Learning Something New

In the April, 2008 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, the cover article is about the lives of paprazzi who follow Britney Spears in order to catalog almost every occurance in her increasingly chaotic life.  One might think that a reputable publication such as The Atlantic having a story about Ms. Spears is a sign of a new low for the news media, I certainly did.  So I read the article, and wouldn’t you know it, it really opened my eyes to something I didn’t even realize I knew nothing about.  Paparazzi work really hard.  I mean it.  These guys are camped out all hours of the day and night hoping to get a shot that will make them a lot (and I mean a lot) of money.  In addition, the paps (as they are called), and the company they work for, sell these pictures to every news outlet in the world.   I’m not really going to get into it in this blog but I recommend that you read the article.  If you do read it please note the language is graphic at times.

For Dog Lovers

If you like dogs or any animal really, you’ll enjoy Street Dogs by Traer Scott.  She’s a photographer who documented stray dogs in Mexico and Puerto Rico.  There are some astonishing photographs and the stories will just break your heart.  You can see some of her shots at her web site.

Meet Author Beth Helms

Beth Helms is the next featured speaker in the Library’s Meet the Author series. She’ll be discussing her novel Dervishes Tuesday, March 18 at 6 pm in the ISSI, 405 Ell Hall. Dervishes explores the lives of the wife and daughter of an American diplomat living in Ankara, Turkey in 1975. Helms, winner of the 2003 Iowa Short Fiction Award, draws on her childhood experiences living abroad in the Middle East to write this compelling story. Turkish cuisine will be served at the event! This talk and book-signing is sponsored by NU Libraries, the International Student and Scholar Institute (ISSI), and the NU Bookstore. A campus map is available here. Ell Hall is building 52.

Library of Congress joins the Flickr fun!

Do we have any Flickr fans out there? If you don’t know what Flickr is you must visit it at once. It is an online photo community. People can join and post their photos to show their friends and family or they can make them public for others to see and comment on. There are lots of groups on Flickr you can join, such as bird lovers where you can post your pictures of birds and others do as well and create a nice little community of people with similar interest in birds. Ok now that we know what flickr is, the Library of Congress now has an account! Along with their 530 miles of books shelves, the Library of Congress also has a fantastic photo collection. They have been uploading some of those photos to Flickr for the world to see, enjoy and comment on! They invite people to tag (a descriptive word for the photo) the photos as well.

Feds Order Public Libraries to destroy law books!

The attorney general for the US Federal Government has issued this order… “The Department of Justice has called for these five public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library. The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA).” See this Link for more details. They have rescinded the order but the fact that the issued such an order in the first place is truly chilling.