Library Stuff

“The San Francisco Law Library filed a lawsuit today against the City and County of San Francisco, alleging that since 1995 the city has violated a City Charter provision that requires it to provide proper funding and adequate space for the Law Library. For decades, the Library shared part of the fourth floor of City Hall with the Superior Courts and had additional space in the building. There it served its mission by providing free and public legal resources to the courts, lawyers and self-represented litigants alike. Following the 1989 earthquake, when City Hall closed in 1995 for retrofitting, the city moved the Library to a temporary space designed for the two year retrofit period at the Veterans War Memorial building that was and continues to be insufficient.”

via Rock Hill Herald Online

“Russia on Thursday harshly criticized a U.S. court ruling fining it $50,000 a day for holding onto tens of thousands of religious books and manuscripts stolen from Jews during the Russian revolution and World War II. Russia’s State Library and the Russian military archive have refused to give up the books, some hundreds of years old, even after a U.S. court ruled that the Brooklyn-based Chabad-Lubavitch group is the rightful owner. The country says the books are part of its national heritage. Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court ruled Wednesday that Russia should pay the fine until it complies with his 2010 order to return the collection to the Jewish group.”

via AP

“The powerful company that assigns ISBN numbers to books hurt a publisher by falsely claiming that all its books are out of print, the publisher claims in court. A.P. Lee & Co. sued R.R. Bowker LLC, several of its employees, and BookMasters, a distributor, in Franklin County Court. Bowker has “the U.S. monopoly on granting ISBNs to publishers” and also “publishes ‘Books in Print,’ touted by Bowker as the most trusted and authoritative source of bibliographical information available,” Lee says in its complaint.”

via Courthouse News Service

“With a new round of filings hitting the docket last week, the Authors Guild appeal of Judge Harold Baer’s landmark copyright decision in the the HathiTrust case is underway. The broad appeal raises a handful of key questions on which the Guild is seeking review by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, including whether the district court erred in finding the scan plan to be fair use.”

via Publishers Weekly

“Voters will be allowed to use Memphis library cards as photo identification in the November 6 election, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a blow to Republicans who wanted only ID issued by the federal and state governments to be allowed. Tennessee is among a number of states that have passed laws requiring voters to show photo ID. Republicans say the laws are needed to deter fraud, while Democrats say they are aimed at depressing turnout by voters who typically support their party.

The Tennessee law, which took effect at the beginning of the year, requires people to show a driver’s license, state-issued handgun carry permit, a U.S. passport or another form of government-issued ID to vote. Student IDs are not acceptable.”

via Reuters

“The Author’s Guild has suffered another major setback in its fight to stop Google’s ambitious book-scanning project. The Guild lost a key ally when Google settled with a coalition of major publishers last week. Now a judge has ruled that the libraries who have provided Google with their books to scan are protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine. While the decision doesn’t guarantee that Google will win—that’s still to be decided in a separate lawsuit—the reasoning of this week’s decision bodes well for Google’s case. Most of the books Google scans for its book program come from libraries. After Google scans each book, it provides a digital image and a text version of the book to the library that owns the original. The libraries then contribute the digital files to a repository called the Hathitrust Digital Library, which uses them for three purposes: preservation, a full-text search engine, and electronic access for disabled patrons who cannot read the print copies of the books.”

via Ars Technica

“The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google today announced a settlement agreement that will provide access to publishers’ in-copyright books and journals digitized by Google for its Google Library Project. The dismissal of the lawsuit will end seven years of litigation. The agreement settles a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Google on October 19, 2005 by five AAP member publishers. As the settlement is between the parties to the litigation, the court is not required to approve its terms. The settlement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright-holders. US publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project. Those deciding not to remove their works will have the option to receive a digital copy for their use. Apart from the settlement, US publishers can continue to make individual agreements with Google for use of their other digitally-scanned works.”

via Google Press Release

“A new Internet live streaming project in Massachusetts broadcast its first criminal trial this month, but it’s still grappling with who can opt to stay off screen and why. Boston NPR station WBUR developed OpenCourt with a $1 million Knight News Challenge grant from the Knight Foundation. Live streaming at Quincy District Court started in May 2011. At first, live streaming was limited to certain procedures, including arraignments, probation surrender hearings, substance abuse commitment hearings and summary process cases.”

via Law.com

“When the police cleared Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park last November, the movement lost not only its central gathering spot, but also one of its more popular institutions: a collection of 3,600 donated books known as the People’s Library. The fate of the books constitutes one of the enduring riddles accompanying the story of the two-month Occupy encampment of the park, in Lower Manhattan. As the group’s librarians sought to retrieve their property from the city, they were able to recover only about 1,000 books. Some 200 were badly damaged, the librarians said, adding that about 2,400 were not found.”

via NY Times

“Yesterday the publisher plaintiffs (SAGE, Oxford U Press, and Cambridge U Press) announced that they would appeal the district court’s decision of the GSU electronic reserves case. It looks like the suit will continue to be bankrolled by the Copyright Clearance Center and the Association of American Publishers, and the latter issued its own statement on the appeal. Coverage of the appeal has appeared in the Chronicle, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly and Inside Higher Ed.”

via ARL Policy Notes