Wikipedia Being Cited in Court Decisions

Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively. Noam Cohen. New York Times. January 29, 2007.
In an appalling development, U.S. judges are basing their decisions in part on information found in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to.

The Harm of Online Bullying

Cyber-Bullying Replaces Schoolyard Bullying Among US Kids. Virginie Montet. AFP. January 28, 2007.
Kids have now taken to taunting and bullying each other online out of reach of school juridictions. Cyber-bullying has contributed to at least two suicides.

Protecting Freedom of Speech on the Web

Tech Firms, Rights Groups to Form Web Conduct Code. Michelle Nichols. Reuters. January 19, 2007.
The organizations Center for Democracy and Technology and Business for Social Responsibility are working with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Vodafone to develop a code of conduct to protect freedom of speech online.

New Publication Models for Scholarly Research

Is This the End of the Scholarly Journal? Gregory M. Lamb. Christian Science Monitor. January 24, 2007.
Now that research can be easily published in blogs and e-books, there has been discussion about the value of traditional peer review. This article examines the issue and looks at online services that may be a preview of things to come. These are PLoS ONE from the Public Library of Science, and Journal of Visualized Experiments, or JoVE.

Court Dismisses Kahle v. Gonzales

U.S. Court Upholds Copyright Law on "Orphan Works." Eric Auchard. Reuters (via Yahoo! News). January 22, 2007.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in its dismissal of Kahle v. Gonzales, has rejected an effort by Brewster Kahle and others to release out-of-print works from copyright protection.

Sparing the Reference Librarian

Tiered Reference: The New Landscape of the Frontlines. Susan Gardner. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship. v.7 no.3 (Winter 2006).
Perceiving less need for reference librarians in the age of Google, many academic libraries are putting student assistants up front to answer the simpler questions.

Google Library Project Gains a New Member

Controversial Google Library Project Grows. AFP. January 19, 2007.
The University of Texas has joined Google Books Library Project, as described in this update on the digitization project.

Net Addiction in China

China: 2 Million Teens Hooked on Web. Reuters (via CNN.com), January 17, 2007.
China is further regulating its Internet cafes, claiming that youths are becoming Internet addicts by the millions.

Teens' Usage of Social Networking Sites

Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview. Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden. Pew Internet. January 7, 2007.
More than half of all online teenagers in the U.S. use social networking sites, which are largely used for making and maintaining friendships and flirting.

New Technology May Pick Up Alien Signals

Eavesdropping on ET Sooner Than We Think. Edna DeVore. Space.com. January 11, 2007.
Dr. Avi Loeb of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believes that new radio telescopes such as the Mileura Wide-Field Array’s Low Frequency Demonstrator may be able to pick up signals leaking from alien civilizations. He spoke at a press conference at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.

An OPAC Recommender System

The Melvyl Recommender Project. Colleen Whitney and Lisa Schiff. D-Lib. December 2006.
Commercial online services such as Google and Amazon have raised user expectations beyond what library catalogs are able to provide. The California Digital Library's Melvyl project is an attempt to create a recommendation service such as users have come to expect from such sites as Amazon and E-Bay. This article describes how the service was designed and implemented, as well as users' reactions to it.

Decoding the Incan Khipu Strings

Untangling the Mystery of the Inca. Gareth Cook. Wired. Issue 15.1. January 2007.
Although the Incans produced remarkable technological accomplishments, they surprisingly never developed writing. Mathematicians and other researchers are taking another look at the mysterious knotted strings called "khipu" believing they may contain the records of the ancient civilization. [Khipu Database Project]

Website Redesign with Web 2.0

Building a Library Web Site on the Pillars of Web 2.0. Karen A. Coombs. Computers in Libraries. January 2007.
The author describes her experiences with the redesign of the University of Houston Libraries website, and identifies the Web 2.0 components that were used in the project.

Students in Libraries Becoming Increasingly Rowdy

Lock the Library! Rowdy Students Are Taking Over. Tina Kelley. New York Times. January 2, 2007.
Librarians across the country are frustrated by the increasing rowdiness of students entering their libraries after school. While many students use the library to study, others are vandalising the buildings and turning them into "disaster areas."