Library Juice 3:25

Library Juice 3:25 - June 28, 2000 Contents: 1. Progressive Librarians Around the World 2. Sandy Berman on KUCI "Subversity" show 3. Core Values on PUBLIB 4. Student project on alternative literature 5. Note on ALA-Commissioned Report on Outsourcing and Privatization 6. The Pacifica Radio/UC Berkeley Social Activism Sound Recording Project 7. Adam Hodgkin and Mary Ann Meyers on xrefer.com 8. Macho Librarians 9. Getting involved in Open Source Software 10. Linux distro war in public libraries? 11. ACTION ALERT: Nader Left Out of Media Websites 12. The Nation's Election 2000 resources 13. Recent book about French National Library 14. GEO - Grassroots Economic Organizing Newsletter 15. Thomas Hennen and Mary Ann Meyers on Questia 16. A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases 17. SearcheBooks.com 18. Findlaw Forms 19. Reference Questions (poem) Quote for the week: "I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." -Eugene Debs Home page of the week: Chris Mays (the design is meant to be annoying) http://thecity.sfsu.edu/~cmays/ _____________________________________________________________________________top 1. Progressive Librarians Around the World Date: 26 Jun 2000 23:06:04 -0000 From: "Progressive Librarians Around the World" <dehmlow[at]bigfoot.com> To: "Progressive Librarians Around the World" <ProgLib[at]listbot.com> Subject: New entries Progressive Librarians Around the World - http://www.germany.net/teilnehmer/100/115158/adresse.htm Dear colleagues, I just wanted to let you now, that there are now 73 colleagues from 14 countries on our list. New entries are from Iran, Korea and Peru. All the best to you, Raimund Dehmlow ________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to ProgLib-unsubscribe[at]listbot.com _____________________________________________________________________________top 2. Sandy Berman on KUCI "Subversity" show - RealAudio This from Daniel Tsang, this year's Eubanks Award winner, describing an archived edition of his radio show at KUCI - "Subversity": Activist Librarian of the People On our June 2, 2000 show, we chatted with Sandy Berman, librarian extraordinaire, and advocate of democratizing and making libraries more socially responsible. Hear about "bibliocide" and "internal censorship". Are libraries turning into corporate entities with no soul? Read the press release http://kuci.org/~dtsang/subversity/pr000602.htm To hear the interview using a Real Player, click on: http://kuci.org/~dtsang/subversity/Sv000602.ram _____________________________________________________________________________top 3. Core Values on PUBLIB Some of the best discussion of the Core Values Statement draft can be found in the PUBLIB archive for June. The archive by date is at: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/PubLib/archive/0006/ Searching the page (which is long) for "core values" should get you to most of the discussion. Some other comments come under the subject lines "Capturing the Spirit beyond the Letter" and "Re: [ALAOIF:11538] Re: [Fwd: Conformism or Consensus?]" The June archive by subject line is at: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/PubLib/archive/0006/subject.html#start _____________________________________________________________________________top 4. Student project on alternative literature Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 14:48:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Abigail <velocity[at]geekbait.com> To: Rory <rlitwin[at]earthlink.net> re: library juice. here's a little blurb on the archiving alt lit project. i'm going running now. The Collection and Archiving of Alternative Literature project began as an undergraduate research project; I'm bringing it with me into my MS of Information program, for fun and, er, profit. The purpose is to compile an online resource detailing the history, mission and methods of various zine libraries as well as Special Collections that include alternative literature. (At the moment I'm only including libraries and archives, although distributors might be an interesting project as well. If anyone's working on that, let me know!) I'm interested in hearing from anyone with comments or suggestions about the site, or with connections to archives I haven't yet included. http://www.geekbait.com/library -- abigail leah plumb http://www.geekbait.com _____________________________________________________________________________top 5. Note on ALA-Commissioned Report on Outsourcing and Privatization Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 01:00:31 -0500 To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l[at]ala.org> From: Al Kagan <akagan[at]uiuc.edu> Subject: [SRRTAC-L:4883] Outsourcing report I just got the Executive Summary of the report ALA Council commissioned on outsourcing and privatization. Unfortunately, the full report will not be on the web until July 4th. The report was done at Texas Woman's University, School of Library and Information Studies. The principal investigator is Robert S. Martin and the report was done within the context of a regular doctoral seminar on Trends and Issues in Library Management. "The fifteen students in the class comprised the research team and carried out the study." The charge