Library News, Reviews, and Views
Libraries have no natural predators. Believe me. Having worked in partisan politics and lobbied on contentious issues, I know what it means to have opponents. Since I started lobbying for libraries no one has called me names, hung up on me, or slammed a door in my face.
Thus far in 2013, the federal budget picture has been quite grim. Since March 1, the United States government has begun to adapt to the harsh reality of across-the-board budget cuts to particular categories of federal spending. This series of cuts—now commonly referred to as the sequestration—were enacted as part of the Budget Control Act [...]
In spite of the gridlock associated with the U.S. Congress, state legislatures across America are presently hard at work. Like many, my home state of Maryland is currently grappling with a series of complex and controversial issues, many of which impact libraries.
According to the Sunlight Foundation, on March 20 the House Oversight and Government Reform committee green-lighted a bill that would make public presidential library donation records. The bill would require disclosure of all donations over $200, whereas currently no donations are required to be disclosed.
The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) was introduced on February 14 in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. If passed, FASTR would require government agencies with annual extramural research expenditures of more than $100 million make electronic manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles based on their research freely available on the Internet within six months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
If you work in a library, sell to a library, support a library, or have ever walked into a library, your life has been impacted by policymakers who often have no idea who you are or what you do for the community. Perhaps more important, they will continue to have no idea unless you tell them.
On Jan. 3, Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) reintroduced H.R. 113, the Workforce Investment through Local Libraries (WILL) Act. The bill, if passed, would include libraries in the Workforce Investment Act.
The American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) today teamed up with 17 other associations, retailers, and charities to launch a new coalition called the Owners’ Rights Initiative (ORI). ORI is an “informal alliance of stakeholders” that will defend the first sale doctrine, which allows libraries to lend books and other materials, as well as individual owners to resell them.
Early voting began today in Dona Ana County for a bill that could make or break New Mexico’s academic library collections, at least for the next couple of years. While public libraries are used to their funding hinging on ballot questions, it’s more unusual for academic libraries to have their fate decided at the polls, [...]
INFOdocket by Gary Price
