14 March 2002
- One Book: Now Canadians Will Read One Book:
CBC Radio is sponsoring Canada Reads, with a work of Canadian fiction to
be chosen by an actor, a musician, two writers, and the son of a former prime minister,
and announced on 23 April. More at Canada Reads.
Also: Here's the National
Post's take on the Canada Reads idea.
- Quasi-Library: Volunteer Book Lenders May Lose Home:
The volunteer-staffed New Tripoli Book Lenders (Lehigh Valley, PA), which has
been lending books to the community since 1995, may have to close up
shop because it can't afford to pay rent to New Tripoli Bank, owners of
the farmhouse location Book Lenders has been using for free. The Bank has
also paid the utilities and insurance for the farmhouse. Book Lenders buys new
books with donations, but it's "different from a library because people aren't required to
sign up for a membership card. Patrons chose books, sign them out and return them when
they are finished." One of the founders of Book Lenders has asked town
officials to help her organisation become a nonprofit, so the group will be eligible for
grants. More in The Morning Call (PA) / [Link]
- Search Engines/News: Google News Search in beta version.
Google checks the latest news once an hour, using about
100 sources (more to be added), keeping the most recent eight days of news in its
updated collection. Results show headline, the search word in context, news source,
and date; sometimes two or more similar results are shown in the same entry. Try it,
and if you have suggestions to improve it, click on 'About News Search' to
voice your opinions to the Google staff. Google News Search / [Link]
via Research Buzz
- Book Review: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters:
"Her debut novel, Tipping the Velvet (1999) was a
New York Times Notable Book; her second novel, Affinity,
garnered the London Sunday Times Writer of the Year Award. Her new
novel, Fingersmith, is, in a word, superb." The books
are historical fiction and mystery, well-written, with 'vividly true'
characters. More in the Baltimore Sun / [Link]
- General Interest/Animals: Whole Critter Catalog Launched:
"A group of tech gurus and scientists [have] launched the
All Species Inventory, an initiative with a simple yet ambitious goal:
to discover, name and classify every living species on Earth within
one generation, or 25 years." Stewart
Brand, of The
Whole Earth Catalog, co-founded the project. More on the project
in Wired / [Link]
Go straight to the All Species Inventory.
- Children's Books/Religion: Christian Western Series for Kids 'Galloping Along':
Mark Redmond, 48, a secondary level English teacher at a
Christian school, researches and writes the Arty Anderson series, western stories for 8- to 12-year-olds.
"'I like the adventure that's involved,' he says of why he
chose the Old West for the setting of his book series. 'I like the country, the
scenery, and I am a shooter. I enjoy the weapons from that day. I shoot
a single-action revolver and some black powder." He also admires the
'freedom of spirit' represented by the cowboy. The first book of the series,
Arty Goes West (1999), tells how Arty and his mother adjust
to life without Arty's father and to living in Texas after moving there from
Ohio to run a ranch. The other titles in the series are Arty and the Hunt for Phantom and
Arty and the Texas Ranger, which involves a murder mystery.
The books are published by Sword of the Lord. More in the South Bend Tribune
/ [Link]
13 March 2002
- General Interest: 2002 is 100th Anniversary of Teddy Bear:
Some libraries are focusing events on teddy bears this year, in honour of
the teddy bear's 100th birthday. Here's some teddy
bear history.
- Author Obituary: Dr. Roy Porter:
Prolific British author Roy S. Porter died at age 55 on 3 March,
pretty much as he had hoped: He "said in a 1999 interview that
he would like to die gardening, [and he] collapsed as he was bicycling to
his vegetable garden," reports the New York Times.
The popular and iconoclastic author wrote on medicine (including
his 1998 The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of
Humanity), on the Enlightenment (including last year's The Creation of
the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment),
on "'the cultural, literary and symbolic identity of gout,' perceptions of
madness and the social history of London."
More in the NYT / [Link]
- EPublishing/Children's Books:
Scholastic is releasing 19 new ebook titles, including bestselling series
Dear America, Royal Diaries, K.A. Applegate's Remnants, and Scholastic Question &
Answer. The ebooks will cost $1.00 less than their print counterparts.
Scholastic is assuming that "kids in the teen and tween age-groups
will likely be adopters of [the ebook] format. We also believe that teachers
will be interested in the ebook for classroom use as the formats and
readers become more appealing." In Fall 2001, Scholastic
published an "enhanced ebook version of A Time for Courage: The
Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen (Dear America),
providing contextual and historical background, images, and
audio; the print version will be published this month.
