According to the LA Times, “once a month, the San Fernando Library’s librarians trade their reading glasses for video-game controllers and invite children to come crank up the volume.” The kids who go say that it makes the library a fun place to go, but the question I ask here is where do we draw the line between library and Best Buy? One librarian states that “It lets teens be more comfortable with the library and become familiar with librarians.”

Apparently libraries crossed the entertainment-education barrier more than a century ago when they began to lend fiction books. Today some libraries circulate things like music albums, tools, toys, cooking pans, even animals! The library I visited when I was a child, is not the same library it is today. Now they are very focused on “providing public access to resources, in whatever format.”

This is a great thing, but what about people who would like to go to the library for a quiet retreat? How are you supposed to focus on what you reading or trying to understand content with rock music blaring from speakers? I can understand if this event takes places a few times a year, but I do not think it would be a good idea to turn the library into a video arcade. The best option here would be to open a Children’s Library or some kind of Children’s Activity Center, to minimize these types of distractions to adults and be respectful of the activities of all ages.

Many people already know of the trend away from print and towards the World Wide Web, but some magazine owners still feel left in the dust. That is until the Digital Media Summit, who are a group of media buyers “told an audience of magazine publishers that they are uniquely positioned to monetize (or make money off of) their content as they expand their Web presence.” Web sites for magazines have even more of an advantage than the typical website because their readers all have an “easily identified topic” that they are passionate about.

This topic is especially important to me because of the use of advertisements now used (I am a marketing major). Companies now are “no longer interested in making magazine-only ad buys.” They see the trend towards more consumers going online and realize they have to take advantage of this. Magazines will now double their benefits if they have their magazine information available online and in text, with advertisers just as happy to target two markets.

I personally have seen this trend in action with some of my favorite magazines available online. One of my favorites is Cosmopolitan magazine, which now has features online that you cannot find in the magazine such as Today’s horoscopes, daily blogs, quizzes and also articles written specifically for the site that you cannot find in print. This is genius because they are taking advantage of people who may not buy the magazine in stores, or maybe people who visit the website will be more likely to purchase the magazine after reading the site.

At any rate, all magazines should have a website available to their readers as an alternate source of communication.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3741031/From+print+magazines+to+online+communities.htm

I just read a very well written letter in the Greenwich Time. The letter was written by Ryan Fazio, the former editor of “The Beak”, a high school newspaper in Greenwich, Connecticut. Since he is no longer editor-in-chief he felt the need to express his true feelings in an open forum. Fazio explains that the newspaper is suffering from “systematic and bureaucratic censorship” and that all the final decisions for the paper are made by one teacher advisor, who “has the pressure of school administration on his shoulders.”

Fazio personally has had three of his editorials censored from subjects reigning from the current drinking age and the illegality of steroids. Some other editorials that were censored were about the “futility of a college fair” at their high school and another on a person’s opinion of the Greenwich culture.

Although Fazio states that “The Beak” has been making progress, he explains that it is still severely limited to its publications. A good point he makes is the irony of the school’s theme of “freedom with responsibility”, because it seems that this newspaper does not have much freedom at all.

On a personal note, I can understand there being some censorship in a high school newspaper, but there are other ways students can express themselves! Blogs for instance are a great outlet for anyone to put out their opinion and read others. Also, many towns have a lot of offbeat independent newsletters or newspapers that people can send submissions in to. Here in Wilmington for example, there is a magazine called Bootleg, which is an independent monthly music, art, fiction and culture publication.

http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_8899138

After reading the Article, Sunshine Week urges public to become informed, by Andrew Dunn in The Daily Tar Heel, I was informed on accessing government documents. The article starts out with an interesting statement ” Just about everything the government does is open for the world to see. But sometimes the annals of government can seem like a dark tunnel. ” That is very true, but our Governer Mike Easley, urges that “access to government information is essential in a free society.”  

 So what types of things would be helpful to a student like you or I?Through public records, we can check out campus violence reports, find out about the company your internship is with (www.sec.gov), find out how the school’s evaluation went (http://www.sacscoc.org) , check out the nonprofit with which you plan to volunteer (guidestar.org), etc.  >

By going to public city meetings you can “give your input on pending town ordinances or development projects (the calendar for the meetings can be found at http://www.wilmingtonnc.gov/Home/CalendarofEvents.aspx), you should also attend the Student Congress hearing for your campus organization.”

One more thing you have the right to do as a student is to Request public records. Which you can do in five easy steps:  

1.  Identify what information you want and who would maintain that record.
2. Request the information by going to the office, send an e-mail, or call and ask the clerk if you can examine and photocopy the information. 
3. If informal requests do not work, writing a letter or e-mail citing the public records law will ensure there is no misunderstanding about exactly what you asked for and when, and serves as evidence in a lawsuit. 
4. Appeal: If denied access to the information, go back to the public body and discuss your requests and why you were turned down with the public official.
5. Last Resort: If you are still denied access, yo can consult a lawyer to make sure the record is public, then file a lawsuit demanding access.

