On Friday December 5 we moved the PLAspace site to a new Virtual Private Server.

This should provide greater performance and a solid foundation for some design and functionality improvements in the coming months. Please contact us if you are encountering any unexpected difficulties.

What do Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have in common? If you said that both are regular targets of attempted censorship, then you are probably a librarian. ALA's Banned Books Week continues through Saturday. The fact that every day around the world some person or group of people attempt to ban books, to deny knowledge, to force conformity of thought; well, "It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race."

I am heading to Danvers, Massachusetts tomorrow to observe a session of Turning the Page: Building Your Library. That's the two-day advocacy education event developed by the Public Library Association with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This trip is a chance for me to observe the program and meet the facilitators. I've heard that Turning the Page is a great program and I look forward to seeing it in action.

Today marks another milestone in the rollout of PLAspace. We officially open the doors to new CoPs and new participants.

We created PLAspace to give Public Library Association members a place where they could share ideas and work together on common interests. Today, the first official day for the site, we already have several dozen members and a half-dozen CoPs.

Please take a few minutes to fill out a survey about your PLAspace experience. The survey is quite short and your answers will help us prepare for the official launch on September 15.