Florida’s $1-a-pack cigarette tax kicked in Wednesday, the first such hike in two decades.
Cigars, Cigarettes
July 3rd, 2009NYPL Spalding Collection’s Missing Wright Scrapbooks? No. 7.3.2009. 94.
July 3rd, 2009
Harry Wright, a Hall of Fame manager and pioneer during professional baseball’s gestation period in the 19th century, kept his letters in scrapbooks along with pictures and ledgers from his distinguished career. These faded pieces of paper are fragile evidence of some of the earliest business practices in baseball.
Hunt Auctions was scheduled to sell some of the items on July 14 at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game FanFest in St. Louis. But the letters have been temporarily pulled from the auction after drawing the attention of the F.B.I. because of the possibility that they were taken years ago from the New York Public Library. …The four Wright scrapbooks were originally at the library as part of the Spalding Collection, named after Albert G. Spalding, a sporting goods entrepreneur and baseball manager and player whose wife donated his vast belongings from the game. The archives of Wright and of Henry Chadwick, another baseball pioneer, were included in the collection, which is in the main library building on Fifth Avenue.
Catalyst for Change: LSTA Grants to State Program and the Transformation of Libraries Services to the Public. No. 7.2.2009. 93.
July 2nd, 2009IMLS Report: Libraries are a Vital Community Resource in the Information Age.
Washington, DC-The character of library services has changed
dramatically with the advent of new information technologies, the
continuous development of locally-tailored services, and the
expectations of the 21st century library user, according to the first
analysis of the Grants to States program by the Institute of Museum and Library Service (IMLS). The report, Catalyst for Change: LSTA Grants to State Program and the Transformation of Libraries Services to the Public,” focuses on services provided through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grants to State Library Agencies, the single largest source of federal funding for the nation’s libraries and the only library grants that require state-wide planning. IMLS conducted the study to inform the American public, the Administration, Congress and the library community about the program’s contributions.
To address the growing demand for online services, libraries have added computer workstations, increased available bandwidth, and provided training in communities where they are often the sole provider of free access to the Internet. Some State Libraries Agencies are incorporating technology investments into their statewide strategic plans while other states manage such investments on a local or regional basis, according to the new report.
“The program’s flexibility is its greatest strength because it allows each state to tailor program services to the specific needs of its citizens.The unique nature of each state’s approach can present real challenges for evaluation because no two state programs are alike. It is like comparing apples, oranges, kiwis, and kumquats. But a common thread that connects these programs is a dedication to providing state-of-the-art programming and information services that meet a clear and compelling local need,” said Carlos Manjarrez, IMLS Associate Deputy Director for Research and Statistics.
To underscore this state-by-state variability, the report provides a
two-page snapshot of immediate challenges, program goals for 2008-2012, and an exemplary project for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The report draws on the December 2008 analysis of 9,000 state program reports from the Grants to States Program between FY 2003 and FY 2006 by Ethel Himmel and Bill Wilson, a library consulting firm, and the annual State Library Agency Surveys collected by the National Center for Education Statistics and IMLS between 1998 and 2007.
Based on the data, IMLS identified three broad strategies advanced by Grants to States programming: human capital development, library service expansion and access, and development of information and technology infrastructure. The report also provides: * a description of the Grants to States program also known as the Library Services and Technology Act(LSTA); * a discussion of the local factors that affect state program plans; * a review of program activities submitted in state program annual reports; and an * an analysis of program expenditures.
“Libraries build community in many ways,” noted Laurie Brooks, Associate Deputy Director for Library Services. “Whether through preparing children for school, helping small businesses thrive, providing technology training for seniors, or imparting a new language, libraries are essential community resources in the information age. The Library Grants to States program provides an important opportunity to plan and support these vital community-building initiatives.”
IndieBound as Alternative as Amazon Cuts Affiliates. No. 7.1.2009. 92.
July 1st, 2009
Amazon’s moves are the latest in a fight involving states trying to get out-of-state companies that perform commerce largely online with their residents but have little or no physical presence in the state to collect taxes.
An Alternative for Ex-Amazon Affiliates
The following “open condolence letter to former Amazon affiliates” comes from Kristen McLean, executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children:
Boy, it sure sucks to be dumped.
There you are, doing a great job of recommending awesome books, handing Amazon the sales, and they just up and leave the party.
To add injury to insult, I’m sure it didn’t feel good to hear from the Wall Street Journal that collective sales from your sites only “account for a relatively small slice of Amazon’s traffic, so the move isn’t likely to cause major damage to the company’s business.”
