Following up on some earlier commentary, Darci Chapman reports that the Passaic system is delaying its vote on privatization. Let's hear it for inertia!
Ed Felten has a reasonable suggestion to help libraries deal with accommodating the CIPA decision: open-source censorware. Hopefully, this idea creeps into the development community...and I mean soon!
INFOZO again comes through with a weblog I hadn't seen yet:
The Creative Librarian - The Creative Librarian is a hub for matters important to librarians/information scientists of today. There is a definite lean towards electronic issues, however is isn't restricted to only those. Hopefully this site will also be useful for informing non-librarians on these issues as so many of them affect us all.
And this one came to me as a dmoz submission:
-=(In Between)=- - A weblog on scholarly online publishing, open access, and library related technology.
Update: Sorry, I had the wrong URL for The Creative Librarian. It's correct now.
Christine from the aforementioned class at Wisconsin wrote about her experience of perusing my dmoz LIS>Weblogs category (great choice, although, Christine, dmoz is much more than just a directory of blogs).
She was hoping to find in LIS blogs more cross-fertilization of ideas and interblogular (?) discusssion of pressing library issues, much like she has found on the listservs:
I briefly poked around clicking on varies sites and the trend seemed to be that public libraries are using them as in information bulletin board advertising the library’s current events. What I did not see, and what I was looking for was a dialog between librarians and how they were coping with challenges in the work place. For example, tips on fund raising for public libraries, suggests to on how to promote your special library or creative ways academic libraries are handling budget cuts. Perhaps given some more time library blogs will move towards these types of discussions.
Now of course a blog tied to an actual library has to be more discrete than to discuss the politics of library operations and "how we deal with our paltry budget." But that's no excuse for the rest of us. Maybe we could use an issues/discussion-based, rather than news-based LIS collaborative blog. Hmmmm......
That said, blogs and listservs are not the same and shouldn't be.
what I was looking for was a dialog between librarians and how they were coping with challenges in the work place
The main challenge for librarians is managing change, whether technological, political, financial, what have you. Keeping up with the LIS blogging community is particularly effective in coping with technological and political change. The important news comes down these pipelines long before it reaches the masses.
Blogs are both a currency tool and an advocacy tool. When enough of us write about CIPA and point to the SCOTUS decision, it shows up on Popdex and thousands more read it. Blogs also demonstrate the creativity, diversity and *individuality* of librarians in a way that is impossible on a listserv.
Listservs foster intense (sometimes unnecessarily so) discussion amongst our ranks; blogs open up that discussion to the world. Listservs are topically focused, while blogs are free, unfettered and therefore better equipped to view the LIS world cross-topically.
My point is that there is room, and in fact need, for both blogs and listservs in our domain. They are both undoubtedly professional tools, but it would be missing the point to hold them to the same expectations.
Although I didn't notice the word privatization anywhere, Peter Scott linked to presentations from a conference entitled Outsourcing library and information services: threat or opportunity?, which at least acknowledges the inherent tension in the concept.
Since we're on the subject of TrackBack, I may as well unveil my newest pet project, which I am apparently calling Indiana Blogs!. There are two components:
1. Your ordinary Blogroll featuring blogs by authors stationed in Indiana.
2. The meat of the thing is an attempt to implement TrackBack to aggregate posts written by Indiana bloggers. By encouraging bloggers to ping the site whenever they post, I can display excerpts and hope to provide a nice cross-section of Hoosier blogging.
If you want to see a similar content aggregating project in action, check out Blogroots Blogpopuli, which collects posts about weblogs.
So if you know someone in Indiana who a) blogs or b) has some web design skills, send 'em my way: greg [at] lishost dot com.
Kudos to Steven for finally implementing TrackBack. The credit is mine, all mine. Let the pinging begin!
Thanks to the power of Trackback, I discovered an entire class worth of thoughtful, interesting blogs crafted as part of a summer course at The School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison:
875: A course about the mass organization and retrieval of information on the web. On the web.
Yeah, baby, yeah! Just the course syllabus alone has me drooling with envy. Start with the instructor's blog, but don't neglect the fellow travelers (especially the clearly wise Toby).
