Jessamyn links to this article written by Senator Orrin Hatch in defense of the Patriot Act. The article is, not surprisingly, chock full of vagueness and sidestepping. While there are many passages worth picking apart, this one really caught my attention:

“Nothing in the Patriot Act threatens our cherished Bill of Rights. In fact, the act is expressly designed to enhance our nation’s fundamental freedoms. Moreover, despite the steady drumbeat of opposition by some groups, none of them has cited one instance of abuse against our constitutional rights, nor one shred of evidence to contradict the fact that these tools have saved American lives by preventing terrorist attacks against our people.”

Well, Senator Hatch, how convenient that there is no evidence, when the Patriot Act goes out of its way to prevent said evidence from ever being produced. Can you say “gag order,” Mr. Senator?

Similarly, Mr. Senator, where is this evidence to support the “the fact that these tools have saved American lives by allowing law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent attacks on our country”? Let’s try not to condemn “unsupported arguments” by offering unsubstantiated rhetoric.

Continuing in the Web Words vein, Steph over at Technobiblio, a great new collaborative blog, posted some interesting new developments on the accessibility front: Accessibility options becoming more accessible.

She asks “Can I just state how cool it is to see accessibility issues being addressed in creative ways?” Yes, please do and let’s hope it doesn’t stop here. There is so much to be done. Virtually every library home page and catalog interface could use a redesign with accessibility standards in mind.

Consider a visually impaired person who surfs by having pages electronically read aloud. Now imagine what happens when that person visits a site which has an extensive menu bar on the left and the regularly updated content on the right. Typically, given the way e-readers are programmed, to hear the new content, they will have to sit through a reading of the entire menu bar each and every time they visit.

This is unacceptably negligent. You’ll notice that the well-designed LIS blogs (for example, Library Stuff, LISNews.com and of course, TechnoBiblio) are conscientious of this potential problem, providing content first, sidebar second. This is more about ignorance than design, so it’s crucial that we continue to talk about accessibility and keep these issues in the forefront. Kudos, Steph.

Peter Scott links to a new UK project called Web Words. The concept is to provide a higher level of audiobook browsablility by providing links from catalog entries to mp3s containing samples of the actual reading. Nothing particularly complicated is required to integrate these links as MARC format provides the 856 field specifically for that purpose. Although Web Words is geared toward the visually impaired, I imagine that it will prove useful to others who want to “sample the goods” before investing their time in an potentially inferior product.

I saw this post on Extranet: Library looks at going private. It’s this part that really raises my ire: “No one calls it privatization. It’s more accurate to call it ‘outsourcing,’ said a representative from Library Services Systems Inc., …”

Let me be the first to dispute the claim that no one calls it privatization when you turn over all public library operations to a private interest. This is exactly what I would call privatization, just like Patricia Schuman did five years ago*, and you know what? In the long run, it’s not gonna work, just like it didn’t work in Hawaii.

The reason is simple…public management is accountable to public interest and private management is accountable to the bottom line. How convenient that someone from LSSI would argue the purely euphemistic term “outsourcing” is somehow more accurate. I’m not saying that there are not appropriate and beneficial applications of outsourcing, but turning what is essentially a community center over to outsiders (who bring little or no genuine community interest) undermines the whole conception of public libraries, as far as I’m concerned.

*Schuman, Patricia Glass. “The Selling of the Public Library.” Library Journal
123(August 1998):50-52.

For those of you who couldn’t make it more than fifty pages into Ulysses (admittedly, I’ve never tried), might I suggest Ulysses for Dummies? A sentence or two per chapter coupled with some ancient-looking “animation” makes for a quick laugh or three. And somehow, I found it educational.

I was looking at my referral logs and saw a number of hits from Netbib, a premier German blog. Following the clues, I discovered a very gracious mention of Open Stacks. I love the idea of an international readership, so those arriving here through Netbib: “Willkommen. Dank zum Besuchen meines blog.” Ist das richtig?

Update: Check the comments for authorized German (Thanks, Daniel!).

I’ve been a little behind on my news-reading in the past few days, so I only just came across the news that EBSCO has successfully purchased RoweCom. Representatives from EBSCO paid a visit to my Technical Services Functions class last semester and we were quick to probe them on such a hot topic. It looks like they’re making good on their commitment to manifest a high degree of publisher support to cover expenditures already laid out by RoweCom customers. Given the dwindling financial support from the federal government, it is gratifying to see private sector vendors and publishers unite to do the right thing for their customers. While the acquisition represents a major coup for EBSCO, it should also prove to be great news for the libraries who were left in the lurch in the wake of the original debacle.

Anyone happen to read Jessamyn’s article in the latest American Libraries about her experience with Google Answers? Although I’ve read her thoughts on the experience before, as a regular reader, I liked being described as a “likely critical thinker.” Thanks…right back at ya.

Not surprisingly, this is not the first project to call itself Open Stacks. Although it does not seem to be active, the original “Open Stacks is an online digital library which houses references to key works that form the intellectual foundation of interface ecology.” The linked page also explains what the author means by interface ecology. Be sure to take a look at Collage Machine, apparently another example of interface ecology, which forms a collage of the images found on the pages of up to five user-entered URL’s. I bet it would be cool to combine some of the quality photoblogs for dramatic effect.