More in The Write News / [Link]
- Book Banning: Wisconsin Teacher Seeks Ban on
Guinness Book of World Records:
Banting Elementary School teacher Mel Culver wants the Guinness Book
of World Records (2000, 2001, and 2002 editions) banned from all 17 elementary
school libraries in her district, because boys are flocking to see its photos
of the world's most valuable bikini and the world's most expensive bra and
panties. The Waukesha Considerations Committee will meet on 21 March to
consider the request.
More in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / [Link]
- Books/Schools: Printing Textbooks for New School Year in
Afghanistan:
"Printing presses in Pakistan are working to publish millions
of textbooks needed for the start of the Afghanistan school year on March 23."
The University of Nebraska at Omaha is sponsoring the printing
of the textbooks, with $6.5 million in funding from the United
States Agency for International Development. The curriculum
includes arithmetic, Afghan language arts/Arabic, Islamic studies,
science, geography, and history, as well as "friendship, peace,
health and awareness of land mines."
More in Ananova / [Link]
- Event/Books: World Book Day, 14 March:
Sponsored by The Booksellers Association of the UK & Ireland,
World Book Day involves booksellers, publishers, authors, libraries,
wholesalers, printers and agents, to encourage reading by providing
UK school children with a token good for a small discount on a
book of their choice at participating bookstores.
World Book Day / [Link]
Also: Don't Forget: It's Bedtime
Reading Week NOW, 11-17 March. Enjoy reading together with
your kids (or your parents). Website offers bedtime
reading lists (separate lists for adults and kids).
- Internet Filtering: Law Suits Proceed:
"Two suits challenging the constitutionality of a federal law requiring
libraries that receive federal funding to use Internet filters to
prevent children from seeing harmful or sexually explicit material are set
to go to trial in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania on March 25." Multnomah County Public Library v. United States of America (No. 01-CV-1322)
-- whose plaintiffs include library patrons who have sought
information about health and social issues; Planned Parenthood;
and a Republican candidate for Congress whose website was
blocked by filtering software -- claims that the Children's Internet Protection
Act (CHIPA) violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because
it prevents plaintiffs from communicating and accessing constitutionally protected
speech. CHIPA requires public libraries that participate in the federal eRate program
and those that receive funds through the Library Services and Technology
Act (LSTA) to filter material or lose their benefits. Another suit,
American Library Association v. United States of America (No. 01-CV-1303)
is similar and was consolidated with the Multnomah suit. The Maine
Library Association, the Connecticut Library Association, the Wisconsin
Library Association, and other libraries are involved in this suit.
More in The National Law Journal / [Link]
Also: The full complaint is
available in PDF format (64 pp.)
- Librarian/Budget Cuts: School Superintendent Proposes
Cutting Wife's Job, Library Media Specialist:
School superintendent Grant Frankenberg proposed that the Weatherford
School Board (OK) cut more than $608,000 from next year's budget,
including his wife Sally Frankenberg's job, library media specialist for
the district's two elementary schools. Her salary is $42,629. Others
at a pubic meeting on the budget proposed that Mr. Frankenberg cut his own job.
More in NewsOK.Com / [Link]
- Current: Martin Buser Wins 4th Iditarod:
Buser broke the Iditarod record, finishing the race in
8 days, 22 hours, and 46 minutes, the first time the race
has been completed in fewer than nine days. A Swiss native, Buser "plans
to become a naturalized U.S. citizen [today] in a ceremony under
the burled arch that marks the Iditarod finish line."
Story in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner / [Link]
- Current Events: Homeland Security Website:
Learn what the colour-coded alerts are! And get the latest in Homeland Security
news, events, budget priorities and figures, and other data. Also provides
HS contact person for each state. Go Home(land) / [Link]
- New Library Weblog: Laura's Space:
Laura L. Barnes writes a library weblog: "What do librarianship, liberal
politics, and the care and feeding of house rabbits have in
common?" Find Out / [Link]
- Current: St. Patrick's Day Resource:
Christine O'Keefe has scholarly and detailed holiday websites,
including one for St. Patrick's Day (17 March), with a history of
St. Patrick, background on the Celts, St. P's legends and customs, and
St. P's place-names. Some sections in both Gaelic and English.
Sources cited for each bit of information.
Not Blarney / [Link]
Also: For kids, BlackDog's
St. Patrick's Day Page offers history and lore, plus puzzles, mazes,
colouring pages, word search, and other games related to the day.
