Call it compassion, call it a protect-your-employees system, whatever you call it, this could be one reason why British libraries are spending so little on books--just nine percent or whatever. Imagine yourself in a library faced with budget cut after budget cut. Do you cut back on collection-building or fire your employees? Perhaps it's time for an efficient TeleRead approach where less money would go for concrete and steel and more would be available for books and people....

Come to think of it, we already have a nasty Internet tax or at least a quasi one. Can anyone spell S-o-n-n-y B-o-n-o?The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is a disguised tax on government and the public. Over the decades it will shift billions from schools, libraries and consumers in general to members of the copyright elite. Among the lucky beneficiaries will be none other than the descendants of the well-to-do lady to the left, Congress member Mary Bono. Well past the previous copyright terms, the family of Sonny's widow will collect from the RIAA, Warner Music Group...

"State and local access fees could add 20 percent to 25 percent to the average Internet consumer's bill--a tax hike of about $150 per year." - Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, in the San Francisco Chronicle.The TeleRead take: I'd side with Armey on this one. E-books and learning in general will benefit from "always on" connections of the kind that broadband and Wi-Fi will encourage. Imagine a mix of Wi-Fi and e-books with interbook links and no downloading-speed issues for multimedia e-books.Simply put, the last thing society needs is for governments to make it more expensive to connect...

Without comment, Roy Lewis in Garland, Texas, was nice enough to pass on a means to compare the library systems of Dallas and the suburb of Plano for 2002, the latest year available this way.Dallas spent $21.35 per capita in total operating expenses and $2.99 for library materials (14 percent of opp expenses), while Plano spend $38.64 per capita in total operating expenses and $4.57 on materials (12 percent). And remember. The materials expenses presumably include everything from Shakespeare to VCR cassettes, not just books. In both cases, the percentages may well be in line with the 9...

This parody video in .mov format is just too funny to pass up. In Copyfight, Ernest Miller examines the copyright implications and hopefully doesn't spoil the fun for the rest of us.Note: Fair's fair. If any GOP types come up with equivalent parodies and can provide URLs, send 'em on....

Stinky homeless men staring at porn on library computers. Unzipped flies. Threats against female patrons. A slew of thefts. 117 police calls in 12 months. That's life at Dallas's downtown library palace, if you go by an article in the Dallas Observer. If the story is accurate, library bureaucrats have tolerated this mess far more than they should. At the same time the 'crats have tried to impress the library world with a Declaration of Independence exhibit, a Shakespearean one and ambitions to create "a highly respected research library" amid the chaos. Don't children and the public at large suffer,...

Billy Barron, an e-library pioneer, saw the U.K.-related items below and came up with some heart-felt analysis of The Library Palace Syndrome in Texas. I'll run his comments later today or tomorrow, complete with one of the questions he raises in passing. Can the homeless and kids mix safely in Library Palaces? Yes, there's a common thread in all this. Library systems should be playing up e-books and neighborhood branches, rather than catering to the edifice complexes of politicians and bureaucrats....

TeleRead has long called for the use of e-book technology to increase the number and variety of library books in the States and elsewhere.Statistics on the Hampsire library system in the U.K. make powerful case for a TeleRead-style approach, which would offer both public domain and contemporary books and blend them in well with local schools and libraries. The bloody detailsVia the recent Libri study, here's a list of authors, titles, and chances of finding them in Hampsire libraries. All three public domain book mentioned below, incidentally, are available for free in the major e-book formats via the PD...

A library activist group called Libri warns that public libraries in the U.K. may be dead in 20 years. In A minute's silence, please, for the late public library, the Independent spells out the details from Libri's report and elsewhere."There were 377 million loans recorded from British libraries in 2003," says writer Ian Herbert, "down from a reported 480 million in 1999." U.K. libraries are spending just nine percent of their budgets on books, many of which are now outdated.It's a lesson for all librarians, especially here in the States where short-sighted cities are squandering money on contruction or...

"In Forney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb of Dallas, 10- and 11-year-old schoolkids are set to cross a technology divide to an area many adults won't venture into--electronic books." - Reuters, via Forbes. The TeleRead take: Considering the many prejudices that adults have against e-books, it should be easier for the fifth and sixth graders to adjust. Details:Starting in August, more than 100 students in the fifth and sixth grades of the Forney Independent School District will receive notebook computers that contain as many textbooks as the school can muster the rights for, as well as thousands of classic works...

We e-booker can use all the good news that's out there. The Next Chapter in Electronic Books is a somewhat upbeat Forbes article mentioned earlier in this TeleBlog. But a little redundancy won't hurt since at least two readers missed the original item--tucked away at the end of a Librie-related post--and wrote in to suggest a link. Thanks anyway; I might well have overlooked the Forbes item....

A hate site is no longer the first on the list when you type the word "Jew" into Google. Nothing deliberate happened at Google's end, however; see CNET for the full story. (Via Mike Cane.)...