Library Juice 2:43 - Library Juice is now a book and a blog

Library Juice 2:43 - November 10, 1999 Contents: 1. Freedom of Information? The Internet as Harbinger of the New Dark Ages 2. Encyclopedia Britannica 3. usgovsearch free edition 4. BCLA opposes re-opening of investment talks at WTO in Seattle 5. N30: Global Day of Action in November 30 6. Escape From America Newsletter 7. WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources 8. Buy Nothing Day - November 26/27 9. Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions 10. Computer Use and Ownership (U.S. Census Bureau) 11. New List: E-collections 12. A note from the server side of Library Juice (Looking for "Martain Luther King Jr.?") 13. The _Annotated_ Grateful Dead Lyrics: a Web Site 14. Monk, Thelonious - 1917-1982 15. Umberto Eco tells "How to organize a public library" 16. An apology and a notice Quote for the week: "...I would venture the opinion that the traditional civil libertarian opposition to the banning of books from school libraries and from school curricula is now largely irrelevent. Such acts of censorship are annoying, of course, and must be opposed. But they are trivial. Even worse, they are distracting, in that they divert civil libertarians from confronting those questions that have to do with the claims of new technology." -Neil Postman, _Amusing Ourselves to Death_, Viking-Penguin, Inc., 1985 Homepage of the week: Paula Edmiston, mesoelectronic hunter-gatherer http://www.cs.unca.edu/~edmiston/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 1. Freedom of Information? The Internet as Harbinger of the New Dark Ages To: librarians[at]tao.ca Subject: Freedom of Information? The Internet as Harbinger of the New Dark Ages Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 23:33:16 +0000 This is the title of a very interesting article from the online magazine "First Monday". The author points out how governments and corporations are struggling against FOI, and how the Internet and developing legal concepts with regards to information are assisting in this, appearances notwithstanding. It's a challenging read, at least: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_11/clarke It may be necessary to register (for free) to get access to the current issue and the archive, in which case go first of all to http://firstmonday.org It is quite worth being signed up for, as although it's basically an academic journal on Internet-related issues there's usually at least one article per issue coming from a radical perspective. Adrian ____________________________________________________________________________top 2. Encyclopedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com The Encyclopedia Britannica site now appears to be fully accessible as anticipated, with its encyclopedia completely and freely searchable online along with its Britannica Internet guide. ResPool Listowner rjtiess[at]warwick.net - From ResPool - http://members.tripod.com/~rtiess/respool.htm ____________________________________________________________________________top 3. usgovsearch free edition http://usgovsearch.northernlight.com/publibaccess/ Originally unveiled and subsequently much-maligned as a pay-for-access service provided by a partnership between Northern Light and the US Government, usgovsearch quickly lost its larger partner. Northern Light continued with the service nonetheless and recently came out with a free public access version of the search engine, which was originally designed for public libraries and public schools only. While the full edition of usgovsearch still requires a subscription, the public access version indexes millions of pages from US government and military sites. Users can search by keyword; by date range, agency, and subject in a power search; or by specific agency. The sheer size of the Northern Light database makes this search engine a useful resource for users seeking US government information. A sample search for "Medicare," for example, produced over 31,000 returns. The same search in Google's Uncle Sam (see the June 4, 1999 _Scout Report_) produced 8,500 hits, though the list was topped by the official US Government site on Medicare as opposed to the site of the Health Care Financing Administration in usgovsearch. Rather than choosing one over the other, the Scout Report recommends using both these engines in conjunction when searching for government information. [MD] > From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-1999. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 4. BCLA opposes re-opening of investment talks at WTO in Seattle PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 28, 1999 BRITISH COLUMBIA LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OPPOSES RE-OPENING OF INVESTMENT TALKS AT WTO IN SEATTLE The BC Library Association (BCLA) has expressed its opposition to the introduction of MAI-like investment negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial conference taking place in Seattle this fall. In its 1998 resolution opposing the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), BCLA stated that "the MAI could threaten existing public services such as libraries, public education, and public health through foreign companies demanding 'equal treatment' and therefore subsidies similar to those allocated to the public sector." BCLA went on to urge "the Government of Canada [to] cease its support for such an agreement and withdraw from any further negotiations immediately." The MAI was abandoned in 1998 after France's withdrawal last year from the OECD investment negotiations. With the