Contents
U.S. & World News
ALA News
Booklist Online
Seattle Update
Division News
Round Table News
Awards
Seen Online
Tech Talk
Actions & Answers
Poll
Calendar

Indianapolis director Mielke to step down
After less than three years in the position, Indianapolis–Marion County Public Library CEO Linda Mielke will step down January 15. Board President Louis Mahern said the move was mutually agreed upon by Mielke and the trustees. She will receive nearly $70,000 in severance pay as called for in her contract....

Kissing Stars spark media-center challenge
The principal of the Toisnot Middle School in Wilson, North Carolina, has removed from circulation The Kissing Stars by Geralyn Dawson, pending its review by the school’s Media Advisory Committee in January. In the meantime, principal Craig Harris told the December 21 Wilson Daily Times, he and the media center coordinator are documenting independently of each other any passages in the historical romance novel that either considers inappropriate for middle-schoolers....

FBI director’s comments reveal hostility towards privacy
In a November 30 written response (PDF file) to the U.S. Senate, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert S. Mueller III again demonstrated that the Department of Justice fails to comprehend the role of libraries and the importance of privacy in the United States. The FBI submitted Mueller’s answers in response to written questions that followed the May 2, 2006, hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary regarding FBI oversight....

ALA membership survey results
More than 2,000 members told ALA they are using the Association’s website more than in 2004, and member satisfaction with the website has increased 28%. The 2006 ALA Member Communications Study, conducted in October and November, was commissioned to assist ALA in identifying areas in communications with members where improvements can be made and to note any key changes since the first-ever member study in 2004....

New research and statistics project manager
Larra Clark, formerly ALA’s manager of media relations, will join the Office of Research and Statistics staff as project manager for the Public Library Funding and Technology Access study. In collaboration with the ORS director, Clark will coordinate the complex activities of this project and work closely with researchers at Florida State University and elsewhere who are doing fieldwork....

Task Force on Digitization Policy
ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy has created a Task Force on Digitization Policy. Its charge is to review ALA policies in relation to digitized content and promote the draft Principles for Digitized Content that were developed in April 2006....

Deadline nears for Advocacy Institute
The deadline for online registration for the Advocacy Institute at the 2007 Midwinter Meeting in Seattle is this Friday, January 5. Online registration for both ALA members and nonmembers is $25, a 50% savings from the on-site registration fee....

A dining guide to Seattle (PDF file)
Robert M. Mason and Marilyn Gell Mason (right) serve up their recommendations on eateries in the Emerald City: “While the city is large enough to have a wide variety of restaurants, the characteristics that make Seattle eating distinctive are its dedication to the use of fresh ingredients (especially fresh fish) and liberal use of Asian flavors.”...
American Libraries 38 (Jan. 2007): 62–65

Midwinter exhibitor events
Exhibitor special event information for the Midwinter Meeting is now available online. More than 450 exhibitors will pack the convention center’s exhibit floor and offer free demonstrations and samples of the latest products and services for libraries and their users....

Seattle Underground
The Seattle Underground is a network of underground passageways and basements that was originally the downtown area’s ground level. After the streets were elevated, these spaces eventually fell into disuse, but have become a tourist attraction in recent decades. Bill Speidel’s Underground Tours offers walking tours beginning in Pioneer Square....
Wikipedia; Bill Speidel’s Underground Tours

New online edition of LA&M
LAMA launched a new electronic quarterly journal, Library Administration and Management Online (LA&M Online) on December 18. Available as a benefit of membership in LAMA, LA&M Online includes features not found in the traditional paper journal, including reader-feedback blogs, color images, additional charts and graphs, and podcasts. The conversion to a full-featured web publication will be phased in and completed by 2009....

ALCTS forums at Midwinter
ALCTS will present a series of forums at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle on the future of cataloging, disaster recovery, and collecting e-resources use data....

Register for ALCTS 50th anniversary celebration
ALCTS will host a national conference in celebration of its 50th-anniversary themed “Interactive Futures: A National Conference on the Transformation of Library Collections and Technical Services.” Registration is now open for the day-and-a-half conference to be held June 20–21 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C....

New round of great websites added to ALSC list
ALSC added 44 new sites in 2006 to its Great Web Sites for Kids page. GWS features links to valuable websites of interest to children, organized by subject headings such as animals, literature and languages, sciences, the arts, and history and biography....

YALSA debuts MySpace web page
YALSA has launched a MySpace page to provide a way for the division to reach out to the general public including parents, educators, teens, librarians, and library supporters. YALSA’s MySpace page offers visitors convenient access to recommended reading, listening and viewing for teens, including titles that have won one of YALSA’s prestigious awards in young adult literature....

Every Child Ready to Read @ your library wiki
PLA and ALSC have introduced an Every Child Ready to Read @ your library wiki that allows new and current users of the program to share innovative ideas and best practices. PLA and ALSC jointly developed the Every Child Ready to Read @ your library program to provide public libraries with vital tools to help prepare parents for their critical role as their child’s first teacher....

