The town of Woolwich, Maine, whose officials had considered eliminating more than $43,000 in fiscal support for the Patten Free Library in Bath because of the September 2007 firing of popular children’s librarian Nyree Thomas, has opted to continue its participation with the Patten Library after all.

Woolwich officials had considered expending up to $20 per resident to purchase library cards at the nearby library of the residents’ choice, but the townspeople rejected the plan by a vote of 113–77. They went on to approve the Patten contribution 114–59 at the May 7 town meeting, the Brunswick Times Record reported May 8.

Before the votes, area resident Linda Wood praised the library as “an invaluable public resource for every person in town, whether or not they check out books. It’s like any other public service; we all pay for our school whether we have children or not.”

Posted on May 9, 2008. Discuss.

“I’m grateful that I am able now to talk about what happened to me, so that other libraries can learn how they can fight back from these overreaching demands,” Internet Archive founder and digital librarian Brewster Kahle stated May 7, two days after records were unsealed documenting his six-month legal battle to force the FBI to withdraw a National Security Letter because it sought details of several patrons’ archive use without a court order.

The disclosure about the existence of Internet Archive v. Mukasey came two days after the records were unsealed about Kahle’s federal complaint against the Justice Department. As legal counsel representing the digital library, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation named themselves as co-plaintiffs because the gag order that has accompanied NSLs since the 2001 enactment of the Patriot Act also forbids legal counsel from speaking about any aspect of such a case.

The complaint never became a full-fledged lawsuit because Opshal offered the FBI a deal: “If the government is willing to withdraw the NSL, including the nondisclosure order, the archive will voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit.” The FBI apparently agreed to negotiate, and reached a settlement agreement April 21 in which the NSL was withdrawn but the case itself remained under court seal until the Justice Department and the plaintiffs agreed on how relevant documents were to be redacted.

Thanking the plaintiffs for “their brave stand against this unconstitutional federal intrusion,” American Library Association President Loriene Roy said May 7, “While librarians fully support the efforts of law enforcement in legitimate investigations, those efforts must be balanced against the right to privacy.” Roy went on to call for the passage of the National Security Letters Reform Act of 2007 (H.R. 3189) “for meaningful Congressional oversight of these risky law enforcement tools.”

ACLU staff attorney Melissa Goodman noted, “It appears that every time a National Security Letter recipient has challenged an NSL in court and forced the government to justify it, the government has ultimately withdrawn its demand for records.” In response, John Miller of the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs said, “National Security Letters remain indispensable tools for national security investigations and permit the FBI to gather the basic building blocks for our counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations.”

The Internet Archive is the third known instance of an NSL challenge, and became public two years after four Connecticut librarians successfully defended patron privacy from a similar NSL demand. The American Library Association as well as its Freedom to Read Foundation filed amicae briefs in an unrelated challenge by an Internet Service Provider to NSL gag provisions; Judge Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York overturned the entire NSL statute September 7, 2007, and the Justice Department is scheduled to offer oral arguments in June before the Second Circuit Appeals Court seeking to reverse Marrero’s ruling.

Posted on May 9, 2008. Discuss.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) announced May 5 that he was gearing up to reintroduce the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), legislation that would require libraries and schools that rely on e-rate funding to prohibit minors from using chat rooms and social-networking sites without parental permission. He indicated that the new bill would create an adults only (.ado) domain for chat rooms and social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

During a press conference at the Mount Prospect police station of Kirk’s suburban Chicago district, the representative singled out Second Life as a site where youngsters were particularly vulnerable. Although Kirk said he could cite no cases in which children were targeted by predators in Second Life, he maintained that it “offers no protections to keep kids from virtual ‘rape rooms,’ brothels, and drugstores. If sites like Second Life won’t protect kids from obviously inappropriate content, the Congress will.”

Kirk shared a letter being sent to Federal Trade Commission Chairman William E. Kovacic that same day requesting that the FTC issue a consumer alert to warn the public about the threat that Second Life presents to children, as Kovacic’s predecessor Deborah Platt Majoras, did in 2006 regarding social networks. “I urge you . . . to take action to warn parents of the similar dangers and sexually explicit content found on Second Life,” the letter said. “If Second Life is unwilling to protect minor children from explicit material on their website, it is imperative that we warn parents of the danger Second Life represents so they can effectively monitor their children’s internet usage.”

Stating that Second Life “contains explicit content that can be easily accessed by minors,” Kirk’s letter also says, “Second Life and its owner, Linden Lab of San Francisco, has no controls in place to prevent minors from creating an account, giving minors access to pornographic and explicit material for no charge.” He argued that although Second Life claims to prevent children under the age of 13 from accessing the site, there are no age-verification features built into the registration process.

In 2006, DOPA passed the House by a whopping majority but died in the Senate. The American Library Association is opposed to the proposal, maintaining that it ignores the value of interactive web applications as a learning tool, could block helpful sites, and would inhibit librarians’ ability to teach youngsters about how to use the Web safely. Libraries accepting e-rate subsidies are already required to block content that is “harmful to minors” under the Children’s Internet Protection Act.

Posted on May 9, 2008. Discuss.

Stillwater (Minn.) Public Library’s new outdoor terrace, a popular venue for weddings and other events since it was added as part of an expansion and renovation in 2006, is drawing concern from neighbors over the potential for noise late at night.

