Free Republic

WESTFIELD, NJ -- Dan Kleinman ... filed a complaint Monday against the 2015 Library Board of Trustees and its individual members, including past board president now councilman Doug Stokes. [An] 11-year-old son stumbled upon a pornographic website while in the children's section last year. The board voted to modify the library's internet use policy so that half of the computers in the children's section that have access to the internet have filtering software. In his 84-page complaint, Kleinman alleges that the board made modifications to the library's internet use policy in secret, violating the Open Public Meetings Act (also known...

A Winlock man was arrested Tuesday after an FBI investigation revealed that he was allegedly using a social networking site and public library Internet service to send and receive child pornography. .... Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt ordered Schnacker held on $100,000 bail. "This is clearly a community safety issue," he said. Hunt said he was particularly concerned about the allegation that Schnacker had used public Wi-Fi to access the images. .... Further investigation showed that Schnacker accessed his Kik account from an IP address assigned to the Timberland Regional Library. ....

GED prep guides, nursing and other professional exam cliff notes were high on the list of frequently filched books — but so too were graphic novels, library officials said. Book thieves checked out but never returned 70,144 books from Brooklyn Public Library’s 60 cash-strapped branches in 2012, records show. GED prep guides, nursing and other professional exam cliff notes were high on the list of frequently filched books — but so too were graphic novels, library officials said. “Those are always going missing,” a librarian at the Brooklyn Heights branch told the Daily News Thursday.

CADL enacted a firearms ban in 2011 at its branches only to have the Michigan Court of Appeals strike it down last year. Public libraries are not included in Michigan's "gun-free zones," and both concealed and open firearms are allowed.

MIAMI GARDENS – Library closures, treating the mentally ill and the state of the fire-rescue service took center stage Tuesday when Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez hosted a town hall meeting at the North Dade Regional Library to discuss his proposed $6.3 billion budget for the new fiscal year. “What are your priorities and what do we cut?” asked Marilyn Lieberman, a self-styled community activist. . . Linnea Pearson, a Florida International University professor and former teacher of Travon Martin’s brother Jahvaris Fulton, said one of the reasons Trayvon got into trouble was because he was suspended. “As an educator, one...

The White House is turning to the network of public libraries to deliver Obamacare information and advice to the nation. As it begins promoting the program that will require all Americans to have health insurance or pay a fine starting next year, the administration is dealing with the biggest hurdle in its effort: Where Americans go to get information on the new program. Enter public libraries, already the go-to site for many Americans looking for tax forms every April. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is in charge of Obamacare, has teamed with the Institute of Museum and...

CHICAGO (AP) -- The nation's librarians will be recruited to help people get signed up for insurance under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Up to 17,000 U.S. libraries will be part of the effort to get information and crucial computer time to the millions of uninsured Americans who need to get coverage under the law.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder heads up the list of the nation's top facilitators of pornography, beating out titillating powerhouses like Google, the American Library Association, and the Department of Defense, according to conservative advocacy nonprofit Morality in Media.

Islamist insurgents retreating from the ancient Saharan city of Timbuktu have set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 13th century, in what the town's mayor described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage. ... The manuscripts survived for centuries in Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara hidden in wooden trunks, boxes beneath the sand and caves. The majority are written in Arabic, with some in African languages, and one in Hebrew, and cover a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from...

The London accountant who accompanied Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to Timbuktu on three occasions in 1998, 1999 and 2000 says the 'father' of the Pakistani bomb witnessed the digging of a well, toured an ancient Islamic library and enjoyed the views of the desert. A remote outpost in the middle of the West African desert, Timbuktu usually attracts explorers associated in the popular mind with the adventures of the comic character Tin Tin. And Pakistani dissidents told rediff.com the reason for Khan's visit to Timbuktu, part of landlocked West African state of Mali, was to prospect for uranium. They say...

Madison - Alicia Rheal is an artist who lives on a quiet street within sight of the Capitol. She's also a librarian. Instead of rows and rows of bookshelves filled with Dewey Decimal System-categorized tomes, Rheal's library is decidedly low-tech and charming. No library cards are required. There are no fines. In fact, library users are encouraged to take any book they want and keep it. Rheal is one of many caretakers of the growing phenomenon of Little Free Libraries - tiny boxes designed to promote literacy and the love of reading through free book exchanges. Each Little Free Library...

LAST year, Christmas was the biggest single day for e-book sales by HarperCollins. And indications are that this year’s Christmas Day total will be even higher, given the extremely strong sales of e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook. Amazon announced on Dec. 15 that it had sold one million of its Kindles in each of the three previous weeks. But we can also guess that the number of visitors to the e-book sections of public libraries’ Web sites is about to set a record, too. And that is a source of great worry for publishers. In their eyes, borrowing...

Penguin's security issue was not specified, although it likely refers to piracy concerns. But analyst Avi Greengart said he wondered how much of Penguin's objections have to do with security and how much with the business model of lending titles, especially new titles, through libraries. The growing availability of e-book titles for borrowing through public libraries has hit a bump. On Tuesday, Penguin Group USA announced it would no longer allow digital editions in any e-format of new titles to become available for library lending -- and it is disabling availability of all titles for lending in Amazon's Kindle format....

Seattle-area libraries on Tuesday began testing the long-awaited Kindle feature that lets patrons transfer borrowed library books to the electronic device. This morning (Wednesday), Amazon.com announced that the program is now available across the country, at more than 11,000 libraries.Amazon agreed in April to work with OverDrive, a Cleveland company that provides electronic book lending services for numerous libraries, but the companies didn't provide many details of what to expect. Amazon's website had promised the service was coming to 11,000 libraries.

A second employee of Birmingham's downtown library has filed a lawsuit against her employer, claiming library patrons are looking at pornography on the Internet and management is doing nothing about it. Jackson says in her lawsuit that patrons are routinely allowed to view pornography on library computers, often in the presence of children and that management has failed to address the matter.

Despite strong opposition from Republicans, the Assembly narrowly passed a union-backed bill to make cities and counties blow through a series of roadblocks before they can privatize their libraries. Under Assembly Bill 438, library systems would have to: • pick a contract after a competitive bidding process. • give four straight weeks of public notice before enacting a change, doubling the current requirement. • prove through a broad analysis that a switch away from the free public library system saves the city or county money. • show that the cost savings are not simply a factor of lower pay for...

The teachers’ union in Bridgewater and Raynham has filed a labor grievance that could block volunteers from keeping the school district’s libraries open. And as word of the work action spreads, it is stirring up outrage in the two towns. Librarian positions were cut from the middle schools in both towns this year and their salaries channeled into hiring teachers to address bulging class sizes. Volunteer organizations stepped in to pick up the slack — only to be surprised and disappointed by threats of a labor complaint.

Everyone's opinion, what would be three books that every adult should read? How about three books every kid should read? (besides the Bible, since that's a given for most)

So I went to my local library today, which is in a not-very-large city, and there were at least three times as many homeless people as there were legitimate library users. The homeless were "using" the library in that they were playing games on the computers, sitting on the furniture, and one was reading the free newspaper. They were occupying spaces/tables/computers that someone doing research or actual library work might want to use. My question is: Since the homeless are not paying taxes, except occasional sales tax (?), why is their unlimited use of the library permitted? Or another way...

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system. The basic pitch that the company Library Systems & Services makes to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — often by cleaning house. Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy. A $4 million deal to run...