NEILSA - Friday Notes Archive

Good Morning! Stolen from the EYE-OPENER [NWILSA weekly e-letter] edited lightly:

1) Great Outcome to ’06 Legislative Session

2) EBSCOHost Renews in June

1) Great Outcome to ’06 Legislative Session: On behalf of Northwest LSA board and staff, (the rest of the LSA people too) thanks to all of you for your advocacy efforts this year. Your emails, phone calls, and personal appearances at legislative functions kept a much needed focus on library issues. And it all paid off. The requirement for teacher-librarians was reinstated into law and increases were approved for Enrich Iowa, the State Library, and the LSAs! In his latest Advocacy Hotline, ILA Governmental Affairs chair Duncan Stewart describes “a banner year for libraries:”

HF 2782 - Infrastructure Budget (Sent to Governor)

Appropriates money from the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund (RIIF). Funds Enrich Iowa Libraries at the Governor's level (a $300,000 increase - total $1.2 million from the Infrastructure Fund). Earmarks $200,000 of that increase to the State Library of Iowa and $50,000 of that increase to the Library Services Areas (to be divided up equally among them). Maintains current level of funding ($500,000) for the Department of Education's Iowa Learning Technology Initiative (pilot programs that encourage innovation, increase student achievement, and establish best practices in learning technology use). Maintains current funding for ICN Part III leases ($2.7 million). Effective 7/1/2006.

HF 2792 - Statewide Educational Standards (Sent to Governor)

Reinstates the requirement that school districts have a qualified teacher librarian and an articulated sequential K-12 media program. Allows school districts to apply for a waiver of the requirement for the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years and grandfathers in all non-qualified media specialists (stating the schools are in compliance with the law until that person retires or leaves employment) Changes the term "media specialist" to "teacher librarian." Also directs the Department of Education to study the establishment of statewide content and performance standards to determine the advantages and disadvantages of current law and administrative rules related to content, performance, and graduation standards for K-12 programs. The bill would require the department to submit a progress report by January 1, 2007, and a final report summarizing the results of the study and making recommendations by July 1, 2007. Includes teacher pay for performance and other educational policy compromises from the 2006 legislative session. Includes an "Equity in Property Taxation Interim Study Committee" to address equalization of the school foundation aid formula. Effective 7/1/2006.

Read the latest Advocacy Hotline from May 7 in its entirety on the ILA website: www.iowalibraryassociation.org And again, our thanks for your help in convincing legislators that libraries are an essential service—and for defending the Library Service Areas as essential support for local libraries!

2) EBSCOhost Renews in June: EBSCOhost has again been selected as the statewide database to be supported by the State Library. The State Library will continue to highly subsidize the license for EBSCOhost so that these databases can be available to all Iowans within their local libraries—as well as from home and work.

As in past years, local libraries are asked to pay a small access fee; this fee represents only a small fraction of the actual product cost. All current EBSCO participants will receive a bill directly from the State Library. Invoices will be mailed in June; payment can be made in June or after July 1^st, that’s a local option. For public libraries, note the new pricing effective July 1: Base price of $25.00 plus .03cents per capita.

When you do the math, you’ll see how affordable this is, even for the smallest of libraries. For instance, Size A libraries in populations less than 500, would pay about $40.00/year, while Size B libraries in populations 500—999, would pay about $55.00/year. And what are you getting? Online access to literally thousands of magazines and journals—the vast majority in full text—plus 30 national newspapers, TV & radio transcripts, EBSCO Animals, Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia…and a whole lot more.