About a dozen residents attended the city council meeting May 6 to protest the council’s prior granting of a blanket variance to the noise ordinance for the library events this summer, extending the noise curfew for them from 10 to 11:30 p.m., the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported May 7. At the May 6 meeting, the council voted to amend its action and only honor the variance for the 13 events already booked. However, the residents were not satisfied.

”The neighborhood is absolutely opposed to this,” said Jerry Helmberger, who operates a bed and breakfast next door to SPL, according to the Tribune. “Since the library [expansion] opened, the burden to this neighborhood has done nothing but increase.”

SPL Director Lynn Bertalmio told American Libraries that the library planned to experiment with the positioning of the music to direct sound away from residential areas. “That’s what they’re really afraid of, the amplified music,” she said, adding that residents also complained about a delivery that the library receives around midnight every night.

Revenue from rentals of the terrace and community rooms is built into the library’s business model. The library has budgeted $30,000 in rental revenue from the terrace this year. Bertalmio acknowledged that if the noise redirection efforts don’t work, the city may not grant variances in the future, but that the library would likely still remain a popular venue due to its panoramic view of the St. Croix River. “It’s such a stunning site that I think there will be a number of parties” that choose the library terrace anyway, she said, noting that interest in the venue had spiked since local newspaper coverage about the noise concerns began.

Posted on May 9, 2008. Discuss.

Anticipating drastically reduced revenue from a dedicated sales tax and state aid, Stanislaus County (Calif.) Library officials issued layoff notices May 1 to 94 of the system’s 138 part-time staff, effective June 30, just before the FY 2008–09 budget year begins. “This is a very, very sad thing for us to do,” Stanislaus County Librarian Vanessa Czopek said in the May 2 Modesto Bee. “We hope we don’t have to be in this mode for very long.” Adding that “a lot of us will be pitching in with duties we don’t normally do,” Czopek said she anticipates doing her part by helping to shelve books.

Officials are also eyeing a service-hour reduction in the new fiscal year that, if approved by the county Board of Supervisors, would close the Modesto branch on Sundays—the only library systemwide currently offering Sunday hours—and close other branches an additional two days a week. Many SCL sites now offer five-day-a-week service, and the proposal calls for coordination of hours so that a branch is open Monday–Saturday in each region of the county.

The library system receives 85% of its funding from a dedicated one-eighth-cent sales tax approved by voters in 1995 to stop the cash-strapped county from closing branches altogether. Renewed in 1999 and 2004, the sales tax has enabled libraries to increase hours from 240 per week in 1995 to 579 per week in FY2007–08. The library system’s weekly hours would scale back to 379 in FY2008–09.

The fiscal trouble stems from a projected shortfall of $1 million in sales-tax revenue due to the slowed economy, as well as a drop of $291,000 in state funding that is linked to local contributions. The overall proposed SCL budget for next year is $10.65 million, down from the current-year’s $12.44 million. Still, Friends of the Ceres Library President Paul Caruso asserted to the Bee that officials “have to be sensitive to the will of the people [and] hold on until we weather these things,” noting that “people voted for the sales tax to have some type of reasonable operating hours and to keep the branches open.”

Although library workers were aware that cuts were inevitable, they expressed shock and sadness nonetheless. “I’m sad it’s affecting so many people,” laid-off children’s librarian Debbie Johnson remarked, adding, “I hope the public understands that we are trying to do the best we can.” Head of Children’s Services Sharon Arpoika revealed that she feels guilty to still have a job. “I feel sad for the community,” she said. “In dire times, people don’t have money to go do things, and a library is a place people can come that doesn’t cost a lot of money.”

Posted on May 2, 2008. Discuss.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon and the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Foundation have joined 13 other plaintiffs in challenging two state laws that criminalize the provision of “sexually explicit” materials to minors. Filed in U.S. District Court April 25, the suit says that the statute, which is aimed at sexual predators, is so vague that it could intimidate Oregonians from giving youngsters sex-education materials and other constitutionally protected works.

David Fidanque, executive director of the ACLU of Oregon, said that the statutes “do not take into account whether someone’s intent is to harm the minor.” Instead, he said, they “criminalize all acts of furnishing ‘sexually explicit’ material no matter who is doing it and no matter for what purpose.” The group notes that under the law a 17-year-old girl could be prosecuted for lending her 13-year-old sister a copy of Judy Blume’s Forever and advising her to “read the good parts.”

The laws, which went into effect January 1, makes it a crime to provide sexually explicit material to children younger than age 13, or to a minor under 18 if the intent was to arouse or satisfy sexual desire or induce the minor to engage in sexual conduct.

Although the statute addressing children exempts public libraries, law enforcement agencies, museums, and medical-treatment providers, it contains no exception for bookstores; the statute aimed at protecting minors contains no exemptions at all.

The 15 plaintiffs include FTRF Vice President Candace Morgan, who was asked to participate by the ACLU of Oregon, for whom she volunteers and speaks on library issues. Morgan, former associate director of the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District in Vancouver, Washington, told American Libraries that while the statute was “very well-meaning,” its vagueness results in a “chilling effect.” Noting that parents and family members are not exempted, she said the parents of her 7-year-old grandson recently asked her to choose a sex-education book. She selected titles by Robie Harris, author of It’s Perfectly Normal and other acclaimed but often-challenged works, but then wondered if they would violate the statute. “If giving them accurate information makes you subject to being charged, that’s frightening,” she concluded.

No date has been set for a hearing on the case.

Posted on May 2, 2008. Discuss.