12 March 2002
11 March 2002
- Essay: Owl-Spotting at Logan Airport (Boston):
"The director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Blue Hills Trailside
Museum in Milton, Mass., has special permission to patrol Boston's Logan
International Airport. He drives his pickup near the runways, looking for
snowy owls." In the Christian Science Monitor / [Link]
- Forthcoming Books: Due Out in May:
FICTION
- Gone for Good, Harlan Coben - Mystery
- Thieves’ Paradise, Eric Jerome Dickey - Fiction
- Inez, Carlos Fuentes - Fiction (novella)
- Three Junes, Julia Glass - Family saga, first novel
- Dragonstar, Barbara Hambly - Fantasy
- A Simple Habana Melody, Oscar Hijuelos - Fiction
- Mr. Potter, Jamaica Kincaid - Fiction, set in Antigua
- Lost Nation, Jeffrey Lent - Historical fiction, set in 1800s New Hampshire wilderness
- Sin Killer, Larry McMurtry - Historical fiction, set in 1800s Missouri; first of new tetralogy
- Fatal, Michael Palmer - Medical thriller
- The Bartered Bride, Mary Jo Putney - Historical romance
- Mortal Prey, John Sanford - Thriller
NON-FICTION
- American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr., Richard Blow - Written
by an editor at George
- Buddha’s Child: My Fight To Save Vietnam, Nguyen Cao Ky - Memoir of
South Vietnam by former prime minister
- Citizen McCain: Maverick Politician, Elizabeth Drew - Written by
leading political reporter, about Senator John McCain
- What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier, James Gleick -
Technology explained by expert science writer
- I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History,
Stephen Jay Gould - Collections of Gould's final essay for Natural History magazine
- A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918; Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front,
Winston Groom - From the author of Forrest Gump, a serious
study of WWI’s Battle of Ypres.
- Small Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver - Essays on life
- The Middle of Everywhere: The World’s Refugees Come to Our Town,
Mary Pipher - By the author of Reviving Ophelia
- Queen and Country: The Fifty-Year Reign of Elizabeth II,
William Shawcross
- The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy, Strobe Talbott - By
Clinton's deputy Secretary of State.
- Flaubert: A Life, Geoffrey Wall - Biography of the novelist.
- Fire Lover, Joseph Wambaugh - A fire chief and a prolific arsonist
turn out to be the same man.
- Learning To Float: The Journey of a Woman, a Dog,
and Just Enough Men, Lili Wright - She escapes single life
in New York to journey from Maine to Key West with a friend’s dog.
- 9/11: Where Were You?:
Tell others where you were or what you were doing when the terrorists
attacked the U.S. 6 months ago today, or read other people's
memories of the day, at Where
Were You? (click on View/Browse to read others' messages); there were
937 postings on the site as of 4:10 p.m. ET today.
Also: View screenshots from over 200 online news sources, taken
from 11-13 September. View 4 shots to a page, full-screen mode,
or search by publication, country or time. Screenshots of Online News Sources /
[Link]
- Librarians: Connecticut Librarian Hikes Himalayas:
Kathryn Taylor, 59, "a seasoned hiker who serves as director
of the Westerly Public Library (CT) when she's not globetrotting and climbing
mountains," hiked in the Himalayas in October and November with
four other American women. She decided soon after the 9/11
terrorist attacks to continue with her plans for the trekking adventure,
a trip she'd wanted to take for 30 years. Taylor, who was director
of the Littleton Public Library in New Hampshire for 18 years before
moving to Connecticut, has hiked all of the White Mountains, summited Mount
Kilimanjaro, hiked Mount Toubkal in Morocco, and was part of a
cross-country expedition to Norway's Glittertind mountain peak.
More on her trip in the The Day.Com / [Link]
- Librarians: Fruitland (FL) Librarian Writes Local History:
Maria Schofield, director of the Fruitland Park Library, wrote
her book on local history -- The City of Fruitland Park, Florida --
using information and vintage photographs stored in the library's archives.
Originally planned as a library fund-raiser when it was published
last spring, the book is now on its third printing,
providing information on Fruitland Park's earliest settlers, the
railroad, the first school, Native American remains, eccentric citizens
and more." To get a copy, contact Schofield at the library: 352.728.3387.
