It's more than a little disheartening when the FBI protects themselves against prosecution by using gag order clauses in the Patriot Act.

Quoted: While the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been quite willing to announce that it has not used Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act to seek records from libraries, the FBI has balked at public disclosure of its use of National Security Letters, another method to gain such records and the one that American Library Association officials consider a more likely avenue.

Whoops. Better send those schools their swimsuit issue.

Quoted: In a swift follow-up to a story that went from librarians’ electronic mailing lists to LJ last week—and then to the media at large—Sports Illustrated (SI) has acknowledged it shouldn’t have withheld copies of the racy swimsuit issue from libraries and schools.

Take that, GW! You're going to have to turn over all you private papers within 12 years of your presidency. Oh wait, do you even write?

Seriously though, when you pass executive orders in order to avoid another Watergate type scandal, doesn't it indicate you might be hiding something?

Quoted: After five years of bitter complaints from archivists, librarians, historians, and public advocates, the House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 333-93, to repeal Bush's controversial executive order 13233, which gave ex-presidents and their heirs authority to effectively block release of their papers indefinitely.

It appears that Sports Illustrated decided to "not send" their annual swimsuit issue to certain paying subscribers - such as schools and libraries. What? Why would you force your subscribers to call a 1-800 number to request somethign they've already paid for? The swimsuit issue was always my favorite thing in my junior high library!

Quoted: In an unannounced policy change that already has librarians fuming, Sports Illustrated decided this year to withhold copies of its risque annual swimsuit issue from classrooms and libraries.

A third look at Google's book-scanning project, this one from the perspective of somebody who actually uses it in their work.

An excellent response on TechDirt to the unviersal Google library article I dotted earlier today from the New Yorker.

A fascinating New Yorker article about the Google's attempts to pull together a "universal library." Major publishers ar finding themselves in the awkward position of being for and against this since it will help them sell books but leaves control of the full copyrighted script in Google's hands.

Quoted: The New Yorker

Booklovers! Please check out the most recent post on my blog, The Puget News. I need photos of books and libraries so if you want to send any along, please do! If I like them, I'll post them to the blog under my new "Library Porn" category! I may even use them for the header of my blog if they're really good!

Beautiful library porn - for book lovers.

Quoted: the nonist, now searching recorded history for some semblance of truth.