In  Leicestershire, England, the local council has fired staffers at 16 local libraries and replaced them with “automatic check-outs machines.” According to a report in The Telegraph by Andrew Hough, the move had to do with a a “perfect storm” of falling revenue and increasing demand for services — a “£1billion budget black hole” being faced by local councils across England and Wales, but it has set off a firestorm of criticism.

“Lots of staff feared for their jobs because of cuts, but no-one dreamed they would be replaced by a machine,” one library assistant tells the Telegraph. The head of a local pensioners group says, “They should not be looking to cut jobs in libraries which are essential services for elderly people. If the council needs to make cuts they should come from elsewhere.” She adds, “Whatever will they think of next.”

A spokesperson for the council, meanwhile, says the machines are an improvement, giving customers a “choice of quicker and easier methods of checking out and returning books in the library.”

With key provisions of the Patriot Act, including Section 215, allowing bookstore and library records to be searched by the government, set to expire December 31, two new bills have been introduced in Congress that would “add more privacy safeguards” to the act, says a Publishers Weekly report.

One, from Senators Russ Feingold and Richard Durbin, “would reauthorize the use of Section 215 orders to obtain business records but would tighten the standard to require that the records be connected to an individual suspected of terrorism or espionage, unlike the present statute that only requires that the records be relevant to an investigation.”

The other, from Senators Pat Leahy, Ben Cardin and Ted Kaufman “would reauthorize the use of Section 215 orders for four years and tighten the standard to require that records sought are relevant to an investigation and, at minimum, pertain to a suspected agent of a foreign power.”

The Campaign for Reader Privacy — an advocacy group put together by the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, and the PEN American Center “to fight for changes in the Patriot Act to protect the confidentiality of reading records” — has issued a statement praising the bills.  ABA CEO Oren Teicher says, “We’re pleased to see that process underway and hope that booksellers, librarians, publishers and authors will make their voices heard by urging their own Senators to co-sponsor the bills.”

J.K. Rowling: Worse than war

A story at ThinkProgress.org reports that Matt Latimer, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, says in his new book, Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor, that the Bush administration “objected to giving author J.K. Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom” because her Harry Potter books “encouraged witchcraft.”

Publisher Bao Pu, with another controversial publication, Prisoner of State, the posthumous memoir of ousted former Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang

The Associated Press reports that Bao Pu, the publisher of Hong Kong-based New Century Press, has decided to publish the controversial book, The Rethinking of Chinese Civilization today — three days before a massive Oct. 1 celebration in Beijing of the 60th anniversary of Communist rule.

Originally, The Rethinking of Chinese Civilization was to be published on the mainland by the China Social Sciences Press, part of the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in January 2007.

But, as the AP explains, “The Chinese-language book by veteran journalist Xiao Jiansheng was banned on the mainland in 2007. The book is sensitive because its criticism of authoritarian governments in ancient China could be seen as a veiled attack on the current regime.”

Xiao questions the oppressive rule of the Qin Dynasty (221 B.C. to 206 B.C.), usually praised by Chinese historians because its leaders defeated rival states and united the country. He also praises the political and religious freedom during the Song Dynasty (960 to 1279), seen by Chinese historians as weak because China was divided during the latter part of the period.”

Xiao, who is an editor at Hunan Daily, published by the Chinese Communist Party branch in southern Hunan province, tells the AP, ” I decided to publish the book because I hope it will help the country’s political and economic development.” He also says that his bosses declined his offer to resign.

Bao Pu says he decided to publish the book because it challenges conventional thinking. “It makes very clear points. It’s different from the views of most Chinese scholars,” he tells the AP. “Because it’s banned in mainland China, it’s necessary to publish it in Hong Kong.”

A brief Associated Press wire story says, “Juanita Castro, the exiled sister of Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro, is set to release a first-person memoir in which she talks at length about her brothers.”

The book 400-page memoir set to be published in the US by Spanish language publisher Santillana USA in late October is entitled My Brothers Fidel and Raul: The Secret Story, and was co-written by Spanish-language journalist Maria Antoineta Collins.

