Library Systems - Post #12

Here it is, kids - the end! Our team is done with our training materials, so the wiki is pretty much finished. All I've got left is the reflection paper, so it's time to kick back and relax, right?

So why do I have this sense of impending doom hanging over me? Oh yeah, because I'm graduating and I have to find a job. This resume/cover letter rigmarole is just driving me bonkers. I can’t imagine what the library job search was like before computers. I guess it probably consisted of glancing through the newest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, talking to friends in the profession, and maybe making some phone calls. Now, RSS feeds can spew thousands of jobs at us, not to mention all of the e-mail listservs dedicated to job hunting. There’s also some great websites, such as ALA’s JobList and one I just found out about today called indeed. It’s not just for libraries; you just put the job title or keywords in one box, the location in the other, and voila, tons of results.

On the other hand, it seems like for all of the positive aspects of technology on resumes (e-mailing instead of snail mail, easily updateable, no more typewriters!) there are almost as many new problems (formatting problems make your resume unreadable, don’t forget to make your resume a PDF, not to mention forgetting to attach it to the e-mail!). But in the long run, it’s a heck of a lot easier to get your resume out there. I just wish it were easier to get a job!

Byebye, blogosphere!

Intellectual Freedom - Post #10

Wow, this is my last post of the semester! This has been fun.

I thought I'd end with a story that I find both hilarious and scary at the same time. It's about 6 weeks old, but I couldn't resist.

According to an article in the Times Online (UK), a company has been manufacturing a “teen repellent” called the Mosquito. It emits a high pitched noise that only young people can hear. Its purpose is dissuade teens from congregating in large groups. Amazingly, it has been installed in over 3,500 locations since it was made available!

Not surprisingly, people have been complaining about it. The Children’s Commissioner of England said, “These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving…The use of measures such as these are simply demonising children and young people, creating a dangerous and widening divide between the young and the old.” The creators, meanwhile, don’t understand what all of the hubbub is about. One of them said “Of course it doesn't solve the long-term problem, but it does what it says on the box. It disperses the large groups.”

Can you imagine something like this happening in the U.S.? We hear all of the time about teens being disruptive in the library after school. Well, we could just turn the Mosquito on from 3-6pm and that would take care of the problem! I just don’t understand how the creators of this can’t see that if you make these teens leave, they’re going to go somewhere else; probably somewhere that’s not as safe.

P.S. I’m still not sure if this is really true, but apparently some teens recorded the sound from the Mosquito and made it into a ringtone, so they can receive calls in class without anyone knowing! Brilliant!

Library Systems - Post #11

Wow, I can't believe how quickly the semester has gone! It seems like only yesterday that it was January and I thought I’d run out of topics to blog about.

My group is starting our work on training materials, and although at this point we are just doing text and screen capture, we’re hoping to at least do a screencast that covers the basics.

I’ve been thinking about screencasting and how effective it is. On one hand, it’s obviously a very effective tool. I’ve watched several of University Library’s screencasts on electronic databases, and I thought they did a great job of explaining the sometimes arcane tactics for searching that the average Joe is not going to intuitively pick up on. They’re fairly easy to do; I’ve spent only a little bit of time with Captivate but I’m sure I could make a passable screencast in very little time.

So what’s the problem? Well, maybe I have too little faith in humanity, but I’m just not sure that the average college student (or even most adults) has the attention span to sit and watch and listen to someone demonstrate a library catalog or electronic database. I feel like they’d rather try to figure it out themselves (and fail), or think “Oh gosh is it really this hard? Nevermind, I’ll try Google”. I’m not sure I really have any answers for this, since I think the problem is a combination of a fatal flaw in society that can’t stop for anything, and library resources that seem designed to maddeningly confound even experience computer users.

This has been my Debbie Downer post.

P.S. Have any of you had any positive feedback from screencasts you’ve done for your library? And what age group were they?

Library Systems - Post #10

So by now, I think we all know that having a pretty good grasp on technology is going to be essential for landing a good library job. I think this class does a great job of teaching us areas of technology that we might not have encountered before. We can put on our resume that we are experienced bloggers, we've created a wiki, we've created podcasts, etc.

