LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Paul Verhaeghen has won this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his novel _Omega Minor_, published by Dalkey Archive Press.
Verhaeghen is donating the £10,000 award to the ACLU.
Read more.

Lydia Cacho Ribeiro Mexican freelance journalist and head of a centre that helps abused women in Cancun is the Laureate of the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.

--Kathleen de la Peña McCook

How can Laura Bush be the wife of George and a librarian?

BE SURE TO CLICK ON THE LINK FOR THE ARTIST'S BOOK:
Librarian's Garden.

Jack Milroy
London, England, 1999
Height 26 cm x width 38 cm x depth 38 cm
NAL pressmark: 805.AA.0001
Milroy acknowledges influences from Picasso and Max Ernst, and his work shares some of the inventiveness of the former and the humour of the latter. 'Librarian's garden' is a beautifully evocative piece which uses the book form as both container and liberator.

UNESCO’s granting of the title of World Book Capital to Amsterdam presents the city with a unique opportunity to reaffirm its reputation as a refuge for free speech and the written word, and to highlight its international renown as a literary hub. Amsterdam World Book Capital wants to inspire and propagate dialogue about the freedom of expression and has chosen to do this by adopting the ‘Open Book’ theme as its guiding principle. Amsterdam: a place of refuge for free speech and the written word.

The Future of Literary Culture
by Harold Augenbraum

So will kids who have been brought up on Facebook, Google, Amazon, Narrative, and Fandango stop reading? I hope not. What will be interesting is to see how literature itself changes as that generation comes of age and begins to write its literary work, where it will get its book recommendations, and, perhaps most important, how will be participate in literary culture.

--more at Librarian.

A mother and her three children occupy the Labour Relations Board and have a story time while one of the officials asks them to move their storytiime elsewhere. The mother asks, "Do you have the keys to the library?

Go HERE and click CHEK news on the right and then type "library" in the search box to see drama and action on behalf of the Greater Victoria Public Library workers of CUPE 410.
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http://www.canada.com:80/ch/cheknews/video/index.html

Policy makers and representatives of inter- and non- governmental organizations will examine the relationship between the right to information and development at an international experts meeting on “Freedom of Information and Sustainable Development, Sealing the Link.” at UNESCO Headquarters on 17 and 18 March, 2008.

The opinion piece, Pull the plug on the library [The Gainesville Sun], was responded to with rigor and wit by Jeffery Austin.

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Sometimes I wonder what surprises will await me when I return to Tampa from overseas and turn to my non-military roles as citizen, taxpayer, homeowner, community volunteer, and student.

This notion of jerking libraries away from me and other central Floridians sounds like something George Orwell would have devised and not something that could be successfully schemed by this misguided George Elmore. Remember, money is the root of all evil. But, wait there's more...

The insensitive misuse of our collective experience with the Terry Schiavo debate/debacle should have forewarned me, yet I was truly surprised. The - ahem - creative bookkeeping that Elmore employs to subdivide library visits into $15 allotments is way off the mark. When my plane makes it back from the Middle East and I stop by a Gainesville library en route to my 4-day pass to check a travel service website, I need to be able to determine the next commercial planeload of my folks got home safely then and there. Not when I get to my family's home two states away. I might also need to email my pastor and ask him and his family to pray for the rearguard's safe return. It's a priceless service.

The Tennessee Library Association has sent a letter to the Mayor of Memphis regarding the "recent dismissal of one of our premier library leaders * Judith Drescher of the Memphis Public Library *-- a slap in the face to many dedicated, well-educated library staff who have devoted their lives to providing informational and educational resources to the citizens of this state."
See "Open Letter to the Mayor of Memphis."

50th Anniversary edition of Kik-Step.

Libraries are between the Scylla and the Charybdis in the 2009 federal budget. While libraries nationwide are suffering budget cuts and truly need additional revenues such as those announced by IMLS, how can we enjoy our privileged status while children's welfare is cut and the health care system slashed?
See LIBRARIAN for details.

A pair of Hillsborough [Florida] county commissioners are using passage of a tax-cutting Amendment to pitch merging some government services with the city of Tampa. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio’s reaction: A very firm no. Iorio said she has no interest in letting the county shape recreation programs in light of the county's nearly three-year-old ban on gay pride displays at libraries.
See Librarian for details.

A group of Methodists is stepping up efforts to force a church vote in July on whether Southern Methodist University has the right to lease out land for the George W. Bush Presidential Library and policy institute.
Rev. Andrew Weaver, an SMU alumnus who is spearheading a fight against the land deal from New York, said he hopes to force a vote at a regional meeting in Dallas in July and persuade delegates not to ratify the mission council action. His group so far has collected about 11,200 signatures on a petition, he said.
More here: Bush Library at SMU Still Protested.

Teen author, Orson Scott Card, is the topic of much discussion as the Edwards honor bestowed by the ALA’s YALSA has brought to general attention Card’s views against tolerance for homosexuals.
See Librarian for more.

The Garfunkle Library is discussed in the article"King of Reading" New Yorker. The library is a listing of every book Art Garfunkle has read over the last 30 years

As seen in The Economist:
The market for books in Spanish is thought to be the second-largest in the world. It is the biggest for books in translation, which account for about a fifth of the 120,000 Spanish titles published each year. With sales up by 7.5% in 2005—growth is strongest in Argentina, Mexico and Colombia—it is expanding faster than many other book markets. Since many of the world's 400m Spanish-speakers live in developing countries, it has great potential: literacy rates are high and incomes are rising. (Ibero-American publishing, which also includes books in Portuguese, is worth about $6 billion a year.)...
more see Librarian.

Raffaele Farina, Vatican Archivist and Librarian, is now a Cardinal.

The 2007 Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards Advancing Human Rights have been announced.
http://www.myerscenter.org/

BOSTON, MA (Dec. 5, 2007) - They definitely are passionate about books, and about social justice. For twenty-three years, the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America has identified books speaking of too-often erased histories and too scantily noticed ideas and strategies for a more humane future.
Here are the 2007 winners:
* Kenny Fries, The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory. (Carroll & Graf).