Category Archives: Politics

Elsevier and the arms business

Posted on 25 March 2007 by Rick Mason

Reed Elsevier, the European publishing corporation behind over 15,000 journals, is being challenged by one of them, The Lancet, in regards to its commercial involvement in the arms trade. This connects to libraries in several ways: subscriptions to many print … Continue reading →

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Copyright Chaos

Posted on 18 March 2007 by Rick Mason

Lawrence Lessig has an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times called “Make Way for Copyright Chaos“, which discusses a shift towards the courts when interpreting copyright law. from ©ollectanea

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Blue Books

Posted on 7 February 2007 by Rick Mason

Wouldn’t it be nice if there existed a web page containing links to all the Blue Books for the states? There are two: ALA’s GODORT Wiki Bradley University’s Wiki If you look under the history tab for each of the … Continue reading →

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Digital Abe

Posted on 31 January 2007 by Rick Mason

Digital versions of books by and about Abraham Lincoln, brought to you by the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and the Open Content Alliance. from ResourceShelf

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WikiLeaks

Posted on 7 January 2007 by Rick Mason

The existence of this web site has been leaked early, so there isn’t much to see (yet), but WikiLeaks is striving to combine the principles of WikiPedia and The Smoking Gun. Have a document, or other information, that you feel … Continue reading →

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Congressional Summary of EPA Library Closings

Posted on 6 January 2007 by Rick Mason

Here is a good PDF summary of the background and issues involved with the EPA library closings.  This is likely to be addressed by the new congress, and there will likely by a fair amount of emotion involved when it … Continue reading →

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Ten Library Stories that Shaped 2006

Posted on 16 December 2006 by Rick Mason

Although we still have two weeks left to generate a top ten news story, LISNews has their Ten Stories that Shaped 2006 list compiled. from Web4Lib listserv

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Update on EPA library issue

Posted on 8 December 2006 by Rick Mason

As an update to this post, it seems that the situation with the EPA library is getting worse. Presumably in response to a congressional request to halt the closure of its libraries, the EPA is removing thousands of documents from … Continue reading →

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Iraq Study Group Report

Posted on 7 December 2006 by Rick Mason

The report from the Iraq Study Group is available as a pdf download here.

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Crime in Libraries

Posted on 24 November 2006 by Rick Mason

This article, dated a few weeks ago, on a Chicago news radio station’s website makes it sound as though libraries are more dangerous than they are. I suspect that many of the “thousands of files” depicting the crimes were either … Continue reading →

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EPA dumping part of its library…

Posted on 21 November 2006 by Rick Mason

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the EPA is trashing a significant portion of its library collection. If the article is accurate, then we risk losing a significant amount of environmental information and research. from ResourceShelf

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Neighboroo

Posted on 26 October 2006 by Rick Mason

Neighboroo is one of the many mashups that exist using the Google Maps as the user interface.   What Neighboroo does is  give you a visual geographic layout of a variety of statistics, while doing a great job explaining those stats, … Continue reading →

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Opensecrets.org

Posted on 10 October 2006 by Rick Mason

If you have this desire to know what is being spent, and by whom, in this year’s political races, then Opensecrets.org is the site for you. from ResourceShelf

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Future of the Internet II

Posted on 24 September 2006 by Rick Mason

From the Pew Internet & American Life Project comes a report titled The Future of the Internet II, a look at what people think might happen between now and 2020 (a little over 13 years — think about trying to … Continue reading →

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Libraries, Religion, and the Appellate Court

Posted on 21 September 2006 by Rick Mason

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Contra Costa County library is within its rights to bar worship services in its public meeting rooms, and that the library is, in the ruling’s terms, a “limited … Continue reading →

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Banned Book Search

Posted on 12 September 2006 by Rick Mason

Google Book Search has put up a page dedicated to highlighting some of the books that have been challenged over the years, encouraging people to become aware of the controversies and the qualities of these reads. They have several links … Continue reading →

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11 September 2001

Posted on 11 September 2006 by Rick Mason

Much is being written about the September 11th attacks on the fifth anniversary. I hesitate to add to the discussion, but have been thinking about my own experience that day, and it seems appropriate to post it here. On that … Continue reading →

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Life in the Commonwealth

Posted on 8 September 2006 by Rick Mason

While driving home today, I heard a commentary on NPR’s All Things Considered entitled Life in the Commonwealth which discusses the impact of a community’s commons, especially the library. It touches upon the question of whether the concept of the … Continue reading →

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Librarians at the Gate

Posted on 29 August 2006 by Rick Mason

Librarians at the Gate is an article from The Nation magazine that covers several political and social issues central to libraries, including the eggshell topic of the Independant Libraries in Cuba (also here) project. from ResourceShelf

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U.S. Government Manual

Posted on 17 August 2006 by Rick Mason

The newest version of the U.S. Government Manual is available online.  It is searchable and browsable. from ResourceShelf

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