More in the Orlando Sentinel / [Link]
- Literacy: Walt Crawford ponders the new literacy figures --
a reexamination of a 1992 National Center for Education Statistics literacy
study pegs American adult functional illiteracy rates at between 5% and 13%,
not the 47% rate determined in 1992. Crawford's article in his April Cites & Insights,
in PDF format / [Link]
- Book Awards: International Impac
Dublin Literary Award 2002 Nominees Announced:
The winner of this Irish literary award for fiction receives 100,000
euros (US $87,570), making this prize the most lucrative of all
book awards. The seven nominees are Peter Carey's True History of the
Kelly Gang, Canadian author Margaret Atwood's The Blind
Assassin, American author Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai,
The Keepers Of Truth by Irish novelist Michael Collins, The
Years With Laura Diaz by Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes,
Atomised (also published as also published as The Elementary
Particles) by French author Michel Houellebecq, who lives in Ireland,
and Madame, a first novel by Poland's Antoni Libera.
The winner will be announced on 13 May. More from BBC News / [Link]
- Culture: National Public Radio Stations Consider Changes:
Maine Public Radio
already tried this and ended up having to replace some news with music again,
but maybe other markets are different. Apparently, they are: "Last year...WKMS in Murray, Ky., snagged 11,000 new
weekly listeners, increasing its audience by more than half,"
by replacing Performance Today, an NPR classical music program,
with The World, a news show distributed by Public Radio International,
in the afternoon slot. "Performance Today now airs at night, when
it still draws few listeners, and [the station's program director] says he
would ax it completely were it not for 'the mission issue.'" Part of
NPR's mission statement reads: National Public Radio will not regard its audience as
a market...It will promote personal growth rather than corporate gains.
At the crux: "Public-radio purists say NPR should produce high-quality
jazz and classical music programs, especially for listeners who ordinarily couldn't
access such fare. Critics of the traditional approach say big audiences
prove the success of syndicated news programs. They don't see much worth
in producing stellar arts shows if no one's listening to them."
Lots more in the 11 March 2002 issue of U.S. News and World Report
/ [Link]
Also of interest: Current Online: Topic:
Programming for Public Radio, a set of articles on various specific public
radio programs, children's radio programming, public radio commentators, health
programming, generation-X and public radio, midday programming,
music (diversifying the audience, selection through audience research, opera, experimentation
in music production and presentation), Native American radio, news (World Radio Network,
Monitor Radio, newsmagazines, election coverage), radio college web site,
religious programming, Saturday entertainment programming, schedule
changes, talk radio public radio style, more.
- Reference: Key Starting Points for Statistics:
Annotated links to general statistics websites, international stats,
population stats, newspaper/magazine circulation stats, internet stats,
and statistics by country. Hosted by Karen Blakeman in the U.K. but
useful for people everywhere. Stats / [Link]
- Student Writing and Publishing Resources,
for high school and elementary/middle school writers. The Wisconsin Education Communications Board
Surf Report / [Link]
- Free Books For All in Baltimore (MD):
Russell Wattenberg -- 29-year-old Brooklyn native, former bartender,
and proprietor of The Book Thing in Baltimore, MD -- spends up to
100 hours a week giving books away from a selection of about 200,000
in the basement of an apartment building. The free books are donated
by libraries, publishers, reviewers, authors, illustrators, and interested
individuals. For more info, contact Wattenberg at 410.662.5631 or
at The Book Thing. Source: Book Magazine, March/April 2002.
- More Free Books, Anywhere:
A year-old Web site called BookCrossing.com,
created by a group of Kansas City-based computer consultants, "encourages people
to experience what it terms 'the karma of literature' by registering books
at the site and then depositing them in public places, like coffee shops,
airplane seat pockets and park benches. Part book club, part behavioral study,
part note-in-a-bottle exercise, it's a concept entirely made possible by
the interconnectivity of the Internet." Book "finders are not encouraged
to become keepers. 'We call it "read and release," 'says co-founder
Ron Allen Hornbaker," whose dream is to 'turn the whole world into a library.'
More in March/April 2002 Book Magazine / [Link]
10 March 2002
- @ WPL >> Added 26 children's books to the March New Books list.
- Author Interview: Susan Minot:
Powells Books interviews Susan Minot, most recently author of
Rapture, a novel built around one long sex scene.
In Bed with Susan Minot / [Link]
- Children's Book Awards:
The Carroll County Public Library (MD) provides a list of links
to awards given in each state for children's books, chosen by
the children of the state themselves. State Awards / [Link]
via John Clark of Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library
- School News: Dogs in Class Improve Students' Behaviour and Attendence,
according to a 5-month study conducted by the Institute for Human-Animal Research.
Students' desire to see the dog every day motivated them to attend
class, and the reward of playing with the dog after finishing
schoolwork helped students to concentrate better on their work.