It’s like the morning after the prom, when in wrinkled dress and wilting corsage you realize they’re just not that into you. At least, not when they may have to collect millions in state sales tax that could help fix bridges, keep schools open and fund libraries at a time when your states are truly suffering.
And they seemed so nice.
Well, I want to invite you to the indie party. While the flashy prom has been happening at the country club, we’ve been holding our own get-together in the gym. What we lack in glamour, we make up for in charm.
Like you, we love to recommend books. We think it’s cool that you’re recommending books, and with us there’s no such thing as too small. We won’t marginalize you. And we all pay our local taxes. Best of all we have an affiliate program too! It’s called IndieBound, and we’d love to have you be a part of it. You’ll get a reward for using it, your readers can keep getting their books off your site, and your state will benefit in the end. Everyone wins.
Again, we’re sorry that you lost your date. (We never really liked them
anyway.) We promise we won’t leave you hanging.
Klagenfurt has no Municipal Library. No. 6.29.2009. 91.
June 29th, 2009JOSEF WINKLER:
The Cat Silver Wreath on Henselstrasse
Klagenfurt Address on Literature,given on 24th June 2009.
This city of Klagenfurt which every June, at linden blossom time, for more than thirty years now, allows itself be celebrated as capital of German-language literature, is probably the only town in central Europe with more than 100,000 inhabitants, which has no municipal library of its own
.
Josef Winkler won the Georg-Buechner Prize in 2008.
$6.2 million meant for library benefits paying Detroit’s bills. No. 6.26.2009. 90.
June 26th, 2009The City of Detroit has been spending property tax money intended for Detroit Public Library employees’ benefits on city operations instead, a library official said Friday.
On Friday, Library Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch said library staff learned this week that the city spent $6.2 million in property tax money that was supposed to go to the library, dating back to July 1.
Claudio Magris awarded the 2009 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. No. 6.19.2009.No.89.
June 19th, 2009
The Board of Trustees issued the following statement with regard to their choice: “The German Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association awards the 2009 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade to Claudio Magris. In so doing, the association and its members have chosen to honor the Italian literary scholar, essayist, novelist and rare examiner of the problems associated with how different cultures interact and live together. In numerous works, Magris speaks of the diversity of systems and languages in Central Europe – of their peculiarities and opposites. He brings together narratives, ruminations, fact and fiction in a thoroughly inimitable literary manner. In doing so, Magris shows just how creative these differences can be when they are respected and considered in terms of their very uniqueness. This way of understanding the world has lead him to become an ardent opponent of exclusionary mind-sets and a powerful foe of attitudes of superiority held by one culture over another. Claudio Magris argues in favor of a Europe whose self-understanding is not based purely upon economic criteria. Instead, he supports one that takes full account of – and insists upon – its historical and cultural tradition and diversity. This is the understanding of individual humanism that derives from the cultural tradition of Central Europe, and it embraces what Claudio Magris calls “our ironic feeling for the diverse.”
Michael F. Suarez, S.J., will be the new director of Rare Book School (RBS). No. 6.19.2009.88.
June 19th, 2009Charlottesville, Va.
Michael F. Suarez, S.J., will be the new director of Rare Book School (RBS), a bibliographical institute based at the University of Virginia.
UVa President John T. Casteen III announced the appointment Thursday morning during his keynote address at the 50th annual preconference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association, being held in Charlottesville this week.
Suarez, 49, succeeds the retiring Terry Belanger, a 2005 MacArthur Fellow who founded RBS at Columbia University in 1983 and brought the school to UVa in 1992. Like Belanger, Suarez will be a University Professor at UVa, a senior rank that gives its holders
unusually broad opportunities for teaching and research. He will take up his new position beginning September 1, 2009.
Suarez currently holds a joint appointment as J. A. Kavanaugh
Professor of English at Fordham University and as Fellow and Tutor in
English at Campion Hall, Oxford University. A Jesuit priest, he is both
co-editor of “The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume 5,1695-1830,” to be published in September, and co-general editor of “The Oxford Companion to the Book,” expected in January 2010. He is also co-editor of the eight-volume Oxford University Press edition of the Collected Works of Gerald Manley Hopkins, in progress. A former president and long-time board member of the Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, he has published an edition of Robert Dodsley’s “Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748-58),” the best-selling poetry anthology in eighteenth-century Britain; the selected essays of D. F. McKenzie (”Making Meaning: ‘Printer’s of the Mind and Other Essays”), and has written many aticles on various aspects of 18th-century English literature, bibliography, and book history. He has also held research fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Ann Sparanese on the Censorship of Triple Cross No. 6.15.2009. 87.
