Library Juice 3:7 - Library Juice is now a book and a blog

Library Juice 3:7 - February 16, 2000 Contents: 1. Black History in _The Nation_ 2. WebSerch - The Web Research Resource 3. Public Library Locator 4. Forget banning books, let's burn the library 5. What's happening in West Virginia 6. Call for support for AIP Free Speech Buffet 7. BiS has a new URL 8. Censorware and Memetic Warfare 9. Speakers needed for "Erotica in Libraries" program 10. Information for Social Change - Call for papers 11. SRRT & CLSG on Cuban Libraries 12. Havana International Book Fair 13. Feminist Promotes New Vision for Hierarchical Libraries 14. Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists! 15. Who's Alive and Who's Dead 16. News stories appearing in the February 14 American Libraries Online Quote for the week: "In the place of competencies and commonalities electronic spaces offer swiftly shifting and easily shared particularities. Web spiders, search engines, and software agents are the cyborgian protozoa in an evolutionary scheme that will take us, humans and machines, toward a coevolutionary world of likewise evolving questions. This evolutionary cell-splitting already increasingly takes the form of what I call gritty searches. More cautious creatures are supplanted by more numerous ones. Smoothly constructed searches are increasingly displaced by successive quick approximations that at each turn are cleansed by iterative query refinements, taking place in virtual and actual communities, involving both computational agents and human beings, and resulting in idiosyncratic and dynamic representations of search and searcher alike. To a contemporary reference librarian such searches are liable to signal a loss of clarity. Even when (or especially because) a machine does most of the floundering, these searches seem wastefully spatial, gestural, fuzzy, haphazard, and physical, and thus gritty in the sense that the particularity of an evolving planet and its creatures are gritty. Yet if they herald a loss it is, I think, the cleansing and morphogenetic loss that engenders a newness." -Michael Joyce, in _Othermindedness: the emergence of network culture_, University of Michigan Press, 2000 Home page of the week: Katester http://www.digitalangel.com/katester/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 1. Voices from History http://www.thenation.com/historic/bhm2000/ In honor of Black History Month, The Nation has assembled a package of articles and resource material online. The selections, all originally published in the pages of The Nation over the past 135 years, feature articles that illuminate the magazine's steadfast commitment to racial justice. The selected pieces take on many different subjects and come from many different perspectives. What unites them is not content or style but a particular manner of engaging with the subject at hand: each is infused with moral passion and a critical edge. Each deals not just with the probable or the possible but in what the author thinks and feels is right. It is certainly true, as James Baldwin once wrote, that "the story of the Negro in America is the story of America--It is not a very pretty story." At the same time, Baldwin and others in this collection shed light on the ugliness of American racism to certify that it is intolerable, that America can--must--do better. ____________________________________________________________________________top 2. WebSerch - The Web Research Resource http://www.clubi.ie/webserch/ This site has been "designed for use by librarians and information professionals, and is intended to assist in the evaluation and selection of information retrieval tools and information sources" on the Internet. The site contains information on evaluating search engines and Web resources; search engine specifications; search strategies and tips; and metadata. The site uses a Perl script that allows the user to view the metadata for each page. The author of WebSerch is a public librarian in Dublin, Ireland. - po >From Librarians' Index to the Internet - http://lii.org/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 3. Public Library Locator http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/liblocator/default.asp The Public Library Locator is a tool to help you locate information about a public library or a public library service outlet when you know some, but not all of the information about it. The information in this locator has been drawn from the National Center for Education Statistics Public Libraries Survey. ____________________________________________________________________________top 4. Forget banning books, let's burn the library Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 13:15:49 -0600 From: "Don Wood" <dwood[at]ala.org> To: <publib[at]sunsite.berkeley.edu>, <PUBYAC[at]prairienet.org> Subject: [MEMBER-FORUM:1560] Forget banning books, let's burn the library from free! Forget banning books, let's burn the library "The library is a monument to all the best impulses in