If you actually come to my site, rather than viewing this in your aggregator, you may have noticed I've been toying with certain elements of the style. Since these may not appear to be substantial changes, you may be wondering why. And the answer is accessibility. I have been very negligent in designing for people with lower screen resolutions than mine (1280x1074) and my server stats tell me that means just about everybody.
I haven't intentionally viewed a page in 800x600 in years, but when I did, I was stunned to see the whole layout essentially broken with the sidebar disapperaing into the netherworld and a single post taking up well over a screen. So towards remedying those issues, I've made some changes that are somewhat less appealing on my screen, but hopefully more comfortable on yours. Any comments?
Since Amazon never got around to providing syndication for new product info, Lockergnome did it for them. There's more than 160 new feeds covering almost all of Amazon's product categories. Now I too can keep up to date on the latest in baby travel systems.
Looks like someone goofed at Blogstreet this morning. The displayed site belongs to one of Blogstreet's developers, so it could be a genuine mistake, but I like to think it's a little retribution for not putting Open Stacks in their database.
Update: That didn't last long, as you may have figured. But my absence continues...
{Jestful CIPA commentary}
As evidence of the inefficacy of filtering, Simon says (sorry) that he couldn't access Library Stuff at work due to the filters on his computers. He was unable to identify the offensive elements, but I'll be damned if I don't at least try.
Of course, Steven is a dirty, dirty man and the phrase "get the stuff every day" is just fraught with innuendo unacceptable for children (whether it's visible to filters or not). Other questionable phrases? You bet.
"C'mon and join the party" - 1-999-LIBERRY. Our 'professionals' are online and waiting for you.
"will not be reading Harry Potter" - No kid should ever see those words together!
"attending the Dixie Chicks concert" - That's un-American!
"tool" and "nuts" - No comment
From the OPML list:
"Big Pink" - Whoa, nelly!
"Good' Sharewood" - Yikes!
"Fuzzystuff" - Hmmm....
"Open Stacks" - How dare he!
"Agnostic" - Well, that's the last straw. To the blacklist with you, Steven M. Cohen!
{/Jestful CIPA commentary}
So on the suggestion of Search Engine Watch, I downloaded the HotBot Quick-Search Deskbar. Look out people, I think we have a winner.
First, this little workhorse opens through the right-click menu in your taskbar, so it doesn't shrink your window size like plugin browsers. Pop a term into the search box and it searches one of the four main search engines (FAST, Google, Teoma, Inktomi) and makes it easy to switch between them. But that's just the beginning. It has a (seriously) huge menu of reference applications that it can also drop your search term into.
Imagine that you're new to XML (perish the thought). So you run a basic search with the engines, but you want a little more focus. With your term still in the search box, you peruse the menu hierarchy and see Webopedia. Selecting it drops your term right in to Webopedia and brings up the definition.
Plus there's a handy shortcut syntax for each resource. Wanna see what Amazon has on XML? Type 'amaz XML' into the box. Bam! There are some issues with the shortcuts - if you wanted to search the term RSS, you will be taken to Feedster as rss is the shortcut. Nonetheless, this is astonishingly cool.
I can't get over how much there is and how painless it is to use. Track stocks, track packages, hex conversions, currency conversions. It just goes on and on. Try the phone number speller. It takes your # and generates some amusing possibilities.
This is some serious good stuff and all from one application. Extremely impressive.
Saw an interesting new RA tool posted on Metafilter today:
Whichbook lets you choose from up to four appeal factor extremes (unpredictable vs. expected, for instance) and set your preference on a sliding scale. It then returns suggestions based on your parameters. You can also set character, plot and setting preferences through similarly nifty interfaces.
Acting in Steven's place while he enjoys his evening out, I was over at INFOZO today and noticed two links to weblogs I hadn't seen before:
The Library Monk - Things of interest to Dan Greene, other librarians and information professionals, and perhaps monks...
Anyone who uses Albrecht Dürer artwork in their site design gets my automatic seal of approval.
Not as new, but still new to me (and therefore dmoz.org):
either/or (dot) org - Matt Grayson, grad student of information science at the university of tennessee. this site is driven by the things that interest me - usually that would includes things like web design, information design, information architecture, web standards, and technology in general. but every now and then i'll pipe up on the news, culture or life in general.
