She Put Her Stamp on Copyright Law

Barbara A. Ringer, a scrivener in an odd niche of the federal bureaucracy who died April 9 at age 83, negotiated and drafted the Copyright Act of 1976, the first major revision in seven decades of a basic law governing intellectual property.

As the U.S. register of copyrights from 1973 to 1980, Ms. Ringer was proud of her devotion to protecting artists, writers and other creators. She said her heroes were Maria Callas ("a thoroughly selfish woman, [a] great artist who knew what she wanted and went after it") and Muhammad Ali ("a very very different type of person [who] just stuck to his guns").

What an interesting combination of heroes. Both certainly were determined individuals who let nothing stand in their way, in their mission to accomplish lofty goals.

The 1976 law was the culmination of more than two decades Ms. Ringer spent negotiating with business, lobbying Congress and drafting provisions. The Act established an expanded length of copyright (life plus 50 years, changed from 28 years, renewable once), codified the concept of "fair use" and made other key updates in response to technologies such as broadcasting, recording and photocopying.

Fair use is a very important concept. The government Copyright Office defines it:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

After attending Columbia University's law school, a rarity for a female of the era, Ms. Ringer joined the Copyright Office as an examiner in 1949. She soon became involved in updating copyright law, a process that had been under way since before World War II.

Technology wasn't the only challenge Ms. Ringer confronted. In 1971, after she was passed over for promotion, she filed a sex-discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress. She won in 1973 and was promoted to be the nation's first female register of copyrights.

But the issue went deeper. She claimed she was passed over in part because she had pledged to promote black workers at the Library. Years later, in 1992, a federal judge ruled in a class-action suit that the Library had for decades discriminated against its black employees.

Pura Belpré

Searching for info, came across this name: Pura Belpré.

Pura Belpré (died 1982), was the first Puerto Rican librarian in New York City. She was also a writer, collector of folktales, and puppeteer. There is some dispute as to the date of her birth which has been given as February 2, 1899, December 2, 1901 and February 2, 1903.

Harvard Friendship Goes on to White House

Jocelyn Frye, who has been a friend of Michelle Obama since law school, has become Mrs. Obama’s policy and projects director.











At Harvard Law School, they supported student demands for more professors of color, savored countless episodes of “The Cosby Show” and “L.A. Law,” and dreamed about how two idealistic black women might make their mark. Their legal careers took them to separate cities, but they never lost touch.

Jocelyn Frye became a passionate proponent of affirmative action and workplace equity and an advocate for women and families in Washington. Michelle Obama became a community organizer and a hospital executive committed to eliminating health care barriers for the poor in Chicago.

She is married to a Republican political consultant, Brian Summers, who campaigned for former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas in the Republican presidential primary race. (“We don’t talk much about politics,” said Ms. Frye, who is 45 and a Democrat. “Nothing good could come of it.”)

I don't understand such marriages.

Ms. Frye, who attended Mr. and Mrs. Obama’s wedding, never imagined that she might follow her friend into the Executive Mansion. She is the daughter of government workers — her mother worked for the Library of Congress and her father worked for military intelligence — who sacrificed to send her to private schools. She still lives in the predominantly black neighborhood where she grew up, just walking distance from the house she lived in as a girl.

Military intelligence?

The Goose is Loose

On page 91 of Goose Gossage's autobiography, "The Goose is Loose" he describes Kent Tekulve this way: "With this aquiline face covered by thick, tinted glasses, and a slight frame with a sunken chest, he looked like an eighth grade science teacher or a male librarian."

Excuse me.

4,800 Books and 10 Legs

In a ritual repeated nearly every weekend for the past decade here in Colombia’s war-weary Caribbean hinterland, Luis Soriano gathered his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, in front of his home on a recent Saturday afternoon. Sweating already under the unforgiving sun, he strapped pouches with the word “Biblioburro” painted in blue letters to the donkeys’ backs and loaded them with an eclectic cargo of books destined for people living in the small villages beyond.

In a country that has suffered so much violence in the last half century plus, this is a heart-warming story of a man and books, a triumph of the human spirit that is not a cliché.

“I started out with 70 books, and now I have a collection of more than 4,800,” said Mr. Soriano, 36, a primary school teacher who lives in a small house here with his wife and three children, with books piled to the ceilings.

A whimsical riff on the bookmobile, Mr. Soriano’s Biblioburro is a small institution: one man and two donkeys. He created it out of the simple belief that the act of taking books to people who do not have them can somehow improve this impoverished region, and perhaps Colombia.