the human mind and spirit. It is a tribute to wisdom and understanding. No community is complete without one. So why is it that in so many communities across this land mobs are marching on libraries with pitchforks and torches?" http://www.freedomforum.org/first/2000/2/14ombudsman.asp ______________ Don Wood American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom 50 East Huron Street Chicago, IL 60611 800-545-2433, ext. 4225 Fax: 312-280-4227 dwood[at]ala.org http://www.ala.org/oif.html ____________________________________________________________________________top 5. What's happening in West Virginia David Price, formerly an SFPL bad guy, is presently the state librarian in West Virginia, and controversy has sprung up around him once again. Bob Schwarz of the Charleston Gazette has been covering the issue in depth: Caution: Library Upheaval http://wvgazette.com/news/Editorials/2000011926/ Library Director defends role http://wvgazette.com/news/Other+News/2000012832/ A list of do's and don't's: Library commissioners hear grievances over money and local control http://wvgazette.com/news/Today/200002092/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 6. Call for support for AIP Free Speech Buffet February 8, 2000 Dear Supporter, The annual conference of the American Library Association (ALA) will be held in Chicago July 6-13. More than 15,000 librarians and library vendors will meet and exchange information within the library community. The Social Responsibilities Round Table of the ALA sponsors a Free Speech Buffet each year as one of the Alternatives in Print (AIP) Task Force activities. AIP is a group of library professionals that works to promote the acquisition and use of alternative information resources in libraries. The Free Speech Buffet is an opportunity for independent publishers in the area to network and meet socially conscious librarians attending the ALA Convention. In New York City in 1996, more than 150 librarians attended the first Free Speech Buffet, which was held at the Mechanics Library, and 25 publishers displayed their periodicals and books. In San Francisco in 1997, 40 publishers and about 200 librarians attended the event held at the San Francisco Public Library. In 1998 the Free Speech Buffet was held at the Washington DC home of Stewart Mott located across from the Supreme Court near the Capitol. In New Orleans in 1999, a cozy French pastry cafe in the French Quarter hosted the event. This year in Chicago, the Free Speech Buffet will be held at Ann Sather, a popular and community oriented restaurant near Clark and Belmont. The owner there has graciously agreed to donate the space. We expect to host over 100 librarians and independent publishers. Since this is a free event, The Alternatives in Print Task Force needs to raise enough money to cover the cost of food. We will ask the publishers for a small table fee, but we'll need a supplemental source. We would appreciate it if you would consider supporting our Free Speech Buffet. For your generosity, you will be listed as a donor in the conference program, as well as in a prominent location at the Free Speech Buffet. Thank you so much for considering our request for supporting the 2000 Free Speech Buffet. A committee member will be contacting you in the near future. Sincerely, Julie Herrada, member Alternatives in Print Task Force Social Responsibilities Round Tablle ____________________________________________________________________________top 7. BiS has a new URL Sweden Bibliotek i Samhaelle (BIS) (Libraries in Society) c/o Lennart Wettmark Rosenbadsgatan 9 S-652-26 Karlstad Phone/Fax: 094654 101813 or Fax: 094654 213787 E-Mail: sve.we[at]xpress.se Homepage: http://www.bok-form.se/bis/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 8. Censorware and Memetic Warfare Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:42:24 -0500 From: Chuck0 <chuck[at]tao.ca> To: librarians[at]tao.ca Subject: Slashdot hands Burt his head on a platter This is great! Censorware and Memetic Warfare http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/14/2316202&mode=thread "But his main meme was the number. Armed with his new figure "64", he performed a division by the largest number in our report, which was 54,000,000. Kind of like dividing apples by hydrogen. Of the 54,000,000 URLs, only 29% were page views; only 0.56% of those were blocked; and the previously-mentioned 5% of those were blocked incorrectly. From there he switched from blocks to unique blocks, cutting the actual figure of 5,000 down to his list of 64." -- << Chuck0 >> ____________________________________________________________________________top 9. Speakers needed for "Erotica in Libraries" program ####### Please forward this message ######### SPEAKERS AND DISCUSSANTS NEEDED FOR SESSION ON "EROTICA IN LIBRARIES" TO BE PRESENTED AT 2000 SUMMER CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION This is a call out to librarians and library workers who would be willing participate in a panel discussion