so-called "Millennium Round" of talks proposed for the WTO conference this November, there could be a resurrection of an MAI-like agreement, which would be binding for all 134 WTO member countries, including Canada. Libraries have much to fear from investment treaties like the MAI which strive to create a "level playing field" for corporations, granted them all of the benefits and none of the responsibilities of trade liberalization. "The worst case scenario is that publicly-funded libraries in Canada could disappear. Free and equitable access to information, a concept integral to public library service, could be replaced by competitive 'information enterprises.' Information could become affordable to only the richest in our society," states Sybil Harrison, President of BCLA In addition to the revival of the MAI, other issues slated to be on the table at the WTO could have an impact on libraries and library service. These include government procurement, intellectual property rights, and the deregulation of services (GATS). BCLA encourages its members and the public to stay informed about these developments and their potential impact on our libraries and our society. Watch for displays in your local library this fall for more information about the WTO and the threat posed by the MAI and other such treaties. For more information contact : Sylvia Crooks, BCLA Information Policy Committee 822-3359 Michael Burris, BCLA Executive Director 683-5354 ____________________________________________________________________________top 5. N30: Global Day of Action in November 30 ########################################### The PGA, at its second world conference in Bangalore, India, called for November 30 to be an Global Day of Action. Organisations and movements from dozens of countries enthusiastically endorsed this decentralised action and pledged to organise local events in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, U.K., Germany, Argentina, Switzerland, Spain, Colombia, etc. Although most of the actions are being planned for that date, there are also groups that are responding to the call but staging their N30 actions in other dates. For instance, in India the National Alliance of Peoples' Movements has given a call for actions spread over a longer period, from November 21st (international day of action of fisherfolk) to December 3rd (anniversary of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal). These actions - mass protests, educative programmes, delegations to the authorities, etc. -will focus attention on the impacts of globalisation, including the WTO, its policies and agreements, on various sectors of the population (fisherfolk, forest produce gatherers and other tribals, women, farmers, industrial and agricultural labour, etc.), reflected through the struggles such as opposition to Narmada dams, the struggle against foreign fishing vessels, displacement due to infrastructure development and mega-cities, and others. (Contact Mahendra at <mahendras1[at]yahoo.com>, tel +91-22-557 4895 for more information). Similarly, there will be a big demonstration in Geneva (where the headquarters of the WTO are based) on the 27th, since this date, being a Saturday, is more appropriate for the large number of organisations which are calling it (contact red-red2[at]span.ch for more information). Below you find an edited summary of the call for action prepared by the November 30 Global Day of Action Collective. GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION NOVEMBER 30, 1999 ************************************** LET OUR RESISTANCE BE AS TRANSNATIONAL AS CAPITAL! A Global Day of Action, Resistance and Carnival Against the Global Capitalist System Laugh in the Face of the Global Economy!! Activists from diverse groups and movements around the world are discussing, networking and organising for an INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION on November 30th. On this day, ministers of 134 governments will be in Seattle for the 3rd conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), at which they will decide on new policies that will further escalate the exploitation of our planet and its people by the global capitalist system. The 'key players' (the Northern governments, especially those of the USA and the European Union) want to push through a new version of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), expand the agreements that grant agrochemical and biotechnological TNCs new domination rights over the agriculture and the food systems of the whole world, strengthen intellectual property rights and patents on life, and further capitalist globalisation through a new round of free trade talks. A coalition of radical activists has formed in Seattle to stage actions against the conference, and activist groups around the world are planning to converge on the city. Also, the international network Peoples' Global Action against 'Free' Trade and the WTO (PGA) and the IWW (International Workers of the World) are planning ACTIONS around the world. Various grassroots groups prepare to take action in their own parts of the world in recognition that the CAPITALIST SYSTEM, based on the exploitation of people, societies and the environment for the profit of a few, is the PRIME CAUSE of present SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL TROUBLES. In view of these developments, we now call for SYMPATHETIC COMMUNITIES, GRASSROOTS GROUPS, AND INDIVIDUALS around the world to organise their OWN AUTONOMOUS ACTIONS, protests, and carnivals in solidarity against the capitalist system on November 30th. Our simultaneous