I’m always trying to learn new stuff, though. Not really to “get a leg up on the competition”; I just feel like I need to know as much as possible. Lately I’ve been wishing that I had more experience with programming languages. I’ve got a pretty good grasp on HTML and CSS, and I have some limited experience with JavaScript, but beyond that I haven’t a clue. I was reminded of this when I was trying to create a form for our wiki, but realized that I would need a PHP script to make the form actually work. Thankfully I got help from Bill Helling, my prof from Info Architecture for the Web, and also from Eric in our class, who had the same problem. Eric actually created his own PHP script!

Maybe I’m just jealous of my friends with computer science degrees who are already making more than I ever will, but it just seems like this is something I should know how to do. What better way to eliminate the divide between “the IT computer geeks who don’t understand us” and “those technologically illiterate librarians who won’t listen to us” than by….being both?

Intellectual Freedom - Post #9

I forgot to mention in class that Facebook recently improved their privacy options, making it much easier to limit who gets to see your information. Well, apparently they didn't quite work out all of the kinks before implementing it. A guy in Canada tested the new settings to see if they worked; he was able to pull up private pictures of Paris Hilton, among other people. The Associated Press confirmed the "privacy glitch" by finding a personal photo posted by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook! It's pretty scary when even he can't keep his profile completely private.

The remainder of the article focuses on the security (or lack thereof) of social networking sites in general. I think we’ve all gotten “messages” or “comments” from our Myspace friends telling us “OMG have you seen this video click here!”, followed soon after by “Sorry guys I got spammed! Don’t click that link!” I actually got one the other day from a friend on Facebook, so unfortunately the spammers have invaded. Now, I’m not 100% sure about this, but I don’t think that spammers just somehow crack your password to get into your account. I think you have to be gullible enough to click on one of those links. Once again, the problem comes down to education. We need to teach people how to know which links are safe to click on, and which ones scream “VIRUS!”

(I’ll talk about this article more in my podcast, especially the last couple paragraphs which deal with legislating social networks.)

Intellectual Freedom - Post #8

Well, according to the Carmel Star, it seems that Carmel parents are"tired of seeing sexually charged images on display in public while they're out with their children". Their solution? To urge City Council to pass a resolution that will remove these things from public view. Their goal is to create a "child-safe community standard", and encourage businesses to support Carmel's "wholesome environment".

Thankfully, the article quotes a council member voicing the same concern that I had when I heard of this. Kevin Rider says "It would give people an absolute blanket to lay over anything they didn't like…You have to be careful legislating morality." Sheesh! That’s an understatement.

While this doesn’t explicitly deal with intellectual freedom, passing this resolution sure seems to set a dangerous precedent. It seems like it would give residents more boldness to come into libraries and demand that a certain book be hidden, or demand that art galleries and museums remove artwork that doesn’t support their view of a “wholesome environment”.

Like a lot of things we talk about, though, I do have some conflicting views. There certainly are a lot of “sexually charge images” on display in public places that, frankly, offend me. To take an example from the article, one of the parents “spearheaded a campaign last fall to remove lingerie-clad models from Victoria's Secret windows at Clay Terrace Mall. The protest garnered national media attention, and resulted in the store replacing the mannequins' lingerie with pajamas.” I find Victoria’s Secret’s advertising to be salacious and inappropriate. If I had children, I’d be probably be uncomfortable walking by their. I just don’t think that demanding they put pajamas on mannequins is the best solution to the problem.

Library Systems - Post #9

Oh technology, when will you do what I want you to?

I'm a pretty organized person. I like to keep track of my work and school schedules with a daily planner (though I've been fooling around with Google Calendar lately, so that may change). I've really enjoyed working on redesigning some of University Library's subject resource pages, because I get to divide up and organize content and make it easier to use. I've really enjoyed that aspect of our project; taking an out of date book and making it more organized, easier to use, and more valuable, frankly.

I’ve had a personal crisis lately with organization. I have quite a few CDs and books, and a few DVDs. What I’ve really been wanting is a way to catalog all of them, so I know what I have, what I’ve loaned out, what I need to read/listen to/watch, and what I can get rid of.

I’ve found decent solutions for 2 out of 3, so far. For books, LibraryThing is great. You can easily look your books up by ISBN, title, author, etc. You can add tags to your books and create a tag cloud. You can also compare your collections with other people, and get some great recommendations. You can only input 200 for free; it costs $10/year or $25 for life to catalog as many as you want.

