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University of Iowa Remains Closed, but Library Escapes Significant Flood Damage
With flood waters from the Iowa River said to have already crested, the University of Iowa (UI) library appears to have escaped major damage, but the university remains closed and classes suspended as public safety issues linger and flood relief efforts ramp up. As receding waters began to reveal the extent of the damage, President Sally Mason told reporters that while it was still too early to estimate the cost, "millions is a good way to start to think about this." According to press briefings, floodwaters hit as many as 16 campuses, ranging from just a few inches of water in the basement of the main library to "several feet" on the hard-hit Arts Campus.
The good news is that the flood waters mostly spared the main library—and excellent and early preparation by librarians, beginning June 9, mobilized a remarkable effort by library staff and students to both fill sandbags and move collections to higher ground. On Friday, June 13, after the main library was ordered evacuated, "hundreds" of volunteers began "handing books along a book brigade that snaked down hallways and up stairwells," noted the library web site. Volunteers moved "tens of thousands of books from storage, including thousands of theses of University masters and doctoral candidates," with one volunteer "estimating they passed nearly 100 books a minute." Sandbaggers, meanwhile "built a dike along the west side of the Main Library and around the loading dock entrance."
About 9 p.m. that evening, the main library was "locked and alarmed," with officials satisfied that materials were safe from floodwaters—although concerned about the additional weight added to the upper floors. As the waters receded, library officials reported about two inches of water had entered the main library basement, but that no collections were damaged. In addition, as the libraries' systems and air conditioning never went out, mold concerns were minimized. About two thirds of UI's five million volumes reside in the main library, the largest library system in Iowa. For the moment, flood relief efforts are still focused on public safety, and UI officials request that all non-essential personnel continue to stay away from flood-affected areas.
Unfortunately, not all of Iowa's libraries fared as well. Flooding in Cedar Rapids, IA, caused the Cedar Rapids Public Library (CRPL) to suffer significant water damage, as some 100 blocks of the city were submerged and 3200 homes evacuated, according to the AP. Also seriously damaged was the National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library. "The staff of the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library does not yet know the extent of the damage to the Museum and we will not know for some time," stated Gail Naughton, president and CEO, on the organization's web site. "We were able to remove many items from the collection to safety before flood waters came. The board and staff are holding emergency meetings to begin coordination of our plans for disaster recovery." Check the Library Journal web site for updates.
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Public Resource Offers Deleted Government Legal Archive, JURIS, for Download
Crusading public advocate Carl Malamud at Public Resource this week announced that the organization has made available for download a copy of the JURIS archive, a government-created collection of federal legal documents that was erased from government servers in the mid-1990s under pressure from legal database publishers. A copy survived, however, and is held at the University of Pennsylvania's (Penn) Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC), which uses—and licenses the archive—as a language resource for the purposes of developing "computer-based linguistic technologies" such as "speech recognition and understanding, optical and pen-based character recognition, text retrieval and understanding, and machine translation." The LDC license, however, does not permit redistribution to the public.
"When we discovered that LDC had a copy of JURIS, we purchased the 2-CD set from them for $800," Malamud wrote in a June 6 letter to Penn associate university counsel Robert Terrell and Robert Firestone. "We have repeatedly asked [LDC] to allow us to re-distribute this public domain information to the general public, and they have repeatedly refused such permission because they claim that they are prohibited from doing so by the Department of Justice" (DOJ), Malamud noted.
It was unclear at press time if Malamud had received the okay to offer the archive for download. A post on the Public Resource web site noted that the archive was available for download to allow users to address "a compelling public policy issue," namely, the Department of Justice's deletion of the archive, following its contracting with commercial providers. "Why did the government delete such a valuable asset that was created at taxpayer expense? Why would a copy not be kept just in case? Why does the government not have a digital copy of their own work product?" the post asked, asserting that the public has "a right to examine the evidence," and offers the archive, which it licensed from LDC, for download.
"The JURIS Database is an important public domain database, particularly for those of us in 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations dedicated to making U.S. case law and codes widely available on the Internet for use without restriction," Malamud wrote. He added that the group seeks "no commercial advantage from this data and are in fact make it available to the government and university libraries."
The archive, which contains over two million pages of case law, began as a project of the United States Air Force, was eventually taken over by the DOJ, before being deleted from government servers in the 1990s, reportedly under pressure from legal publishers. Malamud has been a library ally in seeking to ensure the availability of government materials, most recently joining an array of university librarians in lobbying Registrar of Copyrights Marybeth Peters, to "provide bulk access to the copyright catalog of monographs, documents, and serials on the Internet."
