AMERICAN LIBRARIES DIRECT
September 6, 2006
AL Direct is a free electronic newsletter e-mailed every Wednesday to personal members of the American Library Association.

Contents:

U.S. & World News
ALA News
Booklist Online
Division News
Awards
Seen Online
Actions & Answers
Poll
Datebook
AL Direct FAQ

U.S. & World News

Second Cuba book banned in Miami-Dade
For the second time in as many months, a picture book about life in Cuba has been banned by the Miami–Dade County (Fla.) Public Schools. A reconsideration committee voted in mid-August to remove Cuban Kids by George Ancona from the media center at the Christina Eve Elementary School....

Reliquiae Antiquae from Google Book SearchGoogle Book Search offers downloadable public domain books
Search engine company Google launched a service August 30 that allows users of Google Book Search to download complete copies of books that are out of copyright. Google scanned the originals from the collections of its library partners—the university libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Michigan, and California, as well as the New York Public Library....

J. S. BachMore early Bach manuscripts turn up in Germany
Researchers from the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig, Germany, have uncovered what may be the earliest known handwritten manuscripts ever inked by composer Johann Sebastian Bach. The two documents, transcriptions of organ music composed by Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Adam Reinken, were discovered in the archives of the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, where a previously unknown Bach aria turned up in 2005....

RFID chipCalifornia passes bill to safeguard RFID privacy
The California Senate has passed legislation to ensure that any official use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags in state drivers’ licenses and library cards must contain privacy safeguards. The Identity Information Protection Act (SB 768), which passed August 30 by a 30–7 vote, was introduced by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) and will go to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for signing before the end of September....

Civil War records stolen from library exhibit
A thief took two Civil War documents from a sealed case at the main branch of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, the weekend of August 26. The items, a handwritten furlough for a Confederate soldier and a certificate of medical examination for a slave, had a combined value of about $400....

ALA News

Graphic Novels coverGraphic novels: Suggestions for librarians
ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has prepared a downloadable PDF booklet (with artwork by Sergio Aragonés), in conjunction with the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, that offers tips on how to develop a graphic novel collection, ways to deal with challenges in libraries, and where to shelve them....

AdVanced Consulting logoFree to members: “Messaging and Talking with Congress” online course
Designed for both veteran library advocates and those who are new to Capitol Hill, the three-part online course “Messaging and Talking with Congress: An Interactive Workshop” will help library supporters build or hone effective messages and successfully communicate library needs to Congress. The ALA Washington Office is making this course, led by popular Advocacy Guru Stephanie Vance of AdVanced Consulting, available free to ALA members....

 

 


Looming Tower coverFeatured review:
Adult books

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Aug. 2006. 464p. Knopf, hardcover. (0-375-41486-X).
Wright, a talented New Yorker staff writer with a diverse portfolio and a long-standing personal interest in the Middle East, was on the al-Qaeda beat within hours of the 9/11 attacks. The product of his efforts is more deeply researched and engagingly narrated than nearly all of the looming stack of books on Osama bin Laden and his cohorts published in the past five years....

Division News

ALSC to sponsor an Emerging Leader
ALSC has announced its support of the Emerging Leaders 2007 initiative. The division will provide stipends of $500 per conference to one selected applicant to attend the Emerging Leaders curriculum designed by ALA President Leslie Burger....

Awards

Beaver Steals Fire coverAmerican Indian Youth Literature Award winners announced
The American Indian Library Association has announced the recipients of its American Indian Youth Literature Award, a new literary award created to identify and honor the best writing and illustrations by and about American Indians. The winner in the picture-book category is Beaver Steals Fire: A Salish Coyote Story (University of Nebraska, 2005) by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, illustrated by Sam Sandoval....

Call for nominations for 2007 ASCLA awards
The purpose of ASCLA awards is to recognize outstanding achievement in networking, enrichment, and educational opportunities, and service by library agencies, libraries serving special populations, multitype library organizations, and independent librarians. The deadline is December 15....

Nominations for 2007 RUSA awards
RUSA is seeking nominations for its 17 awards in 2007. The division is interested in learning about innovative and outstanding achievements in the field of reference and adult services librarianship. The deadline for most is December 15....