A breakthrough came several years ago when he heard excerpts over the radio of a novel, “The Ballad of Maria Abdala,” by Juan Gossaín, a Colombian journalist and writer. Mr. Soriano wrote a letter to the author, asking him to lend a copy of the book to the Biblioburro. After Mr. Gossaín broadcast details of Mr. Soriano’s project on his radio program, book donations poured in from throughout Colombia. A local financial institution, Cajamag, provided some financing for the construction of a small library next to his home, but the project remains only half-finished for lack of funds.

He fractured his left leg in a fall from one of his burros in July, leaving him with a limp. And some of his readers like the books they borrow so much that they fail to return them. Two books that vanished not long ago: an illustrated sex education manual, and a copy of “Like Water for Chocolate,” the Mexican writer Laura Esquivel’s novel about food and love in a traditional Mexican family.

And there are dangers inherent to venturing into the backlands around La Gloria. Two years ago, Mr. Soriano said, bandits surprised him at a river crossing, found that he carried almost no money, and tied him to a tree. They stole one item from his book pouch: “Brida,” the story of an Irish girl and her search for knowledge, by the Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho.

“For some reason, Paulo Coelho is at the top of everyone’s list of favorites,” said Mr. Soriano, hiding a grin under the shade of his sombrero vueltiao, the elaborately woven cowboy hat popular in Colombia’s interior.

Luis Soriano, a teacher from La Gloria, Colombia, traveled to the village of El Brasil with his Biblioburro on Oct. 11. The donkeys are named Alfa and Beto.



Slide show

What's in a name?

A patron came in today looking for the book "The man in the white sharkskin suit". She was the third or fourth patron to ask for the book since I came on the Information Desk at 11am. Her record caught my attention; how is this?

Name Nassau, Beverly
Address 973 Cedarhurst Street
North Woodmere, NY 11581

Nassau on Cedarhurst Street in North Woodmere. I like it.

If It's Not by Tolstoy, Hold On to Your Rubles

Libraries remain valuable social institutions, though their roles are changing. Many people think of libraries as "free internet access" or "free wi-fi" and couldn't care less about books, though many people think of libraries as places to socialize, to get books and DVDs, and to go to merely as a destination.

I was shocked a couple of years ago when I learned a fellow worker with small children didn't know where the neighborhood branch of the local public library was. Turns out any time his kids wanted a book, he went out and bought it for them. Same for his own reading.

This is one of the big changes of the last couple of decades: B&N as a destination, a place to look at books, to socialize. Part of it is a generational change: people in their twenties got used to getting an expensive cup of coffee and hanging out at the bookstore. Another part is institutional: libraries did not change enough to stay popular with newer generations. Yet another part is simply progress, change, the tide of social history: libraries and librarians are not highly regarded, libraries seen as stodgy places one has to be quiet, to follow rules, and to do as one is told, librarians as overbearing women who are quick to reprimand and slow to warm up.

Ever since I was a little boy, we made regular visits to the library, where I would sate my reading passion of the moment. Robert Louis Stevenson's works, the now largely forgotten Henry Ware novels of Joseph A. Altsheler, the Bruce Catton histories of the Civil War – I read them all.

B&N became part of the culture of acquisitiveness, of displaying one's ability to spend, what I'd call the Reagan culture.

A Library Encounter

An encounter such as this one makes me wonder why I went to library school; luckily, there are offsetting encounters that balance things out.

Telephone rang; it was around 10am. I picked it up and said, "Reference Desk."
"Could you help me out, my computer's down."
Recognized her voice instantly. Her computer has been down for weeks.
"I'm looking for the telephone number of a John Conner in Westhampton. That's c-o-double n-e-r."
"Sure; hold on a minute." I was remembering all the reference courses I took in Library School, all the research I had to conduct, the papers I had to write (using APA citation protocol), the exams I had to take, the money I had to pay, the grief I had to suffer, the long hours and long months.

I went to library school and took a bucketload of reference courses so I could look up a phone number for a person who refuses to do the work herself (or pay directory assistance, which is understandable, for these days each call is a buck, or more). I have two master's degrees, and I'm looking up phone numbers?

Found a John Conner in the Suffolk County White Pages. C-o-double n-e-r, but in East Quogue, not Westhampton, but it was the only John Conner in the Suffolk County. Research told me I'd found not the requested item, but a close approximation, and intelligence and experience told me this was the only one.

"I found a John Conner," I told the patron, holding the phone a couple of inches away from my ear, for this is a loud-voiced patron. "But in East Quogue, not Westhampton."

"Oh," she said. Loudly. "You're sure there's no other John Conner?"

"Yes, I am. He's the only one."

"That's C-o-double n-e-r, right?"

Holding the phone half a dozen inches from my ear, I answered, "yes, as you said. He's in East Quogue, not Westhampton. Would you like the number?"

"Oh, okay." She continued speaking loudly, and I continued to hold the phone away from my ear.

