Off The Shelves: News

Thu, 15 May 2003 21:35:59 GMT

Lunar Eclipse

There will be a lunar eclipse tonight. If the clouds go away, you should be able to watch it beginning around 10:05 p.m. You can find out more about the eclispe at Space.com

Thu, 15 May 2003 18:27:30 GMT

HIPAA Resource Website. From the HHS Office on Civil Rights, this comprehensive resource, Medical Privacy - National Standards to Protect the Privacy of... [beSpacific]

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 16:06:55 GMT

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). This searchable site offers links to fact sheets, key references (online articles and case studies), education and training, Internet resources, and official remarks and reports concerning SARS. Includes information about the modes of transmission, organism, and syndrome (symptoms) for SARS and other infections. From the Center for the Study of Emerging Infections at Saint Louis University School of Public Health, Missouri. [Librarian's Index to the Internet]

Wed, 26 Mar 2003 20:31:28 GMT

If you would like to learn more about Iraq, the New York Times has put together a reading list:

Iraq: A Reading List [New York Times: Books]

You can use the login and password on the left to register at their website.

If you'd like to see which libraries have which books - check the SWAN Catalog

Tue, 25 Mar 2003 19:52:16 GMT

WSJ on warblogs of journos, military enlistees (and shutdown of kevinsites.net). Today's Wall Street Journal features an article on war, weblogs, disinformation -- and the suspension of kevinsites.net.

THE DAY ALLIED FORCES began their invasion of Iraq, a Navy lieutenant based in the Gulf posted some news on his personal Web site: "Saddam fired a couple of those Scuds that he doesn't have at me." On another personal Web site someone claiming to be a Baghdad resident wrote that "there are more Ba'ath people in the streets and they have more weapons." Kevin Mickey, a Navy lieutenant commander at Camp Patriot, Kuwait, noted on his site that "we had a minor dust storm yesterday" and said the camp's missile alarms were going off repeatedly.
On top of the 500 reporters traveling with the military and the three cable-TV news channels beaming 24-hour coverage there's a new element in this war: unfiltered eyewitness accounts online.
Soldiers and citizens in the war zone are publishing in real time on their own Web sites. Families are posting on the Web the e-mails sent home by relatives in the service. And free-lance reporters -- not subject to restrictions by the Pentagon or large media outlets -- are writing online for a new world-wide audience. In all, the glut of information from the Gulf -- from the important to the trivial -- is creating a dizzying panoply of detail, as well as half-truths.

Link to WSJ story via Yahoo, Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 17:01:35 GMT

CyberJournalist.net: Iraq Conflict Coverage Weblog
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/features/iraqcoverage.html

Includes blogs from "embedded" journalists (even MTV has a correspondent there!), news sites' complete coverage pages, interactive graphics and stories, and more. Among the recent additions: a 3-D map of Iraq, and Jerusalem Post's audio reports from the field.

From Marylaine's Neat New Stuff on the Net

Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:55:01 GMT

You can find Gov. Blagojevich's State of the State address at this link:

http://www.illinois.gov/gov/stateofstate.cfm

Thanks to Laura Johnson from SLS for the information

Wed, 12 Mar 2003 18:32:38 GMT

President Signed "Do Not Call" Registry Bill. H.R. 395, The Do-Not-Call Implementation Act, 117 Stat. 557; 2 pages, "To authorize the Federal Trade Commission to collect fees... [beSpacific]

Thu, 20 Feb 2003 16:45:02 GMT

Credit card database hacked. A computer hacker gains access to more than 5 million Visa and Mastercard credit card accounts in the US. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Tue, 04 Feb 2003 18:54:45 GMT

Stock Quotes

This is the time of the year we begin to receive requests for closing prices of stocks from past years.

Here's where we find our information:

Yahoo Finance

Big Charts

Wed, 29 Jan 2003 17:18:43 GMT

You can find a copy of the President's State of the Union Address on the Chicago Tribune website:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ny-bushtext0129,1,2323815.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed

To register, just use the password and login to the left

Sat, 18 Jan 2003 16:11:07 GMT

Libraries Preserving Our Past.

"The New York Public Library's Image Gate is currently in Beta. However 80,000 images so far out of 600,000 isn't too shabby. Of remarkable interest are the collections (also some here) they have put up so far for your browsing pleasure. Anna Atkins cyanotypes are beautiful, and the Art of the Cigarette Card is joyously quirky. Be sure to check back in 2004 when its all done."[MetaFilter]

Photographs from the Chicago Daily News: 1902-1933
"The Library of Congress in collaboration with the Chicago Historical Society has added to their American Memory Web site over 55,000 images of urban life taken between 1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the Chicago Daily News. Search by keyword or browse by subject." [What's GNU]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 18:37:05 GMT

Rolando Cruz, 2 others pardoned [Chicago Sun-Times]

One of the men pardoned today by the Governour was Steven Linscott. The Library owns his book "Maximum Security". It chronicles his arrest, trial and release.