TRANSFORMATION OF THE CAPITALIST SOCIAL ORDER around the world - in the streets, neighbourhoods, fields, factories, offices, commercial centres, financial districts, and so on - will contribute to the process of bringing separate struggles together based on co-operation, ecological sustainability, and grassroots democracy. This call is made in the spirit of continuing the process of building a strong, bold and CREATIVE GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT against the economic and political institutions of capitalism. For as we realise that no issue is isolated, be it the exploitation of workers, the bankruptcy of peasant farmers, the displacement of indigenous peoples by "development" programmes or the destruction of our environment, we also realise that we must act together and UNITE OUR STRUGGLES AGAINST the social, political, and economic institutions of THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM. Only a strong and united movement of grassroots groups based on mutual respect and solidarity, who struggle independent of these institutions and seek to effect change directly through their own autonomous action can dissolve their power and BUILD A BETTER SOCIAL ORDER based on grassroots organisation. The actions on the 30 of November will BRING DIFFERENT MOVEMENTS TOGETHER in solidarity with one another and strengthen the mutual bonds of otherwise disparate groups - workers, the unemployed, students, trade unionists, peasants, the landless, fishers, women's groups, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, peace activists, environmental activists, ecologists, and others. This process will be continued through FURTHER GLOBAL DAYS OF ACTION IN THE FUTURE - MAYDAY 2000, for instance, has been pointed out as a perfect symbolic and real opportunity to escalate our resistance. The PRESENT PROPOSAL of a November 30th global day of action FOLLOWS from the success of the co-ordinated global day of action on JUNE 18TH this year, and is intended to expand on it in the same spirit. On that day, separate grassroots movements in over 30 countries on all continents worked together and JOINED FORCES AGAINST THE GLOBAL CAPITALIST SYSTEM. The day saw for instance marches by workers in Bangladesh and Pakistan; a fake trade fair by Uruguayan activists; thousands of people in a carnival in London's financial district; occupations and street parties in Spain, Italy, USA, and Canada; ten thousand people in Nigeria protesting the oil industry and imperialism; and, in Melbourne, a prominent politician hit with a cream pie and a logging multinational blockaded with dead wombats. (For more information, see http://www.j18.org) The November 30th global day of action would be organised in a non-hierarchical way, as a DECENTRALISED AND INFORMAL NETWORK of autonomous groups that struggle in solidarity and co-operation employing non-authoritarian, grassroots democratic forms of organisation. Your INITIATIVE AND PARTICIPATION, no matter how small, are crucial to the success of the November 30th day of action in your location. If your group or organisation plans an action on November 30th, please let others know as soon as possible, to FACILITATE NETWORKING and communication, as well as International media efforts. Please send your contact information to: n30contacts[at]angelfire.com to be included in an international contacts list. The more detailed information you send (land address, phone number, fax number, email) the better, but, for your own security, do not include any contact information that you prefer not to be made public. We expect to COMMUNICATE INTERNATIONALLY PRIMARILY BY EMAIL, and so encourage all groups and individuals who plan to take action to subscribe to suitable mailing lists, and in general make efforts to STAY IN TOUCH through this and other means. There is a list of available mailing lists in the appendix below. Please FORWARD THIS PROPOSAL to appropriate lists and to people who will be interested, reproduce it and circulate, put it on a web site, and most importantly, ACT. NOVEMBER 30 GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION COLLECTIVE N30 c/o IWW, 5215 Ballard NW, Seattle, WA. 98107, (+1 - 206) 706-6250, http://go.to/n30 APPENDIX: I. Mailing lists THE NOVEMBER 30 DISCUSSION LIST: This list allows for participants around the globe to co-ordinate and discuss the November 30th global day of action. Subscribers will receive information and updates about the N30 preparations around the world. To subscribe, go to: http://n30.listbot.com THE NO2WTO DISCUSSION LIST: This discussion list has been set up to generate and co-ordinate networking among people interested in radical mobilisation in Seattle for WTO (as in contrast to the generally reformist tendencies of the general Seattle coalition). Subscribe and unsubscribe directly from: http://no2wto.listbot.com/ II. References NOVEMBER 30 DAY OF ACTION WEB SITE The November 30th website will contain information and updates about the November 30th preparations around the world, a regularly updated list of participating groups around the world, announcements of language specific mailing lists, WTO info, etc: http://go.to/n30 N30 Website http://flag.blackened.net/~global N30 call by IWW http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/lobby/8771/iwwwto.html N30 Seattle Walkout http://walkout.listbot.com N30 Seattle Direct Action Network http://www.agitprop.org/artandrevolution/wto JUNE 18th global day of action: http://www.j18.org/ and http://www.infoshop.org/june18.html Peoples Global Action against 'Free' Trade and the WTO (PGA): <pga[at]agp.org>, http://www.agp.org ____________________________________________________________________________top 6. Escape From America Newsletter http://www.escapeartist.com/efan/efan.htm How would you like to homestead free beach front land on the Mosquito Coast? Want to invest in real estate in Budapest? Want to find a job in Brasil, Paris, Tokyo? Want to fly to Cuba? Invest offshore? Find a deserted island? Get free of big brother? Buy a farm in Venezuela? We can tell you how ...and we will. There is no fee for our magazine. It is sent by email and can be subscribed to online. All articles are posted on our website and are viewed free to anyone who visits our website. It can be seen at: http://www.escapeartist.com/efan/efan.htm and subscribed to at: http://www.escapeartist.com/efan/efan1.htm Our journal is for anyone who wants to begin living their life. I am the editor Contact: Roger Gallo Email: editor[at]escapeartist.net From NewJour - http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour ____________________________________________________________________________top 7. WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources Dear Webmaster: For possible use in Library juice, I would like to notify you of the new URL for the WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources, now with over 1400 annotated links in many areas of international affairs. It is frequently maintained,and should be of use to journalists, researchers, professors, and students, among others. It has received recommendations from several Internet academic organizations, including CHOICE Magazine, Internet Scout, and the Argus Clearinghouse. The new address of the site is: http://www.etown.edu/vl/ Please announce its availability to your associates who may be interested. We would appreciate a link from your site, if appropriate. Thank you. Wayne Selcher ____________________________________________________________________________top 8. Buy Nothing Day - November 26/27 The Next International Buy Nothing Day will be celebrated on Friday November 26 / Saturday November 27. It will be a day of cheerfull actions about consumption, environment, human rights, fair sharing and sustainable development. Participate in this world-wide protest-day against western over-consumption! For more information: 1. Have a look at http://www.ddh.nl/bnd (partly in English). 2. To receive a more extensive message, send this two-line message to <Majordomo[at]ddh.nl>: info bnd-list end 3. Or subscribe to the International Buy Nothing Day Mailing List for more ideas, information and inspiration. To subscribe send this two-line message to <Majordomo[at]ddh.nl>: subscribe bnd-list end ____________________________________________________________________________top 9. Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions http://cscwww.cats.ohiou.edu/~Chastain/index.htm Compiled by Ohio University Professor Emeritus of History James Chastain, this online encyclopedia contains a large number of articles written by scholars from around the world on topics related to the "Springtime of the Peoples," the popular revolutions that spread across Europe in 1848. Users can browse the encyclopedia by alphabetical entry or by contributor, although the latter is not currently available. Typical entries contain one lengthy or several smaller paragraphs and a bibliography. The site also includes an introduction by Chastain which discusses the study of 1848 and the Encyclopedia's contents. Both scholars and students studying nineteenth-century Europe will find this site a handy reference resource. [MD] > From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-1999. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 10. Computer Use and Ownership (U.S. Census Bureau) http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/computer.html This site presents computer use data collected in October of 1984, 1989, 1993, and 1997, as a supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS). The 1997 survey also included questions on Internet Use. The reports and detailed tables examine the characteristics of users, including gender and age groups, and the nature of the tasks being performed. Most documents are in PDF format. - es Subjects: computer - statistics | internet - statistics | census Librarians' Index to the Internet http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/InternetIndex/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 11. New List: E-collections Apologies for cross-posting, but please forward as appropriate **** e-collection[at]mailbase.ac.uk **** A new mailbase list especially for those involved in developing electronic collections of information. Whether you are an archivist, a librarian, a museums professional, or some other type of educational service provider please join and share experiences/information about ongoing e-collection development activities. Topics include collection development strategies, dentifying/assessing/acquiring content, collaborative collecting at local/regional/national levels, and other topical aspects of electronic collection management. To join, please send a message to: mailbase[at]mailbase.ac.uk Which says: join e-collections Your Name stop [Note - please replace 'Your' with your first name and 'Name' with your last name]. You will then receive a confirmation message from mailbase. Just cut the code it sends you out of this message, and email it back to mailbase to confirm that your address has been recorded correctly. For additional information about this new list, please contact: Stuart Lee stuart.lee[at]computing-services.oxford.ac.uk