LAMA Leadership Development Seminar
John McNeil, vice president of implementation and design for the Pacific Institute, will be keynote speaker at the LAMA 2007 Leadership Development Seminar at the Midwinter Meeting. This seminar will be presented January 19 from 2:00 to 4:30 p.m. at the Westin Seattle, Cascade Ballroom 1....

Video Round Table special event
Seattle Public Library, VRT, and Friends of Libraries for Deaf Action will cosponsor a screening of short clips from Through Deaf Eyes, a two-hour PBS documentary that explores 200 years of deaf life in America, at 6:30 p.m. on January 20 at the Seattle Public Library auditorium. This groundbreaking work is a production of WETA Washington, D.C., and Florentine Films/Hott Productions, in association with Gallaudet University. A national PBS broadcast is planned in spring 2007. A discussion with Karen Kenton, WETA Executive Producer for the Through Deaf Eyes film project, will follow the screening....

ALA awards deadline extended
The deadline has been extended to February 2 for a number of ALA awards and grants, including the Beta Phi Mu Award, the Melvil Dewey Medal, the Equality Award, the Elizabeth Futas Catalyst for Change Award, the Thomson Gale Financial Development Award, the Sullivan Award Public Library Administrators Supporting Services to Children, and the H. W. Wilson Library Staff Development Grant....

Film preservation grants
The National Film Preservation Foundation invites applications for its Basic Preservation Grants. These cash grants are awarded to nonprofit and public institutions for laboratory work to preserve culturally and historically significant film materials. Awards range from $1,000 to $15,000. The registration deadline is February 9 and the application deadline is March 16....
National Film Preservation Foundation

Feds push for internet records
For more than a year, the U.S. Justice Department has been in discussions with internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of web traffic. The idea is to help law enforcement track down child pornographers. But some see it as another step toward total surveillance of citizens, joining warrantless wiretapping, secret scrutiny of library records, and unfettered access to e-mail as another power that could be abused....
Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Jan. 1

Weeding in the Washington area
Like Borders and Barnes and Noble, Fairfax County (Va.) Public Library is responding aggressively to market preferences, calculating the system’s return on its investment by each foot of space on the library shelves—and weeding out some little-used titles. But the library has not been throwing out all its classics, as the newspaper article implied....
Washington Post, Jan. 2; Fairfax County (Va.) Public Library

Rowdy middle schoolers in Maplewood
Every afternoon at Maplewood (N.J.) Middle School’s final bell, dozens of students pour across the street to the public library. Some study quietly.Others fight, urinate on the bathroom floor, scrawl graffiti on the walls, talk back to librarians, or refuse to leave when asked. As a result, starting on January 16, the Maplewood Memorial Library will be closing its two buildings on weekdays from 2:45 to 5 p.m., until further notice....
New York Times, Jan. 2

Black archives recaptures history
Dorothy Jenkins Fields (right) made one phone call 32 years ago that changed the course of her life. Fields was a librarian in then all-white Myrtle Grove (Fla.) Elementary School and, in preparation for the nation’s Bicentennial celebration, she wanted to teach the children about black history. When she phoned a public librarian to request information, Fields learned all that was available was a folder containing obituaries. That phone conversation later led Fields to found the Black Archives, History, and Research Foundation of South Florida in Miami....
Miami Herald, Dec. 31

DOPA dies on the vine
The end of 2006 marks the end of the current congressional session in the House and Senate, closing the door on the Deleting Online Predators Act. Andy Carvin takes a look at why this legislation, which passed overwhelmingly in the House this summer, died such a slow death....
PBS Learning Now, Dec. 29

More details about Berger and the Archives
Former national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger has admitted taking five slightly different copies of a highly classified document from the National Archives in 2003. A newly released report by NARA’s Office of the Inspector General contains fresh details of the incident, which involved a classified Clinton administration study called the Millennium Alert After Action Review....
Washington Post, Dec. 22

300-year-old book could lead to new drug
A few years ago, Eric Buenz came across Ambonese Herbal, a 17th-century book on herbal medicine. Buenz, then a graduate student at the Mayo Clinic, and a colleague decided to test a tree extract that the book claimed could cure diarrhea. In this case, ancient Indonesian folk knowledge probably would have disappeared if not for the dogged persistence of Georg Everhard Rumphius (right), a mercenary with the Dutch East India Company, whose story is recounted in “Searching Historical Herbal Texts for Potential New Drugs” (PDF file), in the Dec. 23 British Medical Journal....
Tucson Arizona Daily Star, Dec. 31

College libraries: The annex
Even as the internet revolution raises the promise of widespread digital publishing, librarians are grappling with deciding which books to keep and figuring out how to efficiently store them—even if no one touches them in a generation. That dilemma is heightened because room and funding for traditional open stacks are scarce, and library space increasingly is being converted to computer labs and study rooms....
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 25

