws and regulations dating back to 1948 and is updated regularly with new laws adopted by Member States and other States. With the adoption of the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, the subjects covered by the E/NL (the UN symbol for the publication of laws and regulations mandated by the three drug control conventions and necessary to put them into effect) series were extended to include money laundering, confiscation, mutual legal assistance, extradition, controlled delivery and undercover operations and illicit trafficking by sea."

New York Times - With a New Classification System, the New York Public Library Makes a Change for the Clearer: "Librarians have begun a yearlong project to reorganize, reclassify and update the roughly 25,000 reference works on the room’s open shelves. When they are done, officials promise, readers will have a much easier time locating many of the most commonly consulted works, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to Shakespeare's plays."

LC Country Profile of China, August 8, 2006 (43 pages, PDF)

Press release: The University of California libraries today (August 9, 2006) announced their partnership with Google to digitize books from the libraries' collections. UC becomes the latest partner in the Google Books Library Project, which was launched in December 2004 to digitize books drawn from the libraries of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, and the New York Public Library. The digitized books will be searchable through Google Book Search."

H.R.5319 - To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.

Collaborative Reference Work in the Blogosphere, by Jeffrey Pomerantz (16 pages, PDF): "This paper explores the use of blogs as a platform for providing reference service, and discusses Lycemum, and open source software project from ibiblio.org, for this purpose."

Where the Jobs Are: Locating Law Librarian Jobs Made Easy presented by the Placement Committee at the 2006 Annual Meeting.

From Paula J. Hane: "In a move designed to reach users outside library environments, OCLC is planning to launch a new destination site and downloadable search box for searching the content of libraries participating in WorldCat. Scheduled for a beta release sometime in August 2006, the new WorldCat.org site will continue OCLC's efforts begun with its Open WorldCat program to make library resources more visible to Web users and to increase awareness of libraries as a primary source of reliable information."

Appropriations Committee press release, July 13, 2006: "The Senate Appropriations Committee today gave approval to the fiscal year 2007 District of Columbia spending bill. The bill totals $597 million in federal funds, which is $200,000 below the fiscal year 2006 enacted level and the same as the President's budget request...$15 million for a new Central Library in the District of Columbia. The President requested $30 million for a new central library, noting the need for a state-of-the art facility which would provide citizens access to modern technology and improved research and meetings facilities. The Committee believes that a better library system will help the District lower its adult illiteracy rate of 37 percent and help improve lives and opportunities of DC residents."

Law Librarians Look Beyond Books - "Once endangered, librarians have expanded their role to include such duties as market research and competitive intelligence."

Putting the White Back in Strunk and White, by Christina Wodtke. "Style and appropriateness may seem like an odd duo, but they are not. Style is the natural result of the over-abundance of energy and unique perspective a designer—creative person—is gifted and cursed with. Appropriateness is what helps them guide it in its application."

USAToday.com follow's up on news about the FBI dropping demands for Connecticut library patron records with this article on the expansive post 9/11 use of National Security Letters to obtain private data from a range of organizations.

Virtual Reference in the Age of Pop-Up Blockers, Firewalls, and Service Pack 2, by Pascal Lupien.

From the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section of AALL, this Revised Marketing Toolkit (June 27, 2006), includes content in the following categories: Mission Statement, Competencies for Head Law Librarian, Commonly Asked Questions and Answers, Bibliography, and Statistics Handbook.

A resolution to the case involving Connecticut librarians and an FBI NSL gag order regarding patron records - today the ACLU announced the FBI has dropped the case.

Press release: "A free workshop [June 30, 2006 - Jefferson Room National Archives Building 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC, 20408]sponsored by the National Archives Information Security Oversight Office that is aimed at informing the researcher public and the media of their rights in obtaining the maximum information by requesting a declassification review of classified national security documents. Due to limited space, pre-registration is required. Call 202-357-5250 or email isoo@nara.gov to reserve a place."

AP reports that Dr. King's collection of writings and books will be given to his alma mater, Morehouse College, after their purchase by a group of distinguished community leaders, thus ensuring availability to the public in years to come.

