Pradeep Lokhande is an India-based entrepreneur who has been helping bring computers into some of the most remote corners of his country while simultaneously bringing information about rural villages to the city. After working for a multinational company which had him traveling around the country, he realized just how isolated some communities were. With this realization in mind he began Rural Relations, a now 14 year old organization, to help bridge this gap. Mr. Lokhande wanted to help make villagers comfortable with computers and information technology, so he set out to install computers in places where interest was high, such as secondary schools. To date, he was installed over 450 computers across more than 440 villages.

To finance his project Lokhande is appealing to compatriot’s sense of being “Non-Resident Villagers (NRV);” Lokhande explains that every Indian has deep roots to the village they grew up in, or from where their parents came from. All have a deep sense of commitment to the community and are thus willing to help out. The program has engaged a number of NRVs from overseas who have provided a number of computers and other technologies to continue the program’s growth.

Some of the new projects Rural Relations is working on include Rural Voyage, a program that provides highly current information in audio-visual format to villages. There is also the Village Developer, which brings trained local village youths to continue the learning process in the community, and the Rural Barometer which provides live information about the villages to help forecast upcoming trends.

You can read more about this program from an article in the BBC today.

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Just a couple of days ago Boston.com ran an article about a woman in Maine who has decided that certain books are not adequate for the library and has taken it upon her herself to remove them. JoAn Karkos has checked out two copies of “Perfectly Normal: Changing bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” claiming that she was horrified by the illustrations, and “the sexually graphic, amoral abnormal content,” and refuses to return them. The book contains cartoon-like illustrations of naked people.

Oddly, Mrs. Karkos did send a check to the library for the cost of replacing the book, but library personal explain that if she wanted the books removed from the shelf she needed to follow standard procedures. The Library has since returned her money, and has ordered additional copies to meet increased interest in this title.

Earlier this week there was a similar story reported in American Libraries told about a young girl in Brookwood, AL, who borrowed Sandpiper, by Ellen Wittinger, for a school assignment and now refuses to return it on grounds that it teaches students about sex, when school policy is to promote “abstinence-only.”

“Perfectly Normal” is no stranger to controversy. It was the ALA‘s most challenged book in 2005, toping a list that includes authors such as J.D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, and Judy Blume.

You can read the full article from Boston.com here, and the article from American Libraries, here.

01.05.08 – Initially Karkos tried to get the police to remove the book on grounds of obscenity, but the police refused to pursue the complains. In the end this case actually ended up going to court, where Karkos plead not guilty to civil charges that were subsequently filed against her. It was determined that the book does not violate city ordinance. You can read more about this at American Libraries.

Image info; Perfectly Normal, & Sandpiper.

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Yale University has agreed to return most of the Inca artifacts it has housed since Professor Hiram Bingham “rediscovered” Machu Pichu and brought back over 4,000 pieces from the site. The collection includes items such as mummies, ceramics, and bones. Bingham “rediscovered” Machu Pichu back in 1911, bringing it to world attention.

Part of this new agreement has been to promote a traveling exhibit with the pieces, which will eventually find a permanent home at a local museum in Cuzco, Peru, scheduled to coincide with the centenary of Bingham’s “finding” of the site. It will also allow a few selected pieces to remain at Yale a while longer for further scientific research.

In the past a many other countries, and native people the world over have struggled to recover items that were taken during periods of colonization and dominance by foreign groups. During the 1990s the USA passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), requiring museums to inventory their collections and consider returning certain items, although this only applies to federally recognized indigenous groups.

The British Museum has had to deal with a number of cases concerning repatriation, but their response has usually been non-compliance with request from countries such as Egypt and Greece.

You can read more about this issue from an article in the BBC concerning the Yale-Machu Pichu case, or from an article in Suite 101 discussing whether repatriation is a passing fad or not. Wikipedia also has an entire index dedicated to repatriation, divided by cultures.

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Recently the Bureau of Prisons decided that material being housed in prison chapel libraries has been inciting more violence and disorder than it was fomenting good will, and has begun removing books, tapes, CD, and any other material it does not approve of.

A standard list of 150 titles for each from 20 religious groups, ranging from Baha’ism to Yoruba, has been established, with a promise of being expanded in October. Still religious experts who have seen the list are baffled about the choices on it, commenting that there are inclusions by C.S. Lewis, but none by theologians such as Reinhold Neibuhr, Karl Barth, and Cardinal Avery Dulles, nor Robert H. Schuller.

Then there is also the issue that regardless of who is on those lists, this is an affront to the First Amendment, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons was quoted in a NYT article arguing that a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department recommended that books in prisons should be taken a closer look at after the events of September 11, 2001. This argument feels more like an excuse for further censuring, since material entering prisons all over the country is already highly controlled. Besides, it is interesting that a government that has been so vocal in promoting their personal religious beliefs as a way to become a better human being, is now removing the very tools that will aid this process.

I visited a medium security prison while taking a class on library services for under serve- populations, and got to see and learn first-hand how prison libraries function. While laws vary from state to state, it is standard procedure to evaluate the intellectual content of library material before adding it to the collection. Some states further restrict books depending on whether they are hardbound or paperback; none allow material containing violent or sexual material. The only material that is federally required to be housed in every prison library are legal books, short of this, your local prison library looks very much like your local public library; hardly a breeding ground for violence and chaos.

10.04.07 – After much outcry from civil libertarians and religious groups, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has agreed to return to prison chapel libraries all the material that had been previously removed. You can read more about this new development from an article in American Libraries. Or from an article in the New York Times.

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The latest update of the Red List of Endangered species is bringing attention to a number of new animals now threatened with extinction. According to the World Conservation Union, we are facing an extinction rate 10,000 higher than was expected. According to the report, one in four animals is threatened, as well as 1 in 8 birds, 1 in 3 amphibians, and 70% of the worlds plants.

Species added to the list are labeled as extinct (EX), extinct in the wild (EW), critically endangered (CR), endangered (EN), vulnerable (VU), lower risk/ conservation dependent (LR/CD), near threatened (NT), least concern (LC), or DD for data deficient.

All this information is housed in a major database with the World Conservation Union and can be accessed here. When searching the database you can type in the common name for a species and will get results including the species scientific name, and level of endangerment. Clicking on a specific species will provide more information on taxonomy, and citation information relating to how the species was evaluated for inclusion in the Red List. In the photo gallery you can find photographs of a few of the endangered species along with a brief explanation of its current situation.

This new list should make us all aware that while there are efforts out there to preserve wildlife, they are not providing the desired results, and further action should be taken to correct the situation.

You can read more about this from an article in The Hindu. There is another article in Practical Fishkeeping about discussing fish on the Red List.

Image info; Golden Lion Tamarin, (Leontopithecus rosalia), EN. Image from the World Conservation Union.

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Over the weekend London finally broke a tradition that had been running for over 500 years, that of only employing men as Beefeaters at the Tower of London. Moira Cameron from Scotland began her duties as a Beefeater after the requiered 22 years of service in the military, including time in Northern Ireland.

The Guardian had a couple of article about this, but unfortunatly they feel for the easy comments about how the uniforms look, the convenience of having big pockets to carry lipgloss in, and comments of upset (and sexists) turists who complained at having a woman be their tour leader when visiting the Tower.

You can read the articles here and here.

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