on "Erotica in Libraries," which will be held at the upcoming American Library Association annual conference. This session is being sponsored by the Alternatives in Print Task Force (SRRT) of ALA. We expect to line up more sponsors, but first we need to find some speakers and discussants. As one might imagine, finding speakers for a session like this is not easy, even if you ignore the controversial aspect. Since there few, if any, erotica collections in public libraries, this means there are few public librarians with experience collecting in this subject area. The librarians who do have experience collecting erotica, have gained that experience from working at private and special collections. These collections also tend to be historical, which means that there are even fewer librarians who have experience collecting contemporary erotica. The Internet has certainly revolutionized what people can read and view at public libraries. This also means that all library patrons have been able to access subject matter that before the Internet was restricted, outlawed, zoned, suppressed, or, most of the time, just not talked about. Public libraries COULD have collected erotica before the Internet, but chose not to do so for a variety of reasons (the biggest one being the unstated fear of sexuality). Now that the Internet filtering controversy has starkly highlighted this historical rejection of a subject area, perhaps it is time to redress this historical omission. We will be exploring new terrain, which could be pretty exciting. If you are interested in being a speaker at this session, please read the program description that is appended below. If you aren't interested, but know of someone who might be interested in speaking, please forward this message to them. The AIP Task Force does not have the funds to pay for speaker travel, hotel or meal expenses. However, all session speakers get free admission to all conference events and activities. Deadline to be considered for this session: March 10, 2000 Contact: Chuck Munson 301-220-0938 chuck[at]tao.ca ************ Program Description ********* EROTICA IN LIBRARIES Sexy stories and pictures in the stacks? Given that erotica and all types of sexually explicit materials are available now via library computers, isn't it time to address this neglected subject in public libraries? If erotica is widely available in chain bookstores like Towers and Borders, isn't it true that erotic fiction and pictures now fit within the "community values" of at least some communities? In this session, we move beyond contentious debates about whether or not libraries SHOULD collect erotica, to a critical examination of what erotica a library COULD collect. The main focus will be on bibliographic selection along a number of different dimensions. Options will be discussed for various levels of explicitness: PG, R, and X. We will also address different genres and formats, including for example poetry, romance, SF, photography, art, graphic novels, and periodicals. Different sexual subject areas will also be covered: "vanilla" heterosexual, lesbian, gay, vampire, SM, anything goes, as well as factors like literary quality, audience, and trends (such as the current fad for anthologies and "classic porn" novels like those of Henry Miller). Finally, panelists will share tips on developing selection criteria, finding reviews, and developing relationships with publishers. << Chuck0 >> Homepage: http://flag.blackened.net/chuck0/home/ Mid-Atlantic Infoshop: http://www.infoshop.org/ Alternative Press Review: http://flag.blackened.net/apr/ ICQ# 62766441 Free Leonard Peltier! http://www.freepeltier.org/ "A society is a healthy society only to the degree that it exhibits anarchistic traits." - Jens Bjørneboe ____________________________________________________________________________top 10. Information for Social Change - Call for papers Combating racism in library and information services The June 2000 issue of Information and Social Change will be devoted to articles, experiences and views on combating racism in library and information services. The need to address racism in libraries is highlighted by Roach and Morrison (1998) and recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. No forum exists to address the needs of Black communities and of Black LIS workers to document their experiences of racism or their thoughts on improving policies and practices . The serious nature of the problem is reflected in the fact that out of over 20,000 personal members of the Library Association, only 1.2% - i.e. 286 individual members - are of African, Caribbean or Asian background. Even more worrying, only 3 Black members earned over £27,000 p.a. (Khan, 2000). What is the solution to this serious social problem? Real workable solutions will emerge only from an open debate about the problems and possible resolutions. Black LIS workers, black or white policy makers and managers who implement policies all have a duty to engage in a debate to address this