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The American Library Association (ALA) has a useful resource available on their site: USA Patriot Act Resolutions of State Library Associations. It offers an alphabetical list of states, along with either direct, or sometimes circuitous links, to their respective resolutions endorsing the ALA USA Patriot Act Resolution.
Today’s news release from the Federal Communications Commission states that the agency “adopted new rules to simplify and streamline the operation of the schools and libraries program of the universal service fund (USF). The measures adopted today seek to improve program administration, create a more efficient application process for program participants, and improve program oversight …
From around the country, more articles on the escalating backlash against the Patriot Act as exemplified by defiant libraries and local governments. In Washington State, Libraries routinely toss data on patrons’. From New York State, Libraries, government at odds over Patriot Act, and from California, Local Officials Rise Up to Defy The Patriot Act.
See Burn a Country’s Past and You Torch Its Future: “Do libraries really matter for a nation’s sense of its self? Evidently Iraqis felt the destruction of their national library, archives and museum in the past week as a loss of their connection to a collective past, something like a national memory.”
According to Federal Computer Week, the Dudley Knox Library of the Naval Postgraduate School, at the request of the DOJ, will create and implement a digital library of resources on homeland security issues to be made available to “students at the school, employees of the departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and likely other federal …
Via AP, this story from April 15: “Looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted Iraq’s National Library, leaving a smoldering shell Tuesday of precious books turned to ash and a nation’s intellectual legacy gone up in smoke. They also looted and burned Iraq’s principal Islamic library nearby, home to priceless old Qurans…” See also this first …
Public libraries across the country continue to pro-actively protect patron privacy using various straight-forward methods. In and around Chicago, libraries have recently posted signs informing visitors that their reading habits, and web sites visited from library PCs, are subject to tracking. “We want our patrons to be aware we could be forced to turn these …
The New York Times noted the passing of “Seymour Lubetzky, who helped librarians channel the rising tide of information with his ingenious transformation of cataloging.” Mr. Lubetsky was lauded as “the finest mind of the twentieth century devoted to the discipline of cataloging, and “one of the most significant influences in the field of cataloging” …
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the National Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad was looted of its priceless collection and “an extensive card catalog of every item the museum owns, some of which date back 5,000 years, was destroyed.” The deputy director of the museum is quoted as saying, “our heritage is finished.” According …
U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns (MA) dismissed a lawsuit by the ACLU on behalf of Harvard law student and cyber-activist Ben Edelman who argued a first amendment right to create software to decrypt an Internet blocking program by N2H2. The filtering software, used by public and school libraries, is marketed as “CIPA compliant.” Edelman …
The Washington Post brings more attention to the growing movement in public libraries to pro-actively challenge patron surveillance efforts associated with the Patriot Act. The 64,000 member American Library Association has passed a resolution seeking its repeal, and librarians across the country are taking actions to limit access to patron related online and paper documents.
Dave Pollard posted this commentary, Why Complex Intranets Don’t Work and ‘Librarians’ Do: Re-intermediation, that appeared as the Library Link of the Day. He makes an interesting case for the continued, if not expanded, need for expert researchers to leverage the demand within organizations for knowledge resources and information.
