Pondering cancer

This last Thursday, some friends of mine found out that their 12-year old daughter has Stage 4 neuroblastoma.  It's a nerve-originated cancer that metatisizes quickly throughout the body.  In this little girl's case, the cancer is in her bones and has caused tumors to pop up in her lungs, her hip bones, and most awfully, her spine.  Because the parents do not have insurance, her 9 months of headaches, stomach illness, and lack of feeling in her legs and limbs were not treated properly.  It was only after she could no longer walk was she admitted to Peyton Manning Children's hospital, where she underwent surgery to remove most of the tumor pressing on her spine.  Her prognosis is not good, but chemotherapy and possibly stem cell blood replacement is still being suggested to combat this rare cancer.  All of this treatment will likely bankrupt the parents.

Although I barely know this little girl and rarely see her parents, I spent most of the weekend thinking about them.  On Friday, a friend of the family and I visited this little girl after she had had a bone marrow aspiration (think a big needle being inserted directly into your bones), so she was not in the best mood. :)  I can only imagine.  The hospital is very nice and welcoming, but there really isn't anywhere to escape the sadness of the kids in that place, despite the best effort of the wacky nurses and colorful flowers on the wall. 

On Friday, I also found out that two of my other friends lost much-loved pets earlier in the week. 

So, not a happy weekend.  And I mostly feel fragile thinking about it. 

E-books in Libraries? Not if HarperCollins has anything to do with it!

There's been a flurry of e-mails on the SLIS list about a new e-book policy of HarperCollins being pushed through their e-book vendor, Overdrive Books.   Here's an article on it from Publishers Weekly and some hot, steaming writer's vitriol about it from Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing.net. 

The furor, in case you didn't want to read the above links, is over the fact that, unlike most publishers, HarperCollins will sell libraries e-books to "loan" out to patrons.  Unfortunately, the deal with the devil is that libraries' license for the e-book ends after 26 loans or one year.  After that, the libraries must re-purchase the license.  For librarians grappling with shrinking collections budgets and the growing demand of their patrons for online materials access, it's got to seem like a real Catch-22. 

I really have nothing new to say about this issue, because after only a week of the knowledge of this new policy, librarian and author reactions have been loud and many.  This event, though, does drive home how important it is that I pay attention in my Information Policy class, and how sad it is that my class only has 7 people in it.  This sort of issue is not going to go away, especially as the Digital Rights Management Act matures and reacts.  Complicating the issue are new copyleft licenses (like Creative Commons) that would not go through a traditional publisher, but might come through the libraries as loanable items.

It's all kind of fascinating, really.