A Payne in the Bush : Fundraising Scandal at the Bush Presidential Library

With no more campaigns to raise money for it seems that the Bush machine has set its sites on the Bush Presidential Library.

In the spirit of Sacha Baron Cohen the Sunday Times of London arranged and recorded an interview between a leading GOP activist Stephen Payne and two men thought to be acting on behalf of the exiled former president of Kyrgyzstan.

Payne, who also sits on the Homeland Security advisory board, is heard offering meetings with high-level officials of the Bush Administration in return for a hefty donation to the Bush Presidential Library. For somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library, Payne promised face to face meetings with a variety of Bush's cronies.

“Cheney’s possible, definitely the national security adviser [Stephen Hadley], definitely either Dr Rice or . . . I think a meeting with Dr Rice or the deputy secretary [John Negroponte] is possible ...The main thing is that he [the Asian politician] comes, and he’s well received, that he meets with high-level people . . . and we send positive statements made back from the administration about ‘This guy wasn’t such a bad guy, many people have done worse’.” said Payne.

Keith Olbermann has coined this latest fiasco Library-Gate and the House Oversight and Government Relations Committee lead by Henry Waxman has begun to investigate. In the meantime, the White House is distancing itself, Payne was fired from the Homeland Security advisory board and a Bush spokesman for library foundation said that no additional monies will be accepted from foreign sources while Bush is still in office.

See the Sunday Times of London video here
The story here

Other coverage:
Houston Chronicle piece, "Houstonian denies he tried to sell access to Bush aides."
Dallas Morning News story, "Lobbyist promised White House access in return for Bush library"
Post at Majikthise, "Stephen Payne continues to make Jack Abramoff look like a piker"
Huffington Post story via Politico, "Henry Waxman Launches Probe Into Lobbyist Stephen Payne Who Allegedly Traded Access For Bush Library Donations."

Previously on Book Patrol:
The Dark Side of the Bush Presidential Library
And the Envelope Please: Designs for the George W. Bush Presidential Library

Summer Reading : F.B.I. Style

The F.B.!. has come with a summer reading list. They are on the lookout for the following books:

150 copies of Understanding Terror Networks

30 copies of Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times

130 copies of The Koran (Penguin Classics version)

150 copies of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

180 copies of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill

30 copies of Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror

30 copies of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

30 copies of Islam: A Short History

They also need 100 copies of the 2008 Federal Criminal Code Rules Book.

They are also looking for a slew of Microsoft related how-to books.

Details of how you can you can sell them these books here.

Thanks to Resource Shelf for the lead

Barack Obama's Reading Life

"If Obama is elected, he'll be one of the most literary presidents in recent memory" says Laura Miller in her piece, "Barack by the Books", at Salon.com. Miller takes a "look at some of the formative books in his intellectual and political life to see if we can learn more about the man behind the movement."

"Obama the reader blossomed as an undergraduate at Occidental College in California and, especially, during the two monkish years he spent finishing up his degree at Columbia University in New York. "I had tons of books," he told his biographer, David Mendell ("Obama: From Promise to Power"), about this time in his life. "I read everything. I think that was the period when I grew as much as I have ever grown intellectually. But it was a very internal growth." Even after he left New York to work as a community organizer in Chicago, Mendell reports, Obama lived so much like a retiring writer -- spending many hours holed up in a spartan apartment with volumes of "philosophy and literature" -- that some of his colleagues assumed he was gathering material for a novel."

Obama's reading list included:

Herman Melville
Toni Morrison
E.L. Doctorow -"cited as his favorite before he switched to Shakespeare"
Philip Roth
Nietzsche
Reinhold Niebuhr
Ralph Ellison
Malcolm X
and the legendary community activist Saul Alinsky

Related Book Patrol posts:
The Role of the Book in the Ascent of Barak Obama
Books Hit the Campaign Trail
What Barack is Reading
The Biblio Campaign Trail: The New Road to the White House
What's Your Candidate Reading?
What the Candidates Should Be Reading
The Presidential Book Debate
Which Book Would You Bring to the White House?

Saddam Hussein's Papers at Stanford : Watergate on Steroids?

An archive of close to 7 million documents taken from Saddam Hussein's Baath party headquarters will be temporarily housed at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The Iraq Memory Foundation (IMF), a Washington, D.C. based group, has been in possession of the archive since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq five years ago. After spending time in the basement of the foundation director's parents home in Baghdad and at a U.S. military facility in West Virginia where they were digitized the archive has now been moved to Stanford.