Again, current participants will be automatically invoiced by the State Library. Newcomers will want to contact Judy Jones at the State Library to sign-up for the first time. Email judy.jones@lib.state.ia.us More about the EBSCO advantage in the coming weeks, along with training opportunities available through NWILS. Stay tuned…

Computer Class -Power Tools - Limited enrollment May 31 at Waterloo PL 9:00 - 11:30 3 ce credits
OK last time I forgot the REGISTRATION details: Go to the ce Catalog http://www.statelibraryofiowa.org/ld/continuing-ed/cecatalog
or TRY: http://www.statelibraryofiowa.org/cgi-bin/cecat/registrations/events/event_list.cgi?s_sponsor_id=6&searchtype=sponsor&Browse=Browse

The Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 proposes to extend CIPA's requirements to make certain that a library (and school):
>>>>>>>>>>>>
(i) is enforcing a policy of Internet safety that includes the operation of a technology protection measure with respect to any of its computers with Internet access that-
(II) prohibits access by minors without parental authorization to a commercial social networking website or chat room through which minors-
(aa) may easily access or be presented with obscene or indecent material;
(bb) may easily be subject to unlawful sexual advances, unlawful requests for sexual favors, or repeated offensive comments of a sexual nature from adults; or
(cc) may easily access other material that is harmful to minors;
>>>>>>>>>>>>
See article at
http://news.com.com/Congress+targets+social+network+sites/2100-1028_3-607104 0.html?tag=nefd.lede
Bill text is at
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/fitzpatrick.social.networking.051006.pdf

FROM: ALA e-rate Task Force

Internet agency nixes '.xxx' addresses
After objections from anti-pornography advocates as well as some porn sites, the Internet's key oversight agency rejects a proposal to create a red-light district on the Web. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12728784/

FBI director questioned on Patriot Act
During a May 2 oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) asked FBI Director Robert Mueller for assurance that the recently reauthorized USA Patriot Act would exempt libraries from records requests by national security letter (NSL)....

AASL issues statement on instructional classification
AASL has responded to concerns over the proposed “65% solution” legislation being considered in many states nationwide, which mandates that 65% of all funding for schools be spent on “direct classroom instruction,” and which often uses the current definition from the National Center for Education Statistics classifying school library media services as “noninstructional.”...

Net censorship spreads worldwide
Repressive regimes are taking full advantage of the net’s ability to censor and stifle reform and debate, reveals a report written by the Reporters Without Borders pressure group....
BBC News, May 4

The RFID hacking underground
David Molnar is a soft-spoken computer science graduate student who studies commercial uses for RFIDs at UC Berkeley. I met him in a quiet branch of the Oakland Public Library. About a year ago Molnar discovered he could destroy the data on the books’ passive-emitting RFID tags by wandering the aisles with an off-the-shelf RFID reader-writer and his laptop....
Wired, May

School filters vs. home proxies
A teenager at a Pennsylvania school gets caught handing out business cards with instructions on how to circumvent his school’s web filter. But instead of throwing the school discipline book at him, administrators offer a choice: They’ll give him a break if he lets the school’s tech people know how he beat the system...
CNet News, May 3

State of the blogsphere is strong
The blogosphere continues to grow at a quickening pace. Technorati currently tracks 35.3 million weblogs, and the blogosphere we track continues to double about every 6 months. Technorati also reports that English, the language of the majority of early bloggers, had fallen to less than a third of all blog posts by April 2006....
Sifry’s Alerts, Apr. 17–May 1

Libraries in AEA-267 wanting to send items to libraries in AEA-1 need to have them to NEILSA by May 30. Items that we receive after this date will be returned to your library.

The fine print stuff
blog - Friday Notes 2 AT - http://radio.weblogs.com/0108327/
EDITORS NOTES:
"x" & "xx" are catalogers shorthand for: x = See & xx = See also
Edited by:
Ken Davenport - NEILSA Consultant davenport@neilsa.org

COPYLEFT NOTICE 2002:
THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS FREE.
It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael A at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt

COPYRIGHT
Please note: material found on the web should be assumed to be under copyright and is presented here for purposes of education and research only.
NOTE: If credited [via ???] or [from so & so] it is their material and not covered by my "Copyleft" notice. Ken