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!