According to Richard Sousa, senior associate director at Hoover, the institution's agreement with the IMF was "approved by Iraq's deputy prime minister, the Ministry of Culture and the Cabinet of the Prime Minister's office." and is endorsed by the highest levels of the Iraqi government. He then went on to say that he is not sure who "technically owns the documents."

Saad Eskander, director of the Iraq National Library and Archives has called for the immediate return of the archive to Iraq. The Society of American Archivists and the Association of Canadian Archivists have also come out in support of the return of the archive to Iraq.

Here is the letter Eskander wrote to the Hoover Institution regarding this fiasco:

Open letter from Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraq National Library and Archives, June 21, 2008

An Open Letter to the Director of Hoover Institute

I have read Mr. Sousa’s letter to Mr. Mark Greene, President of the Society of American Archivists (dated 06-06-08), Mr. Al-Jaberi’s statement (dated 27-04-08) and the article published by Stanford University’s official site regarding the illegally seized documents of the former Iraqi state and the archive of the Ba’ath Party (dated 18-06-08). As the national archivist of Iraq, I would like to clarify several points regarding the issue of the illegally seized documents of the former Iraqi state and the archive of the Ba’ath Party.

1. Mr. al-Jaberi does not represent the Ministry of Culture, let alone the current Iraqi government, insofar as the issue of the seized documents is concerned. The statement is written by Mustafa al-Kadhemi, who is the director of IMF and Mr. Makkiya’s right-hand man. Al-Kadhemi exploited the good intention of al-Jaberi and persuaded him to sign a statement about a sensitive issue he knows literally nothing about and has no authority to talk about or to deal with.

2. Regarding the retrieval of the seized documents, I have been coordinating my efforts with the Acting Minister of Culture, his deputy Mr. Taher al-Hmud, advisors of the Vice-President, and other important figures inside the Iraqi government as well as a number of Parliamentarians.

3. The Iraqis inside and outside the country have supported my position and disapproved of Makkiya, al-Kadhemi and the IMF’s [Iraq Memory Foundation's] activities, which are considered to be morally wrong and manifest violations of Iraq’s sovereignty.

4. Some parts of al-Jaberi’s statement contradict the IMF’s claims, not mine, regarding the fact that the National Board of Accountability and Justice (NBAJ) will establish an archive for the records of the Ba’ath Party. I informed al-Kadhemi about this in order to tell him that IMF has no right whatsoever to keep these records abroad. Moreover, the INLA is in constant contact with Dr. Ahmed al-Chalabi, who presides over NBAJ, which replaced the former De-Ba’athification National Board. Dr. Chalabi has expressed his support for INLA’s campaign to retrieve all the seized documents, including the Ba’ath Party ones. The two sides (INLA and (NBAJ) hope to work together to return all the seized records.

5. I tried through direct negotiations with IMF’s representatives including Mr. Makkiya to reach a satisfactory settlement regarding the issue of the seized documents. Unfortunately the IMF’s representatives were not interested in making any compromise that would have put an end to the dispute. For instance, I asked IMF to enlarge its agreement with Hoover so that INLA would be included as the representative of the Iraqi state and people.

6. I would like to draw your attention to Iraqi legislation no. 111 for the year 1969. This legislation imposes severe punishment on those who destroys, hides, steal, forge, publish or remove official Iraqi documents. The legislation also imposes severe punishment (10 year-imprisonment) on those individuals who collaborate with and provide foreign states with Iraqi documents. Therefore, the IMF’s confiscation, purchases, scanning, declassification and publication of the Ba’ath documents are incontrovertibly illegal. It also means that the IMF has violated the same Iraqi legislation when it decided to provide the American government with copies of its illegally seized records. In light of that one can say that the letters of clearance IMF received from one or two Iraqi high-ranking officials carry no weight because they went against the above mentioned Iraqi legislation.

7. The IMF has not been authorized by the Iraqi government to ask the Pentagon and the CIA to transfer tens of millions of Iraqi documents they both seized to it. The IMF’s action goes clearly against current Iraqi legislations. We all know that IMF has no storage rooms inside or outside Iraq. This means that the IMF will keep tens of millions of Iraqi documents in America by making deals similar to the one it made with Hoover. Thus, the Iraqis, including the scholars and the victims of the former regime will be given no access to their own documents, while the Americans (the occupiers) will continue to enjoy such a privilege. .

8. Makiya’s claim that his deal with Hoover is legal because he got the approval of the Iraqi government contradicts his refusal to return the documents to Iraq because he says that he does not trust the intention of my ‘bosses’ as he puts it. Are not my bosses the same people from whom Makiya has claimed to have obtained approval for the shipment of the records to the US and for the deal he made with Hoover? This is pure hypocrisy.