The study was performed at Ashley Church of England Primary
School in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, using two dachshunds. More
in Ananova / [Link]
- Homage to Stephen King in the
Glasgow (Scotland) Sunday Herald / [Link]
- Obituary: Gothic Mystery Writer, Young Adult Novelist Isabelle Holland:
Author Isabelle Holland died 9 Feb. in New York at the age of 81. Born
in Basel, Switzerland, Holland wrote over 50 books, including
"fiction for teenagers [that] often focused on serious and controversial
topics like rape, obesity, death and homosexuality. Her novel The
Man Without a Face (1972) was the basis for the 1993 Mel
Gibson film of the same name," set in Maine.
More in the New York Times
/ [Link]
- Book Review: Ian McEwan’s Atonement
"is brilliant, a best seller in Britain -- and like nothing
he’s ever written before," says Newsweek's
Jeff Giles, who also interviews McEwan in the 18 March issue. More McEwan / [Link]
- Poet Obituary:
Poet and folklorist Hamish
Henderson died in his Edinburgh
home at the age of 82. Henderson taught at the School
of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh University and
is "generally held to have been the prime influence
behind the modern folk revival in Scotland and the re-establishment
of the North-east folk tradition in the 1950s." He was a friend
of WB Yeats, WH Auden, Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan and
Hugh McDiarmid, among others. More in The Press and Journal (North Scotland)
[Link]
- Maine Interest: Website Building To Learn The English Language:
A York Adult and Community Education ESOL program -- English Speakers
of Other Languages -- fosters student collaboration, improves
language skills of non-native-speakers, teaches web design skills,
and is creating a public website that will be useful to new immigrants to York, Maine.
The completed website will provide "a map and guide to key locations, such
as shopping, schools and hospitals; biographies of immigrants in the area
(including themselves) who are willing to share their experiences; information about
ESOL classes and how to sign up; and descriptions of daily life and
customs in the United States." Kids from Ecuador, the Dominican Republic,
Taiwan, China, and other countries all work together on the project. If you're interested
in volunteering with the ESOL program, contact York (Maine) Adult and Community Education at 207.363.7922.
More in the Portsmouth Herald / [Link]
- Kids' Books: Easter and Passover:
A selection of new books for children about the spring holidays of
Easter and Passover include Painted Eggs and Chocolate Bunnies
by Toni Trent Parker; Bunny Day, a time-telling book, by Rick
Walton; The Big Egg Hunt, a Clifford book; Easter,
published by HarperCollins, with text from the King James Bible
and stained-glass-like ilustrations by Fiona French; The Story of
Passover by Rabbi Francis Barry Silberg, illustrated by
Stephanie McFetridge Britt; and Pearl's Passover
by author and artist Jane Breskin Zalben.
In the Detroit Free Press / [Link]
- Poetry Online:
New York poet, professor, and translator Marie Ponsot reads
3 poems from her forthcoming collection, Springing,
on the New York Times website. Scroll down for the Java pop-up / [Link]
- Mystery Book Reviews: O'Brien, James, and Rendell's Latests:
Lev Raphael, a mystery writer himself, offers brief reviews of three recently published
mysteries worth reading: Edna O'Brien's In the Forest, Bill James's In Good Hands,
and Ruth Rendell's Adam and Eve and Pinch Me. In
the Detroit Free Press / [Link]
- Travel Books filled with "exquisitely useless information"
are the topic of Caryn James's essay in today's New York Times. Talking
about armchair time-travel -- in which the reader visits places lost and long-ago
via books -- she covers Flaubert's travel writings (including the collection,
Flaubert in Egypt), Peter Ackroyd's anecdotal history London: The Biography,
Tobias Smollett's Travels Through France and Italy, Charles Dickens' American Notes,
Mark Twain's Following the Equator, and Henry James's
essay "London in the Dead Season." Travel by Tome / [Link]
- Current: NOVA to Air Ernest Shackleton’s Voyage
of Endurance on Tuesday, 26 March, a 2-hour special. Further
information on the South Pole expedition that began in 1914
can be found on NOVA's website. Go South / [Link]
via URLWire
- Quote:
"Wanting to meet an author because you
like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pate."
-- pinned to Margaret Atwood's bulletin board, quoted
in The Baltimore Sun, 2 March 2002.