June 15th, 2009
“Lance is busy drumming up support—and publicity—for the book. He’s holding a press conference on the 16th, when he’ll be flanked by lefty anti-censorship activist librarian Ann Sparanese and the lawyer played by John Travolta in A Civil Action, Jan Schlichtmann. The truth is, this may be the best thing that ever happened to Lance. “That’s the ultimate irony,” Lance says. “It wasn’t reviewed by a single U.S. publication. If Patrick Fitzgerald had not attempted to kill it, it would have just gone off into publishing obscurity. This is the true lesson of censorship.”
–Prosecutor As Book Publicist. Was Fitzgerald libeled?
Ann Sparanese has sent the following message to the SRRT and PLG discussion lists:
Mon, 15 Jun 2009
Colleagues,
A week or so ago, I brought to your attention an issue concerning Triple Cross by Peter Lance, and alerted you to the efforts by arguably the most powerful U.S. Attorney in the country, Patrick Fitzgerald, to censor it. Since there there has been a little more press on it, I am hoping you would glance at the following links.
In 2001, librarians were “all over” HarperCollins because the
publisher intended to pulp Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men. Moore credits librarians — actually they were librarians from these two lists! [SRRT List
This time, with Lance’s book, HarperCollins is so
far standing firm against the demands of the U.S. Attorney who — even though he is doing this as a “private” person — obviously brings the weight of his high office to bear. Is this not even more chilling than a publisher censoring itself? Can’t we now give HarperCollins some support, as librarians, for standing up to pressure from someone in government to kill a book?
Maybe some of you have doubts about the contents of Lance’s book. I haven’t read every page, or have thought about every argument he makes. None of us can independently confirm the correctness of his conclusions, or whether his interpretation of the facts is the only one. Clearly there are some conclusions that do not please Mr. Fitzgerald. But this is beside the point. The point is that not only is Lance a reputable journalist, but HarperCollins is a large mainstream publisher with no interest,presumably, in publishing libel, defamation and baseless conspiracy theories. The publisher was sufficiently shook up by Fitzgerald’s concerns to take a very long, second look at the book, and to change a few things, but to fundamentally come to the same conclusion: there is no reason to
withdraw the book. It is scheduled to come out tomorrow.
Links follow.
Thanks for reading this,
Ann Sparanese
***
Newsweek:
Chicago Sun Times
Library Juice Press Blog
[see especially comments including those by Cynthia Kouril, Peter Lance].
[for more on the role of "Libraries and Information Workers in Conflict
Situations" including A.S. see Information for Social Change Number 25.Summer 2007.]
==========
additional: Raw Story
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/12/fitzgerald-trying-to-censor-explosi
ve-911-tale/ WorldNetDaily
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=100764
Reporters Committee For Freedom Of The Press
http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=10830
Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rory-oconnor/patrick-fitzgeralds-priva_b_213
807.html
Accuracy in Media
http://www.aim.org/guest-column/abuse-of-power-backfire
Gotham City Insider blog
http://www.gothamcityinsider.com/
American Bar Association Journal
http://www.abajournal.com/news/chicago_us_atty._says_book_partly_blames_hi
m_for_sept._11_threatens_suit/
NAACP Plans Protest Over Suggested Closure of North Greenwood Library in Clearwater,FL. No. 6.13. 2009. 86.
June 13th, 2009
PHOTO BY [DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times].
When the North Greenwood Library opened six years ago, it was hailed as a huge help for young people in the predominantly black neighborhood. Twice the size of the old library it replaced, it holds more books and computers.
But Clearwater may not be able to afford it anymore. Because of upcoming budget cuts, the city might close the small library and move part of its collection and its computers across the street to the North Greenwood Recreation and Aquatic Complex.
North Greenwood activists are campaigning to keep the place open. The NAACP and local ministers are staging a march in the neighborhood Friday evening.
“We oppose closing this library,” said Clearwater NAACP president Alma Bridges. “A lot of people here don’t have transportation to get their families down to the Main Library.”
Marchers will gather at 6 p.m. at Cherry Harris Park and walk to the North Greenwood Library, where a number of speakers will talk, Bridges said. It’s unknown how many people will show up.
–rest of the article By Mike Brassfield, Times Staff Writer published
Thursday, June 11, 2009 is here.
[Thanks GK].