"That number is," I intoned, and hesitated. Wait, wait until I get a piece of paper is one of the comments she's made in the past. The woman calls looking for a telephone number of a person in Suffolk County, of a pharmacy in Hempstead, of a restaurant in Mineola, and she does not have a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil ready. I went to get a second master's degree for this.

"Yes," she said, indicating she was ready.

The number was, say, 744-6610; I began slowly. "Seven-four-four."

"Wait, now, that's seven-four-four?"

"Yes, that's right," I said, and paused.

"Yes?"

"Six, six."

"Six, six?"

"Yes, six-six."

"Okay."

"One."

"Yes?"

"Zero."

"One, zero?"

"Yes, that's right: one-zero."

"So, that's 744 ..." she said, and paused.

"Right, seven-four-four."

"Six, six, one, zero?"

"Right, 6610."

"And that was Conner: c-o-double n-e-r?"

"As you said, yes."

"And there's no other Conner in Westhampton?"

"No, there is only the Conner in East Quogue."

"And his number's 744-6610?"

"Yes, it is?"

"Thank you dear," I heard her voice saying as I returned the phone to its cradle. Another successful research project completed.

No Shushing in This Library

A different library world.

A library question

A youngster, likely 15, 16 years of age, came to the Information Desk seeking information on a little town in (he thought) Poland. Afer several tries, I got the correct spelling: Suchostaw. Couldn't find much information: two entries in Worldcat.org, one for a book owned by Cambridge University Cambridge, CB3 9DR United Kingdom, the other unspecified.

I then googled the town name, showed the youngster how to go to google books to search, and finally told him to call the Jewish Theological Seminary. He'd never heard of it.

Did he spray toes at library?

You can't make up this stuff. Reading some stories about other libraries reminds me how sedate HWPL is. A story from the Cincinnati Enquirer is a case in point.

A Columbus man has been charged with crawling under a table at a library on University of Cincinnati’s campus, spraying a substance from a syringe on a woman’s shoes and then photographing them.

Weird, on-the-edge weird.

Dwight Pannell, 43, was booked into the county jail about midnight on charges of voyeurism, assault and criminal trespass, court records show.

Voyeurism is a crime?

“There’s really no way to explain people’s fetishes,” said University of Cincinnati Police Capt. Karen Patterson this morning. “I’ve been in police work 24 years and I can’t explain it. I don’t know. It would take a psychologist or psychiatrist to explain it.”

Aye.

She ran for help to the person next to her, and he told her to go downstairs and tell security.

To nitpick: if the person was next to her, how could she run?

UC police arrested Pannell at the library and seized his camera, Patterson said. He told police he was visiting the library and trying out his new camera. Police found images of the woman’s feet on it. “He admitted taking pictures of her feet,” Patterson said. “He said he was doing so because it was a new camera.”

Strange choice of what to take picture of; very strange.

A reference question - Billy Joel-Fire

Yesterday two young ladies came in with a question: where can we find this book? It was a reference book on American history. They had no idea how to find a book, reference or otherwise. One of them was actually interested in the Dewey Decimal System, so I gave them a brief lesson on call numbers.

Their assignment was to research names and events mentioned in the Billy Joel song "We didn't start the Fire". I just now found a link to a site that does exactly that.

One of the students had this stanza:

U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

They thought that U2 was the singing group; when I told them it was a spy plane, they were amazed that it had the same name as the group. A, kids.

I told them Rhee was a South Korean president, that Congo was a Belgian colony. And I helped them find reference material.

A new book

In the new book cart I found Worlds at war: the 2,500-year struggle between east and west, by Anthony Pagden. On the cover is detail of a Delacroix painting, The Battle of Giaour and Hassan. Giaour is a Byron poem.The word Giaour means is a Turkish adaptation of the Persian word gdwr or gbr, an infidel.

Kirkus Reviews Is there a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West? Scholars and pundits are divided; this broad-ranging survey comes down in the affirmative, even if the formulation is a "crude but useful phrase."Pagden (Political Science and History/UCLA; Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present, 2001, etc.) observes that one habit of the ancient Persians puzzled the Greeks most: their prostrating themselves before rulers and gods, which was not the behavior of free people. The habit still puzzles the West, and the gulf grows ever wider. Pagden's chronicle of a long history of mutual incomprehension begins in the age of Xerxes and wanders leisurely through ancient history, observing that "Oriental luxuriousness" set many a centurion off the straight and narrow. As Plutarch remarked, Plato wrote of four kinds of flattery, "but Cleopatra knew a thousand" and, as Pagden adds, used every one of them. Muhammad cherished luxury not at all, as the austere religion his followers spread at the point of a sword clearly indicated. That religion, writes Pagden, carried with it "perpetual hostility between Islam and both Jews and Christians." Charged with this enmity and posing few intellectual obstacles to impede access by ordinary people, Islam became a world religion uniting ethnically diverse cultures from western Africa to the western Pacific. In the permanent battlefield that was Moorish Spain, this new religion clashed with Christianity; the front would widen to embrace the Balkans and spread into Europe as far as Vienna, where only an army of united Christian nations could stem the tide. Later encounters with Islam were no more peaceful, though peacemakers have tried: Napoleon reckoned, for instance, that as long as it was kept out of civil society, religious belief was permissible, a formula that lately met with anguished protest when French educators tried to ban the veil (and the cross, and the Star of David) from the classroom. A cheerless but useful history.