9. The INLA has never claimed that it should alone decide the fate of the seized documents. On the contrary, its director has demanded from the very beginning the establishment of National Archival Committee to include members from the three branches of government (executive, legislative and judiciary). The Committee will be entrusted with the task of making new legislation for all the records of the former regime including the Ba’ath party.

10. The INLA and other governmental agencies have been gathering information on the activities of the IMF since April 2003. Rest assured that this Foundation has violated Iraqi laws and regulations all the way. It violated the principle of the rule of law and the priority of state-based institutions.

11. I would also like to remind you that the IMF came into being within the framework of the American occupation of Iraq, and thus was an integral part of a grand imperial vision for the New Iraq. This explains why IMF has not been accountable politically, administratively, legally, financially or morally to any Iraqi authority since its formation.

12. The IMF’s purchases of illegally seized documents from individuals and private organizations has considerably encouraged the black-market phenomenon, and discouraged local Iraqis from handing over seized documents to the proper authorities.

13. The Ba’ath documents are the property of the Iraqis and the institutions that represent them, and so it is arrogant and unethical for one person (an émigré) to decide the destiny of millions of sensitive official documents that have had and will continue to have considerable impact on the private lives of millions of Iraqi citizens. It is not in the interests of Iraqi victims and academic investigation for the IMF to have been using the documents for propaganda, self-aggrandizement and obtaining funding. The Iraqis desperately want to know and confront the realities of their recent past. They need to recognize the suffering of the victims and to identify those who committed crimes, before bringing them to justice. The Iraqis are well aware that any national reconciliation project cannot be successfully implemented without making the seized documents available for both scholars and the public mediated by a responsible agency representative of them..

Last but not least, it should be noted that the Iraqi public, Iraqi intellectuals, and Iraqi media all support the INLA’s cause. We also rely on the support of our colleagues abroad, especially in Northern America.

Dr. Saad Eskander,
Director General,
Iraq National Library & Archives

Though it might be unclear who "technically owns the documents" I am pretty sure it's not us and I am also uncertain how we can bring freedom and democracy to a place by robbing it of its history.

Thanks to Library Juice for Eskander's open letter

The Role of the Book in the Ascent of Barak Obama

If you're going to run for President, or any office for that matter, there are two things that will need to be addressed pretty early on; how am I going to raise money and how am I going to get my name out there.

Barack Obama has excelled at both. Building on Howard Dean's online success in 2004 Obama has taken to the internet to reinvent campaign financing and to build his name recognition he turned to the book and the book tour to raise Obama awareness and to spread his message.

In his piece in the Times of London on the Obama phenomenon, "Barack Obama: The winner", Andrew Sullivan gives us a little insight as to how he pulled it off:

"Obama also knew that he had to find new sources of funding. With the help of some of Silicon Valley’s smartest minds, he set up the first Facebook model for web fundraising. It has become the most formidable money machine in American political history, raising well over $270m from more than 1.7m individual donors. To counter Clinton’s name recognition, he then relaunched his first memoir alongside a new book and used the bookselling circuit to raise his profile. Oprah helped. He was No 1 on The New York Times bestseller list for months."

It was on this book tour that the murmurs of "rock star" began. The tour and its crowds were a clear precursor to the huge crowds that came out on the campaign trail.

How does Obama's books stack up against McCain's? "If bookworms decided the presidency Barack Obama would beat John McCain handily" says Carl Campanile in his New York Post piece "'Book'ies are Betting on Obama." where he compares the book sales of the two candidates.

Obama's "Dreams From My Father" was first published in 1995 and was re-released selling close to 900,000 copies in the last few years. It has been on the New York Times' Best Seller list for 96 weeks.

His latest book "Audacity of Hope" has sold 1.3 million copies and has been on the New York Times' Best Seller list for 21 weeks.

McCain's "Faith of My Fathers," co-written with senior aide Mark Salter was released in 2000 during his first White House run and has sold more than 500,000 copies. It spent 24 weeks on the Times' list. McCain's memoir about his Senate years "Worth the Fighting For" has sold modestly.

There is another book that will have a tremendous effect on the general election and it wasn't written by either candidate. Scott McClellan's newly released memoir “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” is destined to make its mark on the political landscape. McClellan, Bush's press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006, gives us a glimpse into the inner workings of the Bush Administration and it isn't pretty. He recounts how Bush and his top advisers systematically deceived the American public about their reasons for going to war in Iraq and how the current climate in Washington is "broken and dominated by partisan warfare and the culture of deception it spawns."