For DVDs, I’ve been using DVD Aficionado. It’s free, but it’s a bit clunky. It’s essentially a glorified spreadsheet, but all you really have to do is enter the UPC code, so it saves a lot of work. I’ve heard good things about DVD Profiler, which costs $29.95.

I still haven’t found a good free solution for cataloging CDs. At this point I have a text file with artists and albums, but that’s very hard to search, pretty much impossible to format, etc. I started to make a spreadsheet, but that just seems to be a waste of time. What if I want to add more information about each album? I found a freeware application called Libra that will catalog CDs, as well as DVDs, books, etc. It even lets you use your webcam as a barcode scanner! Of course it had to be too good to be true. The developers have apparently vanished and it’s no longer supported. Oh well. I’ll keep looking.

Intellectual Freedom - Post #7

So apparently, a professor in England has decided to ban her students from using Google and Wikipedia. Tara Brabazon said she did this because "Too many students don't use their own brains enough. We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis." Which of course means only using print sources!

Romeo Wahed from the blog Download Squad has some great insight: "Call us old fashioned if you will, but banning things generally doesn't really solve problems...It's highly unlikely that students will be more motivated to work harder just because they are denied using Google and Wikipedia in their coursework."

We’ve been talking so much lately about banned books; it’s nice to see something else being banned for a change! But seriously, I think this is a great example of how a misguided person, even with good intentions, can do something monumentally stupid. Also, the same principles apply to this that apply to (almost) everything else that seems to get banned: whether it’s a controversial book, or the Internet, it’s here to stay, so banning it won’t make it go away, and it certainly won’t stop people from reading the book or using the Internet. The answer is…education! If this teacher would teach these kids how they can use Google and Wikipedia for legitimate research (just for example… Google Scholar, searching .edu sites, looking at citations in Wikipedia to confirm the information and do more research), it would prepare them much better for the future. Instead, they probably will say, “Remember that batty old prof who wouldn’t let use Google?”

Library Systems - Post #8

Hooray, it's another story about Joel losing the battle with technology!

First let me set the scene: I am a musician, and I enjoy recording my music on my computer. I recently decided that I wanted to get a 4-track cassette recorder (here's an example of one), because I enjoy the charming low quality sound you can get out of it, plus its much more portable than, um, a desktop computer.

Well, there was a specific model I wanted, so I started checking out eBay to try to get a good deal, but I discovered that there were two versions of this model; one was gray (Tascam 414), and the other was blue(Tascam 414mkII). I figured there must be something different with the blue one with that extra “mkII” on the end, whatever that means. So I started Googling it to find out more info. However, all I could find was info on the newer version. I tried all kinds of fancy schmancy searches like “tascam 414 –mkii –mk2”, but still nothing. I tried searching for only PDFs, hoping that I would find the instruction manual (I did, for the newer one; no mention of the older model). After trying this for over a week, I just gave up and ended up buying the older model on eBay.

Well, the other day it dawned on me to try Google Image Search, and I found a picture of the older model. I clicked on it, and it took me to a page where someone compared the two models. Of course, I found out that the newer model had some significant upgrades that I really would have liked. Oh well. Live and learn.

Intellectual Freedom - Post #6

Here's an interesting story. I found it on Jessamyn West's library blog. Several families in Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against their school district, claiming "their religious rights were being violated when kids read books involving 'positive portrayals of families headed by same-sex parents and same-sex marriage, including the frequently challenged children’s book, King and King.'”

The court ruled against them, saying that "there is no First Amendment free exercise right to be free from any reference in public elementary schools to the existence of families in which the parents are of different gender combinations. It also held that public schools are not obliged to shield individual students from ideas which potentially are religiously offensive, especially when the school does not require that the student agree with or affirm those ideas, or even participate in discussions about them."

I've got a lot of conflicting thoughts about this one, and I think part of it is due to me having been home schooled. I'm a little put out at the "how dare you question us" attitude that the school seems to have (or maybe it's the ACLU lawyer's tone that makes me think that). It seems like the rights of the children and the parents are second to the rights of the school to teach its curriculum however it sees fit. I'm not taking issue with the specific topic; I would feel the same way if the issue were more specifically religious.

Then again, this does seem like it was blown out of proportion. The books in question were optional reading that the students took home in a book bag. The parents were notified well in advance (though not about the choice of books, as far as I can tell). And I don't think that filing a lawsuit is usually a very effective way to get your point across.