was to investigate outsourcing and privatization on library services and management. Believe it or not, they used a definition of privatization that resulted in the inability to find any such cases! That definition was "where control over policy was relinquished to a vendor." I have heard that a number of federal libraries have been completely privatized and therefore fit this definition. So without any research, I can already say by their own definition that their research on this aspect is not credible. Regarding outsourcing, they found that "... the evidence supports the conclusion that outsourcing has been an effective managerial tool...." I wonder how the ALA Outsourcing Task Force will feel about the report since it contradicts the ALA TF's conclusions. We might ask the question on how this grant was awarded? We might also ask the question on whether or not such a study should be done as an academic exercise within a regular seminar course? Al Kagan African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration Africana Unit, Room 328 University of Illinois Library 1408 W. Gregory Drive Urbana, IL 61801, USA tel. 217-333-6519 fax. 217-333-2214 e-mail. akagan[at]uiuc.edu _____________________________________________________________________________top 6. The Pacifica Radio/UC Berkeley Social Activism Sound Recording Project http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacifica.html A library of recordings of significant people and events that shaped the politics and culture of the 1960's. The first phase of this project focuses specifically on social activist movements in Berkeley, California, particularly the Free Speech Movement (FSM). Recordings include radio programs as well as unedited field recordings. The project is a cooperative venture of radio station KPFA-FM (Berkeley, California), the Pacifica Radio Archives (PRA) (Los Angeles), and the UC Berkeley Library. Requires RealAudio for connections slower than T-1, which requires StreamWorks. - jb >From Librarians Index to the Internet - http://lii.org _____________________________________________________________________________top 7. Adam Hodgkin and Mary Ann Meyers on xrefer.com First Adam: Dear Rory I read Mary Ann Meyer's letter (7 June, 2000) about xrefer with interest. [See http://libr.org/Juice/issues/vol3/LJ_3.23.html#10 -ed.] We see xrefer as a resource for the library community, but also for researchers, writers and journalists, for students and educators and most of all for the web user who wishes to be well informed. We are 'yet another reference resource' and librarians will be important to us in explaining to their readers how we can be used; but we are obviously only one part of the 'range of reference solutions' which the web is offering to users and readers. Librarians who use the site will see how we fit in: a new method for consulting reputable and generally reliable reference works. We have built our reference engine using XML and software, assisted by editors. We enrich our texts by providing additional cross-references 'xreferences' which take users to other works on the site which have entries of relevance to any particular topic. To do this we rely on the input of the editors of all the reference works we have on the site. The cross-references which they thought to insert in their individual books are our starting point. The process is highly automated, so we have not generally needed to employ librarians or editors to insert the xreferences. But we are pleased to be getting feedback from librarians about what we should be doing; whether differently, the same, or 'more of and better'. Not having an entry on 'xeriscape' we take Mary Ann's observation as an encouragement to find 'more and better' reference material. By the way, we do NOT claim to be a 'family safe' site and the Bloomsbury Dictionary of Slang, which will be going into the site today or tomorrow, has a lot of taboo words and phrases. But a comprehensive reference service must take the rough with the smooth. On the other hand if the library community tells us that we ought to have a 'safe search' option then we will aim to provide it. adam Adam Hodgkin Managing Director, xrefer.com Limited See xrefer's latest reviews: http://www.the-times.co.uk/interface/insight/story544.html http://www.ft.com/ftsurveys/spb246.htm e adam.hodgkin[at]xrefer.com t +44(0) 20 7479 9208 (direct) m +44(0) 7931 371744 f +44(0) 20 7479 9212 w http://www.xrefer.com Macmillan House, Paddington Station, London, W2 1FT, UK .