Australian broadband vendor Optusbroadband has been flooded with protests by library professionals, objecting to its advertisement that includes a tiger doing homework, and bemoaning that " ... it's hard enough to find a book in a library, let alone someone to help ..."

Listserv discussions, particularly from the school library sector, included comments from numerous moderates who believed that the implication had humorous merit, and that the middle to high school senior age group, who were targetted for the advertising campaign, would not be swayed away from using traditional information services.

Meanwhile, the radicals rapidly fired off emails of protest, threatening dire consequences if the advertising wasn't withdrawn immediately. Unfortunately, many of the protesters hadn't actually seen the allegidly offensive item before registering their complaint. So I guess I should do some sort of apology thing that doesn't involve losing too much 'face'. Which should be pretty easy as no one knows which side I was on ...

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The Heavymetal Librarian writes in his blog "Chris got me [Bloodhag's] new album [Hell Bent for Letters] on vinyl while we were up in East Lansing over the weekend. The mere mortal brain cannot even begin to fathom how amazing this artwork is! Please come over to my house and look at it in person! The warrior librarian's sword has "SHHH" etched into it, while her dagger says "READ". I haven't even listened to the music yet but these four guys (and especially their artist!) are my new heroes. Double umlauts! Literary metal! Adoration and reverence for librarians! Eeeeeeee!"

When the genuine, original Warrior Librarian asked if she would sue for impersonation, Biblia first commented on the fact that the blog entry was missing critical information; and that while the record cover image held the data it hadn't been incorporated in any W3C-compliant format such as alt tags or embedded in the descriptive text - which would have allowed it to meet accessibility standards.

When she finished babbling on, she added - in relation to any possible use of the name "warrior librarian" in the blog entry, which was the original question anyway - that due to being old and fat, and only having a plastic sword, there really wasn't much point ...

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GOVERNMENT LIBRARIES

Improve access by removing access?

Cox News service reports that "the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is closing libraries around the country, saying it wants to cut costs and make materials more accessible by moving them to the Internet. But open-government advocates, lawmakers and EPA employees say the online effort will result in the opposite because the effort is poorly planned and underfunded."

It would appear that no one asked any of the library users (probably because they knew what they would say anyway) nor any of the library staff involved, because why would they listen to people who actually knew what they were talking about?

However, Cox does report that "the agency has yet to detail how it will pay for digitizing its vast collection of 504,000 books and reports; 3,500 journal titles; 25,000 maps and 3.6 million items on microfilm. It has not addressed how it will post materials protected by copyrights. And it has yet to offer quality assurances that the material will be properly indexed, cross-referenced and archived."

Our guess is that no details have yet been forthcoming, because the people who made the decision hadn't actually considered these issues ...

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SCHOOL LIBRARIES

State standards not standard

More than $25,000 has been received in contributions to restocking school libraries, compared with less than $20,000 total last year, said Morey Mechlin executive director of the Springfield Public Schools foundation.

While Oklahoma may allocate only $15 per student to school libraries, many will be shocked to learn that Other Places On the Planet make no allocation at all. And we're not talking Third World, either.

Additionally, Mary Kay Carson, K-12 coordinator of libraries for Springfield Public Schools is concerned that 19 Springfield schools are below Level 3 in the areas of fiction and nonfiction, with 5 schools are below Level 3 in nonfiction and 10 below Level 1 in fiction with 4 are at Level 1 in fiction.

Apparently, parents were also shocked that their school libraries didn't meet state standards. Here's something to shock Mary Kay Carson and everyone connected with school libraries in Oklahoma - there are some states in the same said Other Places on the Planet that don't even HAVE library standards ...

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PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Welsh library love affair may end in tears

Tryst Williams, of the Western Mail wrote eloquently of the marvels of the whole public library system. "Imagine, for a moment, if the notion of the library had never been first dreamt up in those far-off times of classical antiquity. Ah yes, all those thousands of years ago when a young Barbara Cartland was no doubt churning out her first pot-boilers on lovingly-crafted pink-dyed papyrus.

And so on, for a whole article that tugged at the heartstrings while quoting top borrowing statistics from Public Lending Right website.

Hopefully, the library-worker spouse has now forgiven whatever thoughtless remark was dropped in an unguarded moment ...

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The major part of last week was spent online conferencing, where they even let me 'host' a day's discussions. What a wonderful week it was too, being free to disagree with just about everything anyone said, regardless of whether or not I knew what I was talking about. Not that I've ever let that stop me before.

All this was very nicely complemented by The Discussion Rules, which required everyone to be polite to everyone else. So I didn't even get flamed. There are times when I wish real life was more like this ...

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? - the cuckoo clock.

Graham Greene & Orson Wells, The Third Man (movie)

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Now in its seventh year, the most excellent Renaissance Library Calendar could also be named 12 Libraries You'd Be Lucky If They Even Let You In To Look, Let Alone Work There.

The 2008 feast features a simply stunning array of places; including St. Peter Monastery Library, St. Peter auf dem Schwarzwald, Germany (1752), Ajuda Library, Lisbon, Portugal, (15th century), and Biblioteca Thysiana, Leiden, The Netherlands, (1653). For the first time ever, four American libraries have been included.

We are reliably informed that the reason why you cannot get a job there is NOT because the original staff have not yet retired ...

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We congratulate all the state and territory nominees for this award: Geraldine McNulty - Merici College, Braddon ACT, Cathy Hill - St Paul´s Grammar School, Penrith NSW, Giselle Pryer - NT Open Education Centre, Casuarina NT, Patricia Carmichael - Concordia College, Toowoomba QLD, Carol Miller - Hamilton Secondary College, Mitchell Park SA, Maureen Mann - Brooks High School, Mowbray Heights TAS, Marie Clarke - Frederick Irwin Anglican School, Mandurah WA. For further information contact: Lorene Furmage, President Elect, Australian School Library Association Inc. (ASLA).

Borat's offical website; what can you say? Spend hours there watching video, cruising through photographics, investigating links. Sure, the splash page sucks, but it's supposed to.

But I just hope the Kazakhstan style of swim wear doesn't catch on. We've got more than enough to cope with already in the Fashion Stakes, what with beige, black-framed spectacles plus and buns (I kid you not) coming back into vogue ...