Finally, I have the same question about this as I do about any sort of censorship/banning/controversial book situation: did the parents talk to their child about the books before they started litigating, etc?

P.S. You can read some of the back story here and here, and read the full court decision here (it's a PDF).

Library Systems - Post #7

In the last several months, I've become someone I never thought I would be: a Mac lover! (or at least I’ve got a grudging respect for them)

I've used PCs all of my life, and I never had any friends that owned a Mac. And I had always heard that "no one makes games for Macs". (Also, I was home schooled, so I didn’t use an Apple IIe in elementary school like a lot of kids did). So I never had any real desire to use one until I started working at the Herron Art Library last semester. All of the public accessible computers there are Macs, and the computer lab down the hall is all Mac.

So I thought I should get to know this strange thing. It would probably look good on my resume to be comfortable with Macs. And everyone says they're "sooo easy to use". To be honest, and this is pretty ridiculous coming from someone who considers himself pretty tech savvy, I was a little scared of it. No right mouse button?? How do I find programs on here?? Etc. What eventually dawned on me is that pretty much every aspect of the Mac that I found awkward was not because it was unnatural, but because I was so used to the old "tried and true" PC way. Instead of two mouse buttons, how about one, with more options by pushing Ctrl while clicking? I don’t even know how many times my mom was confused by the two button mouse when she was learning how to use a PC.

I still use PCs most of the time, and think they’re great, but I’ve finally come around on Macs. Now if only I could afford one!

Intellectual Freedom - Post #5

I'm not totally sure if this is IF related, but it's close enough that I'm going to post about it.

Michael Stephens' Tame the Web blog had a post recently about library IT departments blocking websites. He linked to a blog post from Mark Funk, President of the Medical Library Association, which noted that a survey conducted by the Social Networking Task Force showed that many Web 2.0 websites or applications were being blocked. Funk says, "If MLA wants to better connect our members using these new technologies, we need to convince IT people that not all Web 2.0 sites or applications are a frivolous waste of bandwidth or a security risk. In fact, this problem even goes beyond MLA activity, in that useful medical information is sometimes blocked."

Now, while this obviously is not an intentional limitation of freedom of speech (at least I don't think so), it certainly doesn't paint IT departments in a positive light. I'm sure they are fearful about viruses and security risks, but you can't block everything. And medical librarians especially should be allowed access to as much information as possible, in the event of a life-threatening situation.

Another thought I had was how much a staff member surrenders their freedoms in the workplace. If I work the circulation desk at a library, and the IT department blocks MySpace because I’m using it all the time and ignoring patrons, that makes sense. But some of the sites the survey listed as blocked are just strange. Del.icio.us??? They don’t want the staff to store and share important bookmarks?

Have you ever worked in a place that blocked even staff access to some websites? (I don’t mean filtering for sex, language, etc., but in more of a “preventing staff from wasting time on the computer” sense).

Library Systems - Post #6

Well, it seems inevitable that each of us has a "technology is a pain in the butt sometimes" post on here, and my time has come at last.

First of all, I share a lot of people's frustrations with the case study assignments. I had a hard time getting my head around the concepts in the first one, but once I did, I found it relatively easy to lay out a diagram in Microsoft Word. For the second case study, I thought I would use Word again. After I laid out my flow charts on paper (which only took maybe a couple hours), I started using Word’s flowchart features and thought it would be just a couple more hours. Then the horrors began. For some reason I still don’t understand, I was totally unable to make arrows connecting the boxes; I could draw an arrow between them, but if I moved a box, the arrow wouldn’t stay connected. I fooled with that for an hour or so, then naturally, I began to panic. I tried using Powerpoint , but I had the same problem. Finally, I tried Gliffy, which I probably should have gone with from the beginning. It was (fairly) easy to use, though trying to keep all of those arrows separated from each other was pretty frustrating. I’m glad I didn’t wait until the last minute to do this!

So essentially, my homework took a couple of hours to actually do, and about eight (ugh) hours to implement. I guess computer graphics tools haven’t quite caught up with pencil and paper. Then again, there was probably some user error involved.

I could have also told the story about my 3 minute podcast for another class that took half an hour to write, another half hour to record, and 3 hours to edit! Technology 2, Joel 0.