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:26:46 GMT

Southern Illinois' Cahokia Mounds in the News

New clues to ancient Mississippi culture. Archaeologists are revising the role Cahokia played in the cultural revolution of Indians up and down the Mississippi. [Christian Science Monitor | Sci/Tech]

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 15:45:29 GMT

Assault on Net servers fails. A distributed denial-of-service attack hits the computers that serve as the address books for the Internet, but the effort appears to have little real effect. [CNET News.com]

Sat, 19 Oct 2002 16:40:23 GMT

Here’s the story from the Chicago Tribune about Gerald McDonald from Lyons who went to Prague to recover an art collection taken by the Nazis during World War II. The online version also has video clips.

Confronting the ghosts of a looted past
First of two parts

By Howard Reich
Tribune arts critic
Published October 17, 2002

Gerald McDonald was sick with Hepatitis C, awaiting a liver transplant and low on cash.

Living alone in a tiny frame house in Lyons, just south of Chicago, he was playing out his last days watching cable TV and listening to heavy metal records, another decorated Vietnam vet squeaking by on disability checks.

But when he learned that he was heir to a multimillion dollar art collection looted by the Nazis in Prague -- and that the Czech government was going to take it from him before he even laid eyes on it -- he figured he couldn't sit around the house anymore.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0210170006oct17.story

Retracing a tragic course
Second of two parts

By Howard Reich
Tribune arts critic
Published October 18, 2002

Gerald McDonald barely slept the night before he went to Poland for the first and probably last time.

He already was weak and sick from his journey to Prague, where he had gone to see the artworks that belonged to his great-great uncle, Emil Freund, who was killed in the Holocaust.

Startled by the beauty of the artworks that belonged to Freund and shattered by the sight of Freund’s name among 80,000 painted on a synagogue wall memorializing the dead, McDonald decided that he had to pay his respects at Freund’s grave - if he could find it.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-021018macsjourney.story

To register at the Tribune website, just use the login and password to the left.

Sat, 19 Oct 2002 15:33:36 GMT

An Excellent Explanation Of How Current Copyright Issues Are Negatively Affecting Libraries

Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright and Neighbouring Rights in the Digital Environment: An International Library Perspective

"There are many supporters of strong intellectual property rights today. Media companies and their trade associations view ever increased rights for copyright owners as the best way to maximize their potential revenue. It is somewhat harder, however, to find equally prominent defenders of the other half of the copyright balance, namely the needs of the public to have reasonable legitimate access to copyright material. This can be attributed to some degree to the fact that many advocates of stronger rights for copyright owners have a financial interest in such an outcome. The wider public interest in being able to access this material is more diffuse and usually has no direct economic motive and so is less likely to attract professional advocates. The library sector, however, is proud to view itself as a custodian of the public interest in this regard.

Libraries are major purchasers of copyright protected works, both analogue and digital, and make such works available for patrons to browse, read and use. Librarians and information professionals do, where possible and to the best of their ability, protect against copyright abuse of library material in collections....

It should not be forgotten that copyright is a monopoly right. Without exceptions, copyright owners would have a complete monopoly over learning, and thus control access to knowledge in the digital age....

Technological copyright protection measures are a significant issue for the world’s library and education communities, because they can override and effectively eliminate any copyright exceptions. This is because such technological measures do not distinguish between uses which are not authorised by the copyright owner but are permitted by law, on the one hand, and those uses which are not authorised by the owner and also infringing. For example, the same copy-control mechanism, which prevents a person from making infringing copies of a copyright work, may also prevent a student or a visually impaired person from making legitimate fair use/fair dealing copies....

In addition to intellectual property laws and the increasing use of digital rights management technology, contractual licensing also shapes the digital environment and is being used to limit user rights. ‘Unlike paper materials, digital information generally is not purchased by consumers or the library; rather it is licensed by the library from information providers....

However, there is a growing problem that such agreements are being used as ‘unilateral legislation’; that is, license agreements frequently override copyright exceptions and set a level of usage that is more restrictive than the law allows. Licenses can involve a wide range of terms and conditions, but, unlike copyright law, licensors are not statutorily obliged to consider the public interest in accessing information when setting such terms and conditions. As most digital information is distributed by license, public policy considerations such as fair use, fair dealing or exceptions to the author’s rights are likely to become null and void. It is therefore essential that limitations and exceptions are carefully considered in the digital realm to protect access to information.

Some examples of the types of restrictions that license agreements often impose include:

restrictions on users printing or downloading or emailing copies of (parts of) the material;
restrictions on the number, location, and organizational affiliation of users;
restrictions on libraries performing inter-library loan/document supply;
restrictions on libraries copying the work for preservation purposes;
restrictions on the use of a work beyond a certain date;
restrictions on libraries networking the work across the premises of the library;
restrictions on lending or otherwise disposing of a digital work.
restrictions on the right to quote, analyze and even to index a work

Most copying of print-based material in libraries is for educational, research or private study purposes or for preservation. The reasons usually given for copying are because users are unable to read the material in the library (material is in demand or reference only) or because the user wishes to read it at a more convenient time (time shifting). Despite rights owner concerns about loss of sales there is no evidence that copying reasonable amounts from copyright protected works displaces sales. Those who copy would not necessarily buy a work if prevented from copying it. There is no reason to believe that this pattern will not also be true of copying from digital works.