So there's this article today linked from LISNews about Passaic's (NJ) consideration of turning over library operations to LSSI. Now I've commented on privatization before, but this time it's the relationship between the city and the library that raises my ire. To wit:
"It's being rushed through without much attention and thought. We've only had the last three weeks to look at it," said library Director Kathleen Mollica, referring to a proposal from LSSI. "Apparently, the city has been looking into this since February."
Schaer said that he has indeed been talking to representatives from LSSI for the past several months.
"Before we suggested this to the library trustees, we wanted to make sure that this was the right thing," he said.
Excuse me? What qualifications do you have to make that decision, Mr. Schaer (who serves as the City Council President)? Heaven forbid the library be involved in the needs assessment.
It gets worse:
To encourage the nine-member board to vote affirmatively, Schaer and the council offered to add an extra $50,000 to next year's library budget.
Well, whoopty-doo! That's almost enough to pay someone with the qualifications to make such a decision. Almost.
Add to this equation a mayor who is heavily in support of privatization, yet does not possess a library card:
"We need better things, better equipment. And I think that's the way to go," he said.
Note the vagueness. He appears less qualified to speak to the issue than the guy surfing porn in the computer lab. At least the board president is honest:
"I have no judgment at this moment as to whether this is a great idea or a lousy idea," he said. "More understanding of what the proposal is needs to be clarified."
Well, I wouldn't go looking to the City Council for answers.
I'm sure I'm not alone in fearing for the citizens of Passaic and mourning the imminent demise of their public institution.
Bookslut posted a link to Time Magazine's 50 Best Websites. Most of the selections will be pretty familiar (read lame) to a web-savvy (and pop culture loving) information professional, but there are some noteworthy selections, including the Bookslut herself. My main issue with the list is its apparent NY-obsessiveness (is there a word for that? - Bigapplophilia?):
Gawker as the best News and Info Blog?!?!?
These sites are all well and good, but there seems to be a suspicious level of bias (and mainstreamness) that repels me from taking their suggestions seriously.
I expected to see more coming down the pipelines from the conference, but so far I've only seen Jessamyn's report. So instead, I'll take a cue from the Blog Driver's Waltz and provide you an assessment of my Buzzosity:
(Sorry, I had to remove the score box. The script was interfering with page loading. My last score was 470.)
The buzzwords I employ the most frequently are "blog" and "content." Apparently, "convenient" is also a buzzword, although how exactly I couldn't be sure.
The most buzzworthy of all? Microsoft, of course, employing frequent use of the terms "business" "management" "solutions" and stringing them together with aplomb.
Sorry for the disappearing act, but I was having IP address conflicts on my broadband connection for the past 40+ hours.
I wanted to provide a somewhat more authoritative opinion than my own regarding screen readers and the order of content on websites. Fortunately, Phil Bradley came through with a link to this Pandia article offering 14 tips and techniques for making your site accessible. It not only speaks to the "content on top" principle, but some other really good ideas that I hadn't considered.
As an update to an earlier post, I report with displeasure that due to the predictable budget cuts, the MLK, Jr. Middle School blogging experiment is no more. Best wishes to the project's originator, Pat Delaney at his new cross-town gig. One library's trash will undoubtedly prove to be another's treasure.
Given the recent discussion on making your website accessible, I thought I should direct you to a new service that I discovered via Ben Hammersley today. BrowserCam is a web design tool that will provide a screen capture of the URL's of your choice in a wide variety of browsers and operating systems. This is great if you don't happen to have a Mac or Linux box to test out your coding on. It's frightening to see how your CSS is 'handled' by old versions of Netscape. BrowserCam is offering a free 8 hour trial, which should be enough time to see what kind of accessibility nightmares you have on your hands, but not enough time to fix them.
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.
Steven posits that future aggregators should be heading in the direction of providing only relevant information rather than making us do all the filtering ourselves.
I don't know Steven. I can't say I'm interested in aggregators that make relevance decisions on my behalf. All I want is a single mechanism to look at all *potentially* relevant sources. I can only imagine how much I would miss if what I read became based on an algorithm, even if that algorithm is constantly updated to reflect my reading patterns. Maybe it would be helpful if the program was able to highlight items it believed were *more* relevant, leaving the ultimate decisions to the end-user. I think the future of librarianship is still predicated on the idea that humans will always be the most subtle filters of relevance. Now an aggregator that helps me locate and identify potentially relevant sources, that would be something.