Library Systems - Post #5

Since last Thursday, I've been thinking about the wikis we'll be working on, and the audiences they'll be intended for. Since we'll be creating training materials for the wikis, it's important that we know our audience and tailor our training materials toward them. Thinking about this reminded me of a story I read about on the blog LISNews about a study conducted by a British research group. Both Library Journal and a tech blog called Ars Technica reported on it. The study was called "Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future". Some of their findings were pretty scary, if not all that surprising.

The LJ article mentions that the researchers discovered that the "'Google Generation'—youth born or brought up in the Internet age—is not particularly web-literate, and their research traits—impatience in search and navigation and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs—are becoming the norm for all age-groups." I've definitely noticed this to be true while working at the University Library reference desk; I often have to do a lot of hand holding to get students to the information they need. Unfortunately, when they walk away, I'm not very confident that they'd know how to replicate the search on their own. It's sad to think that adults' research traits are becoming this way as well. This just underscores the fact that our wikis should be well organized and easy to use!

This report also shows that Internet literacy is something that needs to be taught. Duh, it's a skill to be learned just like anything else, but so many people seem to think that knowing how to use a computer is somehow innate now. Fact is, if kids don't get taught (by their parents, or by a librarian, teacher, etc.), they're going to learn from their friends. And chances are, their friends don't really know what they're doing either. Sigh.

Intellectual Freedom - Post #4

Well, here's a strange story, thanks to the Heretical Librarian, "a conservative librarian, documenting radical Islamism's war on intellectual freedom (and other topics of interest)." Frankly, his blog is usually too political for me, but this post was pretty funny (and sad).

It seems that a activist group known as Code Pink has been picketing a Marines recruiting station Berkeley, California. So far, so good. They certainly have the right to do that, just as much as anyone else. But here's the strange thing: the City Council voted 8-1 to tell the Marines that they must leave, calling them "uninvited and unwelcome intruders". And strangest of all, the Council, in a separate 8-1 vote, gave Code Pink its own designated parking space in front of the recruiting station (once a week) as well as a free sound permit (I assume this means they can use powered sound equipment like a microphone). According to someone who works nearby, the protestors are "aggressive, take up parking spaces, block the sidewalk with their yoga moves, smoke in the doorways, and are noisy."

Now, I'm aware that Berkeley is a very liberal city, and it's not surprising that a protest like this would occur, but this surely sets a dangerous precedent. To officially side with one point of view and condemn another completely valid view is certainly unconstitutional and against free speech, not to mention silly. The one thing I could possibly say in the Council's defense is that they possible felt a lot of pressure from influential political groups in the area, where seeming to vote "for the Marines" might be considered political suicide. But alas, such is politics.

P.S. I found another article about the situation where one of the council members stated "I'm ashamed of my vote...The protesters should have free speech - this is where Free Speech was born, after all - but to tell the Marines they are not welcome is shameful." It sounds like this might shape up to be a pretty divisive issue.

Library Systems - Post #4

(This post is only tenuously connected to libraries, but I'll get to that in a minute)

I used to play video games a lot when I was a kid, but ever since I was, oh, probably 18 or 19, I've just not really been very excited about them. I think I lost interest around the time when the controllers had three joysticks, which you somehow had to use simultaneously. If I was playing a game from a first person perspective, my character would end up walking around staring at the ground. Anyhoo, I've gotten back into video games lately thanks to a new one that my roommate got for Christmas: Rock Band! (I would link to the game website, but there's loud music blaring on the front page...just google "rock band" and you'll find it.) If you haven't heard of it, it allows you to "play" songs using a guitar, drums, and microphone controllers. You don't need to know how to play the real instruments; you just push the colored button (or drumpad) corresponding to the color on the screen. It's addictive, and a lot of fun, and great for parties.

The thing about it that sparked this blog entry is the drums. I've tried playing real drums before, and it's not a pretty sight. I've gotten really good at this game on drums, though. And it feels like you're actually playing. So I've been wondering: does this mean that I could actually play real drums now? I wonder if, eventually, schools will use instrument simulators like this to teach music? That idea is a bit scary to me, but that's a ways off in the future.

Ok, to tie this in to libraries: I know that a lot of public libraries' teen areas have video games set up, including Guitar Hero (the same idea as rock band, just guitar only). I'm sure some of them have Rock Band now, too. For some reason, this bothers me...probably just the traditionalist in me ("this isn't what a library is supposed to be!") Do you guys and gals have any thoughts on this?

