Posted by : Joni L. Cassidy, Cassidy Cataloguing Services, Inc. 3/17/10
DEFINITION OF TERMS:
OCLC WorldCat – the union database of bibliographic and authority records contributed by member libraries, the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the National Agriculture Library, the U.S. Government Printing Office and several other national libraries from around the globe. Records are accessible to all OCLC members.
Udated March 17, 2010.
On Tuesday March 16, 2010 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a proposal to overhaul the U.S. broadband* policy by introducing a plan that would provide higher speed internet access and much faster internet connections thoughout the U.S. than are presently available. The plan sets a goal of connecting 100 million U.S. households to broadband connections of 100 megabits per secondf, at least 20 times faster than most home connections now, by 2020.
The plan also calls for every american conmunity to have at least one “anchor” institution, such as a school, library, or hospital that has ultra high speed internet access. The FCC defines ultra high speed in this eontext as at least a gigabit per second, 10 times faster than the 100 megabit per second envisioned for home connections.
On March 10, 2010 New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch released a fiscal reform plan which calls for a five-year plan to eliminate the State’s structural imbalance and introduces a process by which annual budget balance is mandated, minitored and maintained. The plan calls for up to $2 billion in borrowing for the next three years and a financial review board consisting of five members, one each from the Assembly and the State Senate, two appointed by the Governor and one appointed by the New York State Comptroller.:
Mary Alice Baish, Director of Government Relations and Emily Feldman, Advocacy Communications Assistant (both of the American Association of Law Libraries, AALL), have been doing a tremendous job serving as advocates for high quality and highly accessible legal information on the web in a format that can be authenticated.
The following is an e-mail from Emily which mentions the work of the White House open government working group and includes a request for suggestions regarding specific types of information and datasets you would like to see agencies publish. Although Emily’s e-mail is directed primarily to law librarians I am posting it here because of the value of this initiative to the entire legal community.
FROM: Emily Feldman March 10, 2010
In an earlier posting on November 5 , 2009 we reported that on November 3, 1909 the criminal court building in Manhattan (bounded by Centre, Lafayette, Franklin, and White Streets) was declared unsafe for human occupancy and everyone in the building at the time was ordered to leave immediately. When the last man was out a squad of thirty policemen took charge of the building, roping it off on all sides and remaining on guard outside the building to forbid anyone to enter or even pass through any of the flanking streets”.
On March 2, 2010 for very different reasons the present criminal court building in Manhattan was evacuated due to smoke and water damage caused by an electrical fire in the basement.. When the last people were out, policemen, firemen and court officers took charge of the building and for a time did not permit anyone to enter the building except for business related to coping with the emergency situation..
As noted earlier there were many differences in the two events. By most accounts the old criminal courts building was in very poor condition by 1909. The present Criminal Courts buiilding is perfectly safe and in good condition with lingering smoke and other residual damage from the fire causing the building to remain closed until March 8.
You may have noticed that we have not posted anything about health care for awhile. Other topics have intervened but the health care debate keeps coming back. We are actually glad because for many of us health care reform in the United States is one of the paramount issues of our time.
The New York Times has been doing a good job keeping concerns about helth care alive through its ongong list of articles and editorials telling us what is happening and where they think we might be going. Here are links to a few:
Editorial:
Oregon County Law Libraries Planning Grant, Request for Proposals
“Summary: The Oregon Council of County Law Libraries (OCCLL), representing 36 county law libraries throughout the state, received a planning grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the LSTA, administered by the Oregon State Library. The OCCLL has administrative responsibility for implementing the grant project. The grant project team seeks the services of a professional library consultant who will guide the OCCLL through the planning process. The general duty of the consultant is to facilitate the accomplishment of project goals and activities”.
The 2010 CyberSecurity Watch Survey, sponsored by Deloitte and conducted in collaboration with CSO Magazine, the U.S. Secret Service, and the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon, indicates that threats posed by cyber crime have increased faster than potential victims — or cyber security professionals — can cope with, placing targeted organizations at significant risk.
While we cannot provide you a copy of the actual Survey, the Deloitte whitepaper, Cyber Crime: A Clear and Present Danger reports on several of the survey findings and includes Deloitte’s interpretation of key results. Quoting from the Introduction to the white papter: “By its very nature, interpretation goes beyond simple reporting of results…and may prompt disagreement and even controversy”
With that, we invite you to download the white paper from the link below, read it, and draw your own conclusions
Two days ago I posted information on this blog related to the New York Court of Appeals decision (Maron v. Silver, 16 ‘ Larabee v. Governor, 7 ; Chief Judge v. Governor, 18) addressing judicial compensation in that state within the framework of separation of powers. Today I have learned that the State of Connecticut is also confronted with separation of powers issues related to its judiciary. These issues relate at least in part to the unilateral reduction of Other Judicial Expense line items (where the law libraries are placed) by the Office of Policy and Management (Executive Branch) after the initial budget allocations have presumably been agreed upon.
Of special concern to many readers of this blog is the severe negative impact these judicial line item reductions are having on judicial law libraries in the State of Connecicut, as indicated in testimony of the Connecticut Chief Court Administrator to the Appropriations Committee included in this post and by the many expressions of concern among Connecticut citizens as reported elsewhere.
The Chief Court Administrator of Connecticut, Judge Barbara M. Quinn has argued before the Appropriations Committee on February 9 that the unilateral reduction of Other Judicial Expense line items by the Executive Branch infringes on the Separation of Powers and can be remedied by OPM simply transmitting the Judicial request unchanged to the legislature. Two sections of Judge Quinn’s testimony are especially important and are highlighted below in this posting. The section on Law Libraries which highlights the importance of law libraries in Connecticut to both the Judiciary and the public has relevance both in Connecticut and throughout the nation. A second part of Judge Quinn’s testimony highlighted below is her statement on “Concurrence in Allotment Reductions and Rescissions,” which frames the issue nicely.
The webcast of Eben Moglen’s speech ‘Freedom in The Cloud’ is proving to be one of most popular ever, and has received over 20,000 hits representing about a 1000 views since Feb 14. In the talk Eben challenges the tech community to provide the public with the means to recapture its privacy from social media/cloud juggernaut through the development of personal social media servers operating in a robust distributed network.
Note that free DVDs of this talk are available to libraries,
educators, and other interested in running screenings – email dvd@isoc-ny.org and ask for DVD1710.