Alicia Wise alicia.wise[at]kcl.ac.uk We'll look forward to hearing from you! Cheers, Alicia Wise JISC Collections Manager ******************************************* Joint Information Systems Committee JCEI Coordination Office Information Services and Systems King's College London Strand London WC2R 2LS (0171) 848 2556 alicia.wise[at]kcl.ac.uk ******************************************* ____________________________________________________________________________top 12. A note from the server side of Library Juice First, a note to web searchers who arrived here by searching for "Martain Luther King, Jr.," spelled as written there, Martain. The name is spelled Martin, without a second A. You'll have a more successful search using the correct spelling. Issue 2:2 of Library Juice has an item about Martin Luther King, Jr., and also an item containing email from someone with the last name "Martain." This page gets hit every couple of days by someone searching for "Martain Luther King Jr.'s I Had a Dream Speech" using the Google search engine. That seems like an awful lot of people spelling the name wrong, but it really isn't. It's a common enough thing to seach for, and in the search results (using the wrong spelling), my page was coming up first, so it's been getting hit each time. Out of many thousands of searches for Martin Luther King each day, I get a hit on the misspelling every so often. That seems statistically to be expected. But interesting. How did I find out about this? Through the magic of log files. Log files are very useful. If you are a library student and your school gives you a home page, ask for access to your log files, or install a cgi program which makes log files. On libr.org I have access to logs supplied by the web hosting company I use as well as logs generated by the AXS program from Fluid Dynamics, which I installed on the server myself. I check those AXS logs daily. Some people I know use services residing on other websites to log visits to their sites. I chose to install my own so that I would have more control over the file (and more privacy). A typical AXS log entry looks like this: -- A visitor from powermacl-13.chicojr.chico.k12.ca.us (198.49.104.63) was logged once, starting at 1:33:21 PM on Tuesday, October 12, 1999. The initial browser was Mozilla/4.04 (Macintosh; I; PPC, Nav). This visitor first arrived from http://google.netscape.com/netscape?query=martain+luther+king+jr.s+i+have+a+dream+speech and visited http://www.libr.org/Juice/issues/vol2/LJ_2.2.html -- The first line gives the host name and IP address of the visitor. The host name (which is not always present in a log entry, because not all computers have host names) indicates that the visiting computer is part of a K-12 school district in Chico, California. The next line gives the date and time of the visit. Since most servers, including the one libr.org resides on, don't have their clocks set correctly, and you don't always know what time zone they're in anyway, the time isn't trustworthy, except as a relative gauge. The date is more or less correct. On the third line, "Mozilla" just means Netscape or a Netscape-like browser. (Sometimes MS Internet Explorer also calls itself Mozilla when it visits. "Mozilla" is a big, powerful Mosaic browser, i.e. Netscape's original improvement.) The next lines are the most interesting, because they tell you the URL from which a person followed a link to your page and what page they visited. In many search engines, you may have noticed, your search is encoded into the URL. This is very useful in a log file, because it can help you to analyze people's search patterns and learn how people are finding your pages. You can use this information to refine your meta tags so that people will find you more accurately. It is also good simply for getting a better idea of what the average web user is doing. I get many irrelevant hits to my pages, many of which I can't explain. For example, the following: -- A visitor from (204.124.160.235) was logged once, starting at 1:46:24 PM on Tuesday, October 19, 1999. The initial browser was Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; MSN 2.5; Windows 98). This visitor first arrived from http://ink.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=free+stories+of+fisrt+time+gay+sex&hc=0&hs=0 and visited http://www.libr.org/Juice/issues/vol1/LJ_8.html -- I don't know how this search turned up Library Juice 1:8 (though I'll admit I didn't check and see what that issue contains.) It might have had the words "gay," "free," "time," "stories," and "sex," or any combination of those. Most hits are either relevant or partially relevant, however. And most irrelevant hits came for an obvious reason. For example: -- A visitor from cf.webzone.net (208.165.103.2) was logged once, starting at 11:21:04 PM on Monday, October 11, 1999. The initial browser was Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT; DigExt). This visitor first arrived from http://www.google.com/search?q=is+it+harmful+to+drink+pickle+juice and visited http://www.libr.org/Juice/issues/vol1/LJ_36.html -- Google ranks results based on the number of links to a site. Library Juice ranks very highly by their methods (try searching Google for "Juice") so this search by someone worried about their pickle juice habit found me. Library Juice 1:36 may also have the word "harmful" in it or maybe even "pickle." Not all hits are from search engines, of course. The URL providing the link to one of your pages is called a "referrer." One of the things that I find most useful about my logs is the ability to see who is linking to me. I