- FREE Online Tax Preparation for Adjusted Gross Incomes Under $25K
at Intuit's Quicken. FREE. TurboTax Me / [Link]
- Literature: Deserts of Our World: A Literary Adventure:
Very cool. One World Magazine presents "a selection of articles, paintings,
sculptures, poems and photographs of men and women who have been challenged
by the uniqueness of a desert, defeated by its dimensions, rewarded by
its remoteness." Deserts include The West (U.S.), The Sands (Arab World),
The Remote (Australia and Africa), and The Oracle, with writer contributions
from Tony Hillerman, Philip K.Hitti, Terry Tempest Williams, Edward Abbey, David
Hurst Thomas, Pat Little Dog, John Nichols, Geoffrey Moorhouse, Peter
Mansfield, Michael Asher, Sir Richard Burton, Frank Dobie, Elizabeth
Marshall Thomas and more. The Oracle offers 'random' (or not?) quotes and excerpts in response to coin
tosses and other means of determining fate. The Desert Ed section has desert facts.
Travel
Avidly Aridly / [Link]
via Nutlog
- General Interest: Injured Cat Website Nears 250,000 Visitors:
David Donnan's Cat Hospital website -- with webcams, x-rays,
and details of his 4-year-old cat Frank, who was badly injured
in a car accident in Cambridge, England -- has been getting about 12,000
hits per day as people worldwide check Frank's progress. You can, too,
since Frank has been ordered by vets to remain cage-bound for 4 more weeks.
Visit Frank / [Link]
- Book News: New Book TV Show on BBC4:
BBC4 debuted its new Readers and Writers Roadshow Friday
night, with guests Peter Ackroyd, historical novelist Tracy Chevalier,
and historian Jerry Brotton, who answered audience questions about writing,
reading, and other things bookish. As the Guardian says,
"writers [are] no longer the stunned wild creatures in the headlights of the
black-and-white telly era, unused to insolent probings and so needing the
soothing presence of a chap from their own caste. Thanks to the burgeoning of
publicity tours, bookshop readings and literary festivals, most [have] become proficient
and willing public performers." Joanna Trollope and Ian Rankin
are expected to do single-author shows, while there will also be more mixed panels, as the show tours Britain
this year. Fridays at 8.30 p.m. More, including history of book shows on
British TV, in the Guardian / [Link]
9 March 2002
- General Interest: Chinese Beat Columbus To New World:
That's the contention of British historian and map expert Gavin Menzies,
who has spent 14 years researching his claim. "Menzies said the Chinese
discoveries were made by ships of the Emperor Zhui Di. The fleet, under the
command of top Chinese admiral Zheng He, set sail in the early 1420s to
bring back treasures from foreign lands." More at Cosmiverse / [Link]
- Books/Kids: All Seattle Fifth Graders Reading One Book:
It's the 1998 novel Holes by Louis Sachar. More in the
Seattle Times / [Link]
- Books/Libraries: Encouraging Families to Own Books:
Britain's children's laureate Anne Fine hopes free
book plates will encourage children to buy and treasure books.
Her bookplate idea came about when she realised that "children love
choosing, they love free stickers and writing their name on possessions,"
and so she created the Home Library project, which goes live next
Thursday (World Book Day) at www.myhomelibrary.org, where children can
download free, beautiful bookplates. Fine notes that nowadays
it's more difficult for kids to get to a library to borrow books -- because
of two-career families, more traffic and bigger roads -- and, now "for every age
group, infant to teenage, more books are being bought" in the UK than borrowed. She notes
that libraries are still the 'bedrock,' and that "book purchase and
book-borrowing support one another. People tend to do neither or both."
But although books are selling well generally, there are pockets, like Liverpool,
where 30% of schoolchildren come from homes where there are fewer than six
books in the house. More in The Telegraph / [Link]
- Libraries/Internet: Florida County Votes To Install Filters on Libraries' Computers:
"County officials embraced a policy of censorship for Levy County's Public Library
System March 5, as the county commission voted unanimously to approve installation
into the system's computers of internet filtering software designed to protect children
from harmful web sites." The commissioners approved the internet usage
policy developed by the library's director, Tom Reitz, to bring the
county into compliance with the federal Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA);
Reitz explained that failure to approve the filters would cost the library
$35,000 of the approximately $45,000 it costs per year to keep
the county's libraries interconnected.
During the debate preceeding the vote,
commissioner Danny Stevens "brought up the fact that the American Library
Association and the American Civil Liberties Union are making a constitutional challenge
to CIPA that could be decided by the United States Supreme Court this fall and
could possibly reverse the threat of grant losses, but Reitz said that the problem has become
so severe that action by the county is warranted either way." Other county
librarians supported Reitz, with one commenting that "children as young
as nine or ten years old were pulling up hard-core pornography sites in the
library and that she has to spend so much time policing their computer usage that
it is difficult for her to perform her regular duties." More in
the Chiefland Citizen / [Link]
- Quote::
"The mystery is why a private reader in a public space [such as a subway] should
exude a shared, communal sense of bliss, while that CD Discman listener twisting
his shoulders to an unheard beat, and the cell-phoner smiling at something
he's been told, spread irritation and loneliness among their
riding neighbors." -- Roger Angell, in The New Yorker, 11 March 2002.
