LIBRARY LOUNGE

Can’t come to Washington? You can still participate in National Library Legislative Day by organizing library supporters in your state to phone, fax, and email Congress on May 13 and 14.

Virtual Library Legislative Day communicates the needs of libraries to Congress and increases the impact of the National Library Legislative Day in Washington, DC. Organizing is easy!

Go to http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/washevents/nlld/virtuallibrarylegislativeday/vlld.cfm for more information.

“James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone. James Karl Buck sent a message using Twitter which helped get him out of an Egyptian jail. …a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10. On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter. The message only had one word. “Arrested.” Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt — the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier — were alerted that he was being held. Twitter is a social-networking blog site that allows users to send status updates, or “tweets,” from cell phones, instant messaging services and Facebook in less than 140 characters.”

Mallory Simon, CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/index.html