As for what role the book can play in the lives of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al. - well one option is to "throw the book at 'em."


Related: Previous Book Patrol posts
Books Hit the Campaign Trail
What Barack is Reading
The Biblio Campaign Trail: The New Road to the White House
What's Your Candidate Reading?
What the Candidates Should Be Reading
The Presidential Book Debate
Which Book Would You Bring to the White House?

Violence Against Books : Is There an Acceptable Form?

"Violence against books is understood by all parties involved as being comparable to violence against people and/or ideas and that violence against a book can quickly lead to other forms of conflict." Cordell Waldron, Iconic Books blog.

But what if the violence is not motivated by politics or religion but by commerce?

Earlier this month word got out that a U.S. soldier used a Quran for target practice.

Here's the video of the AP story and the apology by Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad. To think that this was an isolated incident would be a bit of a stretch.





In Israel police are looking into the burning of hundreds of copies of the New Testament. Uzi Aharon, the deputy mayor of Or-Yehuda, a town outside Tel Aviv, is being investigated for organizing a group of students who set fire to several hundred copies of the New Testament.

Apparently the bibles were distributed by a messanic Jewish group who in the words of Ahron "encouraged one to go against Judaism." When Ahron got word he "drove around the neighborhood with a loudspeaker asking residents to gather all the New Testaments that were given to them. The yeshiva boys then went from apartment to apartment and picked up the books." Then they burned them. The deputy mayor has since apologized but the damage has been done.

This is a far cry of the recent book burnings undertaken by booksellers to do away with unwanted and unsaleable inventory. Here there is no political or religious motive but the act of book burning is laden with so much historical baggage, this is after all the month of the 75th anniversary of the Nazi Book burnings, that any application is destined to stir up controversy.

Abebooks recently interviewed Shaun Bythell of the The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland who in 2005 staged a book burning during a festival in Wigtown. Bythell gives us two reasons for the torching. The first is purely a marketing one "I wanted to help promote Wigtown as Scotland's National Book Town, and with no advertising budget I had to think of some way of getting media coverage without paying for it." says Bythell.

The second and the one that in a sense legitimizes the act as a form of inventory reduction is "to highlight the fate of books which have reached the end of their useful life." Bythell burned upwards of 3,000 books, each selected "based entirely on commercial value, so most of them were in damaged or unreadable condition, or just so out of fashion and with so little value if they ever became fashionable again that they were not worth holding on to." Sounds like it might be a better option than sending 3,000 books to the landfill.



How did Bythell feel about the burning:

“I didn't feel any remorse about burning the books, as a dealer you have no choice when it comes to dead stock. If you don't keep it moving you'll end up with a shop full of books nobody wants to buy. To be honest I felt a sense of relief as it went up in smoke, both because it burned OK and because it was out of my stock room and no longer causing congestion."

and for those from the "knee-jerk ‘book burning is a bad thing’ brigade" who immediately liken the activity to the Nazi book burnings Bythell offers this: "Although there are historical associations, there is no causal link between burning books and oppression, and to assume that everyone who burns books is an oppressor is a sign of an underdeveloped mind."

In the publicity material for the burning Bythell reminds us of this quote from Rabbi Akiba Ben Joseph, ‘The paper burns, but the words fly away.’”

Books Hit the Campaign Trail

Looks like the photo of Barak Obama holding his copy of The Post American World during a stop in Bozeman, MT might just be the beginning of a biblio-campaign.

The book quickly jumped 3 spots on the Amazon's Top 100 moving from #7 to #4. The following day campaigning in Florida Obama responded to a question about possible running mates with this biblio-reference:

I can tell you this. My goal is to have the best possible government. And that means me winning. So, I'm very practical in my thinking. I'm a practical guy. One of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln. Awhile back, there was a wonderful book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin called 'Team of Rivals,' in which she talked about how Lincoln basically pulled all the people he'd been running against into his Cabinet. Because whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was, 'How can we get the country through this time of crisis?' I think that has to be the approach one takes to the vice president and the Cabinet.

Not to be outdone the Clinton campaign responded with a picture of Bill holding an Advance Reading Copy of Ark of the Liberties, a new history of the U.S. project to promote liberty all over the world by Ted Widmer, a former Clinton speechwriter.

and Chelsea Clinton made an appearance, on primary day, during storytime at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Kentucky.