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. From: "Mary Ann Meyers" <ljmmam[at]hypermall.net> To: <adam.hodgkin[at]xrefer.com> Cc: <Rory[at]libr.org> Subject: Re: xrefer and who makes the xreferences Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 13:05:47 -0500 Dear Mr. Hodgkin: Thank you for sending me a copy of your letter to Rory Litwin in regard to my comparison of xrefer and LibraryCard. I appreciate your viewpoint on questions I have about these and similar website resources. My interest lies primarily in discovering how these new information-brokering website ventures promote or undermine traditional library values, e.g.intellectual freedom, free access to information for everyone, diversity of viewpoint, public service. One of my co-lateral interests is to ponder whether this new method of marketing information will supplant the professional librarian and, in effect, make use of the public service ethos of professional librarians to obviate the need for librarians. In considering these questions, I do not intend to single out xrefer as better or worse than other similar websites. Some questions follow for your industry and my fellow librarians to consider in terms of the authority of the information and in terms of their effects on the future of public librarianship and professional ethics: 1. How does the delivery of information provided by dotcom websites differ from that provided by dotedu, dotgov, dotorg websites? Print references rarely contain advertising; websites often rely on advertising or "sponsors." Is there a conflict of interest between the advertising/sponsorship and the information provided? What is the quality of the information on the website in comparison to its print predecessors? Has the re-packaging of the information to suit a virtual environment affected its quality? 2. Does the website list the names and credentials of the content evaluators, content managers, selectors, editors, advisory board members? Many of these job titles are ambiguous and non-descriptive of the range of duties or the training and experience required. Does the website offer the services of professional librarians to explain the use of the resources, to offer guidance via a reference interview? Are librarians involved as "content managers" or "editors" in assessing the quality of the information provided and in devising an arrangement that will meet the various information-seeking behaviors of the website's customers? 3. Does the website state a philosophy of information delivery, a set of ethics, pledged and practiced by the website owners and their employees? How does this code of behavior compare with the values of public librarianship? Does the website hide an information-filtering statement in, e.g. the FAQ--or is it prominently displayed? Is filtered information the only option offered? How is the website's information-delivery set of ethics integrated with the primary aim of any business--that of profit-making? LibraryCard.com, xrefer.com, Ebrary.com and other similar websites have chosen names which make a subconscious (or conscious) association with public and academic libraries. Free, direct public access to dotcom resources can easily be changed to pay-per-view, privatized information delivery to a wider customer base. At present most of these sites require no substantive or continuing participation from professional librarians--and this may, during the present time when librarians hope to see the continued existence of bricks-and-mortar libraries, seem benign. Whatever the future brings for libraries, I hope my fellow librarians will take the time to ponder the increased interest of commercial, monied entities in establishing dotcom websites for the purposes of (now or in the future) direct sales of information to the general public, without the intermediation of librarians. Mr. Hodgkin states, "Librarians will be important to us in explaining to their readers how we can be used." That is a very limited role for librarians--and one which has the potential of making use of our public service ideal to undermine our own profession. Aside from the ethical values we bring to the public, librarians assist their patrons in information-seeking through reference interviews. Librarians design information-delivery models. Librarians counsel patrons in the use of resources and in how to compare and determine the relative information-quality merits of various resources. Librarians employ their training, experience, empathy, intuition--the foundations of both the science and the art of their profession--to devise and implement classification systems, indexes, and cross-references; to envision how best to serve their patrons' browsing and serendipitous discovery preferences. Librarians offer a wide range of experiences and talents --and a powerful ethic--useful to the far-sighted and insightful website owner or manager. Yet, typically, dotcom website entrepreneurs see the profession as playing a very limited role--perhaps as a temporary intermediary, perhaps as a useful temporary marketing tool. I welcome useful new online resources that offer value-added services like xrefer's cross-referencing of reputable resources. However, I would ask the library community to consider this--that dotcom websites are co-opting library classification schemes, library terminology, library procedures, models and systems. They often are modeling themselves in the minds of the public as mirrors of public and academic libraries, but without assurances that the information that they provide is not biased toward a particular viewpoint, without assurances that library philosophy and ethics will undergird their enterprises, without any guiding principle of selflessly-motivated public service. Can we make our influence felt in this new information marketplace? Can we convey to our patrons the value-added service they receive from us while we are referring them to excellent websites? Cordially, Mary Ann Meyers ljmmam[at]hypermall.net _____________________________________________________________________________top 8. Macho Librarians Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 20:35:58 -0700 (PDT) From: "Absher, Linda (absher)" <absher[at]sequent.com> To: publib <publib[at]sunsite.berkeley.edu> Subject: Macho Librarians.... Looks like the Lipstick Librarian has met her match! http://maverick.brainiac.com/mwwg/mlwg.html LInda -- Linda Absher / absher[at]sequent.com / 503.578.3485 Intranet Librarian / IBM NUMA-Q/ Beaverton, OR "The more I read, the more questions I have. Every time I pass a library I get an anxiety attack." --SeaQuest DSV _____________________________________________________________________________top 9. Getting involved in Open Source Software Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 15:14:34 -0400 From: Matt Wilcox <matthew.wilcox[at]yale.edu> To: jake-list[at]vectra.med.yale.edu, newlib-l[at]usc.edu Subject: getting involved in open source software Hello folks, I came across these two articles on getting involved in open source software projects like jake ( http://jake.med.yale.edu ). I have found them useful in thinking about how I (as someone with miniscule programming skills) can contribute--antything from testing to working on documentation or working on making the website better. I first found out about these on the news items sidebar at http://www.oss4lib that includes stuff from advogato.com Importance of Non-Developer Supporters in Free Software http://www.advogato.org/article/72.html In-Roads to Free Software Development http://advogato.org/article/107.html enjoy, --matt ------------------------------------------------------------- matthew.wilcox[at]yale.edu 203-785-5680 "They say no man is an island, but I'll bet if you got a whole bunch of men and duct taped them all together, you could call that an island. If they didn't sink, that is." (James Key) _____________________________________________________________________________top 10. Linux distro war in public libraries? http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/Forum15/HTML/000159.html This is a thread on LinuxNewbie.org, a site for new users of Linux, the popular open-source UNIX variant. Linux comes in a variety of competing distributions ("distros") which offer slightly different features and installation experiences, as well as slightly different hardware compatibility issues. Someone had the idea to let different distros fight it out via library users, who would borrow them from the library for installing Linux on their computers. While I don't think such a "distro war" in a library-as-battleground would decide anything, I think making Linux distributions available in a public library is a good idea, and inexpensive. Here are some quotes from the thread: ......... "The target: Public Libraries in your town. "Anyone who has a cd burner make 2 copies of your favorite distro, as well as any other current/recent version distro you have laying around. Print the installation howto a couple of times. Take a cd and a set of printouts, put them in a big envelope. Total cost at this point is $5 max per cd/instruction package. "Put them all in your local public library, and request that they be made available for checkout and inter-library loan. "The distro with the most late fines/fees in a year wins . "I am going to the library tomorrow." ..... I took 3 cd's to my local library.Slak7,Man 7 and Suse 6.3 and they wouldn't put then in their stack because they couldn't scan them with Norton Anti Wirus ??????HAHA what can I say...never kick a gift hourse in the mouth. ...... So your library wouldn't accept it because they couldn't scan them? That's lame. I really like this idea, I'm going to do the same thing, thanks for bringing it up. _____________________________________________________________________________top 11. FAIR-L Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Media analysis, critiques and news reports ACTION ALERT: Nader Left Out of Media Websites June 22, 2000 According to recent political polls, the Green Party's Ralph Nader is now the leading third party candidate for president. But you wouldn't know it from looking at online news media websites. In a Gallup poll released June 9, for example, Ralph Nader ranked third among possible presidential candidates, with 6 percent, vs. 2 percent for Buchanan; Nader edged ahead of Buchanan 4 percent to 2 percent in a May 31 Zogby Reuters poll, and led 5 percent to 4 percent in an April 29 Hart/Teeter survey. Buchanan has been included in most lists of candidates available on most major news websites. Information about Nader, however, has been strangely absent. On the joint New York Times/ABC News site "Political Points," the candidates listed under "Elections" are George W. Bush, Al Gore, Patrick Buchanan and Alan Keyes (who is still contesting the Republican nomination despite Bush having an insurmountable majority of committed delegates). Though the Green Party is listed under "Parties and Persuasions," Nader is absent from the list of possible candidates. CBSNews.com's "Campaign 2000" site lists only Gore, Bush and Buchanan as candidates in its "Correspondent's Handbook," which is meant to be a "political consumer's guide" for journalists covering the elections. Though