Digital Domesday Book Doomed 

Digital Domesday Book lasts 15 years not 1000

It was meant to be a showcase for Britain's electronic prowess - a computer-based, multimedia version of the Domesday Book. But 16 years after it was created, the £2.5 million BBC Domesday Project has achieved an unexpected and unwelcome status: it is now unreadable.

The special computers developed to play the 12in video discs of text, photographs, maps and archive footage of British life are - quite simply - obsolete.

As a result, no one can access the reams of project information - equivalent to several sets of encyclopaedias - that were assembled about the state of the nation in 1986. By contrast, the original Domesday Book - an inventory of eleventh-century England compiled in 1086 by Norman monks - is in fine condition in the Public Record Office, Kew, and can be accessed by anyone who can read and has the right credentials. 'It is ironic, but the 15-year-old version is unreadable, while the ancient one is still perfectly usable,' said computer expert Paul Wheatley. 'We're lucky Shakespeare didn't write on an old PC.' [read more]

Online Librarians 

The Top Librarian Personalities on the Web

The LISNews.com Top Librarian Personalities on the Web, is a list of people that, for one reason or another, have stood out in the crowded field of online librarians. The process to build this list worked something like this...

The initial nominees were gathered from the LISNews authors. I then contacted each of those initial nominees, and asked for a list. I then contacted those who they nominated, and so on. In the end I had a list of about 80 people from around the world.

I was shocked at almost 100% response rate and an almost universal excitement for the results. I decided to make the nominating criteria informal, to explore just what people thought a "Top Librarian Personality on the Web" actually was. I wanted to keep it fun and informal.

• Rory Litwin
• Jessamyn West
• Walt Crawford
• Marylaine Block
• Gary Price
• Karen Schneider
• Eric Lease Morgan
• Roy Tennant
• Peter Scott
• The New Breed Librarians
• Steven M. Cohen
• Greg Notess

[read more]

On Monday, March 4th at 4:30 pm EST, we will be moving our T1 line to a more secure location. We expect this to only disrupt service for a short time. Allow up to 1 hour for this change over to take place and please accept our apologies, in advance, for any inconvenience

It's all there 

Linus Pauling Research Notebooks

As with many scientists, Linus Pauling utilized bound notebooks to keep track of the details of his research as it unfolded. A testament to the remarkable length and diversity of Dr. Pauling's career, the Pauling Papers holdings include forty-six research notebooks spanning the years of 1922 to 1994 and covering any number of the scientific fields in which Dr. Pauling involved himself. In this regard, the notebooks contain many of Pauling's laboratory calculations and experimental data, as well as scientific conclusions, ideas for further research and numerous autobiographical musings. [read the notebooks]

Read any good e-books lately? 

Though the dot-com boom is over, e-book sales still on the rise

The theme at this year's annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers seems left over from the dot-com boom: ``Protecting Intellectual Property in the Digital Age.''

The recent shutdown of electronic imprints at Random House and AOL Time Warner Inc. makes e-books look like a dying fashion. Between the slow economy and the events of Sept. 11, publishers apparently had higher priorities than worrying about hackers and electronic copyrights.

The e-market continues to expand nevertheless. While annual numbers for individual publishers remain small -- in the tens of thousands of copies sold -- Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press, HarperCollins and others report double-digit growth over the past year. [read more]

Read any good websites lately? 

The Literary Web: Web sites featuring the word are thriving

In the fickle world of the Web, it's nice to know there are sites that are resistant to shifts in fashion and economy. Literary Web sites, for example, traffic in a form that moves at a less frenetic pace than other online media does. Communities of writers, especially those poets, spoken-word artists and experimental-prose writers whose works rarely make it to the shelves at Barnes and Noble, or even into the farther reaches of Amazon.com's warehouses, have made effective and enduring use of literary webzines -- and they may barely have noticed the fallout of the technology crash.

For a publishing cottage industry of small, independent presses and copy-machine poetry rags that, in pre-Internet days, were by necessity limited to three-figure circulation, the advent of the Web has made the prospect of distributing new, difficult, highbrow or edgy pieces of writing cheap and globally accessible. As one poet jests, "When those poems go live, everybody and their mother will be reading them." [read more]

Bad idea 

Senators talk tough on digital piracy

At a hearing over a proposed bill that could require security technology on computers and other digital devices, the Senate Commerce Committee chairman gave technology and media companies a deadline for working out their differences.

Hollings gave media and technology companies 12 to 18 months to come up with their own solution before federal agencies set a standard, according to Reuters.

"Almost no legal high-quality content (is) available on the Internet" because companies can't agree on one open standard for providing anti-copying features, Hollings, a Democrat from South Carolina, said in his statement to the committee.

Hollings and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, are co-sponsoring a bill that could require computer and device makers to install a government-approved anti-copying technology intended to thwart piracy of digital works.

The proposed Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) would prohibit people from removing or altering such technology. The bill would also make it illegal for someone to make a copyrighted work publicly available after its protections have been removed or altered. [read more]

Acme to move T1 line 

On Monday, March 4th at 4:30 pm EST, we will be moving our T1 line to a more secure location. We expect this to only disrupt service for a short time. Allow up to 1 hour for this change over to take place and please accept our apologies, in advance, for any inconvenience.

Librarians and Publishers 

Librarians and Publishers Find Common Ground in Joint Working Group by Deanna B. Marcum

...With a commitment to work together more effectively on behalf of the user community, the AAP Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division has joined with CLIR to create a Working Group of Librarians and Publishers. The first meeting of the group, held in New York City on January 31, 2002, was devoted to identifying common concerns and developing a problem-solving strategy. [read more]

USA Patriot Act and The Library 

The Patriot Act: Last Refuge of a Scoundrel by Karen G. Schneider

ìPatriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.î
--Samuel Johnson

First of all, Iím a hawk. I believe we should be in Afghanistan, Iíd like to see bin Laden oh, say, six feet under, and behind my bifocals, this middle-aged veteran cheers her colleagues in the armed forces defending our nation.

However, the USA Patriot Act (AL, Jan., p. 20) is treason pure and simple, and you need to know how and why, because it presents particularly pernicious issues for the users who rely on your Internet services.

The Patriot Act is not antiterrorism legislation; itís antispeech legislation, and is no more a direct response to the September 11 attacks than the Childrenís Internet Protection Act is a direct result of sincere concern by members of Congress about the safety of minors. The cold, cynical reality is that the Patriot Act is a bloated hodgepodge of speech-chilling law that lurked in congressional corridors not only before September 11 but in large part before the Bush administration. It was hustled into reality in the post-9/11 environment so quickly, secretively, and undemocratically that our Bill of Rights had been clocked with a one-two punch well before any of us realized it was under attack. [read more]

From ALA--Alert: USA PATRIOT Act

SSSCA 

From Library Juice--SSSCA? What Now?!

The SSSCA is the "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act," and it is scheduled to be introduced in congress soon by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. It's being pushed by the record industry as a copy-prevention guarantee. What the bill would do, most significantly, would be to make it an offense to make or sell any kind of computer equipment that doesn't have built in copy protection technology (which, logically, would be an abridgement of our fair use rights). [read more]