The board of the Windsor (Ont.) Public Library, which voted April 9 to close the South Walkerville branch as a result of a $400,000 budget cut imposed by the city council in February, is rethinking its decision after the council ousted one trustee and appointed two new ones April 28, according to the May 1 Windsor Star.

The library board’s original plan was to close the branch in August when its lease is due to expire, according to the April 11 Star. The city council, however, had ordered trustees not to close any branches when it imposed the budget cuts. Two days after the council reconstituted the library board’s membership, WPL trustees voted April 30 to look into extending South Walkerville’s lease on a month-to-month basis.

”It doesn’t mean that South Walkerville is going to be saved, necessarily, at that location,” said Library Board Chair Alan Halberstadt, who is also a city councilor and the only person to serve in both organizations. “But we’re going to look at other options and consult with the public.”

Relations between the council and the library board have been strained for some time. The council demanded a line-by-line audit of library finances March 5 after learning about a salary raise that Halberstadt gave to a manager by mistake and rescinded before it took effect, the Star reported March 7. “I guess they didn’t want to forgive my mistake, they’d rather draw and quarter me,” Halberstadt said at the time; board member Jimmy Stuart said it was part of a power struggle for control of the library system.

Although the city council funds the library, the library board is independent, and council can only take control if there is mismanagement.

Posted on May 2, 2008. Discuss.

Reacting to concerns voiced by library advocates over its decision to eliminate all 87 of its school library media specialist positions over the next three years, the board of the Mesa (Ariz.) Public School District has called for alternative suggestions for dealing with the district’s budgetary crisis. At an April 22 meeting, school board President Rich Crandall asked the library supporters in attendance to send him “fresh and concrete ideas” over the next two weeks, said Ann Ewbank, education liaison librarian at Arizona State University in Phoenix.

“They’ve kicked it back to us and said, you figure out where to cut,” Ewbank told American Libraries. The elimination of the librarians was projected to save $3.4 million over three years, so library supporters need to find budgetary alternatives that will save that amount. However, Ewbank insisted they’re not going to play “the Solomon game” and pit one area of services against another.

Ewbank said supporters hope to engage outside expertise in making their case, such as obtaining pro bono help from a local certified public accountant.

Before the school board meeting, about 60 librarians and community members attended a rally to protest the cuts and launch a statewide petition in support of school librarians. Ewbank called the event “incredibly heartening,” noting that the crowd included not just librarians but “parents, students, grandparents, and higher-education people,” proving that “this isn’t about librarians saving their own jobs.”

Posted on April 25, 2008. Discuss.

Mayor Bill Finch has proposed a $1.1-million cut in next year’s funding for Bridgeport (Conn.) Public Library. The 25% reduction in the operating budget would require laying off one-third of the staff and the likely closing of branches.

“We are getting back to basics, police, fire, and education. We will not try to be all things to all people. Libraries are not essential services. We tax poor and working-class people to pay for things that the state and federal government should pay for,” Finch said in the April 2 Bridgeport Connecticut Post.

At an April 11 meeting of the city council’s Budget and Appropriations Committee, City Librarian Scott Hughes said the cuts would “essentially shut all four branches.” He added that the current economic picture makes the timing of the cuts particularly bad, noting that “It’s a national trend people use the library more during hard times. Cutting the funding does not diminish the community’s need to use the library,” the Post reported April 12.

Although Hughes had proposed what he termed a “very conservative” budget of $5.1 million to the mayor—a modest increase over the current $4.03 million—the library had hoped to expand its services:. The Black Rock branch, closed for renovations since 2003, was scheduled to reopen this summer, and the city recently obtained a nearly new bookmobile from Seattle. “You’ll probably have a ribbon-cutting ceremony [at Black Rock] and then lock the doors,” said library board member Sylvester L. Salcedo. “And the bookmobile? It’ll never get out of the garage.”

Hughes told American Libraries that the city council has been holding departmental hearings on the budget, as well as one public hearing that drew “a tremendous amount of public comment” in support of the library. He added that a possible reprieve may come in the form of a city ordinance that was passed in 1990 but never enforced that gives the library a set percentage of city taxes. The full city council must adopt a budget by May 13.

Posted on April 25, 2008. Discuss.

The Iowa state Senate voted 31–17 April 23 against an amendment to an education appropriations bill that would have prohibited libraries that receive state funds from loaning R-rated films to children under 18.

Sen. Frank Wood (D-Eldridge), an opponent of the bill, cited his local librarian’s views. “Once you start restrictions, where do you stop?” reported Radio Iowa April 24.

Similar rules were proposed in 2006. That bill, which never came to a vote, also required libraries receiving state funding to “eliminate access to pornography on the public library’s computer equipment.”

Posted on April 25, 2008. Discuss.

Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf of Mexico, a determined group of architectural preservationists in Gulfport, Mississippi, is fighting to save Harrison County (Miss.) Public Library’s devastated Gulfport Public Library from the wrecking ball. The activists, who have formed We the People, met April 23 with legal counsel to strategize their next move as an April 29 deadline loomed for receiving bids to demolish the downtown beachfront facility, whose first floor was ruined.

The decision to tear down the 1966 structure, which had served as HCPL’s main library, came as a shock to the community. “We need to keep something of what we were,” area resident Betty Bittner told ABC-TV affiliate WLOX March 1 during a daylong save-the-library petition signing outside the damaged building, noting that the facility has “stood through two hurricanes” (the first being Hurricane Camille in 1967, which hit 13 months after the library opened). However, it was precisely because the library has suffered hurricane damage twice that made FEMA leery of insuring it a third time as a public building.