SirsiDynix finds a new investor
In a somewhat surprising announcement, SirsiDynix announced in late December that it had a “new investment partner,” Vista Equity. Details were scant but a formal (and only slightly more detailed) press release (PDF file) was issued December 27. Vista is a private equity firm with over $1 billion in capital, primarily in the software and technology sectors. SirsiDynix, of course, is one of the biggest players in the market, with nearly 4,000 clients....
Hectic Pace blog, Dec. 28

50 things to do with Google Maps mashups
Mike Pegg shows how individuals and organizations are using Google Maps to chart such things as zip codes, red-light cameras, disease outbreaks, ski resorts, UFO sightings, webcams, libraries, and cheap gas....
Google Maps Mania blog, Dec. 28

Battelle’s predictions for 2007
John Battelle, author of The Search (Portfolio, 2005), has made 14 predictions about developments in search-engine technology next year....
John Battelle’s Searchblog, Jan. 1

What every librarian should know about search engines
Scott Hawksworth writes: “Online research and the power of the Web have made accessing information only fingertips away from all of us, but the taxonomies and standards used for search will impact how people learn online and off for years to come. Here are some of the things librarians understand about search—and things that anyone doing online research can benefit from.”...
DegreeTutor, Dec. 8

Tagging systems in del.icio.us
Margaret E. I. Kipp and D. Grant Campbell of the University of Western Ontario examine the tagging patterns exhibited by users of del.icio.us to assess how collaborative tagging supports and enhances traditional ways of classifying and indexing documents....
Proceedings of the ASIST Annual General Meeting (2006)

70 acronyms parents (and maybe librarians) should recognize
From POS to WYRN, these chat and IM acronyms could turn up in your e-mail messages or your 24/7 reference logs....
NetLingo

Untangle the Web with RSS
Robert MacMillan summarizes RSS feeds for the uninitiated and explains why websites need to have them....
Reuters, Dec. 29

Kimbooktu
Kim Heijdenrijk in The Hague, Netherlands, has started up an English-language blog devoted entirely to book-related gadgets—books about books, bookholders, bookmarks, keychains, mugs (right), clothes for reading, tote bags, a British TV series called Black Books, and much more....
Kimbooktu

Remote libraries in Peru and Kenya
Paul Francescutti, a producer for CTV Southwestern Ontario in Kitchener, has produced a documentary about remote libraries in Peru and Kenya. Remote Access: Distant Libraries of the World aired only in Ontario early in 2006. A DVD is available and previews can be found on the Remote Access website....
Remote Access

LC adds 25 movies to National Film Registry
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington December 27 added 25 motion pictures to the National Film Registry to be preserved for all time, bringing the total number of films on the registry to 450. The 2006 selections span the years 1913 to 1996 and encompass films ranging from Hollywood classics to lesser-known but still vital works. Billington chose this year’s selections after evaluating nearly 1,000 nominated titles, among them Blazing Saddles (1974), Groundhog Day (1993), and Tess of the Storm Country (1914)....
Library of Congress, Dec. 27

Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust wiki
Best-selling author and award-winning reviewer Nancy Pearl now has a wiki-format website for readers interested in books: Book Lust: A Community for People Who Love Books. Currently she is collecting suggestions for best books of 2006 and most popular authors, and offering suggestions for book clubs....
Book Lust wiki

Fantasy sports library programming
Why not create some sort of library program around a fantasy league for the teens in the library? You can find these leagues through a variety of sources such as Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, as well as a host of other places. The librarian would have to establish the league and act as commissioner, which means he or she would control the league settings and rules....
Alternative Teen Services blog, Dec. 28

New Pentagon library center opens (PDF file)
The Pentagon has completed a new Library and Conference Center (PLC2) that is operational and open to visitors. The 120,000-square-foot facility is home to the Army library, 16 conference rooms, and several offices under the Pentagon Force Protection Agency....
The Renovator, Dec.

Suggested guidelines for library blogs
Karen Schneider offers some tips on what to put in library blog policies concerning purpose, managers, hosting, assignments, acceptable use, and best practices, among other things....
Free Range Librarian blog, Dec. 30

Monty Python’s gorilla librarian skit
From Series 1, Episode 10 (December 21, 1969), of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, in which a gorilla applies for a librarian position. It contains the classic line: “You see, I don’t believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that’s been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.”...
YouTube

More top 10, 50, and 100 lists than anyone else
Microsoft’s Rex Sorgatz has compiled all the 2006 lists at his Fimoculous site, helpfully arranged by category (including a section on books). He has lists for previous years as well....
Fimoculous

“Happy New Year” around the world
Infoplease offers a list of ways to say “Happy New Year” in 34 languages. When in ancient Rome, say Felix sit annus novus!...
Infoplease