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Ambassador David Johnson, U.S. permanent representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) issued a statement in response to growing international concerns that U.S. anti-terrorism legislation such as the Patriot Act was negatively impacting the exercise of civil liberties. He stated, “The First Amendment rights of libraries, and bookstores and their patrons, …
Via Research Buzz news that a treasure trove of searchable, historical Congressional documents and debates (with many imaged texts) from 1774-1875 are now available to researchers from the American Memory Project, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation. Included are House bills from the first forty-three sessions of Congress, Senate bills and resolutions beginning …
A recent survey of how U.S. public librarians have responded to information requests from law enforcement as a result of the Patriot Act indicates that the community is divided in regard to protecting patron privacy. Of those surveyed, 219 indicated that they provided data on patrons, while 229 responded that they did not do so. …
Something has gone terribly wrong with the FCC’s Universal Service Program for Schools and Libraries. Known as the E-Rate Fund, the objective of the program, part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, is to ensure low-cost public access to Internet services for needy schools and libraries throughout the country. The fund is capped at $2.5 …
A new Missouri law went into effect on January 1, 2003 that “requires public (elementary and secondary) schools and public libraries that provide access to the Internet to either: use filtering software; purchase Internet service through a provider that provides filter services; or otherwise restrict minors’ access to the Internet by local rule.”
The Kaiser Family Foundation issued a study, See No Evil: How Internet Filters Affect the Search for Online Health Information. The focus of the study was how the choice of the ‘least’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘most’ restrictive web filtering options available through six high profile systems (8e6, CyberPatrol, N2H2, Smartfilter, Symantec and Websense), impacted access to …
The American Library Association provides a guide to key provisions of the E-Government Act that impact public access to government documents. The act was passed by both the House and Senate on November 15, 2002. References: H.R. 2458, P.L. 107-347, E-Government Act of 2002 (Dec. 17, 2002; 116 Stat. 2899; 72 pages).
President Bush signed into law the Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002 (Dec. 4, 2002; 116 Stat. 2766, P.L. 107-317). For more information about this new Internet domain for children, kids.us, please see NeuStar’s (the domain name manager) Proposal for Guidelines and Requirements for the kids.us Second Level Domain.
The Supreme Court today agreed to review a challenge to the constitutionality of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) (United States v. American Library Association, 02-361), which stipulates that libraries receiving federal funds install filtering software on public access PCs. This law is vigorously opposed by the American Library Association (ALA) and the ACLU. For …
The Supreme Court will review a number of cases this week, including United States v. American Library Association, No. 02-361, requiring the use of filtering software by all libraries receiving federal funds. For up-to-date information on this case, see the American Library Association web site on CIPA.
According to this New York Times article, Dr. Raymond Lorie, Research Fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center, has been testing a program to preserve digital documents so that they can be read decades into the future, despite the obvious obstacles of the evolution of hardware and software. A paper he wrote on the topic, …
In the Circuits section of today’s New York Times, there is an article about adoption of 24/7 virual reference services by public libraries around the country. These services are provided both by contract employees from their homes during off-hours, and by librarians serving their patrons during scheduled hours when libraries are open. One of the …
