LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Pornography found on a computer at the Ragland (AL) Public Library back in February has members of the town council and library board at odds.
Actions taken to remove the computer from the library premises and clean off the hard drive have also raised questions.

“One of the council members wanted to take the computer to District Attorney Richard Minor, and I said, ‘no.’ Why? Because I couldn’t prove no more than anyone else could who was the one responsible for the pornography. I’m not going to get this town sued over what someone thinks. I don’t care who they are. I’ve been here 16 years, and I’ve never been in a lawsuit we ain’t won.”

Here we go again.

The Internet Archive protested the receipt of a National Security Letter from the FBI back in November. Today it won its case.

The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced this morning.

On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a National Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site.

Wired reports on the story.

One of a modern parent's nightmares is finding out there's a gunman on campus at their children's school. It's hard to get information in and out of that situation and it's incredibly nerve wracking.

So what if a student knows how to Twitter?

In a recent incident at the University of Richmond, a report of an armed man on campus brought a lockdown. Students were able to get information in and out and comfort each other using Twitter.

From CNet: Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who is seeking re-election this year, staged a press conference at a library in his suburban Chicago district on Tuesday to highlight what he called the "dangers" of the virtual world to children. Flanked by local officials, he also released a letter asking Federal Trade Commission Chairman William E. Kovacic to "take action to warn parents of the similar dangers and s#xu@lly explicit content found on Second Life."

Digital Transition Looms, but Do Americans Have a Right to TV?

The huge information campaign and an incentive program are casting American taxpayers up to $1.5 billion. And it's illuminating to put the government's $1.5 billion allocation in perspective. Consider: The proposed 2009 federal budget for adult basic and literacy education is $574.6 million. The Rural Development program has approved 85 loans totaling $1.68 billion since 2002 to help fund broadband infrastructure rollout in underserved areas. Is nationwide availability of speedy Wikipedia queries as important as delivering Ryan Seacrest digitally to your living room?

See Also: IMLS Budgets [PDF]

The Washington Post: With a test, Web sites let people in and keep out computers set to unleash spam attacks. Now, computers are cracking the code.

Google Maps and Google Earth brought the world to our fingertips. Then, with varying degrees of success, they did the same thing with the sky, the street, and Mars. Now, Google calls together a team of oceanographers with a plan to map the ocean floor.

Google's current plans are to provide a framework and basic map of the ocean floor and, like Google Earth, provide the ability to add things to it. Ideas for additional data include shipwrecks, coral reefs, and currents.

PR Newswire announced today that Finding Dulcinea has launched a Spanish-language version of its Web Guides which includes:
"How to Search the Web," "Health," "U.S. Politics," "Immigration," "Cinco de Mayo" and "Survival Guide toNew York City." FindingDulcinea (Librarian of the Internet) plans to add more Spanish-language Web Guides in the future, based on user feedback.

The AOL Latino 2006 Hispanic Cyberstudy revealed that only 15 percent of U.S. Hispanic Internet users read online content in Spanish only, with most users switching back and forth between English and Spanish.

Finding Dulcinea is a division of Dulcinea Media, Inc. "a Silicon Alley team of savvy Internet users" according to their website. Their mission is to "untangle the Web, freeing it of clutter and spotlighting only the sites that matter."

I started a new site, LISWire - The Librarian's News Wire (http://liswire.com), and I'm doing my best to spread the word. You can probably guess what the site is all about from the name. There's also 2 mailing lists, and a bunch of RSS feeds. Robin K. Blum (you might know her as Birdie) and I are running the show and are looking for press releases and other news items of interest to librarians to get things going. You can sign up for an account and submit things you'd like to announce to the library world. I'll be cross posting most announcements to LISNews for a little while until we see how much traffic we get at LISWire.

It's just out of beta, so there might still be some bugs floating around. Let me know if you spot something that needs fixing! I'd love any and all feedback you can provide.

Matt Cutts, head of Google's Webspam team and an engineer who's been working on the problem for eight years, offered some tips about combating it during a speech at the Web 2.0 Expo here.
• Use captcha systems to make sure real people, not bots, are commenting on your site.
• Reconfigure software settings after you've installed it
• Employ systems that rank people by trust and reputation.
• Don't be afraid of legitimate purveyors of search-engine optimization services.