Nader is listed in the site's "Candidate Schedules" section, he is excluded from the more substantive "Where They Stand" and "Follow the Dollar" pages, while Buchanan is included. CNN.com's "White House hopefuls," like MSNBC.com's "Decision 2000" candidate profiles, features Buchanan, Bush, Gore and Keyes-- but not Nader. Time.com only offers profiles of Bush and Gore. Two news sites that do include Nader in their lists of candidates are WashingtonPost.com and FoxNews.com. (The Fox site also mentions Libertarian candidate Harry Browne.) ACTION: Please contact the following websites and let them know that Ralph Nader, the leading third party candidate, deserves to be included in their lists of candidates. As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair[at]fair.org with your correspondence. CONTACT: New York Times: mailto:navigate[at]nytimes.com MSNBC: mailto:world[at]msnbc.com CBS: mailto:webmail[at]cbs.com CNN: mailto:cnn.feedback[at]cnn.com Time: mailto:webletters[at]pathfinder.com ---------- Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair[at]fair.org ). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented example of media bias or censorship. All messages to the 'FAIR-L' list will be forwarded to the editor of the list. Also, please send copies of email correspondence, including any responses, to us at: fair[at]fair.org . Feel free to spread this message around. Put it on conferences where it is appropriate. We depend on word of mouth to get our message out, so please let others know about FAIR and this mailing list. Don't miss a single e-mail from FAIR-L. You can subscribe to FAIR-L at our web site: http://www.fair.org/emaillist.html Or, you can send a "subscribe FAIR-L enter your full name" command to LISTSERV[at]AMERICAN.EDU. The subscriber list is kept confidential, so no need to worry about spammers. You may leave the list at any time by sending a "SIGNOFF FAIR-L" command to LISTSERV[at]AMERICAN.EDU. Please support FAIR by becoming a member. You will receive FAIR's magazine, EXTRA! and its newsletter, EXTRA! Update. You can become a member by calling 1-800-847-3993 from 9 to 5 Eastern Time (be sure to tell them you got the information on-line) or by sending $19 with your name and address to: FAIR/EXTRA! Subscription Service P.O. Box 170 Congers, NY 10920-9930 FAIR (212) 633-6700 http://www.fair.org/ E-mail: fair[at]fair.org list administrators: FAIR-L-request[at]american.edu _____________________________________________________________________________top 12. The Nation's Election 2000 resources http://www.thenation.com/issue/000403/0403links.shtml _____________________________________________________________________________top 13. Recent book about French National Library From: "Eric Fenster" <efenster[at]igc.org> Organization: Moscow Study Trips To: "Moscow study trips"<efenster[at]igc.org> Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 15:30:11 +0200 Subject: Recent book about French National Library I've written here in the past about the problems in design and function of the new French National Library. Followers of this tragi-comedy might be interested in a recent book: Jean-Marc Mandosio L'Effondrement de la Très Grande Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Ses cause, ses conséquences Paris 1999 Editions de l'Encyclopédie des Nuisances 74, rue de Ménilmontant 75020 Paris France 75 FF (about US$11) +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+* Eric Fenster efenster[at]igc.org http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/efenster [sic] http://efenster.home.igc.org [sic] Next Moscow Study Trip(s) in 2001 Web site has FAQs, trip details, anecdotal accounts, sample schedules, photos, more ... _____________________________________________________________________________top 14. GEO - Grassroots Economic Organizing Newsletter "Mission: GEO provides news and a bi-monthly forum on grassroots organizing to build and finance worker-owned, democratically run, community based, ecologically sustainable enterprises. GEO promotes networking to encourage the growth of a self-conscious movement for economic democracy." Issue #36 (March/April 1999) contains articles on education for cooperative ownership and grassroots economic activism at the college level, in both traditional and alternative settings. It also has book reviewsa bibliography, a calendar, and brief news items. It appears extremely useful for anyone interested in community based economic activity, and would be a good addition to a library collection supporting sustainable development. ISSN: 1071-0590 Web page: http://www.geonewsletter.org Mailing address: GEO RR 1 Box 124A Stillwater, PA 17878 Subscriptions are $40 per year for libraries, $20 per year for individuals. _____________________________________________________________________________top 15. Thomas Hennen and Mary Ann Meyers on Questia Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 18:41:35 -0700 (PDT) From: "Thomas J. Hennen Jr." <thennen[at]haplr-index.com> To: publib <publib[at]sunsite.berkeley.edu> Subject: The questia question First NetLibrary.com now questia. E-texts in abbundance to provide new challenges to public libraries. Questia is building an online service to provide access to the