A Holistic Approach

On Reading Ahead, the blog of the National Book Foundation, Executive Director Harold Augenbraun offers us this nugget regarding the state of reading in this country.

If literary reading is on the decline, one way to stem that decline is to create a holistic approach along a spectrum of age-appropriate activities and to allow flexibility, which the balkanized literary culture will most likely not be able to do because of varied cultural, political, and social ideologies that have very little to do with inculcating a love of reading. If we leave the creation of readers to ideologues—and I use that word in its broadest sense—as we have done for decades, we will end up as a nation of non-readers. And I am not only talking about the easy-to-predict failure of Reading First and No Child Left Behind, but the results of the actions of boards of education, curriculum developers, parents, and even book salespeople.

The same need for a holistic approach applies to the bookselling world. Here are some excerpts from Bookselling 2.0 : The Bookseller Manifesto. Part II that appeared on Book Patrol back in January of 2007:

Step 3

The barriers that separate the different forms of bookselling must be torn down. A bookseller must be willing to sell new, used, rare and out-of-print books. They must be willing to sell books by small presses, fine presses and book artists. Hand-made and machine-made, limited and unlimited editions.

One must embrace the rich world of the book, in all its forms, to succeed. Each bookshop becomes a book center where all the book needs of the community can be met.

Yes, you can put a used copy of a book next to a new copy, next to the DVD of the filmed version, and you can have the first edition and a fine press edition available too!

Step 5

The bookselling industry remains completely fragmented, both within the various segments (new, resale, book arts, etc.) of the industry and within the industry as a whole.

To date the leadership of the ABA (American Booksellers Association) and the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America) have been unable to respond effectively to the massive changes that has taken place in the industry. Yes, there have been changes and no doubt much effort and thought has been expended by the leadership but the trade remains in dire straights.

At minimum, the leadership of these trade organizations must unite their resources and begin a concerted effort to work together. They should also reach out to the various Book Arts Guilds and Centers for the Book throughout the country. We need to build book epicenters in our communities not independent outposts. We do not want to, or need to, be survivors.

What Barack is Reading

Barack Obama hits the tarmac in Bozeman, Montana with book in hand.

The marketing folks at W.W. Norton where all over this one. I am not sure the New Times slideshow was finished before they blasted the blogwaves alerting us to this biblio treat.

The book? Fareed Zakaria's new book The Post-American World published by W.W. Norton.

The book begins in pure Barackian fashion -"This is a book not about the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else."

Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International and writes a regular column on foreign affairs for Newsweek. He will also be the host of a new CNN program which will focus on international news.

Photo of Obama by Doug Mills.

Related: previous Book Patrol posts
The Biblio Campaign Trail: The New Road to the White House
What's Your Candidate Reading?
What the Candidates Should Be Reading
The Presidential Book Debate
Which Book Would You Bring to the White House?

Expand the Public Domain : Release the 'Orphans'

UPDATE : May 20th - Lawrence Lessing has a must read op-ed on the issue in the New York Times titled "Little Orphan Artworks"
**************************************************************************

In the copyright world 'orphans' refer to all the books, films, pieces of art etc. that are banished to the storage rooms of museums and libraries across the country because their creators cannot be found.

There are literally millions of items that go unprocessed because the places that house the material are afraid of being sued. With potential fines upward of $150,000 per item it is safe to say they will go unprocessed for a long time unless the copyright law changes. The digitization train is simply passing them by. A measurable part of our material culture is locked away for fear of litigation. Most institutions have conducted exhaustive searches to try track down the owners, but for pretty much all of these orphans the owners cannot be found.

Both the Senate and the House have introduced legislation that address this travesty. Both are considerate of each party and provide for compensation if the owner ever turns up.

Julie Mellby at Princeton University's Graphic Arts blog posts a copy of the letter she sent in support of H.R. 5889 : The Orphan Works Act of 2008. It's a good one and points out some of the not so good restrictions that infest the resolution.

There is a sane solution.

Let's keep the pork and politics out of it and do what is necessary to guarantee the public free access to this treasure trove of material culture while supporting, if they are ever found, the creators.


pdf of the The Orphan Works Act of 2008
Post at O'Reilly's Tools of Change blog with some good links

The Dark Side of the Bush Presidential Library

In a speech last week President George W. Bush touted the plan for his new Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University calling it "a place where we get the thinkers from around the world to come and write about and articulate the transformative power of freedom, abroad and at home."

Bush expects to raise $500 million for the library making it the costliest Presidential Library to date. The half-a-billion dollars is twice the total amount Bush spent on his entire 2004 Presidential campaign! Just think if public libraries had that kind of kind of support while he was in office.