matter. It is for this reason that Information for Social Change is devoting its next issue to combating racism in library and information services. Contribution can be experiences or racism in work places, examples of good practice, ideas on possible policies and practices to eliminate racism. Research findings and recommendations by Roach and Morrison provide a useful starting point for a debate on this issue and are reproduced below to provide a framework for future action. Please submit articles to the address below. They can be hand-written, typed or on disc (Word). They can be e-mailed also. Closing date for submission is May 31, 2000. Address for submission is: Shiraz Durrani Information for Social Change London Borough of Merton Library & Heritage Services Merton Civic Centre London Road Morden, Surrey SM4 5DX e-mail shiraz.durrani[at]merton.gov.uk Tel. 020 8545 4061 Fax: 0181 545 3629 References Khan, Ayub (2000) "Stamping out institutional racism". Library Association Record 102(1) pp. 38-39. Roach, P. and Morrison, M. (1998), "Public Libraries, ethnic diversity and citizenship". Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, Warwick. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry; report of an inquiry by Sir William Macpherson. Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Home Department. 1999. London. The Stationary Office. CM 4262-I. ____________________________________________________________________________top 11. SRRT & CLSG on Cuban Libraries Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 15:36:58 -0500 To: plgnet-l[at]listproc.sjsu.edu, srrtac-l[at]ala.org From: Mark Rosenzweig <iskra[at]earthlink.net> Subject: SRRT & CLSG on Cuban Libraries The below letter is a press release by the Cuban Library Support Group (CLSG). It notes that SRRT has joined with CLSG (so has the Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG)) to work to support Cuban libraries and to challenge the escalating campaign of Robert Kent and his "Friends of Cuban Libraries", which apparently intends to provoke an international incident at the Havana Book Fair. I urge you to support SRRT, PLG and the CLSG and, if contacted by Kent, make clear your opposition to his US-based political intervention being carried out under the cover of a fabricated scenario involving "independent librarians". End the Blockade! Return Elian Gonzalez! Hands Off Cuba! Mark Rosenzweig _________________________________________ Letter to the Library Association Record 31 January 2000 Dear Editor, Robert Kent (LAR p83) is unable to provide any evidence to support his allegation that "independent librarians" are being persecuted in Cuba. This is not the view of the Cuban Library Association (ASCUBI) who have stated that none of these people are librarians or members of ASCUBI and that they "were never subject to arrest or imprisonment". Kent refers to the IFLA report but he fails to mention that FAIFE did not consult with ASCUBI when drafting this report. Marta Terry, President of ASCUBI, has commented, "What has happened to FAIFE ? I am a regular member and nobody has endorsed any official answer to our ASCUBI statement" If Kent were a true Friend of Cuban Libraries he would be campaigning for the end of the illegal 40 year blockade of Cuba by the US ; this blockade includes food, medicine, books and information. As Fidel Castro said at the Havana Book Fair, "In Cuba there are no prohibited books, only those we do not have the money to buy". I will be going to Cuba in April to visit ASCUBI and assess some of these "independent libraries" The Cuban Libraries Support Group (CLSG) has joined forces with the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association to progress support for Cuban libraries on both sides of the Atlantic. For more information call me on 0181 545 3770. Yours sincerely, John Pateman CLSG ____________________________________________________________________________top 12. Havana International Book Fair Cuban Library Support Group sends geetings to the Havana International Book Fair The Havana International Book Fair is a testament to the Cuban revolution's investment in books, libraries, education and literacy. The Book Fair will attract stalls from all over the world, including Pathfinder Books in the UK. The Pathfinder representative, Jonathan Silberman, will be reporting back on the Book Fair to a meeting organised by the Cuban Libraries Support Group. This meeting, held jointly with the International Group of the Library Association, will be held at the LA in late February / early March. Jonathan will give an eye witness account of the Book Fair, publishing and libraries in Cuba, including the so-called "independent" libraries. This will be a first hand account, not news that has been recycled through the "Friends of Cuban Libraries" (sic) / US government propaganda machine. Pathfinder Books have launched a "Books for Cuba" appeal to help them supply books to Cuban libraries. This is necessary because of the illegal 40 year US blockade