Free Republic

The San Francisco Public Library has installed 18 privacy screens on its public computers so patrons continuing looking at online porn in the library without disturbing the people around them. The library refuses to install internet filters, but families have begun complaining that children can see sexually explicit content when they use public computers. At least one group is outraged that the library continues to allow people to use public facilities to look at hardcore pornography and has accommodated them -- instead of driving them out.

The gun ban at West Bend's public library has been shelved. I can see it now. Somebody steps up to the circulation desk and the librarian asks, "Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just ecstatic to have found 'Fifty Shades of Grey'?" Patrons of the West Bend Community Memorial Library can now pack heat - whether they're into the steamy "Shades" trilogy or not. Last November, the Library Board voted to keep the building a gun-free zone in the wake of the new state law allowing people with permits to carry concealed weapons. But that was...

FREEPORT, Pa. - An Armstrong County library had to get police involved to get four overdue books returned from a 4-year-old girl. Freeport Area Library Board President Donna Michael said the books had been out since Oct. 19, or 240 days and $81.60 in fines. Michael said she had no choice but to get police involved after two phone calls, a postcard and three letters failed to get the books returned.

Concealed carrying of weapons is permitted, for now, at the Kilbourn Public Library after the library board reversed a decision to post signs prohibiting the weapons. At a meeting Thursday, library board members said they wanted to persuade legislators to change the law to list libraries in the Wisconsin Statutes as buildings where weapons are prohibited. The board voted 3-2 to rescind a December vote to post signs prohibiting concealed carry. Members Dianne Effinger and Bill Pettit voted against rescinding. Members Jo Ann Luke and Kathleen Helland were absent. Wisconsin Dells Mayor Brian Landers came to talk to the board...

When the right-wing Second Amendment Foundation teamed up with the left-wing First Amendment foundation to sue the Eastern Washington library system for filtering out gun websites, it serves as a case study as to why the Seattle Public Library was right last week when it said it wasn't going to do anything about Internet porn. There's not much titillating about Women & Guns magazine. About as racy as it gets is a recent photo spread on "practical leather" — gun holsters and casual carry handbags for the lady who packs heat. With articles like "Taming Shotgun Recoil" and "Ammunition on...

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...

RICHLAND — Central Washington’s library system will head back to federal court Oct. 25 to further argue its filtering of public Internet access. The hearing in Richland before U.S. District Court Judge Edward F. Shea will consider motions left dangling after the Washington Supreme Court last year upheld the North Central Regional Library district practice of narrowly filtering Internet pages related to pornography and gambling. The state court’s 6-3 decision sided with the NCRL and its 28 branch libraries in a 2006 suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, representing three North Central Washington residents — Sarah Bradburn of...

http://www.reaganfoundation.org/live-webcasts.aspx

March Rubio's recent speech at the Reagan Library.

You could check out the barren shelves, but not the books. A Harlem library branch has rows upon rows of empty bookcases. The shelves in each and every aisle in the adult section of the 115th Street Library had two or more rows without a single tome. Though the NYPL online catalogue indicated that four copies of "The Catcher in the Rye" were available, they weren't there -- and they weren't checked out. The librarian said that the selection there has always been sparse and then whispered, "And there are no metal detectors. Sometimes people just walk out with stuff."

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.

First-time novelist Rebecca Makkai gives us a character in "The Borrower" who faces a moral dilemma: a Missouri librarian who must decide whether she can help a child running away from home after his parents enroll him in an evangelical program to "discourage" homosexuality. The librarian struggles to choose. The book begins with 26-year-old Lucy Hull's confession: "I might be the villain of this story. Even now, it's hard to tell."

Reading List For List Complete List Complete List By Subject Introduction Arranged by Recommender's Name To contribute to this list, or add to your own list below, plese use the Reading List for Life suggestion form. Professor Richard Abels, History Department: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. (PS 3558 .E476 C3 1961) Regeneration by Pat Barker. (PR 6052 .A6488 R4 1961) Waiting for the Barbarians by Joseph Coetzee. (PR 9369.3 .C58 W3 1982) The Making of the Middle Ages by Richard Southern. (CB 351 .S6 1953a) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (Book: PG 3326 .B7 G32, Audiotape: PG 3326 .B7...

In an era of fiscal austerity when cities all over the Bay Area are reducing library hours, shedding library staff or closing libraries altogether, a small band of preservationists is actually fighting to stop a new library from being built in Berkeley. The Concerned Library Users is using the language in a 2008 voter-approved bond measure as the basis for a lawsuit filed last fall to halt the city from tearing down the south branch library on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Because Measure FF, a $26 million library bond measure, makes no mention of demolition, the group contends that...

Berkeley officials say a lawsuit by residents could prevent the demolition and rebuilding of two aging libraries in the poorest areas of town. The officials took their case to Berkeley residents Tuesday night, publicly urging the plaintiffs to drop the suit at a rally before a City Council meeting. The suit, brought by five residents calling themselves Concerned Library Users, contends language in a 2008 ballot measure that secured money for the renovation of the libraries does not contain the word "demolish" and that doing so would be illegal. At issue are plans for demolition and construction of the west...

I routinely make fun of the U.S. News law school rankings for taking into account the size of a law school library when ranking law schools. We live in a world where you can get everything online. Well, not everything. Leave it to the perennial U.S. News darling, Yale Law School, to come up with a library offering worthy of the school’s number 1 ranking. Here’s the wonderful catalog listing: NOT CHK’D OUT – Ask at Circ. – DOG BASKET BEHIND CIRCULATION DESK – ASK AT CIRC: Description 1 dog (border terrier mix) : brown hair, 21 lbs. ; 33...

Thomas More Society attorneys issued a letter today to Marathon County library officials demanding that the library rescind its decision to cancel a showing by the Wausau "40 Days for Life" group of the pro-life documentary, "Blood Money." The director of the library, Ralph Illick, had cancelled the showing of the movie in one of the library's "public meeting rooms," because he determined that the film's topic -- abortion -- would "interfere with normal use of our library." "Having to demand that a library not engage in censorship is outrageous," said Peter Breen, executive director and legal counsel for the...

A local judge extends the ban on open carrying of guns at the Capital Area District Library. We first told you about the battle between the library and a statewide gun rights group a few weeks ago. The preliminary injunction from Ingham Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina bans anyone from openly carrying firearms in the library until at least June. In February, the library sought the injunction after four people brought weapons into the building. The gun rights group "Michigan open carry" wants to allow the public to bring guns to the library. The judge says she believes the library has...

May I begin, by saying, I love this country, the United States of America, It is the greatest hope in the history of our planet, save the works of the prophets of God. I add that I have never voted for a Democrat - and I probably never will - although JFK did cut taxes and I wish he had lived longer. Also: I believe that we were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, foremost being the freedom of speech. Jim Robinson, Thank you. So: If I be banned for what I am about to write, then I...

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich.—Mark McKee is lucky a Michigan library isn't charging him a late fee for returning a book 76 years late. .In 1934, the 13-year-old McKee checked out "A Dog of Flanders" by English author Marie Louise de la Ramee from the Mount Clemens Public Library. Recently, McKee, now 89, said he discovered the book and mailed it to the library. "I was entranced by the book and kept it with my prized possessions, intending to return it forthwith," McKee wrote in an accompanying letter. "Thus began a 76-year odyssey of missed opportunity and intention."