- Books: What Cities and Towns are Reading Together:
Check the Library of Congress website for an up-to-date list of Community Wide Reads.
8 March 2002
- Philosophy/Morality: Good and Evil People:
Fascinating website. Begins with one person's choice of the Top 10 (or so)
Evil People and the Top 10 (or so) Good People, with reasons why. That's
interesting by itself, but the comments of others on the original choices
and on what constitutes being good and being evil are very thought-provoking.
Examples:
* "Surely Harry S. Truman deserves a place above Vlad the
Impaler; Hiroshima/Nagasaki resulted in the murders of over 100,000
innocents"
* "Is saving people 'good'?
If you feed a starving person, are you good? If that person lives to have children and
the same basic problems of lack of resources still exists, haven't you
made things worse, merely deferred a current problem and made it worse
in the long term? Is that good or evil? Is the leadership of China good or evil --
clearly their Draconian state enables a rapid reduction in their birth rate. Isn't
that evil? Yet, if they didn't control their birth rate, millions would
die -- isn't that evil?"
* "I guess charity is one way that people (rich people, at least)
can do Big Works Of Good. Perhaps Carnegie belongs on the list, for all of those libraries he
funded? (I know that the library in my hometown of Edwardsville was a
Carnegie library). But to do so means that Ted Turner is Really, Really Good for giving all that money away."
* "Then there is Mother Theresa -- I'm not saying she shouldn't
be considered 'good' -- but what about the other nuns that worked with
her that aren't recognized as individuals. Is the same work without
world recognition even more 'good'?"
Weigh In at The Scales of Good and Evil / [Link]
via Fimoculous
- Current Events/New England: New Hampshire Musher Confronts Bison:
New Hampshire wildlife biologist, former winner of the Yukon
Quest International Sled Dog Race, and current Itidarod musher
Aliy Zirkle, 34, was confronted en route Tuesday "by a gigantic and
disturbed bison blocking the trail with its calf only yards away.
Then the bison charged. It covered about 20 yards toward the team
but stopped just short of the lead dogs. There the colossal animal
shook and lowered its head, pawed the ground and snorted." Finally a
single-engine Super Cub airplane, whose occupants saw what was happenening,
swooped down and drove the bison away with the noise of their engine.
Zirkle wondered if the encounter was the result of 'bad karma' caused
by sleeping under a stuffed bison the day before. More in the
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner / [Link]
- Reference: Documenting the American South
at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, contains a
collection of over 1,000 first-person accounts of the American South through
history, depicting slavery, literature, education, and religion in
the South through the words of the people involved. The
project began 6 years ago with a handful of documents written by black slaves
before the Civil War, and has grown to include "digitized collections
of renowned Southern literature, catechisms and other documents from black
churches in the South, manuscripts and currency from the Confederate period,
and examples of fiction, textbooks, and other documents reflecting the experiences
of Southerners." The website is available to the general public.
More in the Chronicle of Higher Education / [Link]
Go Straight the the Source: Documenting the American South
- Reference Work: User-Friendly Chinese Literary Index Compiled
The publication in December of the 4-volume A Comprehensive Reference
for the Chinese Language -- which collects 35,000 Chinese idioms
and 43,000 celebrated quotations excerpted from almost all of the ancient
Chinese literary classics and works in the fields of history and
economics -- makes possible all kinds of searches through Chinese literature
that were previously impossible or burdensome. The reference is the
first in the People's Republic of China to adopt random indexing by any
Chinese character, which means that the reader can "find out
the origin and various uses of characters or expressions in a wide
range of works, no matter whether the word or phrase is the first in
a line of verse or whether it occurs in the middle of a line," making
it much more convenient to look up the "sources of idioms, allusions, and
well-known sayings;" this apparently suits the pace of
life in China, as "ordinary people are showing increasingly more interest in
studying famous sayings, idioms and poems, and quoting from them in
their own writing or speeches instead of reading entire classics."
