ALCTS Network News v13n03 (March 14, 1997) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/ann/ann-v13n03.txt ISSN: 1056-6694 ALCTS NETWORK NEWS An electronic publication of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services Volume 13, Number 3 March 14, 1997 In this issue SITES SELECTED FOR ALCTS PRECONFERENCES ALCTS NEWSLETTER EDITOR SEEKS PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS DISCUSSION GROUP ASSISTANCE SOUGHT CDA CHALLENGE GOES TO SUPREME COURT MARCH 19 CALL FOR ACQUISITIONS PAPERS ISI OFFERS 1997 RESEARCH GRANTS FOR CITATION ANALYSIS STUDIES ************ SITES SELECTED FOR ALCTS PRECONFERENCES ALA Conference Services has selected the locations for the four ALCTS preconferences to the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco. Information and registration is available on the ALCTS gopher at gopher.ala.org or www.ala.org/alcts.html or by calling Yvonne McLean at 800-545-2433 ext. 5032. Making Statistics Work for Your Library -- Without Pain Thursday, June 26 --Pan Pacific Business of Acquisitions: Rethinking and Transforming Acquisitions Thursday, June 26 and Friday, June 27 -- Moscone Convention Center Demystifying Subject Cataloging of Electronic Resources Thursday, June 26 and Friday, June 27 -- Pan Pacific Scanning for Beginners Friday, June 27 -- Hotel Nikko ************ ALCTS NEWSLETTER EDITOR SEEKS PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS Thursday, March 20 is the submission deadline for the next issue of the ALCTS Newsletter, volume 8, number 3. This issue is scheduled to be mailed May 29 and will be the last issue to appear before the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco. I would like the issue to contain, if possible, brief descriptions of all preconferences and programs sponsored or cosponsored by ALCTS units. If you are chairing a committee or group sponsoring a program, please consider writing something up for me by this deadline. Space is limited, so it will be important to be concise. Descriptions of conference programs should be no more than 200 words in length, preconferences no more than 300. Discussion groups are also invited to submit descriptions of their conference meetings for this issue if they have their agendas ready. Because the number of discussion groups in ALCTS is so large, however, I'm asking that you try to keep these around 150 words or fewer. I look forward to hearing from all of you. Thanks! --Dale Swensen Editor, ALCTS Newsletter dale_swensen@byu.edu ************ DISCUSSION GROUP ASSISTANCE SOUGHT The Role of the Professional in Academic Technical Services is seeking input, examples and speakers for our meeting in San Francisco on the topic "Technical Services Librarians and the Teaching Mission." Are technical services librarians involved in the teaching of students at your institution? Do they do bibliographic instruction? Give Internet workshops? Teach credit courses? Or contribute in some other way? Are you one of these contributors? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, what are the specifics? What exactly is the extent of the involvement? Is it purely voluntary? Is it strongly encouraged or mandatory? Or, conversely, is it discouraged? What effect do these activities have on other areas of the library? What is the effect on the technical services department concerned? Does teaching enhance or detract from technical services work? If technical services librarians are not currently involved in teaching, is there some specific reason why not? Are you or your institution looking for more such involvement, or are you happy with the status quo? Do you think the technical services people at your institution would be interested, or would they be against such a change? Examples, opinions, information, etc. should be sent directly to me (at the email address below) as I am not a subscriber to all the lists on which this notice will be posted. Please remember to mention if you are interested in speaking in San Francisco on this subject, or if you know of someone who may be interested in speaking. (The Discussion Group will meet from 2-4 on Sun. June 29). --Mary Grenci mgrenci@darkwing.uoregon.edu ************ CDA CHALLENGE GOES TO SUPREME COURT MARCH 19 The legal challenge to the Communication Decency Act led by ALA will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, March 19, at 10 a.m. The challenge has been combined with a suit led by the ACLU. Both challenges were upheld in the federal district courts and appealed by the U. S. Department of Justice. ALA's legal counsel Bruce Ennis, of Jenner & Block, will present the case to the Supreme Court. A decision is expected in June. An op-ed piece by Judith Krug, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, follows. It will be distributed to Knight-Ridder and other newspapers across the U.S. Librarians, trustees, and others who wish to voice their support are urged to send letters to the editor and submit editorial columns to their local newspapers. [Reprinted with permission from The Bridge Forum: A series of viewpoints on telecommunications and related issues. Krug's views are not necessarily those of Bridge News.] Within the next few weeks our nation's Supreme Court will face one of the most important decisions of our time -- determining whether or not we have the right to free speech over the Internet. At issue is a section of the Telecommunications Act called the Communications Decency Act, which was signed into law in February of 1996. Last year in Philadelphia a federal court ruled that this Act was unconstitutional. The government is currently appealing this ruling. Should the Supreme Court find this Act to be constitutional, it will become illegal to use communication over the Internet that is now perfectly legal to print, fax or even broadcast. In other words, we will be able to sing it, say it, copy it, draw it, and mail it, but we will not be able to put it on-line. The Act would ban Americans from transmitting a broad category of information vaguely defined as indecent or patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards. Any person who knowingly sends or displays materials over the Internet to minors that could be interpreted as indecent could be imprisoned for up to two years and fined up to $250,000. The lawmakers who voted for the Act claim that it will protect children. But it will not. Because of the global nature of the Internet and World Wide Web, children will still be able to access information - which some might consider indecent - from other countries. This Act will serve only to mislead parents into believing the government is protecting children from inappropriate material. The fluid and vast nature of the Internet -- with