“At first we were looking at rebuilding everything,” Harrison County Administrator Pam Ulrich admitted in the April 14 Biloxi Sun Herald, explaining that officials were unaware of flood elevation requirements that it would restrict library operations to the second floor. “FEMA said if we moved [the library], they would pay up to $6 million for land and other costs associated with relocating. That’s when it began to make sense to move,” former Harrison County board member Larry Benefield explained.

The application approved by FEMA calls for construction of a new main library in nearby Orange Grove and a new downtown branch to be built further inland. Because federal regulations stipulate that the same entity own both a building and the land it occupies to qualify for FEMA aid, the Gulfport City Council ceded the municipality’s ownership of the beachfront library to Harrison County in December, adding its own condition: that the county tear down the beachfront library building. “The [library] board’s position is that we don’t want to put the headquarters there,” HCPL Director Robert Lipscomb told the Sun Herald, adding, “We want to move ahead, and we want to improve our library services.”

The city council refused activists’ request April 22 to ask the county to delay the demolishment. “I feel I did vote in haste [in December],” Gulfport Councilwoman Barbara Nalley conceded after asserting that she “will not sacrifice the library in Orange Grove to save this building.” Because FEMA has already okayed the relocation plan, it will not also fund a restoration of the original facility, agency representative Sue Ann London told the council, the Sun Herald reported April 23.

However, We the People attorney Henry Laird remains unconvinced, and is asking county officials to delay awarding bids before clarifying all the options for receiving FEMA funds. “Since we don’t have an answer in writing, why demolish the building until we do?” he said in the April 24 Sun Herald.

Posted on April 25, 2008. Discuss.

The Mesa (Ariz.) Public School District is on the verge of eliminating all 87 of its school library media specialist positions over the next three years and replacing them with support staff. Faced with an estimated $20-million reduction in its 2008–2009 operating budget—caused both by a decline in student enrollment and attempts to remedy the state’s $1.2-billion deficit—school district officials will also replace many school nurses with health assistants and phase out a contract with a company that provides speech pathologists to help students with learning disabilities, the Phoenix Arizona Republic reported April 17.

“It comes back to a financial issue,” Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Susan DePrez told American Libraries. “We have never lived through a crisis like this, and we have no choice but to change some of the things we’ve been doing that we’ve been quite happy with for a long time.” She said the libraries would be run by resource center specialists, a “full-time, 40-hour classified position” that does not require a teaching certificate.

Scott Ritter, librarian at the James K. Zaharis Elementary School, said that since he has been working as a librarian less than 14 years, he will be among those who will move into a teaching position in September. “Fortunately,” he told AL, “there is an opening in our school and I will be teaching 4th grade next year.” Media specialists with more experience will be phased out later.

“Librarians have many contact hours with kids and are able to encourage their love of reading and writing,” Ritter said. “It’s unfortunate that some of the certified positions that don’t have contact with students are being kept.”

The decision came as a surprise to many librarians, who were notified of the change the second week in April. “They are just reeling,” Ann Ewbank, education liaison librarian at Arizona State University in Phoenix, told AL. “This school district has done this under the radar.” She added that since librarians are considered instructional support staff, cutting their positions is not perceived as cutting classroom dollars. “They will turn libraries and media centers into warehouses. There will be no collaborative lesson planning, no information-literacy standards, and no library media programming at these schools.”

Ewbank, past president of the Arizona Library Association, hopes to mobilize support for the Mesa school librarians and protest the restructuring at the next school board meeting April 22. “We want to generate enough constituent pressure,” she said, “to tell them that you do not take the largest school district in Arizona with the best record for full library staffing and decimate it.” Although the Republic had reported that the measure would be discussed at this meeting, DePrez said it would not be on the agenda.

American Association of School Librarians President Sara Kelly Johns said in an April 18 statement, “It’s very sad that the students of Mesa will be left behind the rest of the country in their literacy, research, and critical-thinking skills through the elimination of certified school librarians.”

At least 20 state and provincial studies have identified a positive correlation between fully staffed school libraries and student achievement.

Posted on April 18, 2008. Discuss.

The judge hearing British author J. K. Rowling’s copyright-infringement lawsuit against an unauthorized Harry Potter encyclopedia urged both sides to settle the case April 17. On the final day of the three-day trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Judge Robert P. Patterson suggested that appeals may delay resolution for years, Bloomberg News reported April 18. “Litigation isn’t always the best way to solve things,” he said. “The lawyers get caught up in the case, and the clients are part of the baggage. I just feel this case could be settled, and should be settled.”

Rowling and Warner Brothers Entertainment are suing RDR Books, which planned to publish The Harry Potter Lexicon, written by Steven Jan Vander Ark, who based the work on a website that he launched in 2000 while working as a librarian at Byron Center (Mich.) Christian School. At the end of three hours of testimony, Vander Ark broke into tears when asked about what the suit has done to his relationship with the community of Harry Potter fans, the Associated Press reported April 15. “It’s been difficult because there has been a lot of criticism, obviously, and that was never the intention.”

Rowling contends that the book relies excessively on material from her seven novels and two guides, and will harm sales of her own Potter encyclopedia that she plans to publish. However, the day after Vander Ark’s emotional testimony, she told the judge that she had been misunderstood, the New York Times said April 17. “I never ever once wanted to stop Mr. Vander Ark from doing his own guide— never ever,” she said. “Do your book, but please, change it so it does not take as much of my work.” Stating that her suit was motivated by outrage rather than money, she testified that the prospect of Vander Ark’s guide upset her to the point of causing writer’s block.