Among the contributors to the Presidential Library are:

A sheik from the United Arab Emirates, who contributed at least $1 million.
The state of Kuwait.
The Bandar bin Sultan family.
The Sultanate of Oman.
King Hassan II of Morocco.
The amir of Qatar.
The former Korean prime minister.

China also gave tens of thousands of dollars to the library. In addition, funds were received from the late Kenneth Lay, the former head of Enron, and Dick Cheney, the current Vice President.

I received a press release the other day from Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, an outspoken critic of Bush's plan to house the library at SMU. Weaver points out that in a recent vote among members of the United Methodist Church members voted 844-20 on a petition calling for the rejection of the Bush project! How's that for an approval rating.

Apparently, this opposition is not enough. Bishop Scott J. Jones of Kansas, a staunch supporter of the library, called the petition merely procedural and that the decision rests in hands of the church's South Central Jurisdiction (SCJ).

Weaver goes on to say:

I urge Bishop Jones to reconsider and support the democratic and transparent processes of our church. I fear our communion will suffer a lingering and unnecessary wound of distrust, hurt, and anger if there is not fairness on this issue. Thousands of United Methodists...believe that honoring and “celebrating” a glaringly unrepentant UMC member, President George W. Bush, with a partisan think tank, will damage our credibility as followers of Jesus Christ and bring lasting shame upon the our church and a fine university

Article at Media Transparency Dubya's Tower of Babel

Protest SMU.org

Weaver's June 2007 piece, Southern Halliburton University

Previous Book Patrol post : And the Envelope Please: Designs for the George W. Bush Presidential Library

A New Dawn at the Library of Congress

Tomorrow for the first time in 18 years the bronze doors leading to the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building will open to the public and the Library of Congress Experience will begin.

The LOC Experience is the marriage of some of the treasures of the world's largest library with the latest interactive technology. These new technologies "will make the Library of Congress and its collections more dynamic and accessible than ever."

The "new exhibitions enhanced by interactive technology will offer a chance to experience rare and unique items, such as the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, the Gutenberg Bible, the 1507 Waldseemüller map that first named America and Thomas Jefferson’s recreated library."

Each exhibit offers a new technological slant that make each more accessible and engaging to the visitor and scholar alike.

New features include:

-Strategically placed interactive stations will offer a panoramic view of the Great Hall. Visitors will be able to zoom in on architectural details and explore the significance of features including the Minerva mosaic and the lamps of knowledge.

-Through interactive stations, visitors will be able to page virtually through the LOC's copy of the Gutenberg Bible and the Giant Bible of Mainz using state-of-the-art technology. They can also learn about the importance of these historic documents and browse other significant bibles in the Library’s collection.

-Exploring the Jay I. Kislak collection, Exploring Early America's, using nine interactive touch-screens as well as “hands-on” stations where visitors can virtually and physically delve deeper into the collection, and explore the history it represents. Visitors can examine individual objects in detail, view select artifacts from every angle, flip through documents using page-turning technology and zoom in on details of numerous images.

-The LOC has recreated Thomas Jefferson Library. On display for study and exploration there will be 6,487 volumes housed in a large spiral-shaped bookcase, including the more than 2,000 surviving volumes from Jefferson’s original collection. Vistors can review Jefferson’s cataloging system and virtually explore select books, as well as learn about the interests and ideas that shaped his thinking. Visitors will also learn about the Library’s history, how Jefferson’s Library transformed the Library of Congress and gain insight into how Jefferson selected books for his personal library.

In addition to the enhanced technology the LOC is breaking out a new logo and advertising campaign and sprucing up the grounds with banners and related kiosks.

A new day is here.

Here is an 8 minute video tour of the Experience with Cheryl Regan of the Library of Congress's Interpretive Programs Office.





Previous Book Patrol post "The Library of Congress Hits the Jackpot on Flickr"

Library of Congress blog

'The Hairy Times' of Diane Jacobs

The Hairy Times. Handmade paper from the New York Times & Los Angeles Times, human hair, letterpress text, 2005

For her Hairy Times installation Diane Jacobs chooses "hair to explore the contradictions and controversies inherent in our current political climate." The installation ranges from the two items featured here to pieces featuring an oil drum, bubble gum machine and coffee grinder.

The Hairy Times which was created from shredded New York Times and Los Angeles Times papers, "manifests the media's failure to ask the hard questions and hold the government accountable. The ramifications of this neglect and deceit are made evident in our apathetic and disenfranchised populace."