Intellectual Freedom - Post #3

I recently noticed a flurry of blog posts about Orson Scott Card, who received YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association)'s Margaret A. Edwards Award on January 14th. He's best known for his young adult science fiction, such as Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. The reason this has gotten so much attention is due to Card's controversial, outspoken anti-gay beliefs.

K.G. Schneider at the Free Range Librarian certainly makes her point clear in a post entitled "Orson Scott Card is a Big Fat Homophobe", claiming that giving Card the award is "like the Anti-Defamation League giving Bobby Fisher a lifetime achievement award."

Debra Lau Whelan's article for the School Library Journal states the question succinctly: "If a well-known author writes and speaks about gays and lesbians in a way that many interpret to be anti-gay, should he be given an award that honors his outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens?"

The Annoyed Librarian's humorous spin on the situation includes this remark: "The question comes down to this: should an award honoring an author's work instead be based on the author's politics? That's what YALSA's critics seem to think. Ignore the actual works and instead judge authors by what they do and say outside their fiction."

My head has been spinning from so many different points of view, all of them making persuasive arguments. On one hand, I think that an author's work should be viewed impartially, regardless of their personal views, especially if these views are not explicitly contained in their work. On the other hand, his views could certainly be viewed as damaging to gay teens. The problem is, every author (and every person!) has views that someone, somewhere will find offensive, or even reprehensible. Most people keep those thoughts and beliefs more privately than Card. Should YALSA have chosen someone with a less controversial backstory? I think they made a challenging, courageous decision, even if I don't entirely agree with it.

A brief aside...I wonder how the controversy would change if the situation were different: if the author were gay, or an outspoken Christian, or a hard-line Muslim? There's probably too many variables to know for sure.

Library Systems - Post #3

For this entry, I decided to talk about RSS; though I guess we'll be talking about it in class on Thursday. I thought I would focus on two ways that RSS has already helped me a lot in this class.

First, it has made it a lot easier to keep track of everyone else's blog posts. When class first started, I would go to the "links to blogs" page on the wiki, then click on each individual blog, then see if they'd written anything recently. Then I thought "Duh, this is why RSS exists". Sure enough, Blogger automatically creates an RSS feed for each of our blogs. Using Bloglines (though most people use Google Reader, I guess), I've subscribed to all of our blogs. I even made a special folder to organize them and keep them separate from the other blogs I read. (If you want to subscribe to our blogs, just click on the orange RSS icon in the address bar (in Firefox), or click on the RSS icon next to the home icon (in IE 7).

The other way RSS has helped is in keeping track of changes made on the wiki. There's an RSS feed built into it that lets you keep track of all changes made to any of the pages. This will be more valuable as the semester goes on, and we start adding and changing more things. It's been very helpful in another class I'm taking, where we have to post articles for discussion. Once again, instead of checking a website to see if it's been updated, I can have the updates delivered to me!

Well, I hope I didn't give away Dr. Ball's RSS lecture. I just really wanted to share how RSS has made my classes much easier to handle!

Intellectual Freedom - Post #2

I never would have thought the comics would be a good source for this blog, but a friend of mine showed me this Foxtrot comic strip from Sunday, December 30.

In my opinion, this comic strip is more effective than 100 hysterical blog posts, and in any case reaches thousands more people that don't read blogs.

I've been hearing a lot about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) ever since I started reading a blog called Boing Boing. (A quick Google search tells me that "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" has been mentioned at least 228 times on BB.) One of the ways the DCMA enforces copyright is through Digital Rights Management, or DRM. This is how iTunes limits the number of times you can burn downloaded music, or limits the number of computers you have a downloaded movie on. I’m not quite as militantly against the DCMA as a lot of people are, but I do see the point that in a lot of cases it hampers a person’s ability to freely use the media that they purchased. The DVD issue mentioned in the comic strip is pretty ludicrous, though. Why shouldn’t I be able to “rip” my DVDs to my computer the way I rip CDs? Without doing much research, I would guess the answer is money, or more particularly, the movie studios are afraid of losing profits from people sharing their downloaded movies with other people.

