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Library Journal: Presidential libraries need private funding

Robert Dallek, a CAS professor of history, who has worked at 6 of the 10 presidential libraries, counters statements made in a Wall Street Journal article that challenge the validity of individual presidential libraries and call for the papers of the nation's leaders to be housed instead in the National Archives. Dallek contends in the April 15 Library Journal that such a maneuver would severely limit the access historians, biographers, and the public currently have to presidential papers. "The libraries do a superb job of organizing these vast collections and making them available in a timely fashion to anyone with a legitimate research interest," he says. Regarding the pardons-for-donations investigation into the financing of the proposed Clinton presidential library, Dallek says, "Let's avoid future allegations of this kind by providing federal funds to build and administer all future presidential libraries. A nation with a $1.96 trillion national budget can afford to be generous in support of historical studies."

Asahi News Service, dateline Tokyo: Japanese companies to export the Internet

Japan -- a country that tinkered with, fine-tuned, and then exported VCRs, microwaves, and liquid crystal displays -- is preparing to remold the Internet in its own fashion. The West will get a taste of what Japan has to offer when telecommunications giant NTT DoCoMo Inc. exports its successful mobile Internet i-mode service to Europe in September and to the United States early next year. But Kumiko Aoki, College of Communication assistant professor of mass communication, doubts that Americans "would want to stare at a small screen when they have fast [Net] connections at home." She does believe that e-commerce business models "unique to Japan," such as ones that place the convenience store at the center of delivery and payment for goods bought online, are ripe for export, especially to big population centers in Asia.

At these stores, customers can do their online shopping via high-speed terminals and also pick up their purchases and pay for them in cash. This eases fears about sending sensitive credit details online, and as Aoki points out, it solves the problem of delivery, as transport firms in Japan won't leave packages outside the door
if no one is home.

Christian Science Monitor: Seeking peace in the Middle East

Responding to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Bush administration's policy that the two parties have to make peace themselves, Farouk El-Baz, director of the GRS Center for Remote Sensing and an expert on the Mideast, says in the April 19 Christian Science Monitor, "I think it will take a mutual announcement by both parties to say we are going to try it one more time. In addition, Israel will have to stop overreacting to the kids who are throwing stones. If there is no Israeli military presence, the rock throwing will stop."

"In The News" is compiled by Mark Toth in the Office of Public Relations.

27 April 2001
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