I just read the article EPA Libraries Reopening by H. Josef Herbert from the website http://www.ap.org. It is an interesting article about the reopening of five closed libraries, that were closed to the public. The libraries were closed because the public did not utilize them regularly and because most of the resources are available online.

Congress did not approve of the closings and “added $1 million to the EPA’s budget so that the libraries could be reopened. It also required the agency to provide the report on its library plans.” Inside the libraries were numerous “scientific documents on health and the environment”. Representative John Dingell, a democrat from Michigan said he is “concerned that some of the libraries might only be opened on appointment”.  

  Personally, I think that if the EPA is losing money on keeping these libraries open, they should just have all the information available online! These days, everything is basically available online. Congress is even already worried about staffing issues when the libraries will be re-opened. If it does more harm then good, I would agree with the EPA’s decision to shut down these barley used facilities. 

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After reading Legal Download 2.0 – ICT Usage Policies by Chris Edwards found on www.itp.net, it is clear that workers these days must be wary when it comes to personal use of companies information communications technology. There are many advantages of the Internet, emails and instant messaging but these components also pose risks for companies when used improperly by employees. This article “highlights some of the key issues and offers some practical guidance for companies who are seeking to either create an ICT usage policy or ensure that an existing policy meets the best practice.”

Obviously a policy should state what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in their policy. This should include topics on use for illegal purposes, harassing other employees, unlicensed copyright material, viruses and creating or distributing offensive content. More topics should include acceptable use of what you can store on the companies ICT, downloading content from the internet and rules for certain websites (personal blogs, social networking sites, etc).

As long as the employees personal use of the ICT is not interfering with their duties of work and they are following all the rules outlined in the company’s policy, everything should be alright. A good example of personal use might be “personal usage up to 30 minutes at lunchtimes.”

I think companies should take serious precautions when it comes to ICT’s because Chris Edwards has reported that in 2007, 27 percent of Fortune 500 companies have dealt with claims stemming from employee misuse and abuse of corporate e-mail and internet systems. That is a fairly large percent. Companies should just block all harmful website and limit emailing and instant messaging to company related issues.

I just finished reading an article from the New York Times on a brand new library in Charlotte, North Carolina. The article was titled “Visitors Retrace Paths of Faith at Billy Graham Library” and was written by Ken Garfield.The Billy Graham Library opened in 2007 and has already attracted more than 130,000 visitors! People from all over the country have made the “pilgrimage” to new library to relive their “own faith journeys”

Billy Graham is an Evangelical Christian who has preached all over the world. At the opening of the library were notable former Presidents such as George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton! The library generally attracts an older crowd of people because Billy Graham made his last crusade in 2005 at the age of 87. Nonetheless, the librarians at the Billy Graham Library still see busloads of school children come through on a daily basis.

Franklin Graham, Billy’s oldest son, now runs the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and stated that “the library’s goal was not to glorify his father, or the stadium-style revivals where he preached to 215 million people over more than a half-century.Instead, the library is meant to serve as an evangelical tool.”

I can imagine this being a very peaceful place for Christians to go and meditate in the prayer garden and remember the times they had with the minister. While you are at the library you can visit the gravesite of Billy’s wife, Ruth Bell Graham and read all the writings of Mr. Graham. This is an amazing tribute to a man who changed many peoples’ lives.

I just read a very interesting article out of the Boston Globe.  The name of the article is “Online Plagiarism Strikes Blog World” written by Maura Welch on May 8, 2006. It starts out with a story about a girl who has a Red Sox blog that gets about 500 hits a day! She was very excited and proud of her blog until she realized that other people were plagiarizing it! Someone informed her that another blogger had been copying a lot of her posts for at least 6 months and they had changed all personal information, such as friends names, to people that the plagiarizer knew. 

 In stepped Jonathan Bailey, the author of a blog called Plagiarism Today. He said that at any given moment he is helping up to 25 bloggers who have also been plagiarized. The funny thing is that plagiarism has been around since the first books have been published, but now with the internet, obtaining other people’s information is as simple as a click and paste. Another blogger named Michael Zimmer from NYU theorizes that maybe people plagiarize blogs just to get attention?  

So who exactly is getting plagiarized? Well famous bloggers obviously are not ripped off due to their popularity and at the opposite end of the spectrum neither is the average joe. The people who are getting copied are the “mid-range” bloggers who have talent but are still everyday people.  How can you protect yourself? Well it is much easier than many think! All you have to do is put a little copyright notice on the bottom of the blog. Another thing you can do is make is so that your RSS feed only shows a summary of your blog and not the entire article.