The fair use issues at the center of the case promoted attorney Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, to serve as RDR’s cocounsel on a pro bono basis. In his opening arguments, Falzone called the Lexicon a “transformative” reference work protected by the First Amendment, the New York Law Journal reported April 15. “The lexicon, whether on the Web or in book form, is a valuable tool to find and remember details from this elaborate world,” he said. “Profit was never the point. They did this because it was a labor of love.” He claimed that Rowling now wanted to exercise “the power to make the lexicon disappear from our world, never to be seen in libraries or bookstores.”

However, plaintiff attorney Dale Cendali called RDR’s use “neither fair nor useful—it takes too much and does too little.” She said the lexicon was “massive, wholesale, willful copying beyond anything that could possibly be excused by the fair use doctrine,” and suggested that RDR and Vander Ark had tried to shield themselves by “slapping” a research label on a book that contained “virtually no analysis or commentary” but only wholesale lifting of text from the books.

Vander Ark, 50, left his librarian position shortly before the suit was filed to concentrate on the book, the Detroit Free Press reported April 9. He is in the process of moving to England, where he is researching a guide to real places in Britain that resemble the settings in the Harry Potter books.

Judge Patterson, who is hearing the case without a jury, gave the lawyers three weeks to file additional documents before ruling on the suit.

Posted on April 18, 2008. Discuss.

Former Sacramento (Calif.) Public Library finance director Anil Paul has filed suit in Superior Court of Sacramento County, accusing the library of retaliatory termination after he raised concerns about overpayments to a library staffer’s company. Those concerns, he claims, were ultimately validated by an investigation that led to SPL filing suit to recover $1.3 million in restitution and damages. Paul also alleges that his dismissal from his position, with salary and benefits of $180,000 annually, was in retaliation for his refusal to approve improper expenses charged to library credit cards.

Dated February 19 and amended this week, the lawsuit claims that Paul was fired after raising concerns “in or around June 2006” about “the one million dollar overpayment made to one county employee’s company,” and he “had reasonable cause to believe that such actions were violations of state or federal laws, rules, and/or regulations.” At the same time, he made the library aware of “the improper use of county credit cards” by SPL managers. After several months, the suit claims, Paul “observed that these problems had not been resolved and he began refusing to sign checks to cover expenses that were improper.”

In a November 28, 2007, letter to SPL, Paul’s attorney, Robert A. Carichoff, outlined his client’s position and refuted the library’s claim that his dismissal had to do solely with “performance-related factors,” since he had been promoted during his tenure and had not received any written or verbal reprimands. Paul said the library offered early on to settle for $7,000 and later $15,000 but did not respond to his attorney’s settlement offer of $720,000.

Carichoff told American Libraries that he amended his complaint this week after discovering that punitive damages and wrongful termination were not allowable under state law. “What is left is a claim for retaliation,” he said, “technically a whistleblower claim. The library has 30 days to respond to the amended claim,” he added.

“We have investigated all of Mr. Paul’s allegations,” SPL Director Ann Marie Gold told AL, “and we have found them totally without merit, and that is why we are vigorously contesting the claim.”

Posted on April 18, 2008. Discuss.

A review committee at Turner Elementary School in New Tampa, Florida, has deemed The Land by Mildred Taylor age-inappropriate and removed it from its media-center shelves.

The committee said the novel, about a former slave during Reconstruction, was “above the maturity level of elementary students at Turner,” reported the April 14 St. Petersburg Times. School officials said they will donate the book to a middle school.

The Times said the committee’s three parents were outvoted by the two administrators, three teachers, and the media specialist.

“I thought it was an excellent book,” said parent Jeanann Kuch, who voted to retain it. “I have mixed emotions about [the decision].” Parent Craig Younger would have preferred to keep the book, but with restrictions. “Unfortunately, it had to be keep it or remove it,” he said. “There were no other options. Now that we’re taking this book from 5th-graders who read at a higher level, that’s another form of censorship. Either way, I don’t think anybody really wins.”

Darryl Brown had filed a challenge to the book, which his 11-year-old daughter Ashyaa was reading from the school’s accelerated-reading list, over its use of the n-word. “It’s a very small victory,” he said. “We won the battle, but the war is the situation that allowed this to come into the school system, the process that the county used and the media specialist used to allow the books in.”

Brown said he is preparing to file another challenge, seeking the removal of The Starplace by Vicki Grove, a story about an interracial middle-school friendship in 1960s Oklahoma that also contains the n-word.

Posted on April 18, 2008. Discuss.

Officials in Woolwich, Maine, voted 4–1 April 14 not to place a $43,700 contribution—its share of the operating budget—to Patten Free Library in Bath on the agenda for a town meeting, opting instead to set aside $20,000 to purchase for town residents individual library cards for up to $20 apiece at Patten or other libraries. Residents, however, have started a petition to put the contribution back on the agenda, the Brunswick Times Record reported April 17.

The move is part of the fallout from the library’s September 21, 2007, firing of children’s librarian Nyree Thomas, allegedly for her receiving an unsatisfactory review. Public outcry led to renegotiations with Thomas, which resulted in the library—which serves Bath, Woolwich, and four other communities—offering Thomas a public apology April 8, six months of pay, 18 months of health insurance, a fund to help her find a new job, and a guarantee of a positive letter of recommendation, the Times Record reported April 9.

