Home > News Archive > May 2005

May 30, 2005

That's the title of what seems to be an interesting book. "This new reader presents a section by section analysis of the Act and highlights the provisions that are supposed to expire and when." It's due out in the fall of this year. There's a whole section devoted to Libraries and the PATRIOT Act, written by Charles Doyle (Senior Specialist, Law Division, Congressional Research Service). Doyle also wrote a chapter in the USA Patriot Act back in 2003.

source: danielle

May 25, 2005

As yet another State files legislation to remove gay books from childrens' book section, a bill in Washington has been proposed "to restrict children's access to information by establishing review boards that would recommend for or against the acquisition of particular books and materials based on the panel's view of "appropriateness." ". How far will the far-right go to control the thoughts of millions of kids in America? This sounds like Québec in the 1950s (a period we call "la grande noirceur" - the great darkness), where reading was considered suspect by religious and political leaders and "inapropriate" books were put in the "Index", an official censorship of books. Clergymen were responsible for making sure that the faithful stayed away from prohibited material.

source: Google News and Topix.net

May 22, 2005

Wondering how to be more vocal about protecting patrons and libraries from the PATRIOT Act? Read this article from Sandy Berman. It's actually a presentation Berman gave at the "Libraries and The Patriot Act Conference", held in Minneapolis last week.

source: Google News

May 19, 2005

As reported back in April, what was only in negotiations is now to be introduced in the Naperville Public Library: they will be introducing biometrics to scan fingerprints instead of using the library card and a personal identification number to gain access to public computer workstations. Why you may ask? "We have discovered that young people in particular like to swap library cards". Cost for the library? $40,646. Cost for the FBI? Priceless. The library and U.S. Biometrics (the company selling the equipment) say each patrons' privacy is protected... but (and I may be making wrong assumptions) if the FBI wants access to US Biometric's database of library patrons, I doubt the company will invoke patron privacy laws to deny the FBI access. Whole story here.

source: Topix.net

More than 15,000 librarians, archivists and information specialists in France have prepared a petition in response to a very unbalanced piece of copyright legislation. Many of the problems with the law in France mirror the ones seen here in Canada and elsewhere, for example, the need to bypass TPMs for conservation purposes or the need to have a law that supersedes contract provisions of electronic documents. (These contracts usually do not allow for fair use of documents, thus ignoring provisions that are present, in one form or another, in all copyright laws).

source: BiblioAcid

May 18, 2005

The Cogitateurs-Agitateurs will be presenting a series of films from 5 conference sessions from the first Conference on the Public Domain back in 2001. The film will be followed by a discussion on the relation between the FLOSS movement and anarchism as an economic and social model. More info here.

source: Cogitateurs-Agitateurs

May 16, 2005

May 21st is Montreal's 6th Annual Anarchist Bookfair, "the largest anarchist event in North America". The whole month of May is the Festival Anarchy, which is featuring a bunch of events.

source:

If you still have a few dollars left in your acquisitions budget, CODE is probably a good buy. CODE: that's the title of a new book out on collaborative creativity. The book discusses:

the philosophically resonant issues of ownership, property, and the commons, they ask if the increasing application of the language of property rights to knowledge and creativity constitutes a second enclosure movement -- or if the worldwide acclaim for free software signifies a renaissance of the commons.

source: Chris

The Canadian Government is kicking off a series of meetings with First Nations, Inuit and Métis, called Traditions: National Gatherings on Indigenous Knowledge. It will address topics such as artistic expression, intellectual property, cultural property, languages, and culture. One of the questions that will be addressed during these talks is "What are the main vulnerabilities in these areas? What are possible strategies for respectful protection, preservation and celebration of Indigenous knowledge in Canada?" To help guide the discussions, a series of discussion papers by Native authors have been written on indigenous cultures and intellectual property.

source: Topix.net

May 11, 2005

A Stanford University / WTO partnership has produced the GATT Digital Library: a library of over 30,000 documents from the GATT from 1947-1994. A nice effort to ensure public access and transparency and a good way to know thine enemy!

source: Topix.net

May 9, 2005

The Minneapolis Public Library is trying to promote the library with an ad campaign featuring "famous" librarians. Their picks? J. Edgar Hoover, Mao Tse Tung, Cassanova, and Batgirl! A concerned individual writes:

The Iibrary is supposed to stand for freedom of information, access to all, and democracy. Mao and Hoover are the antithesis of these things - both of them ruined many lives, prevented free speech, and used fear to gain power. Mao killed, tortured and imprisoned thousands of people. Hoover was instrumental in doing surveillance against people during the McCarthy era. He spied on Martin Luther King, and was a bigot, a homophobe, and a racist. In the 60's, during the Berrigan brothers' trial he even had a real librarian imprisoned because she refused to testify against them! Why then, use these people's images - at all- when there's so many better people to pick from?

Let the library know that you find these ads offensive. Also let them know if you're a person that Hoover or Mao would have silenced (eg. person of colour, an artist, etc.). You can also contact the Friends of the library. You can suggest other famous librarians for their ads.