often learn about brand new pages that interest me when the author is testing his or her links, and one of them is to a page somewhere on libr.org. I find a lot of the Library Juice home pages of the week in this way, and find out about people doing things in my area of interest. I also find useful resource compendia this way. Another thing that is useful about logs is the ability to see, in many cases, who is visiting your site and what they are looking at. Well, it's rare that you can tell exactly who someone is by their log entry, but occassionally their host name will include the computer users name if it is a static IP address (for instance, often a DSL line will give the user and address that contains their name), and sometimes you can piece together the person's identity by the company or institution identified in the host name and the pages visited. There is a computer owned by Goldman-Sachs, the financial firm, that visits my the gallery page on my personal website at least once a day. I have no idea who that is, but I suspect it is a software program designed to track changes to a site. In general, log files can give you a view of the web from the inside, that is from the server side, and this an important perspective on the information landscape. Log files don't involve leaving "cookies" on a visitor's computer, and only show you the information that their computers give you "voluntarily." If you have access to the server, this is your information. However, many people open their log files to public access. If you ever see one of those little symbols on a web page that looks like a tiny graph, a blue box with a jagged red line in it, that is a link to the remote log for the website you are visiting. If you click on it you may be able to see the most recent referrers to that site. People who have websites on geocities or other free servers, who don't have access to their server logs or cgi-bins, often use these remote services. And that is a peek at the inside of the web via Library Juice. ____________________________________________________________________________top 13. The _Annotated_ Grateful Dead Lyrics: a Web Site http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/ Forgotten the third verse of "Eyes of the World?" Wondering just what Jerry mumbled after "Eight sided whispering hallelujah hatrack" on your copy of "The Eleven?" from Las Vegas in 1968? Or would you like to know what Robert Hunter meant by the "the transitive nightfall of diamonds?" Look no further than this site, created and maintained by David Dodd, Branch Manager of the Civic Center Branch of the Marin County Free Library, and co-author of _The Grateful Dead and the Deadheads: An Annotated Bibliography_. Clearly a labor of love, the site offers the full text of songs by Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow, the Dead's principal lyricists, accompanied by footnotes and possible explanations of various passages by Dodd and others. In addition, the site includes discographies, bibliographies, and thematic essays. Grateful Dead enthusiasts and tape collectors will undoubtedly enjoy this site. [MD] > From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-1999. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 14. Monk, Thelonious - 1917-1982 http://www.achilles.net/~howardm/tsmonk.html Devoted to the life and work of the remarkable jazz piano master, bandleader, and composer, the Thelonious Monk Website provides a wealth of information and interesting links. Includes discographies with reproductions of the original album sleeves, photo galleries, bibliographies, and the full text of many reviews and articles, including Time magazine's 1964 cover feature. Searchable. - jg Subjects: people | jazz Librarians' Index to the Internet http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/InternetIndex/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 15. "How to organize a public library." From How to travel with a salmon and other essays, by Umberto Eco. 1. The various catalogues must be housed as far apart as possible from one another. All care must be taken to separate the catalogue of books from that of periodicals, and these two from the catalogue by subject; similarly, the recent acquisitions must be kept well away from older collections. If possible, the spelling in the two catalogues (recent acquisitions and older collections) must be different. In the recent acquisitions, for example, "pajama" should be spelled with an "a", in the older, "pyjama" with a "y". "Chaikovskii" in recent acquisitions will follow the Library of Congress system; in the older catalogue the name will be spelled in the old-fashioned way, with "Tch". 2. The subjects must be determined by the librarian. On their copyright pages the books must bear no indication of the subjects under which they are to be listed. 3. Call numbers should be impossible to decipher and, if possible, very complex, so that anyone filling out a call slip will never have room to include the last line of numbers and will assume they are irrelevant. Then the desk attendant will hand the slip back to him with the admonition to fill it out properly. 4. The time between request and delivery must be as long as possible. 5. Only one book should be released at a time. 6. The books distributed by the attendant after the request form has been properly submitted cannot be taken into the reference room, so the scholars must divide their working life into two fundamental aspects: reading on the one hand, and reference consultation on the other. The library must discourage, as conducive to strabismus, any crossover tendencies or attempts at the simultaneous reading of several books. 