Our next guestblogger is the incomparable activist geek librarian
Jessamyn West, who,
along with other library-hackers like
Jenny Levine are
part of a movement to redefine librarianship in the information
age. I've been enjoying Jessamyn's projects and thoughts for years and
it's a delight to have her here. — Read the rest

Radical librarian (and warrant canary inventor) Jessamyn West (previously gave this year's Alice G Smith lecture at the University of South Florida's School of Information. It's called "Social Justice is a Library Issue; Libraries are a Social Justice Issue."

Radical librarian Jason Griffey (previously) wants librarians to continue their 21st century leadership in the resistance to surveillance and persecution — a proud record that includes the most effective stands against GW Bush's Patriot Act — by pledging to make libraries safe havens from trumpism and its evils: electronic surveillance; racial and gender-based discrimination; and the assertion that ideology trumps empirical reality.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refused the mark on grounds of it being "scandalous" in what must surely be the most brilliant trademark determination of all time.

Jessamyn West is a freelancer, and that means that she has to talk on the phone to earn her crust. This sucks.

The American Library Association's code of ethics demands that library professionals "protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality" and they've been taking that duty seriously since the first days of the Patriot Act.

"REK is a bookcase that grows with your book collection," writes Reinier De Jong Design on its official website. "The more books the bigger the bookcase gets. The zigzag shaped parts slide in and out to accomodate books in the resulting voids. — Read the rest

UPDATE: Report confirmed as hoax, Link to BB update.

Here's the original Boing Boing post, and here's yesterday's batch of update links.

Today, Boing Boing reader Gary McGath, a software engineer with the Harvard University Library, writes:

Just to add more confusion to the situation of Homeland Security and the unidentified UMass Dartmouth student: in a reader comment on a previous BB post, Jessamyn West reported that the Mao book "was from a library in nearby Providence."

UPDATE: Report confirmed as hoax, Link to BB update.

Librarians, reporters, and bloggers are today debating whether this story about a student visited by DHS agents over a famous book of Mao Tse-Tung quotes is real or hoax.

Standard-Times reporter Aaron Nicodemus, who filed the article, maintains it is "is real and factual to the extent [he] reported." — Read the rest

UPDATE: Report confirmed as hoax, Link to BB update.

Widespread debate today over whether the South Coast Today story "DHS visits student over Little Red Book" is a hoax, or contains unsubstantiated non-facts. But the reporter who filed it maintains otherwise; update and details at bottom of this post. — Read the rest