For her piece Family Values, Jacobs takes an older copy of the Bible and "boldly drills the pride symbol for gays and lesbians through the text block" transforming the book by "exposing elements of discrimination and magnifying the irony of religious might resulting in violence and destruction."

Family Values. Old bible, 12" x 10" x 3 3/4", 2005

Diane Jacobs work is saturated with the healthy resistance to the status quo that is necessary to produce compelling art and sustain our democracy.

As Caroline Levine reminds us in her powerful book Provoking Democracy: Why We Need the Arts:

"In the most repressive moments for democratic states..., when free speech was threatened and calls to unanimity and a common culture seemed to triumph over marginal and minority voices, art continued to stand for a crucial and long standing democratic value: the importance of minority voices and the benefits of pluralism."

Which Book Would You Bring to the White House?

Katie Couric has a series underway at CBS called "Primary Questions: Character, Leadership, and the Candidates" where she asks the presidential candidates questions "designed to go beyond politics and show what really makes them tick."

Her current question:

If you were elected president, what is the one book other than the bible you would think is essential to have along?

The question was asked prior to the recent thinning of the field so Giuliani and Edwards are included.

Here are their books of choice:

McCain: "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith
Obama: Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Lincoln "Team of Rivals."
Romney: "John Adams" by David McCullough.
Huckabee: Francis Schafer's "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?"
Edwards: "The Trial of Socrates" I.F. Stone's book.
Clinton: "The Federalist Papers"
Giuliani: The bible would be it. The next would be "The Federalist Papers."

Full text of the candidate's responses.

Video responses:




Previous Book Patrol post, The Presidential Book Debate


Thanks to PhiloBiblos for the lead

The Presidential Book Debate

As the presidential debate process marches on and the issues seem to get less and less attention lets attempt to get some book energy in the mix.

I propose the great Presidential Book Debate of 2008.

All the candidates are positioned in front of shelves filled with books from their library. The moderators can be drawn from the deep pool of writers, reviewers, bloggers and librarians whose world revolves around the printed (or digital) word.

Potential questions:

What is your favorite book? (Republicans must give a back up when choosing the Bible)

What has the been the most influential book on politics that you have read?

What was your favorite book as a child?

One of the major issues facing our country is how do we respond to climate change. As you are aware under the Bush Administration funding for the EPA libraries has been reduced and access to the vital information contained therein has been severely restricted or eliminated and quite possible destroyed. It would seem that access to this information is as important as ever. What would you do to address this issue?

A recent study have shown that reading levels are at critical levels in this country, one in four Americans did not read a single book in the last year. In his recent interview with the New York Times Apple founder Steve Jobs went as far as to say "People don't read anymore." As President how will you invigorate reading in America?

If you had the chance to meet and have a drink with one literary figure who would that be and why?

I know how a candidate responds to these questions would seriously influence my vote.

Previous Book Patrol posts:

The Real Presidential Libraries in which I recommend that all candidates should as part of their campaign strategy have a page on Shelfari or one of the other book social networking sites like LibraryThing or Goodreads.

What's Your Candidate Reading which covers the AP story where they did in fact ask the candidates what book fiction they were currently reading.

What The Candidates Should be Reading which features Ron Paul's reading suggestions for Rudy Guiliani.

Bancroft puts 'Loyalty Oath' archive online

The 'Loyalty Oath' controversy was the McCarthy-era communist witch-hunt that took place on the Berkeley campus in the late 1940's. It began when "hundreds of University employees refused to sign a special anti-communist oath mandated by the Regents."
Dozens of tenured faculty and staff were fired and the ensuing protests eventually spread to every campus and garnered international attention.

The California Supreme Court struck down the 'loyalty oath' in 1952 and all the the terminated employees were reinstated.

The collection includes 3,500 pages of searchable text, 20 images and 15 audio clips

The book on the subject is The California Loyalty Oath Controversy by UC President Emeritus David P. Gardner who also help fund the project.

Unfortunately, we are not out of the woods yet:

"The Republican National Committee (RNC) used both signed Loyalty Oaths and spoken Loyalty Pledges as a requirement to attend certain 2004 re-election campaign speeches, a possible first in U.S. election history. During the 2004 presidential campaign, the campaign of George W. Bush routinely required all attendants at its rallies to take what some have called a "loyalty oath". Those who refused to take the oath were not allowed to attend the rally."

Image from an editorial cartoon in the July 7, 1949 issue of the Daily Californian

Feds Drop Subpoena. Amazon Does Not Have to Reveal Names of Used Book Buyers

Finally there is some good news coming from the government about our First Amendment rights.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker has ruled that Amazon does not have to reveal the identities of thousands of people who purchased used books through Amazon Marketplace.