Woolwich had also asked the library to disclose the number of town residents who had cards at the library, the newspaper reported April 15. “We wanted some figures, and the figures kept changing,” said Selectman Todd McPhee. “We felt they were giving us the run-around.”

Library Board Vice Chairman David Miller told the paper that Woolwich residents use the Patten library frequently, with as many as 1,300 cardholders checking out 10,000 items in a single year.

Posted on April 18, 2008. Discuss.

The March 31 discovery by an academic librarian that the administrator of the reproductive-health database Popline (Population Information Online) had placed the search word “abortion” on its stop list, or file of blocked terms, has led to the dean of Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health reversing the decision a scant five days later.

Administered by JHU, Popline is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and contains more than 360,000 items about family planning and sexually transmitted disease. However, federal laws dating back to 1973 prohibit the use of federal funds for abortion advocacy or supplies, according to the April 10 Johns Hopkins University News-Letter.

After finding that a routine Popline search on the word “abortion” retrieved fewer citations at the end of March than it had in January, librarian Gloria Won of the Medical Center of the University of San Francisco e-mailed database officials to ask about the discrepancy. Popline Database Manager/Administrator Debra L. Dickson replied April 1, “We recently made all abortion terms stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.” She went on to suggest that librarians could substitute the terms “fertility control, postconception” or “pregnancy, unwanted.”

An outraged Won and her supervisor Gail L. Sorrough alerted the library community on a medical-librarian discussion list and soon word had spread to the biblioblogosphere and the mainstream news media. On April 4, Michael Klag, dean of the public health school, stated that he “could not disagree more strongly with this decision,” adding that he had “directed that the Popline administrators restore ‘abortion’ as a search term immediately.”

Reporting on the findings of an investigation he had ordered, Klag explained April 8 that the stop-listing of the word “abortion” began in February; Popline officials took the action unilaterally after USAID inquired about two articles in the Winter 2008 issue of A, the Abortion Magazine characterizing the termination of pregnancy as a human right. Popline officials also pulled the two articles, plus another five from the same issue of A, from the database. Pledging to “work with our staff to reinforce their appreciation of the importance of academic integrity,” Klag said, “Unfettered access to information is essential for informed debate and rational choices in any field, especially in family planning.”

Posted on April 11, 2008. Discuss.

The parents of an 11-year-old student at the Hillsborough County (Fla.) School District’s Turner Elementary School in New Tampa announced in mid-March that they would seek the removal of two media-center novels that contain the n-word: The Land by Mildred Taylor and The Starplace by Vicki Grove. “I want them pulled,” Darryl Brown, a doctoral student in education at the University of South Florida, said in the March 17 St. Petersburg Times. “There needs to be an examination of these words that elementary school kids are reading.”

Brown and his wife Alytrice told the Times that they originally expressed their concern to the assistant principal in January after their daughter Ashyaa told them she had found the offensive word in The Starplace, a story about an interracial middle-school friendship in 1960s Oklahoma. However, the family was not advised how to file a challenge until two months later, Mr. Brown explained, telling how he called again in March because another student who was reading The Land directed the epithet against Ashyaa.

On the second occasion, Turner Media Specialist Donna Simonetti-Tedesco phoned him to explain how to challenge materials, but used the n-word in talking about the books. She apologized, but “it was a lackluster apology,” Brown told the newspaper, describing the librarian’s word choice as “like pouring salt on a wound.” Brown added that he subsequently wrote the principal asking that Simonetti-Tedesco be suspended.

Mildred Taylor, who is African American, has written in an afterward to The Land, which is a story about a former slave during Reconstruction, that she deliberately used the language “that was spoken during the period, for I refuse to whitewash history.” In a March 18 interview on 24-hour Florida cable TV station Bay News 9, Mr. Brown disagreed, calling such an explanation “a moot point [and] a politically savvy way of trying to cover something up.”

Posted on April 11, 2008. Discuss.

Paul and Irene Bogoni, who had pledged $2 million for an addition to Friedsam Memorial Library at St. Bonaventure (N.Y.) University, have said that they will not pay the final $900,000 of their gift, and have filed a suit in State Supreme Court in New York County claiming that the university is not meeting the terms of the donation and demanding that the school either provide full accounting of the gift or return the money.

The lawsuit lists several points of contention between the Bogonis and St. Bonaventure, among them that costs rose from the originally planned $1.5 million to more than $2.5 million, the Buffalo News reported March 27. “We have asked for documentation and have received nothing worthwhile,” Paul Bogoni said in a prepared statement through his attorney. “I just want to see why the project has gone over budget so dramatically.”

Emily Sinsabaugh, vice president for university relations, said in the March 20 Chronicle of Philanthropy that the project was on budget, that the Bogonis knew the cost when construction started, and that the university had provided detailed financial information.

The Bogonis said that they agreed to be sole donors in exchange for having the addition named after them. The school, however, raised additional funds to cover the construction cost, and when the Bogonis sent notification last October that they did not plan to fulfill the pledge, St. Bonaventure said that the naming rights would be affected.

The addition is 75% complete and will open in the fall.

Posted on April 11, 2008. Discuss.