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IMLS Awards More than $20 Million to 31 Institutions for Library Education
The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) today announced grants to 31 institutions totaling $20.3 million, including an initiative to provide educational opportunities to library students and staff to strengthen Gulf Coast libraries and a diversity initiative for library education. Among the grants announced:
- $728,821 (with a match of $311,946) to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) for the "ARL Minority Fellowship Program." In partnership with the National Library of Medicine and libraries at the universities of Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina State, and SUNY- Albany, ARL will provide 45 MLS students from "underrepresented racial and ethnic groups" with internships in an academic or research library. It will also provide "librarian mentors, opportunities for leadership development, and career placement."
- $839,073 (with a match of $738,376) to the North Carolina Central University (NCCU) to study the "Library as Place." Working with a range of public and school library partners, NCCU's School of Library and Information Science will recruit and provide scholarships for MLS degrees to 20 minority students from 12 North Carolina counties to examine the "face-to-face roles of the library."
- $279,672 (with a match of $269,784) for the Louisiana State University (LSU), A&M to address "post-Katrina issues in Gulf Coast cultural heritage institutions." Under the program, LSU, A& M's Graduate School of Library and Information Science will create "the Mid-Gulf Coast Collaborative for Education (MGCEAC)," to target small, resource-challenged repositories in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and provide them with "affordable workshops and other continuing education opportunities, based on a needs survey," with the goal to "establish a sustainable mechanism for providing ongoing continuing education to help support these highly vulnerable institutions."
The grants are the latest in Laura Bush's multimillion dollar effort to bolster the library profession. Begun in 2002, the program has awarded more than $100 million so far, helping to fund the education of 3220 master's degree students, 186 doctoral students, 1,256 pre-professional students, and 26,186 continuing education students. The next deadline for the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program is December 15, 2008. For a complete list of grants announced today, visit the IMLS web site
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Audio Fixation: Library Journal Looks at a Surging Audio Marketplace for Libraries
All you really need to do is look at the person next to you with their earbuds in to get a sense of how pervasive digital audio has become. And that popularity, notes Alan Kaye, director of the Roddenbery Memorial Library (Cairo, GA) in the May 15 issue of Library Journal is "mirrored in library audio services, where audio circulation continues to gain momentum nationwide." Nonprint library services now largely involve digital media, Kaye notes, with some statistics the Audio Publishing Association (APA) to bolster his argument: in 2006, audiobook sales rose six percent to a record $923 million; 77 percent of sales was for CDs, up from 45 percent in 2003, and 14 percent was in downloads, up from nine percent in 2005. Sales to libraries, meanwhile, outpaced retail sale, representing 32 percent of sales ($295 million) versus retail's 30 percent.
"Libraries are doing an excellent job of making audio more visible to patrons—moving their entire collections to the front of the library, integrating listening into audiobook clubs, trying new formats, and generally encouraging patrons to give audio a try," notes Michele Cobb, a library marketing director and current president of the APA. "Now is an exciting time for audio, as we reach new listeners and find more ways to integrate multiple elements into the traditional idea of the audiobook." An APA survey in 2006 also showed one in every four respondents had listened to an audiobook in the previous year—and over 50 percent of audiobooks listened to were borrowed from a library, up from 38 percent in 2001.
Despite more digital downloads, however, libraries are still doing a booming business with CDs. "The demand for audio CDs continues to increase at a rapid rate and has not been diminished in the least by the advent of digital audio," notes Los Angeles Public Library assistant director of information technologies, Giovanna Mannino, although, she adds, "downloadable service has been very successful" and has expanded the library's audiobook user group by enabling 24/7 service.
In addition to Kaye's ear-opening report, Eric Pasteur, librarian for reference services at Peoria Public Library, IL, offers librarians an excellent primer on beefing up their alternative and postpunk music collections, both in great, recent books about the movement, including Simon Reynolds Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. And, of course, the music itself: "British bands like Joy Division and Gang of Four added dance beats and keyboards to punk aggression. Mission of Burma and Big Black harnessed sonic textures that channeled the raw proto-punk of the Stooges," he writes. "The Raincoats and Laurie Anderson challenged the challengers by painting broad brush strokes from minimalist palettes. Southern bar bands R.E.M., the dB's, and Pylon displayed their love not just for punk tempos but the jangle-rock ear candy of Big Star and the psychedelic harmony of The Byrds."
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