of Cuba which applies to food, medicine, books and information. As Fidel Castro said at the last Havana Book Fair "In Cuba there are no prohibited books, only those we do not have the money to buy". Cuba is being economically strangled by the blockade - a blockade which the "Friends of Cuban Libraries" supports, despite their claim to "oppose violations of intellectual freedom, as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights", which the blockade clearly breaches. The "Friends of Cuban Libraries" is supported by Freedom House. which is run by former CIA agent and Cuban exile, Frank Calzon, and annually receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from the Washington government. In 1998 an American representative of Freedom House was deported from Cuba after he was arrested in the act of handing $500 in cash "donations" to individuals with instructions of how to set up opposition parties. In the latest issue of "Cuba Si" there is an article on Calzon's role in funding a campaign to set up so-called "independent libraries". "Cuba Si" also quotes a letter from Judith Johnson who works in the Political Section of the US Embassy in London. Johnson admits that the US government does fund Freedom House and that its activities consist of disseminating "writings on democracy" in Cuba. Robert Kent has admitted that on four occassions he has taken books and pamphlets to Cuba for Freedom House. On three occassions his travel expenses were paid by Freedom House. This makes a mockery of his claim that "The Friends of Cuban Libraries" is an "independent, non partisan" organisation. John Pateman Cuban Library Support Group ---------- From: RKent20551[at]cs.com To: W.A.Forster[at]herts.ac.uk Subject: PRESS RELEASE: Protest Erupts at Cuban Book Fair Date: 04 February 2000 05:59 PRESS RELEASE The Friends of Cuban Libraries CONTACT: Robert Kent FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tel: (d) 212-930-0871 February 3, 2000 Tel: (n) 718-340-8494 e-mail: rkent20551[at]cs.com PROTEST ERUPTS AT CUBAN BOOK FAIR On February 3, as foreign publishers made travel plans to attend the Havana International Book Fair (February 9-15), the Friends of Cuban Libraries released an Open Letter to the publishers signed by more than thirty authors. The letter, entitled "Book Fair or Carnival of Persecution?," urges publishers at the Fair to make protests to government officials against the "scandalous" repression of Cuba's independent librarians, whom the authors describe as "the only librarians in the world who are being subjected to systematic persecution." In an attempt to establish a civil society in Cuba, the island nation has recently seen the opening of more than thirty independent libraries with the goal of offering access to books that are banned under Cuba's harsh system of censorship. Citing reports and statements by Amnesty International, the International PEN organization of writers, and the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), the authors of the Open Letter condemn the government's effort to suppress the independent librarians through a campaign of harassment, intimidation, death threats, police raids, evictions, short-term arrests, and confiscations. "To remain silent on this important matter...," the authors admonish the publishers, "would be an act of moral cowardice and would constitute silent support for this unprecedented violation of intellectual freedom on the part of the Cuban government." In addition to public and private protests, the authors also urge the publishers to carry out other acts of solidarity such as visits to the independent librarians in Havana. Another cause of dismay surrounding the Book Fair is the fact that it will be held in Havana's La Cabana fortress, notorious as the former site of a harsh prison where the Castro administration carried out hundreds of executions. Jorge Valls, one of the authors signing the Open Letter, spent part of his 20-year prison term in La Cabana prison after being convicted of refusing to register for the military draft. In his published memoirs, Mr. Valls recalled his grim experience in La Cabana: "Night was no time for rest. On the contrary, that was when the horrors began. At nine or so the executions would start.... We could hear the prisoner being tied to the pole, his last cries, the command to fire, the volley.... The last sound would be the screech of the night bird coming to peck at the pieces of flesh that still clung to the pole and the wall." Mr. Valls, now a member of the Friends of Cuban Libraries, says, "A number of the publishers going to the Book Fair have already agreed to carry out actions in support of the independent librarians, and we hope others will follow their brave example." Among the many prominent authors signing the Open Letter are Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a winner of Spain's prestigious Cervantes Prize for literature, Heberto Padilla, a renowned poet whose arrest and show trial in 1971 sparked worldwide indignation, Carlos