Seattle City Librarian Deborah L. Jacobs, who oversaw the opening of the city’s acclaimed Rem Koolhaas–designed main library, is stepping down July 2 to become deputy director for global libraries at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Jacobs came to Seattle in November 1997 after serving as director of the Corvallis–Benton County (Ore.) Public Library. In her first year she spearheaded a successful drive to pass a $196.4-million bond issue to nearly double the space in 22 branches and replace the downtown library; at that time, it was the largest measure ever approved for library construction nationwide. During Jacobs’s tenure, annual circulation has risen from 4.9 million to 9.3 million.

“It has been a privilege to serve as Seattle’s city librarian,” Jacobs said. “The Seattle Public Library’s many successes are due to a dedicated library board, hard-working staff, support from elected officials, and the advocacy and fundraising efforts of the Seattle Public Library Foundation and Friends of the Seattle Public Library. Together, we have built a strong foundation able to meet the future needs of our community. I have confidence the library will continue to soar!”

“Deborah Jacobs has led our library through a remarkable period of growth and renewal,” said Mayor Greg Nickels. “She understands the important role libraries play in bringing communities together. I wish her the very best as she takes her passion and dedication to a global stage and leaves a lasting legacy.”

Jacobs will begin at the Gates foundation on August 10.

Posted on April 11, 2008. Discuss.

Two contractors and a former facilities supervisor for Sacramento (Calif.) Public Library made their first court appearance April 2, following their arrest the previous week on felony charges in an alleged billing scam, the Sacramento Bee reported April 3. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gary Ransom read the charges against James Mayle, 63, his wife, Janie Rankins-Mayle, 59, and former library facilities supervisor Dennis Nilsson, 61, that included bribery and grand theft. Nilsson and Mayle also face additional counts of conflict of interest. None of the accused entered pleas.

Meanwhile, library Director Ann Marie Gold has come under growing criticism for her handling of the situation, with one union leader who represents library employees calling for her resignation for failing to act sooner in the alleged $650,000 kickback scheme.

In her own defense, Gold told American Libraries, “We initiated an investigation last July as soon as we had substantive evidence of fraudulent billing that was brought to us by a subcontractor.” She credited the district attorney’s office for moving the case forward. “Everything they uncovered validated what we found and that’s what led to the arraignments,” Gold said. “I’m delighted about the indictments. These three individuals obviously did not have the best interests of the public at heart.”

The Bee published an editorial March 29 claiming that it was one of the newspaper’s reporters, Christina Jewett, who instigated the probe and calling Gold’s handling of the situation “gross incompetence.” The editorial argued that Gold should not only be denied a raise, she should be replaced. The library board had discussed and tabled the topic of the raise at its March 28 meeting.

Gold told AL that she had asked the board “to defer any discussion about compensation for me and that’s why they did not take action at the meeting.” Noting that the swindle was “clearly nothing that anybody wanted to see happen,” Gold said it was more important to focus on “the balance of the work that has happened under my leadership. Libraries are thriving and that is the true legacy this community will get.”

Asked how she was withstanding the public pillorying, Gold said, “The measure of leadership is not just the successes. When you have an issue, it’s taking responsibility for it and putting the solutions in place.” And that is what she says she has done. “We look at the value of the work that we do and measure and judge ourselves against those results. ‘Are you creating better libraries for the communities that you serve?’ At the end of each day, that’s the question that needs to be asked.” She pointed to the three groundbreakings and a grand opening occurring this year.

SPL filed suit October 30 against local contractor Hagginwood Services, asking for more than $1.3 million in restitution and damages. The suit names Mayle and Rankins-Mayle, seeking recovery breach of contract, negligence, false claims, and fraud. Mayle was the library’s security supervisor prior to beginning a workers compensation leave in 2005. Rankins-Mayle, his wife, was registered as owner of a subcontractor called All City. Nilsson was placed on administrative leave last June and resigned in September. Gold told AL that SPL filed for summary judgment in March but is still waiting. The Mayles and Nilsson are each free on $45,000 bail.

Posted on April 4, 2008; modified April 14, 2008. Discuss.

March was a month that embroiled two Ohio public libraries in charges of censorship from local community groups.

In a decision sharply criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, the Cleveland Heights–University Heights Library cancelled a March 12 showing of Searching for Peace in the Middle East, a documentary film screening cosponsored by the library and Cleveland Peace Action. The screening was scheduled as the first of three events in a series, the latter two of which are still scheduled to proceed as planned at the library April 6 and May 15.

Library Director Stephen Wood said in the March 13 Cleveland Plain Dealer that the first part of the series was cancelled because library staff found the 30-minute movie, which was produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, to be “controversial and biased.” A day earlier, Jeffrey Gamso, legal director of the ACLU of Ohio, had characterized the action in a letter to Wood as “blatant and shameful censorship of particular views,” adding, “A library may not withdraw its sponsorship of a film series because some members of the local community may be offended by it.”

The April 6 event will feature a week’s worth of Middle East news footage shot by a Youngstown network TV affiliate, and the May 15 program is scheduled to be a panel discussion about the regional conflict.

On the other side of the state, the Cincinnati-based social-conservative group Citizens for Community Values filed a lawsuit March 7 charging that the Upper Arlington (Ohio) Public Library violated the group’s First Amendment rights by canceling its February 27 meeting-room reservation for a program entitled “Politics and the Pulpit” several days after approving it. The affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio indicates that UAPL wrote the plaintiff group February 21, a week after okaying the program, asking that CCV “refrain” from its original plan of engaging in “a time of prayer petitioning God for guidance . . . and singing praise and giving thanks to God for the freedom we have in this country to participate in the political process” so that the program would be in compliance with the library’s meeting-room policy, which prohibits “inherent elements of religious services.”