7. Insofar as possible, no photocopier should be available; if such a machine does exist, access to it must be made very time-consuming and toilsome, fees should be higher than those in any neighborhood copy shop, and the maximum number of copied pages permitted should not exceed two or three. 8. The librarian must consider the reader an enemy, a waster of time (otherwise he or she would be at work), and a potential thief. 9. The reference librarian's office must be impregnable. 10. Loans must be discouraged. 11. Interlibrary loans must be impossible or, at best, must require months. The ideal course, in any event, is to ensure the impossibility of discovering the contents of other libraries. 12. Given this policy, theft must be very easy. 13. Opening hours must coincide precisely with local office hours, determined by foresighted discussion with trade union officials and the Chamber of Commerce; total closing on Saturday, Sunday, evenings and mealtimes goes without saying. The library's worst enemy is the employed student; its best friend is Thomas Jefferson, someone who has a large personal library and therefore no need to visit the public library (to which he may nevertheless bequeath his books at his death). 14. It must be impossible to find any refreshment inside the library, under any circumstances; and it must also be impossible to leave the library to seek sustenance elsewhere without first returning all books in use, so that, after having a cup of coffee, the student must fill out requests for them again. 15. It must be impossible on a given day to find the book one had been using the day before. 16. It must be impossible to learn who has a book that is currently on loan. 17. If possible, no restrooms. 18. Ideally, the reader should be unable to enter the library. If he does actually enter, exploiting with tedious insistence a right, granted on the basis of the principles of 1789, that has nevertheless not been assimilated by the collective sensibilty, he must never ever -- with the exception of rapid visits to the reference shelves -- be allowed access to the sanctum of the stacks. ____________________________________________________________________________top 16. An apology and a notice Last week, I published an email conversation about Steve Coffman's "Earth's Largest Library" idea that took place on GAY-LIBN. I was happy to publish it, because it was the only discussion out there (that I was privy to) that actually took the form of a debate. It was very interesting, and, owing to the spirit of that list, also had moments of fun. I published this conversation in the way I usually have, without asking participants for their permission to be republished, under the assumption that the conversation was already public, since it was on a publically accessible list. This was a serious mistake, as I learned from the subsequent reaction on GAY-LIBN. List members were shocked and offended that their conversation had been republished. Far from public, they regard their list space as private and safe. In republishing list-members' email without prior permission I was jeopardizing their privacy. I should have considered this and asked prior permission from the people whose email I used, and I want to apologize in this forum to the people whom I have upset or offended. In the future I plan to seek prior permission before I republish contributions to listserv conversations. Seeking permission in the future is a simple adjustment. A thornier issue for me is what to do about the archives. They contain quite a few listserv conversations from LIBREF-L, the ALA Council list, PUBLIB, and others. In many cases contributors are aware that they have been republished in Library Juice. No one had complained before last week, and people have been generally pleased to find themselves republished. However, this is no guarantee that everyone whose words appear in back issues of Library Juice would be happy if they found out about it. It wouldn't be practical to go through all my back issues to ask for retrospective permission from all contributors. So, I am torn between potentially risking an unwanted exposure and taking down the archives, which I believe are otherwise valuable. I have consulted a lawyer about the copyright issues, and have learned that I am not really affected by copyright law in this situation, mainly because I am happy to respond to anyone's request to have their words removed from the archives. The ethical issue is more important to me than the legal issue. I would be happy to hear subscribers' thoughts about this question. Write me at rory[at]libr.org. Thanks, Rory Litwin ____________________________________________________________________________top L I B R A R Y J U I C E | http://libr.org/Juice/ | | Library Juice is supported by a voluntary subscription | fee of $10 per year, variable based on ability and | desire to pay. You may send a check payable in US funds | to Rory Litwin, at PO Box 720511, San Jose, CA 95172 | | Original material and added value in Library Juice | is copyright-free; beyond that the publisher makes | no guarantees. Library Juice is a free weekly | publication edited and published by Rory Litwin. | Original senders are credited wherever possible; | opinions are theirs. If you are the author of some | email in Library Juice which you want removed from | the web, please write to me and I will remove it. | | Your comments and suggestions are welcome. | | Juice[at]libr.org This page was created by SimpleText2Html 1.0.3 on 9-Nov-99.