(Oh by the way...I wasn't able to right-click and save this from the site, so I used a screen capture program. Hmm...did I violate copyright law by posting this?)

Library Systems - Post #2

I've been thinking about "information overload" lately, partly due to this post on Michael Stephens' Tame the Web blog (highly recommended, though I have some issues with his tone that I may get into at some point). He's actually talking about another blog post, from David Rothman's blog about medical librarianship.

Rothman says...

"I’m sincerely flabbergasted to hear a librarian (or any information professional) complain that there is “too much data” or “too many RSS feeds”.

“Web 2.0 doesn’t cause an information glut. What causes an information glut is being an information glutton, taking on more than anyone can reasonably manage. There aren’t too many RSS feeds. Rather, there are users who subscribe to too many RSS feeds. The solution isn’t for less data to exist, the solution is smarter, more selective use of the data. The tools that help us filter and manage the information that we care most about are continuing to improve in power and sophistication."

I know that I personally suffer from "information gluttony". I've got 142 feeds in my Bloglines account (that's an RSS feed aggregator). I’ve got…let’s see…254 bookmarks in del.icio.us, and I can’t even remember what half of them are, or if I need them. I have a bad habit of bookmarking something, or subscribing to a feed, or writing myself a note about something, and saying “oh I’ll get back to that later, when I have time”. Problem is, I either don’t have time or don’t use my time wisely.

I’m not ready to make a New Year’s resolution or anything, but I think it would be healthy for me to cut back on something, and give myself more time in other areas.

Have any of you discovered any good methods for dealing with information overload?

Intellectual Freedom - Post #1

"Family shocked by web images at library"

I probably don't even need to explain the contents of this article from Tampa Bay, FL. A father and his ten year old son visit the public library, the father sees a patron viewing what appears to be pornographic materials (and possibly with his hand on his pants), Dad complains and leaves, Mom hears about it, gets angry, and is presumably the reason the story was reported.

We seem to hear about this kind of thing happening all the time. I was surprised at the somewhat balanced tone of the story, as opposed to the “Your public library – the new Sodom and Gomorrah” angle. (There was a TV story in Cleveland like this; if I find the link I’ll add it in here). I think this story is still trying to be sensational, though, especially with the headline.

The mother’s ignorance is pretty sad. She says “you've got to watch them 24/7 even in a public library, a place mostly for children.” I’ve never known a public library to be mostly for children, or mostly for adults. Also, she sounds like she’s maybe a little upset that the library can’t be her babysitter.

The author quotes the library director as saying that “there is a fine line between censorship and appropriate behavior”. From what is reported in the article, I think the librarian(s) did exactly what they should have, with the information that they had. They had a policy in placed, they enforced it, and they didn’t overstep their bounds.

A brief aside: I think one of the worst aspects of the Web 2.0 world is allowing comments to be posted to pretty much any news article in any online source, including reputable newspapers. While people certainly should have freedom to voice their opinions, a brief glance at these comments will turn up hateful speech, bad grammar, and faulty reasoning. How that makes the world a better place I'll never know.

Library Systems - Post #1

I'm very excited about this class, and not just because it's my last semester!

I’ve always felt pretty comfortable with technology. I grew up with computers (I got my first one when I was 6), and I’ve always been interested in checking out what’s new. I feel that it’s especially important for me as a SLIS student to familiarize myself with new technologies, not only to learn how to use them, but also to gauge their effectiveness in a library setting.
My first exposure to Web 2.0/Library 2.0 was in Dr. Ball’s Online Searching class. Part of our assignment was to create an account on del.icio.us, a social bookmarking tool. While I found it a bit awkward to use at first, I’ve since abandoned in-browser bookmarking and use del.icio.us exclusively. I've also joined social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the usefulness of certain kinds of Web 2.0 technology in libraries. I think the benefits of blogs and RSS feeds are pretty obvious; blogs allow for libraries to share news and other content with patrons quickly and easily, and RSS feeds make it simple for patrons to receive this content. However, with things like Twitter and a lot of the more specialized social networking sites, I have a hard time seeing them as effective tools for librarians. I think there is a danger in diving right into whatever is the latest thing, and proclaiming "This awesome flashy new technology will totally make more patrons use the library!”. I think a more balanced approach should be taken. Ask yourself, “Does this technology really help me do my job better?”

I hope I didn’t use up all my thoughts on technology in my first post!