Score 1 for privacy 

Court uphold privacy of book buyers: Retailer can refuse to turn over records by David G. Savage

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects the privacy of both bookstore owners and their customers when it refused yesterday to force a Denver retailer to turn sales records over to police.

Legal experts predicted that the decision would slow, if not halt, the recent trend of investigators seeking records of book purchases or video rentals as a quick way to track suspects or bolster a prosecution.

Four years ago, independent counsel Kenneth Starr surprised booksellers when he subpoenaed the records of a Washington, D.C., store, seeking information on purchases made by Monica Lewinsky.

Since then, there has been "an alarming increase in the number of bookstore subpoenas and search warrants" -- including requests to online booksellers -- said Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

But the bookstore owners have fought back, and they won an important victory yesterday. [read more]

Reading 

Enjoy the miracle of reading - soon and often by Herbert Siegel

Before the invention of paper, the thin inner bark of certain trees was used as a writing tablet. In Latin, this bark was called liber, which in time also came to signify a a "book." Hence, our library, the place for books, and librarian, the keeper of books. Books are the keepers of words, the tools of communication that elevate us above all other life forms on Earth.

Although the role of today's public library has been greatly expanded to accommodate advanced technology such as computers, DVDs and the like -- all beneficial for its patrons -- the very core of this institution is, in a word, words. Which returns us to the book, miracle-worker that it is, through the means called reading. [read more]

On the web vs. in print 

'Why Do We Need to Keep This in Print? It's on the Web ...': a Review of Electronic Archiving Issues and Problems by Dorothy Warner

Indeed! It may be on the web today, but is there a plan in place to ensure that it will be there in twenty or more years? Probably not. In the haste to make information available electronically there are few agreed-upon plans for the preservation of digital information and much has already been lost. The particular concern of preserving electronic state government documents recently became an issue for our State Documents Interest Group of the Documents Association of New Jersey (DANJ) when we recognized that not only are fewer documents produced in print format but there is not a state plan to preserve the electronic documents being produced. For several years the Division of Elections in New Jersey eliminated the web page that gave the previous year's election lists and results. Fortunately, the concern from those using the information prompted the Division of Elections to begin to retain this information. But the earlier information is gone. Recently, Public Utilities created a new web page and eliminated virtually all of the documents that had existed on the earlier page. At least one agency replaces its old annual report with the new one. The predicament in New Jersey is not an isolated one. Our response was to research the issue of digital preservation and to present a report of recommendations to the State Librarian. The report, edited by Sue Lyons (2001, available at the DANJ website), provides a thoughtful overview of the concerns and problems of digital archiving, offering recommendations for a cooperative process and plan by the state. In the report, Lyons cites several examples of lost digital information, including data from the Viking mission to Mars and all computerized data from a New York study mapping land use and environmental data throughout the state. [read more]

Medieval Manuscripts 

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts