LibraryLaw Blog

Hooray - I figured out how to use tags instead of categories in this blog

As I suspected, it's much easier and more flexible.  So if any of you are looking for new posts based on categories, you may not find them. Use the technorati tags at the bottom of a post instead. If it works like I think it will, I'll probably stop using categories altogether.

Update: It looks as if users who click on a technorati tag below will get everyone in the world's posts with those tags. That's useful, but it would be nice to have an option to limit it to this blog, the way flickr does.  Well, there's always the search button in the blog...

Library 101 - Signups now open for four-week online course (with me)

We're taking sign-ups right now for an Infopeople online course on basic library structure and principles such as intellectual freedom, privacy...  For better or worse, you'll have lots of opportunity to interact with me if you sign up - via online discussions, "office hours" etc. It's aimed at new library staff and paraprofessionals without formal library training.

Library 101: What You Need to Know to Provide Good Library Service in the 21st Century (An Infopeople Online Learning Course)  Details here.

January 17, 2006 - Februray 13, 2006 This course is aimed at new library staff and paraprofessionals without formal training in library science. It will answer basic questions about the kinds of fundamental library issues that can quickly turn into hot topics: staff rights and responsibilities, user access and fees for service, book selection and censorship, library funding and outsourcing, and reader privacy. You will receive a basic exposure to library concepts, ethics and principles, with an emphasis on their practical application in real-life situations. For example, how would you respond to parents who ask to see what titles their children have checked out? You'll learn what to do and what not to do and why. Understanding the thinking behind library procedures will help you provide better service and enjoy your work more fully.

For New Jersey library folks

Here are the presentations I gave - I'll keep them here until April 30th...and I will follow up here on this blog with a response to the statues question soon.

Trustee liability

Meeting rooms

Privacy - with Patriot update

Copyright and webpages

p.s. Alice Hoffman read her grandmother's advice which was wonderful - she later said it was in a published anthology. I thought she said the anthology title was FAMILY. Could someone give me the citation? THANKS.

Are library cards more dangerous than credit cards? Are there limits on liability?

Here's a question for readers:

A New York library patron lost her library card and didn't realize it until three weeks later. She reported it lost as soon as she realized it. Meanwhile, someone else had checked out the maximum number of DVDs using her card and didn’t return them.  She estimates that she could be charged upwards of $1000. 

Does anyone know of any legal limitations on a library’s ability to charge a cardholder for items someone else checked out on a lost card in NY (or elsewhere)?  What's your library's policy on patron liability? Do you include it as part of the library application that the user signs?

Is a deputy commissioner at the Chicago Public Library a public official, protected from threats?

Apparently not.  An Illinois Appellate Court ruled in favor of ex-library employee  Edwardo Muniz who had previously been found guilty by the trial court of "threatening a public official."  He had been sentenced to 6 months in the Cook County Jail (time actually served) and 30 months of probation.  The conviction was overturned since the state law against threatening a public official was not written broadly enough to include a deputy library commissioner.

California's new State Librarian Susan Hildreth will address library trustees and advisory boards in Sept - registration will fill up fast

8/17/2004 update: To my surprise, there are still slots available as of today - go ahead and sign up now if you haven't yet. - Mary Minow (I'm the policy analyst for CALTAC)

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California Association of Library and Trustees and Commissioners (CALTAC) invites library trustees and advisory board members to hear Susan Hildreth, State Librarian of California "Creating California Library Success Stories in Turbulent Times" and go walkabout with Joan Frye Williams, consultant and library futurist "Marginalized or Mainstream? --The Library's Place in Community Life"

Friday September 24 and Saturday September 25, 2004

Conference tuition, lodging (Friday night) at the Cerritos Sheraton and conference-sponsored meals (Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast and lunch) will be covered as part of an LSTA grant. The conference will also provide reimbursement for allowable travel costs to and from the conference for those who request it.

YOU MUST REGISTER IN ADVANCE - ONLY 100 SEATS (I'd advise registering immediately)

LOCATION: Cerritos Library conference center (Southern California).
HOSTED BY: The clioinstitute (a program of the Cerritos Library)
FUNDED BY: The Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) administered by the California State Librarian