full text of hundreds of thousands of books, journals and periodicals, as well as tools to easily use this information. Their primary market appears to be liberal arts undergraduates that prefer the net to the physical library and have amounts of money to burn. As an after thought, they may market to libraries, both public and academic. Questia is slated for opening in 2001. Questia expects to have 50,000 volumes digitized in early 2001 and is projected to have over 250,000 within three years. According to them, thatís greater than the number of volumes in over 80 percent of all academic libraries in the United States. The Questia interface will allow students to search, access and interact with thousands of important books and journals from anywhere: from home, from the computer lab or anywhere else they connect to the Internet. The Questia service will have, they say the most valued volumes in the liberal arts from the 20th and 21st centuries (not including textbooks). Anyone will be able to search Questia at no cost to locate books and journals. But to experience the ease and convenience of online viewing of full text and the unique research tools of the Questia service, users will need to subscribe. The collection will be searchable by a word, phrase or concept. Questia says it will allow simultaneous access by an unlimited number of people to a given book at any given time. It will also allow the ability to view, copy and paste text from any page of any book. It will also have tools that allow you to compose and save papers online. The Questia search function, they add, is to be offered to all at no charge. It will allow librarians or professors to find the exact volumes and pages that can answer a studentís question. Because the research process is more efficient and less cumbersome. http://www.questia.com/index.html Are we in libraries ready for this new century? I still think the challenges make it a great time to be a librarian! datcalmguy Thomas J. Hennen Jr. http://www.haplr-index.com 6014 Spring Street Racine,WI 53406 Voice: 414-886-1625 Fax: 414-886-5424 thennen[at]haplr-index.com .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Dear datcalm, Thanks for the current awareness on yet another commercial website dedicated to the "marketplace" of ideas. I just checked out questia. They say they don't expect to replace bricks-and-mortar libraries; but many of the press accounts listed on their website mention them as a "virtual library," and they describe themselves in some of their web content as a "library." They have a (one, as far as I could tell) "professional librarian" on staff who has 25 years experience in "managing collections." Questia does not talk about her degree(s), if any, or of what her experience consisted, or where she has managed collections, or if she will have a role in evaluating and selecting texts for inclusion. Questia mentions its several memberships with various library associations, but does not state whether some texts will be filtered out for political, religious, philosophical, etc. reasons. Will the library profession's code of ethics hold sway over this commercial venture? Rather doubtful. Included texts will be chosen by some vague committee of folks and various "advisory" groups. The narrative style on this site is warm, cozy, and very fuzzy. It looks like a really great way to make some big bucks for people who can co-opt the public library and market it. And just think, they see themselves as a great resource for librarians who can locate citations to full-text online for their "customers"--oops! patrons, that is. What a great idea! Get the librarians to "turn-on" students and other patrons to an online resource they can use at home and obviate the need to go to a library and diminish even further any perceived need for professional librarianship in either bricks-and-mortar or virtual libraries. Yeah, it's a great idea, but I don't feel reassured by their sweet rhetoric. Online research is here. More is inevitable--and more will be tied to e-commerce. Can we guess what their core values are? Professional skeptic, Mary Ann Meyers ljmmam[at]hypermall.net _____________________________________________________________________________top 16. A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995 [.pdf] http://207.153.244.129/ Released on June 12 by the Columbia University Justice Project, the "Liebman Study" is a groundbreaking report that examines every capital conviction and appeal between 1973 and 1995 (nearly 5,500 judicial decisions). It finds that in this 23-year period 68 percent of death penalty verdicts were thrown out when appealed. In other words, serious, reversible errors were found in nearly seven out of ten capital cases reviewed in this period. The majority of these cases were overturned not on technicalities, but for clearly preventable errors, the most prominent of which were "egregiously incompetent" defense lawyers, prosecutorial misconduct, and faulty instructions to jurors. Combined, these "constitute 76% of all error in capital punishment proceedings." The full text of the report is available online in HTML format, accompanied by state/national capital punishment report cards in .pdf format. Note that all of the appendices to