May 8, 2005

A private member's bill (bill 196) named the "Right to Read Act" was introduced in the Nova Scotia Legislature last Friday. The MP who introduced the bill says "It is simply unacceptable that the library expenditures in this province are below the national average. Students deserve a designated librarian to help them enjoy reading, and to work on some of the fundamental areas of learning." Here are some of the bill's provisions:

• equipping every school with a school library that is an effective centre for the development of reading, research and problem-solving skills
• implementing an increase in library books and other media holdings by fifty per cent from the levels in place on January 1, 2005
• ensuring that schools have access to librarians and teacher-librarians who are available to teaching faculty to assist in the development of programs and pedagogy
• ensuring that students at every school have adequate access to their library and librarians during instructional time, and for reasonable times outside normal hours of in-class instruction
• developing provincial standards for the dedicated funding of the maintenance and enhancement of school library collections

source: APLA-listserv

Not to be missed! Michael Geist, Canada's copyright guru is giving a teleconference that will examine the evolution of Canadian copyright and cultural policy, identifying the gradual escalation of rights and the warning signs of a dramatic shift in the copyright balance.

source: CLA-listserv

This event was hosted by St-Kate's PLG Student Chapter and is now available in MP3 format. It's a large file, but worth a listen.

source: PLGNet-listserv

May 4, 2005

The Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) in Montreal is hosting a bunch of interesting events starting tomorrow. May 5th, they are holding a symposium entitled "Sampling the Spectrum: The Politics, Practices and Poetics of Mobile Technologies" where the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN) will examine "the impact of mobile culture and the evolving idea of a wireless commons." The MDCN's mission is the

"implementation of a permanent wireless commons in the cities of Montreal and Banff. Each of the network projects will utilize the wireless commons to explore new ways of distributing culture, information and commercial applications on cell phones, wireless PDAs, and laptops."

The SAT will also be hosting a "Free Media Lab and Fileshare Party":

(...) to address the ongoing corporate enclosure of the cultural commons and to demonstrate a variety of creative tactics and legal alternatives. (...) Participants are invited to make free copies from a library of media, made available under open licenses, as well as to upload their own work.

source: Cogitateurs-Agitateurs

The BCLA's Information Policy Salon being held on May 13th will discuss Cuba's "independent libraries". The speaker will be John Pateman, "known for his work on issues of social exclusion, internationalism, and libraries as an agent of social change, is a key leader among librarians in supporting Cuba and opposing outside political intervention." Doing a quick check on Pateman, I found this interesting site: Cuban Libraries Solidarity Group.

source: BCLA-listserv

The report "Canadian School Libraries and Teacher-librarians: Results from the 2003/04 Information and Communication Technologies in Schools Survey" confirms that school libraries are poorely staffed and funded. The summary gives the major findings.

The vast majority of schools, 93.3%, had libraries, but the median expenditure on the physical collection, including books and magazines, was $2,000 (half of the values are above and half are below this figure). Given current costs, this would cover the purchase of one encyclopaedia series.

The relatively low median expenditures may limit the ability of school libraries to maintain collections that meet student needs in an information-based environment.

Despite a body of international evidence that shows teacher-librarians help improve student achievement, few schools in Canada had a full-time teacher-librarian on staff. On average, each school had 0.25 full-time teacher-librarians.

source: Topix.net

April 29, 2005

Two great archives for open access to library literature: DLIST, the Digital Library for Information Science and Technology, and E-LIS, E-prints in Library and Information Science. Also of interest, METALIS "a Service Provider for the Library and Information Science field. We collect (harvest) metadata from institutions that offer full-text papers and documents about Library and Information Science."

Two great articles found on ELIS:

• Indigenous libraries, utopia and reality : proposing an Argentine model: Beautiful plea for progessive librarianship (excerpt):

  (The Native library) is focused to consider the social, the human and the personal factors. Only from humanistic and supportive points of view, respecting diversity and multiculturalism and understanding intercultural relations, a valid proposal for these long neglected populations could be generated. Librarianship (LIS) could contribute with its wisdom –a wisdom developed from centuries of experience- for achieving the growth and the development of these (and other) human groups. But LIS must give up its silence, its marble tower, its privileged positions in the new "knowledge society", its "apolitical" attitudes and its "objectivity". It must become more deeply involved in the problems, side with the helpless and struggle, shoulder to shoulder (maybe without tools, without technology, without money, just equipped with imagination, working wishes and service vocation) with other human beings, who were - and currently are- forgotten, just because they are faithful to themselves.

• Liberation of information as a condition to the liberation of the access to information: The article is in spanish, but the abstract looks promising.

  Emphasizes as outstanding the roles that the worldwide library community has to play as the vanguard towards the liberation of information. (...) It analyses the main mechanisms of how until nowadays information has been an object of opression against society, depriving it precisely of its access. (...) It proposes alternative strategies and policies that seek to guarantee people --including the working class people-- freedom and rights so they can achieve a free, free of charge, unhampered, democratic and socially egalitarian access to the information and knowledge that has been generated as a communal good towards the social and public welfare.

source: BCLA-listserv

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