Franqui, a former editor of the Cuban newspaper "Revolucion," Zoe Valdes, a rising star among the younger generation of Cuban writers, Maria Elena Cruz Varela, a poet who suffered permanent injuries after being attacked during a government-directed mob assault, and the noted Mexican writers Carlos Monsivais and Jorge Castaneda; the latter is an acclaimed biographer of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. The Friends of Cuban Libraries, founded in June, 1999, is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit support group for the independent librarians. The organization opposes censorship and all other violations of intellectual freedom, as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, regardless of whatever administration may be in office in Cuba. The Friends are funded entirely by their members and do not seek or accept contributions from other sources. ### ____________________________________________________________________________top 13. Feminist Promotes New Vision for Hierarchical Libraries _Women In Higher Education_, March, 1999 From http://www.wihe.com Deb Nordgren was a feminist and a librarian for 20 years before the two identities began to merge. As a group, librarians are not conspicuous revolutionaries. On her office wall at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where she's technical services librarian and assistant professor of library science, a poster quotes Audre Lorde: "When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." Today Nordgren is boldly promoting a feminist vision for her library staff and students in a world where women are the majority but men are the directors. In the feminist spirit of telling one's story, she told hers at NAWE's 1999 Women in Higher Education conference in Charleston SC. She began to integrate her librarian and feminist identities after discovering Christina Baum's Feminist Thought in American Librarianship (1992). Baum reports that most "feminist" library studies concern sexual stereotypes and the status of women; their agenda is gender equality with no basic change in how libraries work. Few ask deeper questions such as: -Are librarians elitist or paternalistic in defining "quality?" -Are funds meager because most staff are women? -Can libraries counteract economic forces that silence women by closing bookstores and alternative presses? -Who decides what information is stored on computer? -Can we imagine a non-hierarchical library workplace? -Why are most library directors male, and most staff female? Reviewing recent library literature and conference programs, Nordgren still finds little feminist awareness, but more writers cite women in other fields. She's glad to see librarians getting less insular. Conferences like that in Charleston and newsletters like WIHE help build feminist connections across disciplines, she said. She learned about feminist management and pedagogy largely from women outside library science. Few librarians in the feminist forefront It's odd that librarians aren't the leading feminist activists, since the fit is so natural. Most are women, committed to making information available to people of every social and economic group. Like feminists, librarians value story, clear language and awareness of context. So why don't more librarians talk about feminism? Perhaps partly because the field attracts introverts instead of rabble-rousers, but that's changing. History may be a bigger factor. Unlike social work, which began with women, library science began with men like Melvil Dewey. When he hired women as librarians, he saw them as clerks. "We've been trying to fight that perception and be accepted as professionals ever since." One librarian's story As a technical services librarian, Nordgren buys materials for the collection, coordinates operation of the online catalog and supervises three permanent staff. Although she could stock the library with radical feminist books, she refrains. Her feminism is more evident in how she relates to her staff. For years she felt an internal tension between what the library journals said she should do and what she actually did. "What I was doing in my work didn't seem to fit what I was reading about management." Little in the library science literature supported her, but she got validation from writers in other fields who described a "women's management style," which she recognized as her own. Using intuition and common sense, she had developed a collaborative management style of asking opinions and working together to solve problems. She advocated flexible work schedules and work-at-home options for staff with small children. Her vision for the library centered on people rather than things. It was exciting to discover writers who named her feminist style instead of dismissing it as poor management. Teaching library science The biggest effect of integrating her feminist and librarian identities was in her teaching. The standard library science curriculum has changed little since her student