More in China Daily / [Link]
- Book Awards: PEN/Faulkner Award Nominees Announced:
Nominees for the PEN/Faulkner
Award -- the largest U.S. fiction prize ($15,000 to the winner) -- were
announced yesterday; they are: Jonathan Franzen's The
Corrections; Karen Joy Fowler's Sister Noon, set in
19th-century San Francisco; Claire Messud's The Hunters,
a novella about an obsessed American scholar living near London;
Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, in which a lavish South American
party turns into a terrorist siege; and Manil Suri's The Death of Vishnu, a first novel
about inhabitants of a Bombay apartment building. The winner is announced
in April. More from Reuters (via Lycos) / [Link
- Librarian Plans To Start University With Money From
Sale of Rare U.S. Coin:
P. Kalyanasundaram, 62, formerly librarian at the Arulmigu Kumaragurubar
Arts College in Tuticorin, India, and winner of the Best Librarian Award
in 1995 from the Goa University, wanted to give the U.S. "a coin
issued on the occasion of the independence of the U.S. minted in
1776, valued today at about $6.5 million," but the U.S. consulate turned
down his request to give the coin to then-president Bill Clinton 2 years ago,
and the Indian government isn't eager to have the coin leave the country.
So Kalayanasundaram, who was given the coin by an Indian businessman impressed with
Kalyansundaram's philanthropy, plans to sell it privately and use the
proceeds "to establish an international university at Tirunelveli to study
children's affairs. The university will educate poor students in child
psychology and their rights along with a study of the sciences,
arts and languages. It will also equip physically and mentally impaired children."
More from the Indo-Asian News Service (via Yahoo!) / [Link]
- General Interest/Children: Commercially Branded Theme Parks
Coming to U.S. Malls: The City of Children,
a successful theme park/shopping mall attraction in Mexico,
is coming to malls in the New York and Los Angeles areas, and perhaps
to the rest of the country if the concept catches on. "The idea of
the park is simple: After buying their American Airlines 'ticket' to
enter ($20 each), children receive play money, which they can
spend on General Motors bumper cars (Avis rents them). Or, they
can make themselves up at the Pond's Institute beauty salon or scale a
rock wall emblazoned with the word 'Nesquik.' If they run out of money,
they can go to work -- applying Sherwin Williams paints to a
wall at the Cemex construction site, caring for babies (dolls, actually) at
the Johnson & Johnson hospital or reading bar codes at the
Superama supermarket." I'm not making this up! Lots more in
Nando (AP) / [Link]
- Internet: Web Domain for Children:
"The [U.S.] House [of Representatives] edged closer Thursday to
setting aside part of the Internet for material suitable for
children. The Energy and Commerce Committee's telecommunications panel
approved legislation [Bill H.R. 3833] to create a 'kids.us' domain for Web
sites free of pornography and other material deemed inappropriate for
children under 13. 'While there is no substitute for proper
parental supervision, responsible parents that I talk to want more
tools to assist them in protecting their kids on the Internet,'
said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., the subcommittee chairman."
More in Nando News / [Link]
- General Interest: Sources for Replacement China:
While unwrapping someone else's china over the weekend for a tea party,
I wondered where I would find a replacement if I broke one of the lovely
teacups, saucers, or tea serving plates. Now I know; this New York Times
article lists several online (and offline) companies specialising in finding replacement
china and provides some tips on the search process, all wrapped in
the author's memoir of her husband's grandmother (who resembles her china
like some people resemble their pets). Find Flowered Fragiles / [Link]
- Essay: John Gould Remembers A Man Who Read His Horse
Black Beauty Every Evening: In today's Christian Science
Monitor / [Link]
@ WPL >> Here's more on John Gould.
- Library News: Nuns Put Genealogy Index Online:
Cloistered sisters near Erie, PA, are fulfilling "their ancient role as
scribes with a modern twist by working for the Virginia-based Electronic Scriptorium,
which employs monks and nuns at 12 monasteries across the United States,
creating an online catalog for the genealogy and historical collection of
Washington Memorial Library in Macon, GA, which holds more than 22,000
books and 10,000 microfilm documents. Electronic Scriptorium was "founded in
1988 when Edward Leonard, an environmental activist, helped Trappist monks at Holy Cross
Abbey set up a computer system for tracking their fruitcake sales."
More on the Scriptorium and the Genealogy Index in the Macon Telegraph
/ Link]
- General Interest: National (U.S.) Crime Prevention Council
resource links to organisations, publications, and websites concerned
with all types of crime and violence and prevention and management of
crime and violence, including bullying, child
abuse and child advocacy, domestic abuse, child grief/trauma/communication,
Internet safety, community coalitions, faith community, mediation and
arbitration, mentoring, cyber crime, fraud/identity theft,
hate crimes, stalking, crime stats/data, guns and
firearms, community-oriented policing, crime mapping, law enforcement
organizations, gangs, and much more.
Crime Library / [Link]
via Librarians' Index to the Internet
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