2007 ALCTS awards await nominees
Nominations are being accepted for the 2007 ALCTS awards. ALCTS presents 10 awards to honor individuals whose work represents the finest achievements in research, collaboration, creative work, leadership, and service in the field of library collections and technical services. December 1 is the deadline....

Minnesota Book Award stickerMLA now coordinating Minnesota Book Awards
The Minnesota Library Association is the new coordinator of the Minnesota Book Awards, according to MLA Executive Director Barbara Vaughan. The program’s future was in doubt late in August, when the Minnesota Humanities Commission announced it could no longer administer the 18-year-old book awards, which honor the state’s writers, illustrators, and publishers....
St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, Sept. 1

Seen Online

Do the crime, serve the time in the library
Reading your way out of trouble is possible in Duncanville, Texas, where teens are sentenced to the public library to undergo a literature-based program sponsored by ALA’s Great Stories CLUB. Teens hoping to keep their records clean after minor offenses are referred by the Duncanville Teen Court as part of a sentence that includes community service, educational classes, counseling, and teen court jury service....
Dallas Morning News, Sept. 1

San Diego Public Library sketchPlans for San Diego Public Library are in trouble
Despite nearly two years of fundraising, a lack of money is threatening plans for a landmark downtown San Diego library and putting a state grant in jeopardy. There is even talk of paving over the undeveloped site for a parking lot....
San Diego (Calif.) Union-Tribune, Sept. 2

Rutgers budget cuts will affect library service
In light of unprecedented, across-the-board budget cuts and an $80-million shortfall, library services at Rutgers University have been sideswiped. The New Jersey Reading Room will now close Mondays, restricting access to the state’s most comprehensive collection of New Jersey primary-source materials, while total library hours on the New Brunswick/Piscataway campuses will be reduced by 109 hours per week this fall....
East Brunswick (N.J.) Home News Tribune, Sept. 5

Honolulu Community College library cardPhoenix College librarian holds all the cards
Some people collect shot glasses, matchbooks, or baseball cards, but not Carla Smith of Tempe, Arizona. The Phoenix College reference librarian has an impressive collection of library cards from around the world, from Äänekoski, Finland, to Yuma, Arizona. With national Library Card Sign-Up Month starting this week, ALA encourages people to obtain just one card each....
Arizona Republic (Phoenix), Aug. 31

The gloves are off in academia
White gloves are worn in many American research libraries to handle rare books and documents, but Randy Silverman, a preservation librarian at the University of Utah with 26 years’ experience in book conservation, has launched a quiet campaign to “stop the white glove.” He and a colleague, conservation consultant Cathleen A. Baker, have published a paper, Misperceptions about White Gloves (PDF file), in which they call for the wearing of gloves to be replaced with a policy of people simply washing their hands....
The Guardian (UK), Sept. 4

Central Seattle Public LibrarySignage will help in Seattle’s downtown library
For all the architectural artistry of Rem Koolhaas’s downtown Seattle library, there was just one little problem with the building: People kept getting lost inside. So the Seattle Public Library hired Lynne Faulk this year to help book borrowers and tourists navigate the $170-million library, which features fluorescent, chartreuse escalators, but not many signs....
Seattle (Wash.) Post-Intelligencer, Sept. 5

Police suspect arson in West Virginia library fire
Beckley police are awaiting word on the damage caused by an arsonist who struck the Raleigh County (W.Va.) Public Library on North Kanawha Street early in the morning of September 5. Beckley Police Detective Cpl. Sam McClure said firefighters and police discovered an accelerant had been doused throughout the building....
Beckley (W.Va.) Register-Herald, Sept. 6

MU journalism library battles moldy mess
The University of Missouri journalism library in Columbia is closed for at least the next few weeks due to the discovery of an undisclosed number of moldy books. Library officials said that the mold is due to the combination of a broken air conditioner and recent hot temperatures and high humidity....
The Missourian, Aug. 31

