It appears that access to digital media and First Amendment Rights is not only of interest to us librarians, but also to lawyers. Of Blogs, eBooks, and Broadband: Access to Digital Media as a First Amendment Right is a thought provoking article in the Hofstra Law Review in which the author, Hannibal Travis, “aims to show that the rubric of originalism provides the most persuasive, consistent, and principled basis on which to establish First Amendment limits to efforts by private entities to censor digital media using government-issued monopolies.” In case you’re interested, this paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network electronic library at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1025474.

Librarians from the Sojourner Truth Library at SUNY New Paltz, the New York State Library, and the Mid-York Library System had terrific presentations on some recent projects at the 9th Annual Nylink Showcase. Heartfelt thanks goes out from Nylink to the presenters! If you didn’t have the opportunity to attend, here is some information to help you learn about their activities.

Check Out Lloyd@Your Library
Librarians Stephan J. Macaluso, Megan Coder, and Heather Whalen Smith at SUNY New Paltz’s Sojourner Truth Library presented a poster session at the 9th Annual Nylink Showcase on their terrific project, in which a five-foot tall sock monkey named Lloyd serves as a mascot and an avatar. Besides posing for pictures for the library’s virtual tour, Lloyd maintains a presence at Livejournal, Tumblr, and Flickr. He’s also an experienced poster boy and does booth time representing the library during college orientation fairs. Take a look at the Sojourner Truth Library virtual tour, and see for yourself!

New York State Library Digital Collections
Browse the New York State Library’s digital collections online. Categories include Education Laws and Policy Documents, New York State Government Publications, and the New York State Library Scanned Documents Collection, which includes broadsides, maps, musical scores, and many other types of media. Presented by Cara Janowsky.

Mid York Regional Read Uses Library and Web 2.0 Technologies, Gets Unprecendented Participation
Beverly Choltco-Devlin shared the Mid-York Library System’s wonderfully successful 2007 Regional Read project. Keeping Your Balance in a Flat World, featuring Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, was the theme. This project encouraged everyone in Madison, Oneida and Herkimer counties to read Friedman’s work and others related to globalization, and more importantly, discuss the issues related to keeping our balance in a globalized world. The steering committee, comprised of individuals from libraries, businesses, schools, colleges and universities, and non-profit organizations chose to utilize Library and Web 2.0 technologies to plan and implement the Read. A wiki was used for the collaborative planning process, and topic blogs on the Regional Read website were set up to discuss the issues raised in the book. Business,school and college and university communities participated until the Regional Read ended in October 2007, and noted author Bill McKibben and former New York Congressman Sherwood Boehlert took part in the discussion. In production: streaming video of the panel session.
Read all about it!

Nylinkers were on the move again yesterday when Jen Stelling, T. Sahm, Evelyn Butrico, Ann Gunning and I attended the Capital District Library Council’s “Are Databases Dead? Databases in the Age of Google” at the William K. Sanford Library in Colonie. A large crowd of over 70 people from all types of libraries attended the event, a clear indication to me that this is an issue that many of us are dealing with. After a delicious lunch and fun conversation with our tablemates, speakers A. Ben Wagner, University at Buffalo and Gloria B. Meisel, Westchester Community College discussed the impact of Google on library databases. I left with some ideas to mull over such as: don’t be afraid of Google! If your students and patrons use Google be open to it. Discuss the positives of Google: it is fast, user friendly, and free while at the same time educating users on its shortcomings: the results are not always usable, the quality is not assured and users have to be discriminating. In the end databases are not dead though it was suggested that they need to take steps to be more user friendly, accessible and fun. Perhaps databases need a little googlizing to stay alive! Presentations are now available at www.cdlc.org

Now through February 1, 2008, Nylink, in partnership with OCLC NetLibrary, is offering the NetLibrary East Shared Collection. The East Shared Collection is a larger Shared Collection than previously offered due to participation in multiple states.

This new collection contains front list titles (2005-present) from major subject areas like: Social Science, Business, Medicine, Literature, Psychology, and Education.

The possible title pool of over 700 possible titles (over $67,000 in content) have been carefully selected by NetLibrary collection development librarians to develop a current set of content geared primarily to academic undergraduate programs. Within the possible title pool, there is a very small amount of duplication with previous Nylink Shared Collections.

The cost is: $1.15/FTE (prior to December 15)$1.25/FTE (after December 16th)

• Academic 4-yr Colleges/Universities have a 1:1 ratio
• Community Colleges (2-yr) 2:1 ratio for FTE
• Public Library is 5% of Population Served
• Schools (K12) and Special Libraries call.

http://www.nylink.org/reference/nl/netli_east07.cfm

Questions? Call Jen Hawkes (hawkesj@nylink.0rg) at 1-800-342-3353