years with two exceptions: Rutgers University NJ offers "Gender and Culture in Children's Picture Books" and the University of Wisconsin-Madison teaches "Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults." Course descriptions don't reveal whether faculty use feminist material in courses with traditional titles; for example, Nordgren always had cataloging students describe and classify materials on women's issues, multiculturalism and homosexuality. When she recently began to teach school library administration, she decided it wasn't enough just to teach feminist practices: She also needed to name them in the classroom. Working with women from other departments to revamp her university's women's studies minor a few years ago introduced her to literature on feminist pedagogy, which she now uses in her administration course. For example, she: -Links theory with practice by having students talk to librarians about information in the textbook. -Invites students to share responsibility for their learning and make choices about their assignments. -Tells personal stories of her library experiences. -Discusses power and leadership in non-traditional ways to empower students as leaders. -Includes cultural and sexual diversity issues. -Values intuition and questions, knowing she doesn't have all the answers. Calling her approach liberal rather than radical, Nordgren's is a far cry from a traditional library education and a step toward raising future librarians' consciousness. --SARAH COOK E-mail Deb Nordgren at dnordgren[at]staff.uwsuper.edu ____________________________________________________________________________top 14. Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists! http://tln.lib.mi.us/~amutch/jen/index.html Created by Jennifer Hubert, Young Adult Librarian at the Queens Borough Public Library in New York City, and Webmaster Andrew Mutch of Novi, Michigan, this site offers booklists for young adult readers "who need a good read, but are wondering if there's life after Judy Blume and Gary Paulsen." Hubert believes that some adults don't give teens enough credit when it comes to reading tastes, and she aims to introduce them to books that are interesting and demand a little more of them than typical young adult selections. The Reading Rants lists are accessed via a pull-down menu in the lower-right section of the Homepage. Highlights include Boy Meets Book: Best Boy Reads, Riot Grrrrl! Reads, Deadheads and Mosh-pits: Books about being in a band, and Bare Bones: Honest Fiction about Weight and Eating Disorders. New reviews and lists are featured on the home page. Hubert notes that some of the titles listed will be found in the Adult rather than the Young Adult section of the library, but that's exactly the point. A fine site for teen readers, teachers, and librarians. [MD] > From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 15. Who's Alive and Who's Dead http://www.neosoft.com/~davo/livedead/ A "site that helps you keep track of which famous people have died and which are still alive!" If they're one of the more than 1,700 people listed, you can find out if they are still with us and, if not, when and why they went. Grouped according to the accomplishments for which they are best known, alphabetically, and searchable. Information includes full name, what the person is known for, and reason for death, if known. Maintained by a person with a day job as Director of Technology at an architectural firm. - cl >From Librarians' Index to the Internet - http://lii.org/ ____________________________________________________________________________top 16. News stories appearing in the February 14 American Libraries Online http://www.ala.org/alonline/ -Professional Librarian to Head British Library -150 People Trapped in Library During Police Standoff -Baltimore County School Libraries Eye $10-Million Upgrade -Schwarzenegger Movie Prevents Vancouver Library Shutdown -U. of Pittsburgh Librarians Agitate for Same-Sex Benefits -Utah Lawmakers Tie Library Funding to Restricting Online Smut -Indiana Bill Mandates Annual Meetings on Community Standards -Michigan Bill Requires Filtering or Supervision for Surfing Minors -Arizona House Rejects Filters for State Computers -Illinois School Takes Aim at Guns and Ammo -Captain Underpants Banished at Connecticut Elementary School -Most Scopes Trial Papers Escape Bryan College Fire -Rogue Fire Sprinkler Destroys 1,100 Books in Maryland Library -Berman Catalog Records Disappear Mysteriously from Hennepin County -Copernicus Missing from Russian Academy of Sciences American Libraries' Web site also features the latest "Internet Librarian" columns by Karen Schneider; "Technically Speaking" by David Dorman; AL's "Career Leads" job ads; listings of conferences, continuing-education courses, exhibitions, and other events from AL's "Datebook"; and Tables of Contents for the current year. ____________________________________________________________________________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 15-Feb-100.