DOT Law Library Newsletters, from Summer 2001 through Winter 2005, available in PDF and HTML versions [Michael Ravnitzky]

See also:

New York Times: Library Phone Answerers Survive the Internet

Press release: House Appropriations Committee Directs NIH to Ensure Tax-Funded Medical Research is Freely Available in Agency’s Online Archive

Related references and sources:

News Division Program for the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference 2006, June 10 - 15, 2006 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Reconsidering Our Communications Laws: Ensuring Competition and Innovation, June 14, 2006.

Press release: "Americans prize public library service in the Internet Age, a new research report released today by the nonpartisan public opinion research organization Public Agenda concludes. As local communities and states contend with tight budget constraints for public services, the public sees libraries as potential solutions to many communities' most pressing problems, from universal access to computers to the need for better options for keeping teens safe and productive."

From John P. Joergensen, Rutgers University School of Law - Camden Law Library, news about the launch of a searchable online collection of U.S. Congressional documents, hearings and prints that are being scanned from their holdings. This is an ongoing project, and the collection will expand over time. In addition, see also the New Jersey Session Laws Online, Acts of the New Jersey Colonial Assembly and Session Laws of the New Jersey Legislature (currently in Beta).

Press release: "The study presents data from a survey of 84 law libraries; data is broken out for law firm, university, government and private company law libraries, and by size of the library’s content budget. The study has approximately 300 tables of data summarizing a broad range of developments in law library policies regarding personnel and salaries, materials spending, procurement, management, reference services, and information policy."

AP reported that JFK archvist Allan Goodrich announced a huge digitization project to be completed by the end of 2007, which would provide web access to "48 million pages of documents, 400,000 photos and 1,200 hours of video.."

Fragile digital data in danger of fading past history's reach, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (6-7-06)

WSJ free feature: Why Getting the User To Create Web Content Isn't Always Progress

Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning? EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2 (March/April 2006): 32–44.

Following up on previous postings about Connecticut librarians gagged by the FBI's use of the National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act, news from an ACLU press conference on the identity of the librarians and their respective statements as follows:

"The Library of Congress preserves the nation's cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library's traditional functions of acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to the Congress and the American people to foster education and scholarship extend to digital materials, including Web sites...In 2004, the Library’s Office of Strategic Initiatives created a Web Capture team to support the goal of managing and sustaining at-risk digital content. The team is charged with building a Library-wide understanding and technical infrastructure for capturing Web content. The team, in collaboration with a variety of Library staff, and national and international partners, is identifying policy issues, establishing best practices and building tools to collect and preserve Web content."

AALL Speakers Directory and AALL Speakers Directory FAQ

From PERC: Patient Education Resource Center [U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center], "lists of information sourcesrelating to a specific cancer diagnosis or issue. The purpose is to help newly diagnosed patients and their loved ones find sources of information and support. The guides are not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to provide starting points for information seeking."

Eight Reasons Solo Lawyers Should Use Law Libraries, by Mary Whisner.

May 11, 2006 press release: "Complete back issues covering nearly 200 years of historically significant biomedical journals are being made freely available online as a result of a landmark project launched today at the Wellcome Trust headquarters in London. On completion, the Medical Journals Backfiles Digitisation Project will deliver over three million pages of medical journals to the archive, free to anyone through standard search tools such as PubMed and Google."

As reported by Declan McCullagh, the text of new legislation to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.

Report of Investigation: John G. Roberts' Missing File by the Office of Inspector General, National Archives and Records Administration, 27 September 2005. "This report has not been previously released. It was supplied in paper form to Washington, DC-area researcher Michael Ravnitzky by the National Archives and Records Administration."

"Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain. Launched in 2006, Open J-Gate is the contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd to promote the Open Access Initiative (OAI). Open J-Gate provides seamless access to millions of journal articles available online. Open J-Gate is also a database of journal literature, indexed from 3000+ open access journals, with links to full text at Publisher sites."

Follow-up to yesterday's posting, FCC Orders VoIP and Broadband IP Compliance With Law Enforcement Surveillance - today Reuters reports that in a case [American Council of Education v. FCC, 05-1404] before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the FCC's surveillance order was met with skepticism by Judge Harry Edwards, who called the agency's position "totally ridiculous."

Press release, May 3, 2006: "Two of the world's largest membership-based information organizations have agreed to come together. The combined organization will offer an integrated product and service line, and will give libraries, archives and museums new leverage in developing services, standards and software that will help them support research and disseminate knowledge online."