the report are not yet available online, but the Justice Project plans to make them available in the near future. [MD] > From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ _____________________________________________________________________________top 17. SearcheBooks.com http://www.searchebooks.com/ MaxBot.com, creator of SearchEdu, SearchGov, and SearchMil (see the January 28, 2000 _Scout Report_), also offers SearcheBooks, a search engine that indexes the full text of "thousands" of online books. Like its siblings, SearcheBooks offers a simple keyword search interface and caches the versions of pages that its robots find. Unlike them, however, SearcheBooks returns two URLs for each hit, one for the provider's page, and one for the full text of the book. While the search engine can be used to find particular references within the books indexed, it is probably best used to search for the books themselves, for personal or pedagogical use, via author, title, or subject. [MD] > From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ _____________________________________________________________________________top 18. Findlaw Forms [.pdf] http://forms.findlaw.com/ Findlaw (last discussed in the June 9, 2000 _Scout Report_) has recently launched an extremely useful free site that offers almost 8,000 state and federal court forms in .pdf format. The forms, logically enough, are grouped into federal and state sections, the first divided by circuits, the second by state (not all states were available at time of review). Users who do not know their circuit court number can select it from a map. Available forms vary by circuit or state, but most include Bankruptcy, Civil, Criminal, Family, and Probate Courts. Others also offer forms for Small Claims, Worker's Compensation, Juvenile, and other Courts. Related resources and a legal dictionary are also provided. An excellent resource, although users should certainly read the Notice posted at the bottom of the page regarding "local rules" before filing any forms. [MD] > From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ _____________________________________________________________________________top 19. Reference Questions (poem) Paul comes back from the dead. They buzz me out to the Circulation Desk; "Are you happy?" he says, and I cannot stop laughing and I am in his arms, his arms, his living arms... I hear my mother, behind me, saying, "I knew she could be happy..." * She visits me at the Reference Desk, the woman wiht the sweetest perfume. She wants a map of Africa, particularly one that shows the rivers. After she is gone, bearing her opened Atlas of the World with Geographical Features, toward the Xerox machine, taking the rivers, but not the perfume, not all of it, I stand there by the atlas case in a flower-field-- all the flowers nodding, nodding, nodding, still sway where she has just passed through them, the woman with sweetest perfume- while the water-sleeked hippopotami are frolicking, frolicking, borne up and splashing, shining; water sheets off them as they rise, making a joyful horrendous noise, under the African sun. * Can I read her some prices over the phone? and if so what does this year's Jeep cost, fully loaded? the four door, not the two. When I ask her how many miles, she tells me 27 thousand-- deduct $2,250, I tell her--as she says, laughing, how do you suppose they got that many miles on it in such a short time? * He is searching for Bobby Fischer, even though he can hardly see any more (so he wants me to read it to him.) He remembers about twenty years ago Bobby was arrested in Los Angeles he can't remember the reason and he wants to read about that (to have me read it to him, really) but all the books on Bobby F. are utterly about chess and the last one, alittle more promising, has no index in which I might have looked up Los Angeles, police dpartment, arrested, if not twenty years ago. So I skim through the big chess matches, game by game, until I find him, Bobby Fischer, on the outskirts of Pasadena wandering alone, talking to himself, no money in his pockets. They took him in as a vagrant and held him for a while at the police station until they found out he was Bobby Fischer, whereupon, shaking their heads, I can see it! they let him go. There is only one paragraph and it doesn't tell much--how he looked, what he wore, did he smell?-- but the reading of it satisfies, somehow, it is sufficient; he nods, and smiles, and turns away. * She needs some information, not very much, just an encyclopedia or something, about the Bahamas, where are they? And what time zone are they in? In the World Almanac, indexed under time zones, is a map of the world about four inches across, with the time zones shown in parallel bands of pastel color. Starting from Florida, you can just make out Cuba and so the Bahamas would be just about there, four hours later than where we are standing- looking at a tiny, imprecise map of the world. A gift to Brenda, who thinks the library might be poetry. - June Hopper Hymas _____________________________________________________________________________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. | | Rory[at]libr.org This page was created by SimpleText2Html 1.0.3 on 27-Jun-100. un-100.