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...

Law for Librarians

"Legal Ease: What Staff, Administrators, and Trustees Need to Know about Libraries and the Law,"  is a preconference sponsored by the Oregon Library Association on April 18, 2007. Even if you can't make it to Corvallis, check out the slew of useful legal materials for libraries that OLA has posted (with permission) from the ALA Law for Librarians conference last spring. 

May someone get copies of stuff in a library's collection by using an open records request?

No, at least not in New Jersey, according to the NJ Government Records Council.  Using the state's public records act, Barbara Schwarz asked Rutgers University for records on Barbara Schwarz/Barbara Schwartz, Mark C. Rathburn aka Mark De Rothschild, Scientology or Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, and former President Dwight David Eisenhower.

When she was turned down, she filed a complaint with the Government Records Council (GRC). On March 10, 2005, the GRC ruled that the library's "inventory" does not fall within the scope of a government record pursuant to the state open records act.

The GRC made a clear distinction between a library's public records and its inventory. A library does not use its inventory in the course of doing business. Instead, it provides open access to it, the very "heart" of library service.

The complainant has 45 days from the date of the decision to appeal.

To read the decision ...

For those of you who can be in London on Jan 12...

Two pillars of wisdom: freedom of information and copyright - what information professionals need to know - January 12, 2005

Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, London

http://www.ukolug.org.uk/content/public/activities/meetings/12jan05foi.html

via Peter Scott's Library Blog

San Francisco Library Commission wins in Brown Act decision

A California appellate court recently determined that only one general public comment period is necessary when a public body meets in multiple sessions to consider one agenda.

The Court found that the Commission complied with the laws by allowing general public comment on the second day of the two-day meeting held to consider a single agenda.

James Chaffee v. San Francisco Library Commission 115 Cal. App. 4th 461 (January 29, 2004).

Case at FindLaw (need free account to access)

LibraryLaw.com

Cross referencing here like a good librarian -- if you clicked on a blog topic, you might find more or related info at LibraryLaw.com