A reference question on art

Gustave Courbet

Modern library

E-books.

A reference question

A patron called to ask the symbolic meaning of a swan. A quick check revealed HWPL owns a number of books on symbolism. Joseph Campbell refers to Zeus in the form of a swan in one of his books. I found further information on that on the web; how authoritative that is I am not yet sure, but it does dovetail with Campbell's reference.

It is in the form of a swan that Zeus assaults Leda and in so doing, engenders the twins -- the Gemini -- Castor and Pollux, who hatched from eggs and also their sisters, the tormented Clytemnestra, and fatefully beautiful Helen, whose elopement with Paris is cause for the Trojan War.

Reference is also made to a painting by Leonardo. An interesting question, an interesting answer.

Family friendly libraries, or censors?

Uh-oh. This one is a biggie in the library world.

Calif. librarian fired after telling police man was looking at ...
USA Today - 2 hours ago
Brenda Biesterfeld says she lost her job as a library aide because she ignored her supervisor and turned in a patron who was looking at photos of nude boys at the library in Lindsay, Calif.
Firing of library worker causes uproar Los Angeles Times
Fired Lindsay Librarian Receives Honorable Award CBS 47
United Press International - KMPH Fox 26 - ABC30.com - Visalia Times-Delta
all 8 news articles »

Building Google-age libraries

More on libraries.

Borrowed Time: How do you build a public library in the age of Google?

By Witold Rybczynski - Posted Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008, at 7:02 AM ET

Click here to read a slide-show essay about the architecture of libraries.

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Public libraries told to innovate or die out

This one is on UK libraries. Another person who isn't satisfied with what she sees in libraries from her vantage point.

London’s public libraries must take innovative steps such as rewarding regular borrowers with vouchers for travel or the cinema if they are to stay relevant to an increasingly discerning and web-savvy population, Margaret Hodge, the Culture Secretary, said today.

Imagine that, handing out coupons, or vouchers, to people who come into the library. That one will go over well with librarians.

Although spending on libraries has risen 17 per cent in the past decade, the number of books borrowed has slumped by 34 per cent, she told delegates.

Books, of course, are not the one resource provided by libraries, so that statistic is misleading. The larger point, however, is valid.

Situating libraries in railway stations and shopping centres would attract a wider market, as would a single London library card allowing users to borrow books in one location and return them in another, she suggested.

I agree. A single card is essential. It is common in New York, and seems an anachronism.

A loyalty scheme, like those run by supermarkets, could be implemented, rewarding borrowers with a one-day travelcard or a pair of cinema tickets after ten visits, for example.

This I don't like. Reducing library use to being equal with retail shopping would cheapen it. It seems to me that using a library is somewhat different than going to the market to get toilet paper or toothpaste.

More, London has 33 boroughs that seem to hardly co-operate, if at all.

"... it ought to be possible to share services and support functions such as inter-library lending, IT systems and delivery systems and thereby spend more effectively.”

No Inter Library Loans? Ouch.

Pull the plug on the library

One man's view on libraries, and he isn't sympathetic. A sampling:

According to the Alachua District library's own Web site, the library had 1.2 million visits last year. I am guessing this means that the turnstiles clicked over 1.2 million times, no telling what for. But let's stipulate that all those entrances were to actually use the library services and not just to get a drink of water, use the bathroom or escape the elements. The budget for the coming year is $19 million. That means that each visit costs over $15.

And so it continues.

And it gets even better. If my property tax bill is any indication, elimination of the library would result in an immediate 5.1 percent tax cut! I mean how hard can it be to sell a 5.1 percent tax cut to each and every property owner in Alachua County? I don't have the exact number in front of me, but I am guessing that it's over 70,000 people who would experience direct tax relief.


Well, it doesn't faze him that he's unsure about the number, but sure about his point.

The county commissioners are warning that the sky is falling because of a potential $3 million mandated tax cut. Here is a chance to cut six times that amount with no reduction in essential services.


My emphasis, his point.