“The library does not refuse the use of meeting rooms for discussions,” Ruth McNeil, library community-relations manager, told the March 8 Columbus Dispatch. “You can discuss faith, family values, or war. This is a place for public discussion. The opportunity to meet here was and still is open to them.”

Citizens for Community Values, which has sparred with libraries for at least a decade over filtering material it deems harmful to minors, is represented in the lawsuit by the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit that defends the rights of Christians to practice their faith. “The government cannot treat people with nonreligious viewpoints more favorably than people with religious viewpoints,” Tim Chandler, legal counsel for ADF, said in a March 7 news release. “Christians have the same First Amendment rights as anyone else in America.”

Posted on April 4, 2008. Discuss.

Six organizations have banded together to fire two new salvos in an ongoing battle against the use of National Security Letters to obtain information about individuals’ reading habits under the USA Patriot Act.

On March 17 the American Library Association joined with five other groups to file an amicus curiae brief in a case brought by an internet service provider challenging the FBI’s use of the letters to demand private information from libraries, telephone companies, internet service providers, and other data-gathering bodies. Last September a District Court judge ruled that the NSL provision of the Patriot Act violated the First Amendment, and the government appealed the case, Doe v. Mukasey, to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

The brief, submitted by ALA, the American Booksellers Association Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Association of University Professors, the Freedom to Read Foundation, and PEN American Center, states that the NSL statute, even as revised by Congress, “chills protected speech,” pointing out that “even though the new Section 2709 purports to create an exemption for libraries, it does nothing of the sort for the vast majority of libraries.”

In an advertisement in the April 1 issue of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, ALA, AAP, ABA, and the PEN American Center urged Congress to restore the reader-privacy safeguards that were eliminated by the Patriot Act. The open letter, which cited two recent reports by the Justice Department’s Inspector General showing that the FBI has violated the law thousands of times since Congress expanded the bureau’s authority to issue NSLs, called for passage of the National Security Letters Reform Act (S. 2088 and H.R. 3189).

Posted on April 4, 2008. Discuss.

Staff of the Greater Victoria (B.C.) Public Library returned to work beginning April 2 after the library and its staff reached an agreement that day to end the lockout that had closed the library since February 17.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 410, which had been without a contract for 454 days, voted 85% in favor of the agreement. The four-year deal brings library wages in line with comparable jobs in neighboring Esquimalt and Oak Bay. The union had been seeking pay equity with jobs in Victoria, where wages are slightly higher. “I think the main dispute has been properly put to bed,” CUPE Local 410 President Ed Seedhouse told American Libraries, noting that Esquimalt and Oak Bay are part of GVPL’s service area. “They’re not that far apart. I would have accepted that as reasonable at the start.”

GVPL Chief Executive Officer Barry Holmes told AL that the union introduced the “regional equity” approach of looking at wage levels at other municipalities in the area, and credited it with making resolution possible. “That freed us up to look at other ways we could compare,” he said. “Given the pressure, both parties were able to move a little bit.”

“I’m not aware of another library in British Columbia that has achieved finality on pay equity,” Holmes added.

All staff will receive 12% raises, spread out over over the next four years, Seedhouse told American Libraries. Certain classifications will receive additional raises, ranging from $1 to $3 per hour, to address pay equity issues. Nine full-time senior page positions with benefits will be created, one for each branch, while other pages will receive an additional 30-cents-per-hour raise per year beyond the 12%. The union also negotiated a 0.5% reduction in long-term disability insurance premiums.

Book drops at all branches reopened April 4, and the nine branches themselves reopen April 8, the Victoria Times Colonist reported April 2. Most services will resume on reopening day, although some programs will be phased in over a few weeks. No late fees will be charged for the lockout period, and previously borrowed materials will have an additional grace period until April 20.

Posted on April 4, 2008. Discuss.

The independent Section 108 Study Group, which was set up in 2005 by the Library of Congress to reexamine the exceptions that apply to libraries found under Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act, issued its final report March 31 with recommendations on how the law could be adapted to the digital environment. The report will serve as the basis upon which legislation may be drafted and recommended to Congress.

The group focused on the limited exceptions that allow libraries and archives to make preservation or replacement copies of copyrighted works in their collections. Among the recommended changes:

• Include museums as well as libraries and archives.
• Strengthen eligibility requirements to apply only to institutions “possessing a public service mission, employing a trained library or archives staff, providing professional services normally associated with libraries and archives, and possessing a collection comprising lawfully acquired and/or licensed materials.”
• Permit qualified libraries to make a preservation copy of an at-risk published work prior to damage or loss, but strictly limit access to such a copy.
• Allow libraries to capture publicly available websites and other online content as long as the content is labeled as “an archived copy for use only for private study, scholarship, and research” with the date of capture.
• Authorize libraries to outsource allowable copying or preservation activities to outside contractors.
• Amend the television news exception to permit archive streaming but not downloading.
• Clarify that libraries are not liable for unsupervised use of personal scanners or cameras by patrons.

The Section 108 Study Group was cochaired by Laura N. Gasaway, associate dean for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina School of Law, and Richard S. Rudick, former senior vice president and general counsel of John Wiley and Sons. The Library of Congress acted as a facilitator for the study group but had no influence over its conclusions.

The report was delivered to Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters.

Posted on April 4, 2008. Discuss.