Des Plaines library connects with Mexican biblioteca
Through its recent connection with the Biblioteca Benjamín Franklin of the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, the Des Plaines (Ill.) Public Library hopes to promote the exchange of ideas among librarians and learn more about issues facing public libraries of both countries. Mutual visits have been the highlights....
Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald, Sept. 2

Actions and Answers

Google debuts 200-year news archive search
News and history junkies take heart: Google’s new News Archive Search lets you search back over 20 decades worth of historical content, including scads of articles not previously available via the search engine. Google has partnered with news organizations including Time, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Washington Post, and aggregators including Factiva, LexisNexis, Thomson Gale, and HighBeam Research, to index full-text content going back 200 years....
Search Engine Watch, Sept. 6

Library 2.0: Service for the next-generation library
Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk spell out how this new model of library service will revitalize the way we serve and interact with our customers. Library 2.0 encourages constant and purposeful change, inviting user participation in the creation of both the physical and the virtual services users want, supported by consistent and frequent evaluation....
Library Journal 131, no. 14 (Sept. 1)

OhioLINK offers advice on open access
There is no guarantee that Ohio residents will have access to research produced by the state’s own scholars as the costs and quantity of scholarly journals keep rising beyond the reach of Ohio higher education. OhioLINK has released recommendations (PDF file) that will help authors and their institutions retain the right to disseminate their works electronically, thereby assuring access to Ohio research for the Ohio scholarly community and beyond....
OhioLINK, Aug. 30

The small signing table that the library recovered in 1998 is visible to the left of President Kennedy. (Kennedy Library)How NARA and the JFK Library recovered missing Kennedy materials
Kennedy Library Archivist James M. Roth describes how many pilfered historical items—some taken by thieves, others possibly removed by Evelyn Lincoln, former secretary to President John F. Kennedy—were returned to their rightful place....
Prologue 38, no. 2 (Summer)

Packing up a library (PDF file)
Education Director Robert Adler Peckerar relates his experiences retrieving a large collection of Yiddish books from Montevideo, Uruguay, for the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts....
Pakn Treger, no. 51 (Summer 2006)

Salaries of academic librarians in the West and Southwest (PDF file)
The salaries of academic librarians, like many in the library field, are affected by their position, the type of library they are working in, and where their library is located. The data indicates that a majority of academic librarians in the West and Southwest received annual salaries lower than the national average. Most affected were librarians at four-year colleges who received below national average salaries....
Fast Facts (Colorado Library Research Service), Aug. 22

Hispanic Heritage celebrantsCelebrate Hispanic Heritage Month
Each year from September 15 to October 15, the United States celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month to recognize the economic, cultural, and social contributions of the more than 41.3 million Latinos residing in the U.S. The dates were selected to include the Independence Day celebrations of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Chile, and to incorporate October 12 (Día de la Raza), a holiday celebrated in Mexico to observe the colonization, exploration, and multicultural heritage of the Americas....
National Council of La Raza

Literacy Day posterInternational Literacy Day
September 8, UNESCO’s International Literacy Day, is a timely reminder to the world about the importance of literacy for individuals, families, communities, and whole societies. This year’s theme, “Literacy sustains development,” emphasizes that literacy is not only a positive outcome of development processes, but also a lever of change and an instrument for achieving further social progress....
UNESCO

Phishing expeditions on the rise
Ipswitch, a leading developer of network management and file transfer solutions, announced the results of its fifth Spamometer survey August 31, revealing that 70% of all email received is spam. The increase stems from a massive rise in phishing emails—the inherently dangerous spam messages that ask the recipient to supply personal information that can lead to identity theft....
Ipswitch, Aug. 31

The five types of content on library websites
David Lee King, Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library acting IT director, classifies the types of content most often presented on library web pages....
David Lee King blog, Aug. 22

The Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour
Stopping at 50 cities in 50 days, the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour began September 4 and ends October 27. Over 100 poets, along with musicians, filmmakers, and journalists, are participating as the bus traverses North America, bringing innovative poetry to big cities and small towns across the U.S. and Canada....
Wave Books

Sponsor: Sirsi Dynix

Sirsi Dynix ad


ALA website screen grab
ALA is conducting a usability assessment of its website. The survey is designed to take a thorough look at the site, its problems, and its strengths, in order to guide improvements, development, and a redesign. If you have visited the ALA website recently and want to comment, please start the survey from this page. Comments will be accepted through the end of September.