At Amazon's request the court documents from Crocker's June ruling have just been unsealed.

"The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their knowledge or permission," Crocker wrote. "It is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting for evidence against somebody else."

Crocker also notes that if the feds got their way "The chilling effect on expressive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America...Well-founded or not, rumors of an Orwellian federal criminal investigation into the reading habits of Amazon's customers could frighten countless potential customers into canceling planned online book purchases."

This guy deserves a promotion.


AP article at the Seattle PI

City Council Does the Right Thing: Increases Library Funding by $2 Million

It seems everywhere you turn library budgets are getting slashed. In some cases the budgetary reality it's so ugly that the management of public library services is being outsourced to private companies.

But here in Seattle things are a bit different.

The Seattle City Council has adopted a $2 million increase for The Seattle Public Library’s 2008 materials budget.

They already know that libraries matter. In 1998 the citizens of Seattle voted overwhelmingly for the "Libraries for All" bond measure, a $196.4 million infusion to build new, and remodel existing, branches citywide. This is where the money for the Rem Koolhauss designed Central Library came from and where the recent boon in library usage originates.

How busy has the library gotten:
For her piece in the Seattle Times, Looking for that hot new title? At Seattle library wait may be long, Mary Ann Gwinn tried to get a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and there where 726 people ahead waiting for one of the 119 copies in circulation.
Not exactly serving the community by any stretch.

And if the $2 million increase isn't amazing enough the City Council also set "a significant new funding guideline for future library materials budget proposals." The new guideline or “Statement of Legislative Intent” basically requests that "the library present the ideal level of resources needed to accommodate the growing library system and resulting patron demand."

Tell us what you need and we will try and help!
I forgot the government worked that way.

Censored in Plame Sight

And the National Book Award for the Altered Book of the Year goes to...

Valerie Plame's recently released memoir "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House,"

In fact it just might be the most widely distributed altered book in publishing history.

About 15% of the entire book is visibly altered with gray bars eliminating text, sometimes for pages at a time. The CIA originally wanted 35% of the text to be redacted. A court battle ensued between the publisher, Simon & Schuster, and the government. The Bush administration won by about 15%.

The title of the book comes from Karl Rove who at one point said to Chris Matthews of Hardball fame, “Wilson’s wife is fair game.”

This story is a good one though at times it sounds more like a storyline for a mystery or a script for a TV drama rather than the actual behavior of the leader's of the free world!

A covert CIA agent who's life (and the life of many others) is endangered as a result of a political cheap shot when the Bush administration reveals her true identity as payback for her husband's, former Iraq ambassador Joe Wilson, op-ed piece that revealed the truth about the Bush administration's fabrication of Iraq's nuclear threat.

Plame decides to write a book about her experience (think First Amendment) and the Bush administration does all it can to alter the telling.

Of the censoring Plame says "They're seeking to cover up their own role of how this all played out...It deprives the public of the full sweep of the story."

Colette Bancroft, Book Editor of the St. Petersburg Times says :

"Fair Game can be a little disorienting. It's understandable why a chapter about the invasion of Iraq might have chunks excised. But at one point, a couple of solid grayed-out pages are interrupted by a few sentences describing a surreal encounter with a woman wheeling a baby carriage whose passengers are a pair of pugs dressed in Burberry raincoats. What came before and after that?"

These are really strange times.

Valerie Plame's piece on the Huffington Post soon after the books publication
Colette Bancroft piece in the St Petersburg Times, A literary blackout, courtesy of the CIA
CasePage has the legal angle
Janet Maslin's piece in the New York Times Her Identity Revealed, Her Story Expurgated

Image via

Pull the Plug on Book TV

or at least let's change the name. How about Books and History; Books and Washington; Non-Fiction for the Masses.

Book TV has as little to do with the diverse culture and life of books as the Bush administration has to do with democracy.

Before you throw the book at me for this one head over to the Guardian to read Daniel Kalder's piece Literary TV to put you off reading forever.

He amusingly reminds us how downright ridiculous much of Book TV is and how extended viewing can be seen as a low grade form of torture guaranteed to ruin your weekend.

Book TV is a narrow, near-sighted approach that is more alienating than inviting. It is embarrassing to those of us who appreciate the depth and variety of the book atmosphere.

We can do better.
Book Patrol would be more than happy to help produce hours and hours of quality programming centered on the diverse and rich world of books.

We will need more than one camera.