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August/September 2003 LibraryNet Monthly TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. DIGITAL DIVIDE NEEDS GLOBAL HELPOn August 29, the World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR) issued a statement affirming that cooperation between states and public-private partnerships to bridge the digital divide were crucial to help reduce world poverty. The statement was adopted by delegates of 68 countries and numerous technology companies who attended WITFOR in Vilnius, Lithuania. The so-called Vilnius Declaration will be used as input for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva this December. The knowledge society "is about technical solutions and their financing, but it is also about truly being informed, which requires education," said International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) President Klaus Brunnstein. IFIP, set up by the UN educational, scientific and cultural body UNESCO, organized the Forum. For more information: To read the full text of the Declaration [in PDF format]: 2. BEST PRACTICES IN UK LIBRARY DESIGNA report published on August 18 provides a snapshot of public library usage and trends in the United Kingdom. According to "Better Public Libraries", co-authored by Re:source, The National Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), 96% of British residents believe that libraries provide a valuable service to local communities. However, the report also points out that in the last ten years visits to libraries have fallen by 17% and book loans by almost one-quarter. A few innovative projects have reversed the trend in their areas. Current best practice in library design is illustrated through a number of case studies of libraries such as Bow, with its glass-walled "idea store", and Bournemouth, where an open-plan building replaced a library once called the second worst in Britain. Use has tripled in Bournemouth and quadrupled in Bow, where circulation rose by 40% in the library's first year. "The library has the potential to be the 'living room of the city' or a 'club for everyone'... New libraries should increasingly be long-stay places for students, a safe haven for children, even a home from home. They should include cafes, lounge areas with sofas, and chill-out zones where young people can watch MTV, read magazines and listen to CDs on listening posts." The report also recommends a flexible approach based on local conditions; for example, libraries in areas of high unemployment could focus on skills training, or in neighbourhoods with a large proportion of single-parent households, provide more children's services. To read the full text of the report [PDF format]: 3. WILL AMAZON BRANCH INTO ONLINE RESEARCH?According to a July New York Times article, Amazon is planning to assemble a searchable online archive of the texts of thousands of nonfiction books. Users would search by keyword and then view a list of books mentioning such terms along with the sentence(s) containing them. Browsers could then choose which pages they wanted to see. Amazon plans to limit how much of any given book a user can read. The plan appears to be part of a strategy to compete with online search services like Google and Yahoo for consumers' time and attention. Amazon is telling publishers that the plan will help them sell more books while better serving its own online customers. However, Amazon would face several challenges in developing such a service. In addition to the cost of converting books to a digital format, publishers and authors have expressed concerns with the project and how they would be compensated. Publishing executives told the Times that Amazon had asked them to keep the plan confidential until the scheduled start of the service in fall 2003. A spokeswoman for Amazon would not confirm any of the details. To read the full text of the article: 4. "LOW-CONNECTIVITY" SEARCH ENGINEIn many places in the world, gigabytes of inaccessible information stream by because telephone lines are too expensive, Internet connection fees are 10% of a local monthly wage, or there are no computers. Even where computers and working phone lines are available, bandwidth is often so expensive that searching the Internet and downloading the discovered material is cost-prohibitive. TEK is a "low-connectivity search engine" that hopes to overcome these problems for users in developing or remote countries. TEK likens its model of Internet access to using inter-library loan services: "you are willing to 'pay' to access the information in that book with time: you will wait a week to see the book." In the same way, TEK performs Internet searches for people who are willing to wait for the information. Using a client software program, a user submits a query which is emailed to the TEK server in the United States. The server searches the Internet, locates webpages matching the query, selects which pages to send back, compresses them, and returns them to the user via email. Because search results are returned asynchronously, connectivity charges are lower. Selecting which pages to send back and compressing them addresses the bandwidth question and (hopefully) reduces the amount of irrelevant information. The TEK team realizes that the client program will be too big for users to download over a slow or unreliable Internet connection. They are considering distributing CD-ROMs to local libraries so that people can borrow them and install the software on their computers. Right now, the software is still in the alpha testing phase, and needs to be debugged before it can be made freely available to remote communities. For more information: 5. BBC ONLINE ARCHIVE TO BECOME FREE ACCESSOn August 24, in a speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, the director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announced plans to give the public