Juanita Castro left Cuba in 1964. Says the AP, “A longtime Miami resident, she has kept a low profile and for years could be found behind the counter of the small pharmacy she owned. She retired in 2007.”

The book had been dictated 10 years earlier to Collins, but it is only now that Ms. Castro has consented to publication. And she is scheduled to appear at the Miami Book Fair in November to promote it.

An ad for the book promises,”This is the story Juanita Castro owed us all, but has never told, now here it is.” Though having missed out on the brothers last 45 years in action, you’ve got to imagine there are going to be some serious gaps in that story…

Boris Yeltsin

The story about Boris Yeltsin is perhaps the juciest tidbit in Taylor Branch’s new book, The Clinton Tapes; Wrestling History with the President: “President Clinton recalled getting a security alert in 1995 that the Secret Service had found Mr. Yeltsin, in his underwear, outside Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue trying to hail a taxi. He was clearly inebriated, wanting a pizza.”

But as a New York Times blog post notes, the way the book itself is sourced is generating a lot of discussion, too: Branch was given extraordinary, secret access to Clinton throughout his presidency — some 70 interviews that were recorded … but Branch wasn’t allowed access to the recordings. “Rather, whenever he left the White House, he would dictate his recollections of the lengthy chats into cassettes as he drove home to Baltimore …. Mr. Branch indicated that he would sometimes sit in his driveway, dictating away in the middle of the night.”

What calls all this in question, of course, is that there were a lot of prosecutors who would have liked to get their hands on those tapes — Clinton’s or Branch’s — but both men kept their existence secret.

Meanwhile, Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post notes others are having a field day hashing out Clinton’s behind-the-scenes commentary on George Bush, Al Gore, and Maureen Down.

It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing Ralph Nader would say: Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! But in fact, it’s the title of Nader’s new book, which also isn’t the kind of book you’d expect Nader to write: it’s a novel. And, as a rather garbled Associated Press wire story by Hillel Italie notes, the title isn’t necessarily a joke: the book features a team of super-heroes based on real-life gazillionaires “who conspire to set off a progressive revolution.” That is, it consists of Ted Turner, the late Paul Newman, Bill Cosby, Barry Diller, Yoko Ono, and Ross Perot, and others, and they’re led by Warren Buffet.

“Fiction is a way to liberate the imagination,” Nader tells Italie, “to see what could happen if 17 billionaires and super-rich people really put their minds to it … and took on the existing business power bloc and the politicians in Washington who serve (it).”

Meanwhile, the report itself doesn’t sound like the kind of thing the AP usually reports on, either. Yep, it’s a rare instance of the AP covering a book from an indie publisher. It’s also a rare instance of the AP book reporter leaving out a fundamental detail that he never leaves out when writing about the big boys: that is, who’s publishing the book. Moby, as ever, is happy to fill in the mainstream blanks: It’s being published by lefty stalwart Seven Stories Press, of New York, New York.

The battle in Australia over “parallel imports” of books — lifting restrictions against importing books from other countries that are the same as books published by Australian publishers — may be nearing an end. As previously reported on MobyLives, the Australian government’s Productivity Commission recommended lifting the restriction — also known as “territorial copyright” — because it said it would help lower the cost of books. The country’s biggest bookselling chain, Dymock’s, has been aggressively lobbying in favor of the move, while just about everyone else — including groups representing Australian publishers, writers, and independent booksellers, as well as some British publishers who think it will damage their imprints there — have opposed it. Others have pointed out that a similar lifting of restrictions in neighboring New Zealand devastated that country’s book industry across the board.

Now, says a report in The Australian by Leonore Taylor, “The Productivity Commission has launched a robust defence of its conclusion,” while the “federal cabinet seeks a compromise solution on the contentious issue,” amd a report from a publishers’ group says “the commission had failed to take into account the risk that repealing the restrictions would ultimately lead to more expensive books as fewer big retailers came to dominate the market.”

But Cabinet Ministers who have to vote on a recommendation to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd are sharply divided, and Taylor says “a compromise could be considered, along the lines of the commission’s draft report, which recommended the import restrictions apply for 12 months after the release of a book.”