Category: publishing

American government law officials are visiting libraries to remove “sensitive” material, access records of what library patrons are reading, and, in at least one case, try to remove a librarian’s computer hard drive because an email with the word “anthrax” had been recieved on it.

The BBC is conducting a public search for the UK’s most-loved book. But the broadcaster wants to avoid attempted manipulation of the voting, as happened last year with the public vote that named Winston Churchill the country’s Favorite Briton. “The Churchill bandwagon beat off a well-orchestrated campaign for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, headed by students at Brunel University, who voted en-masse on the internet for the man who gave their institution its name. Bookmakers were so convinced the students’ campaign would work that they stopped taking bets, and the episode led to allegations that the BBC had fixed the poll by deliberately placing the Churchill documentary last in the series so he would be freshest in the viewers’ memory.”

“A collection of intimate letters written by Ernest Hemingway to actress Marlene Dietrich has been donated to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. The collection includes 30 letters, telegrams and a Christmas card that were written between 1949 and 1959, as well as early drafts of several Hemingway poems and stories. Under the terms of the gift, donated by Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, the correspondence can’t be opened to the public until 2007. Deborah Leff, director of the library, said Monday she had seen the letters and they were ‘breathtaking.'”

American libraries are taking steps to guard patrons’ privacy from the US government. The US Patriot Act allows law enforcement to pry into the library habits of citizens. “The American Libraries Association calls the provisions a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users. The association fears library patrons or bookstore customers could become targets of suspicion simply based on what books they are reading. More importantly, they say they fear a chilling effect that could make people fearful of reading particular books or Web sites to avoid becoming targets of suspicion.”

Not content to simply sell books, superstore Barnes & Noble is expanding the line of titles it publishes. “The superstore chain announced Monday it was upgrading and expanding its line of ‘classic books’ such as ‘Moby-Dick’ and ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.’ Editions from the new imprint, Barnes & Noble Classics, will start coming out in May, with 100 different titles expected by June 2004.”

“In one of the largest such purchases in American history, the University of Texas at Austin has bought the Watergate papers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for $5 million, the university announced today… As part of the extraordinary deal to purchase the materials, the university agreed to honor Woodward and Bernstein’s long-standing commitment to protect the identity of a number of confidential sources until their deaths, including ‘Deep Throat,’ the Nixon administration official whose deep-background information was crucial to The Post’s pursuit of the Watergate story.”

Another Canadian publishing house is going under. This time, it’s the “elite nonfiction” publisher Macfarlane Walter & Ross, which had been operating as a division of McLelland & Stewart since 1999. MW&R had been put up for sale by McLelland & Stewart, but no buyer has been found, and publisher Doug Gibson says that MW&R will cease publication at the end of the month. However, Gibson also said that most if not all of the titles slated for publication by MW&R will be put out by McLelland & Stewart.

Librarians across the US have protested provisions in the Patriot Act that require libraries to turn over records about their patrons. Librarians in Santa Cruz have turned to the shredder for their protest. Daily they shred records that might identify patrons in some way. “The basic strategy now is to keep as little historical information as possible.”

Thirty of Ernest Hemingway’s letters to Marlene Dietrich are being donated to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. “The letters, never made public, will remain sealed for four years, according to the wishes of Dietrich’s heirs. ‘We didn’t know the collection existed,’ said Deborah Leff, director of the Kennedy Library.”

The British Museum has bought a collection of rare handwritten manuscripts by Virginia Woolf. “The manuscripts form part of two mock newspapers composed by Woolf’s nephews, Julian and Quentin Bell, as children. Some 188 editions of the partly hand-written, partly-typed newspapers – The Charleston Bulletin and The New Bulletin – were found in an old tin trunk.”