AASL Conference logo
AASL will hold its 13th National Conference October 25–28, 2007, in Reno, Nevada. One way to seek permission and funding from your school administrator to attend is to speak in a concurrent session or participate in an Exploratorium presentation. What principal would turn down an opportunity to place the school in the national spotlight? Find out how to submit a proposal.



CHILDREN’S SERVICES LIBRARIAN
,

Murrieta (Calif.) Public Library. The Children’s Librarian provides programs, reader, and homework assistance as well as other services to children, parents, and teachers....

Joblist logo
See JobLIST
for more career opportunities.

Loss and Recovery video cover
Loss and Recovery: Librarians Bear Witness to September 11, 2001,
a one-hour video in DVD or VHS format, consists of interviews with librarians who were in or near the World Trade Center on that horrific day. In their own words, they describe what they saw and how it affected them personally and professionally. An American Libraries production, the video is distributed by the Library Video Network. You can also view a three-minute QuickTime excerpt.


Oprah ALA promotion


Library automation graphic
The phrase library automation has many diverse meanings in the literature of librarianship. This ALA Library Fact Sheet offers a selection of print and web resources on the issues to consider when moving from the card catalog to the computerized catalog, upgrading from one present ILS to another, or considering virtual reference services.

What do YOU think?

Where does your library shelve its collection of graphic novels?

Click here
to ANSWER!

This is an unscientific poll that reflects the opinions of only those AL Direct readers who have chosen to participate.


Results of the
August 30 poll:

This year marks the 25th observance of Banned Books Week. Do you feel more or less pressure to remove materials from your school or library, or to not buy what might be considered controversial for your collection, as compared to five years ago?

MORE.............28%
LESS...............31%

SAME.............33%
N/A...................6%

(85 responses)

For cumulated results and selected responses to all AL Direct polls, visit the AL Online website.

“Worthing Borough Council are closing the public toilets, and the space will become a new IT computer suite in the library.”

—“Goring Library’s Information Techno-loo-gy Boost,” Worthing (UK) Herald, July 31.

September 2006
AL cover
Stories inside include:

The Next Big Issue: Public Access to Research

How Academic Libraries Can Meet Student Info-Seeking Behaviors

Break Out the Pinstripe Suits: Are You Ready for the For-Profit World?


Upcoming:

Sept. 16:

Assistive Technology Expo, Bronx Library Center, 310 East Kingsbridge Road, New York. Vendors and representatives from nonprofit organizations will showcase products and services for adults, young adults, and children with mobility, hearing, and visual disabilities. Contact: 718-579-4244.

Oct. 22–24:
New England Library Association,
Annual Conference, Burlington, Vermont. “Peak Performance.” Contact: NELA.

Oct. 24–27:
Mississippi Library Association,
Annual Conference, Grand Casino, Tunica. “Libraries Help Re-Build Communities.” Contact: 601-981-4586.

Oct. 25–27:
Nebraska Library Association/
Nebraska Educational Media Association
,
Conference, Qwest Center, Omaha. “Libraries: Vital, Vibrant, Visionary.” Contact: NLA.

Exhibits:

Until Oct. 22:
Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, Mass. “The Wonderful Art of Oz," organized in honor of the 150th anniversary of Oz series creator, L. Frank Baum. Contact: Eric Carle Museum, 413-658-1100.

Until Dec. 17:
University of Southern California, Los Angeles. “Five Days of Freedom: Photographs from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.” Contact: Patty Johnson.

Until Jan. 1:
National Archives,
Washington, D.C. “Eyewitness: American Originals from the National Archives.” Letters, diaries, audio and film recordings that chronicle dramatic moments in U.S. history. Contact: NARA, 202-357-5300.

More Datebook items...

American Libraries Direct

George M. Eberhart,
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geberhart@ala.org

Karen Sheets,
Graphics and Design:
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