full online access to all of the corporation's programming archives. Greg Dyke said that the BBC is planning to digitize and offer for download as much of its back catalogue as legally possible, from early radio shows to nature documentaries. The proposed BBC Creative Archive would be free and available for anyone to re-use and re-edit, as long as it was for non-commercial purposes. "The BBC probably has the best television library in the world," said Dyke. He predicted that those benefitting from the online archive would range from people accessing the Internet at home, to children and adults using public libraries, to students at school and university. No timeline was given in the speech as to when the service would become available. For more information: 6. IRAQI LIBRARIAN SAVED COLLECTIONIn the days before British forces reached the Iraqi city of Basra, Alia Muhammad Baker, the Central Library's chief librarian, secretly removed items from the facility and relocated them to her own home and those of friends. Baker told New York Times reporter Shaila Dewan that she was able to move roughly 30,000 books and periodicals - 70 percent of the collection - to safety before the facility, and the remaining items, were destroyed in a fire caused by looters. On April 6, 2003, when bombing of the city began, looters were already stealing carpets, light fixtures, and other items from the library. Baker asked workers in neighbouring businesses to help move materials. Many left their jobs to load the collection into boxes, bags, and even the library's curtains, which were torn down and used to wrap loads of books. Restaurant owner Anis Muhammad helped the librarian and her husband hide them in the back of his business until they could be moved to other locations. Baker suffered a stroke after the incident, but is recovering and has vowed to see a new library open in Basra. To read the full text of the article: 7. NATIONAL LIBRARY'S FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY MARKED WITH STAMPSOn September 8, to commemorate the National Library of Canada's fiftieth anniversary, Canada Post issued four stamps that honour a diverse collection of Canadian authors. The five authors featured on the stamps are: Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie (on the same stamp), Morley Callaghan, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, and Anne Hébert. Together they represent a broad spectrum of Canadian literature, from early 19th century non-fiction to present day fiction, poetry and even broadcasting. For more information: 8. CALL FOR PROPOSALSThe Partnerships Fund of the Canadian Culture Online Program (CCOP) has announced a general call for proposals for 2004/2005 fiscal year funding. The deadline for proposals is October 20, 2003. The CCOP Partnerships Fund provides funding to not-for-profit associations, consortiums, foundations and organizations for the digitization of Canadian cultural collections to make them accessible to the public via the Internet. Part of the Department of Canadian Heritage, CCOP exists to foster a deepened understanding of Canada and its rich diversity by stimulating the development of, and ensuring access to, quality Canadian digital content. To see the revised Program and Application Guidelines [PDF format]: For more information: 9. CALL FOR PAPERSCanadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) 2004 Annual Conference The theme of the 2004 CAIS conference is "Access to Information: Technologies, Skills, and Socio-Political Context." Papers presented at the conference should focus on one of these three areas of information access. Topics may include: organization of information, information retrieval, evaluation of systems, human information behaviour, informatics, information literacy, cognitive models, governmental and organizational studies, digital publishing, copyright, and intellectual freedom. Proposals should include a title, be no more than 500 words long, and specify how they relate to one of the areas within the conference program theme. Proposals may be submitted in English or French. The highest ranked papers will, with permission of the authors, be published in the Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science with their abstracts appearing in the proceedings. The deadline for proposals is January 16, 2004. Authors will be notified of the Committee's decision no later than February 16, 2004, and papers to appear as full-text in the electronic proceedings must be submitted no later than April 15, 2004. Proposals, including the name(s) of the author(s), mailing and email addresses, telephone and fax numbers, can be sent electronically in Word, WordPerfect, or Rich Text Format (RTF) to Heidi.Julien@ualberta.ca, or in print to: Dr. Heidi Julien, Program Chair CAIS/ACSI 10. CONTINUING EDUCATIONWhat's New in Children's Books? This online course will focus on children's books published since 1999, with emphasis on the best and how to use them in your school or library. Outstanding new picture books, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and traditional literature for infants through age 12 will be presented. (A companion course looking at literature for young adults will be offered in spring 2004.) New authors and illustrators, multicultural literature, awards and distinctions, and current issues in book evaluation and selection will be highlighted. For more information: 11. USEFUL INTERNET RESOURCESCanadian Subject Headings Internet Education Project Advanced News Searching E-stories Vancouver's Golden Years: 1900-1910 McAfee AVERT Stinger Digital Best Practices Software Tools for Indigenous Knowledge Management GlobalEDGE: International Business Resource Desk Eurodicautom Volcanoes of Canada How Everyday Things Are Made If you have information you would like featured in the next issue of LibraryNet
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