IFLA believes, therefore, that not only must traditional copyright exceptions be preserved both in the print (analogue) environment but also in the digital environment, and that this must be addressed at the same time as the issues of the increasing use of copyright protection technologies and contractual license agreements. It is of little use for national legislatures to guarantee fair use rights if these rights are promptly overridden by non-negotiated click-through licence agreements or technological protection systems in almost every case....

For works in digital format, without incurring a further payment or seeking permission, all legitimate users of a library should be able to:

browse publicly available copyright material;
read, listen to, or view lawfully acquired publicly marketed copyright material privately, on site or remotely; (including material which has to be adapted for those with a learning disability or translated into a different language)
copy, or have copied for them by library and information staff a reasonable proportion of a digital work in copyright for personal, educational or research use.

Libraries are, in effect, catalysts for the sale of information in all of its formats. Therefore, any legal or contractual restraints put on lending would be to the disadvantage of rights holders as well as to the libraries themselves. Unfortunately a precedent has been set with the European Union when lending was made a restricted act under copyright even though it is not an international requirement.

IFLA believes that the lending of published materials by libraries should not be restricted by legislation and that contractual provisions, for example within licensing agreements, should not override reasonable lending of electronic resources by library and information staff." [IFLANET]

From The Shifted Librarian

Mon, 14 Oct 2002 18:32:53 GMT

STEPHEN AMBROSE, 66
`He wrote for everyday people'

Associated Press
Published October 14, 2002

NEW ORLEANS -- Stephen Ambrose, a history professor catapulted to prominence by his best-selling books that made World War II veterans hometown heroes again, died Sunday of lung cancer. He was 66.

Family members were with Mr. Ambrose, a longtime smoker who was diagnosed in April, when he died at a hospital in Bay St. Louis, Miss., according to his son, Hugh.

At the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, which Mr. Ambrose founded, his portrait was placed near the entrance and a sign noted his death. Guests were invited to write messages to the Ambrose family on museum postcards.

From the Chicago Tribune. To register at the Tribune's site use the login and password to the left

There is also a website for Stephen Ambrose

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:38:33 GMT

Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act. The text of Rep. Boucher's bill that seeks to even the playing field for users of digital media whose traditional rights are being squeezed out by entertainment companies. [Marylaine Block's Neat New Sites]

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:37:17 GMT

Carter wins Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee takes a sideswipe at President Bush's Iraq policy as it rewards Jimmy Carter for his peacemaking efforts. [BBC News | Front Page]

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:48:12 GMT

Have you been following the Supreme court debate on Copyright Law? Here are a couple of articles about yesterday's proceedings:

High court weighs copyright law. Supreme Court justices debate a copyright extension law that prevents works like Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie" and the poems of Robert Frost from becoming part of the public domain. [CNET News.com]

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:42:49 GMT

NY Times report on Eldred v Ashcroft. [Scripting News]

Wed, 11 Sep 2002 20:04:29 GMT

Check Out Poynter's 9-11 Gallery [LISNews.com]

Tue, 10 Sep 2002 21:34:50 GMT

Some Good News

Paralyzed Christopher Reeve makes slight gains
September 10, 2002 Posted: 4:26 PM EDT (2026 GMT)

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (CNN) -- Actor Christopher Reeve -- paralyzed since 1995 -- is experiencing slight movement in his fingers and toes, his doctor told CNN on Tuesday.

"To be able to feel just the lightest touch," he said, "is really a gift."

He can feel hugs from his wife and children, he told People magazine in the issue that will be available on newsstands Friday.

From CNN

Mon, 09 Sep 2002 20:44:06 GMT

- "Newsday, the Tribune Co. newspaper in Melville, .... - "Newsday, the Tribune Co. newspaper in Melville, N.Y., has compiled an online database of those dead or missing as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks. Containing the more than 3,000 names in Newsday's ongoing "Remembering the Lost" series, the database is accessible at http://www.newsday.com/911memorial."

"The database will be used in 9/11 anniversary observances around the country. A banner created by the General Services Administration in Kansas City, Mo., is carrying the names, the Nasdaq electronic billboard in New York's Times Square is displaying them, and the city of Dedham, Mass., is having them read during a memorial ceremony." (from Editor and Publisher)

LS Thoughts - See also, Portaits of Grief from the New York Times. [Library Stuff - Updated daily by Steven M. Cohen]

Off The Shelves: News

An *Excellent* Explanation Of How Current Copyright Issues Are Negatively Affecting Libraries

An Excellent Explanation Of How Current Copyright Issues Are Negatively Affecting Libraries