literally millions of transmissions from around the world each day -- makes that impossible. The Communications Decency Act as written is unenforceable. Is the federal government going to provide funds to monitor every single Internet transmission and World Wide Web site? Is the government prepared to establish a bureaucracy whose single purpose is to determine that which we must now deem indecent? And finally, are all offenders going to be prosecuted? Let us consider exactly who those offenders might be under this law. Librarians, for one. Librarians have always been the great equalizers, providing books, videotapes and other resources to all people in all communities. Today, those resources also include computers, on-line connections and training. Millions of citizens who otherwise would not have access to state-of-the-art communication technology depend solely on their libraries for these services. Under this law, librarians could go to jail for posting titles of books or classical works of art depicting nudity that someone might find offensive. Medical information that some might find too graphic could be found to be in violation of the law. If a child surfing the Net on a library computer happened upon anything deemed inappropriate -- even if it came from an international source that was not bound by American law -- librarians could be held liable. Libraries are not the only public institutions affected. Museums, colleges, health agencies and any individual who transmits information some might find inappropriate for a minor could be subject to prosecution. The Act's wording is so broad and poorly defined, that public health services, even government agencies - could potentially be deemed criminal. The chilling effect of this new law on public access to information cannot be underestimated. In essence, it would restrict information from American sources to what some consider suitable for minors. The American Library Association believes that such a scenario is unacceptable if we are to enjoy a free and open information society. It is still not clear why lawmakers thought such a law was necessary. Existing laws already outlaw the distribution of obscene material. And there are many means of safeguarding children on-line that do not take away anyone's rights to freedom of information and speech. The most important being, as always, parental supervision. The future of free speech in this new medium is in the hands of the Supreme Court. Let's hope today's justices feel as strongly about protecting our freedom of speech, as those who have upheld that right for more than 200 years. ************ CALL FOR ACQUISITIONS PAPERS The guest editor for a pending volume of The Acquisitions Librarian, with a working title of "Acquiring Management Reports Online," has issued a call for papers. If interested, submit a proposal, outline, abstract, sketch, etc. by June 1 to Will Jarvis, Head, Acquisitions Washington State Univ. Libraries, jarvis@wsu.edu. The scope of this volume of articles is very broad. Acquisitions librarians have always been acquiring/crafting/compiling management reports, both "narrow acquisitions" ones (funds, number of orders) and the broader comparative collection management reports. Now the opportunities available from online integrated systems and a variety of "external online system" sources make the tasks of acquiring online management reports a growing area. Whether it's a circulation user report or a class range volume count, "yet to pay this year" order record survey or a fund balance report hierarchy, the librarian must acquire the report, canned or ad hoc, turnkey or custom-built. "Acquiring management reports online" is a "big tent" topic. The varied contributions to this volume of The Acquisitions Librarian will demonstrate the vast opportunities and challenges of acquiring online management reports of all sorts, acquisitions-module-specific" and otherwise. ************ ISI OFFERS 1997 RESEARCH GRANTS FOR CITATION ANALYSIS STUDIES The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) announced that it will offer two $3,000 grants this year in support of research projects based on citation analysis. The first #3,000 grant will be awarded in July 1997; the second, in December 1997. The deadline for submissions for the first award is May 30. The ISI Research Grant Program was initiated by ISI in 1996 to support research based on citation analysis. Proposals are evaluated by an internal ISI committee and judged on the significance of the research problem and the proposed application of citation analysis. In 1996, ISI received grant proposals from research in 14 countries. Professor Charles Oppenheim of the International Institute for Electronic Library Research at de Montford University, United Kingdom, was selected as the 1996 ISI Research Grant recipient. His proposal involved corroborating the value of various types of citation analyses in research assessment activities. Oppenheim received his award prior to the ISI lecture given at the Institute of Information Scientists Members' Day in London in September 1996. ISI is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA. For more information about the citation research grants, e-mail Barbara Nagy-Teti at bnagy-teti@isinet.com. Guidelines for submissions are also available on the ISI home page at www.isinet.com. ************ ALCTS NETWORK NEWS (ISSN 1056-6694) is published irregularly by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association. Editorial offices: ALCTS, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611; Carol Chamberlain, President; Karen Muller, Executive Director. Editor: Karen Whittlesey (kwhittlesey@ala.org); Editorial Assistance: Karen Muller, Shonda Russell. ALCTS NETWORK NEWS is available free of charge and is available only in electronic form. Opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the division. News items should be sent to the editor at the e-mail address above. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to listproc@ala.org with the only line of text being "subscribe an2 [your name]" (without quotation marks). Back issues of AN2 are available through the listserver. To find out what's available, send the following command to listproc@ala.org: "index an2" (without quotation marks). Send questions about membership in ALCTS to the ALCTS Office, alcts@ala.org. All materials in the newsletter subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for the noncommercial purpose of scientific or education advancement. For other reprinting or redistribution or translations, address requests to the ALA Office of Rights and Permissions, 50 E. Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611. ************ an2 v13_no3