I was checking out the winners of this year's Webby Awards and found some really fascinating stuff I hadn't encountered before:
Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus - Offered in both an online and desktop format, this reference tool gives you a manipulable graphical representation of your selected terms, allowing you to explore interrelationships between words. Really engaging stuff.
BrainPop - An educational site filled with great animations, quizzes, games, etc. There are many sites that work in the same domain, but this is amongst the elite.
Theban Mapping Project - Working toward a comprehensive archaeological database of Thebes. Be sure to check out the Atlas of the Valley of the Kings - a genuinely worthwhile timesuck.
There are many other sites worth exploring amongst the nominees, so check it out.
I am quite pleased to report that today one of my close high school friends shared with me his intention to pursue the MLS (or related) degree. What really makes me happy is that he turned to me for insight. Not three weeks out of the program and I already have the opportunity to serve as a mentor and spokesperson for pursuing the degree. Now all I need is the job to back up all the great things I have to say about the merits of LIS education.
Incidentally, not long after my interview today, I was called regarding a different position within the same system. Looks like I have an interview. This time the position is more technology and instruction oriented, which plays to a different (although entirely related) set of skills than the managerial position. No matter what happens, I'm thrilled that there are librarians who see something worthwhile in what I'm presenting on paper. I hope they feel even more strongly about me in person.
Congratulations. You have found the new (and hopefully semi-permanent) home of Open Stacks. With this post, I consider the transition to LISHost successful. I guess it's time to pay up.
please take a gander at my newly redesigned resume and let me know what you think. I'm particularly interested in cross-browser display issues, but welcome comments on content, design and format as well. Thanks.
Michael Stephens at Tame The Web reports the onset of a pilot blogging program at St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, IN. Two of his colleagues already have new blogs underway: Joe Sipocz's Book Blog and Julie Hill's Sights and Sounds Blog. Kudos to Michael for his initiative and well wishes for the project's success.
I just received an email from a former schoolmate announcing that the UIUC ALA chapter has been selected as the ALA Student Chapter of the Year. Although I wasn't really involved, some of my close friends and colleagues deserve credit for the apparent success. Hopefully, this recognition will inspire some genuine activism within the ranks, instead of the perfunctory fundraising/film screening kind of stuff that keeps me away from student organizations in general. In particular, I'd like to see an advocacy committee that organizes opportunities for lobbying and the like. Still, this is great news for UIUC GSLIS, so I'm pleased.
On the advice of Simon, I've signed up for The Informed Librarian Online, a free newsletter dedicated to "Professional Reading for the Information Professional." Quoting Simon: "It's a monthly e-newsletter which provides links to the contents pages of various library and info science journals. It also links to the full-text or abstracts if they are available online." In addition, they provide a list of recently published books of potential LIS interest. Many of the listed journals are of the variety listed daily on Peter Scott's blog, but collated for your convenience.
Steven has done more to expose this blog than anyone on the planet, so I am happy to return the favor. Today, he posts about a completely web-based conference taking place from October 20-24. The Learning Times Library Online Conference 2003 features a variety of interesting presenters (including a keynote from the man himself).
Unfortunately, as an unemployed information professional, these sorts of things are well outside my budget. I'll be lucky to afford a tank of gas to get to my interview. But I digress.
The conference board is still seeking submissions for papers or other deliverables to present virtually. Apparently, a reduced registration fee exists for those with accepted submissions and it's a chance to learn some cool online presentation tools. Definitely worth a look.
Just wanted to let everyone know what's been going on and why I haven't been posting lately. As I've mentioned before, I'm trying to move Open Stacks over to LISHost. It has not been as smooth a transition as Blake had predicted, but not for lack of trying. I think we're going to attempt a different approach, but Blake has been busy moving and with other life/work-oriented pursuits. So my blog is in a sort of limbo for the time-being. I might add that all of this effort should be seen as a strong endorsement of Blake's work and LISHost on the whole. He really has put a lot of time into sorting out the endless Movable Type complexities and apparently has learned much in the process. Glad I could help. Stay tuned.