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nets first round nod from Legislature
By Randy Essex
Aimed with t stack of gambling devices called pickle
cards, and feeling like "the captain of the Titanic trying to
peddle icebergs," Neligh Sen. John DeCamp won first
round legislative approval Thursday for his bill that Would
make all gambling crimes misdemeanors,
Debate on LD 152 came the day after i statewide
gambling crackdown by the Attorney General's office.
The action was coordinated in O'Neill, a town in
DeCamp's district It was the first gambling crackdown
under the four-month-old criminal code that established
felony penalties for certain gambling crimes.
But It was DeCampi contention that if the penalties
for bookmaking are too stiff "small time, local" people
will be forced out of the business, and organized crime
will take over.
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The Miscellaneous Subjects Committee, responding to
law enforcement concerns, proposed to amend the bill to
make bookmaking operations handling more than $500
guilty of a felony, but DeCamp was successful in returning
the bill to misdemeanor form.
Amendment passed
DeCamp's amendment to the committee amendment
passed 20-3.
DeCamp beat back an attempt by Omaha Sen. Patrick
Venditte to include tougher prostitution laws in the bill.
"I hate to see you put a hooker in this bill that might
ruin its chances to pass," DeCamp told Venditte.
Venditte offered an amendment which would have in
creased the penalty for prostitution to a harsher mis
demeanor than it is. The Omaha senator said, "Women
from all over the country have come to Omaha to sell
themselves" since passage of the present law, and those
women are "laughing at the Jaw."
Speaker Richard Marvel ruled that Venditte could add
the amendment to DeCamp's gambling bill, even though it
dealt with different subject matter. But the amendment
fell five votes short of adoption, 20-19.
Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers was then successful in
amending the bill so that possession of gambling records
would not be a punishable offense in itself. That amend
ment passed 22-0.
But Chambers failed in his attempt to amend the bill
so the misdemeanor penalties would be reduced even
further than DeCamp wanted. DeCamp said he thought
the Chambers amendment was reasonable, but he had to
oppose it because of the compromise he agreed to.
Chambers proposed that the penalty for bookmaking
operations ranging from $300 to $999 be a maximum of
six months in jail and a maximum $1,000 fine. DeCamp
proposed a maximum jail sentence of a year.
Chambers said since the state has accepted gambling as
a profit venture, and since a person can. lose an unlimited
amount of money at horse races and face no penalty, a jail
sentence of one year is too harsh for someone involved in
a $300 bet.
But his amendment failed, 1324.
Several other amendments to the bill were pending, but
then withdrawn after DeCamp received a message from
the Attorney General's office pointing out tho problems
in the bill.
DeCamp slad he and other senators were going to meet
with Assistant Attorney General Patrick O'Brien Thursday
afternoon.
O'Brien spent Wednesday in O'Neill, helping coordin
ate the gambling crackdown. DeCamp was quick in point
ing out that his bill was drafted with the help of the
Attorney General's office and the Douglas and Lancaster
County Attorneys' offices.
The senator predicted that the Holt County attorney
would have trouble getting convictions from the arrests
made Tuesday because of problems In the present law.
$i
Library computer nears completion
off til April 30
APPOINTMENTS
AVAILABLE
Call 477393
liibrary Book Sale
Thurs. April 19th
5:00-&30pm
Friday & Saturday April 20 & 21
900 am-530 pm
Auditorium 4th Floor
Bennett Martin Public Library
14th &N Street
Sponsored by Lincoln City Library Foundatbn
By Diane Andersen
In a few months students and faculty owing LIRS (Li
brary Information Retrieval Service) cards will be able to
find books by punching computer keys instead of thumb
ing through a card catalog.
Library staffers with proper code numbers will also be
able to find out how many books each the library patrons
have checked out and how many they have reserved in ad
vance. They will even be able to "block" the circuits so a
person who has been abusing the library will be unable to
check out any further materials.
All this will happen two months after the LIRS
computer circulation system goes into effect early this
summer, according to the. assistant dean for planning and
research, Brice Holbrock.
"We haven't begun public operation yet because we
want to accumulate a massive volume of student and book
files," Holbrock said.
He explained that the 2,000-3,000 students and
majority of the faculty who now possess LIRS cards are
currently using them to check out books just like student
ID's have been used in the past.
Loaded books
One hundred forty thousand of our most recently
purchased books are being loaded into the system next
week," Holbrock said.
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The LIRS system includes over $250,000 worth of
computer hardware in the basement of Love Library made
up of the computer, CRT terminals, and a communicat
ion's system to UNO and the UNL Medical Center. The
two Omaha libraries have three terminals each that are
currently running , Holbrock said .
"We didn't have any way of knowing what the
campuses in Omaha had before," he continued, explaining
that LIRS will be a big help in resource sharing.
"We also need to achieve more accurate control over
items with a turnover rate of 1,000 of those items each
day.
"It saves the student time and it saved us a lot of head
aches." First in Big Eight
Holbrock said NU is the first institution in the Big
Eight to install such a computer system, although about
SO large academic libraries in the United States use similar
systems. Some of these are at UCLA, the University of
Utah and the University of Houston.
"We hope some of the others will follow along,"
Holbrock said.
Only those with authorized passwords have access to
the library files. Each student card bears a code number as
does each book, which will be read electronically at the
checkout desk to determine the status of each.
"Your privacy is protected " Holbrock said.
Books in the LIRS system can be retrieved by title,
author or number. A computer readout shows when a
particular book was returned to the shelf, how many
copies are available and how many copies are located in
other branch libraries .
The ONL, UNO and UNMC systems will start public
operation within a few weeks of each other, Holbrock
said.
Basketball star wins
East Lansing, Mich (CH)-How does a student get
elected to the student council of a major university
without being on the ballot, without campaigning and
without even knowing about the election?
It helps if the student Is Earvin 'Magic'' Johnson. The
star of the NCAA basketball champions, the Michigan
State University Spartans, was elected by write-in votes to
the MSU student council minority menfter-at-large
position.
The surprised Johnson said, "I would like to stay on
the council if I could be of use." He added that he might
have difficulty finding the time.
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