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:: I am back from Toronto and Kitchener. Tomorrow I drive to Calgary to attend the CLA Conference. The week in Ontario was fun, rewarding, and very busy. It was also stiflingly hot and muggy, with temperatures hovering between 30-35C every day (86-95F), high humidity, with smog alerts issued daily in Toronto. I had a wonderful visit with my Great Auntie Anne, whom I had not seen since I was too young to remember. I spent two days in Kitchener visiting my friends, Jason and Brenda, also a very nice and relaxing time. More on the trip later.
:: Interesting interactive quiz about Canada from the Globe and Mail, called What Canadians Think About Everything. I scored 14/20. Damn that heartbreak question.
:: Today is the last day of the SLA Conference in Toronto. It's been interminably hot, and I've had four morning meetings in a row beginning at 0730, 0730, 0730 and 0700 hrs. I've had a good time, an exhausting time, it's been great to see old friend, and make a few new ones. Anyway, I was leaving the final morning meeting an hour ago, and while walking towards the general conference meeting area, noticed a fellow conference attendee walking in the opposite direction towards me, apparently holding something in her hands. As I got closer, I realized that she was knitting while she was walking.
It's bad enough that occasionally in sessions at library conferences, I notice the occasional audience member knitting, quietly adding to the staid, dowdy stereotype image of the librarian, that of loving only cats, books, and wool. But while they're walking? Good grief. Can you say obsessed? Can you say addiction?
I have nothing against knitting (or cats or books for that matter.) Some of my dearest and best friends knit. My grandmother knitted me Christmas bells. But enough already! I'm sorry, but while attending and participating at a professional conference, knitting is inappropriate, and unprofessional.
That sound you hear is me banging my head against the desk in my hotel room.
:: Everything continues to move at a fast pace. Tonight I blew away Norton Internet Security 2005, despite having paid for a full year's subscription. I'd grown tired of its increasing sluggishness, error messages, and for the past couple days, preventing me from connecting to my ISP. I replaced it with avast!, at the suggestion of Geoff. I've been running Microsoft AntiSpyware, which seems to function quite well as a firewall for now. The only thing I don't like about avast! so far is that it unleashes a siren sound, followed by a woman's voice saying, "Warning, there is a virus on your computer"; however, I could turn the sound off, but for now, I'm still learning how to use it.
:: I am pleased to report the publication of an article1 co-authored by your humble correspondent and the amazing Geoff Harder, my friend and colleague (on the other side of the wall in my office). The article, "Weblogs: Their Use and Application in Science and Technology Libraries", briefly covers the history of blogs and considers how they can be put to good use in the science and technology library setting:
Weblogs, or blogs, emerged in the late 1990s on the Web, quickly becoming a new way to communicate ideas, opinions, resources and news. Since that time, the community of blogs has grown to encompass specific subject areas of study and research. This article briefly discusses the history and background of blogs, including blogging software. Literature searches suggest very little has been published on subject-specific blogs in scientific and technical publications. Applications in science and technology librarianship are discussed, including team and project management, reference work, current awareness, and the librarian as blog mentor for students.Please note that my work e-mail address listed in the article and on the Haworth web site is incorrect, and should read randy.reichardt@ualberta.ca.
I've written or co-written a small number of articles in my professional life, but this is the first peer-reviewed article I've had published, which is a nice accomplishment, if I may be so bold.
1. Reichardt, Randy and Geoffrey Harder. 2005. "Weblogs: Their Use and Application in Science and Technology Libraries." Science & Technology Libraries, 25(3), p105-116.
Update: The pdf version of the article is here.
:: Word is out that President Bill Clinton has been added to the list of general session speakers at SLA in Toronto. From a post on SLA-ENG today:
This morning it was announced to the Board, that former President Bill Clinton recently agreed to be a general session speaker for the SLA Toronto meeting. He will speak on Wednesday morning , from 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. This is really exciting news! We wanted the conference planners to be among the first to hear. Promotional and PR Information is being developed and will be sent out as soon as we are able to the entire membership. We do not foresee this conflicting with any division programming, except as mentioned earlier, Wednesday morning sessions will now begin at 7:00 a.m.
:: This is work-related, but I'll share it with you anyway. The March/April 2005, v3 n1 issue of Ei Update is available for viewing, featuring updates on faceted searching and the forthcoming study: Role of Information in Innovation 2005. Ei is Engineering Information in Hoboken NJ, the company that produces the Compendex database, which indexes and abstracts the important engineering literature of the world. Some of you may remember the many trips I took to NYC between 1993 and 1998, all of which were to attend a committee meeting at Ei's offices in Hoboken, followed by a few days of hanging out in Manhattan.
The Librarian's Corner for this issue of the Update was written my your humble engineering librarian-type weblogger, and is called RSS: Moving Into the Mainstream.
:: As my friend Tony Dalmyn noted, I didn't include a link to Michael Gorman's original column in the LA Times, Google and God's Mind, in the previous post about his Library Journal column about blogs, so there it is. I mention this because I want to draw your attention to a new blog, Quædam cuiusdam by esteemed colleague Peter Binkley, Digital Initiatives Project Librarian at the University of Alberta, in which he offers an insightful, informed and educated response to Gorman's take on the Google project. Peter works on Peel's Prairie Provinces, a major digitization project to enhance and improve access to the history of the Canadian prairie provinces:
Peel's Prairie Provinces is a resource dedicated to assisting scholars, students, and researchers of all types in their exploration of the history and culture of the Canadian Prairies. The site contains both an online bibliography of books, pamphlets, and other materials related to the development of the Prairies and a fully searchable collection of the full texts of many of these items. As of September 2004, the Peel bibliographic database holds some 7,200 titles, approximately 2,500 of which have already been rendered in digital form and mounted on the Web site. These materials are extremely varied in terms of their content and provide an extraordinarily diverse picture of the Prairie experience. These items date back to the earliest days of exploration in the region and include a vast range of material dealing with every aspect of the settlement and development of the Canadian West. These sources are also highly diverse in regard to the cultural experiences that they reflect. Although English-language titles predominate, the databases contain a very substantial body of materials in French, Ukrainian, and numerous other languages.
The project is based on resources documented in Peel's Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies. Gorman calls digitization projects "expensive exercises in futility", easily interpreted by Peter as "wasting my time." Scholars working in this area would beg to differ. Tony notes that Google "is a dumb brute which brings up lots of commercial and promotional sites and lots of oddball sites on any given search." Fair enough, but it's here to stay and is indexing scholarly material (such as IEEE Xplore, for example), and thus providing access to thousands of peer-reviewed publications (among others), including the full-text, if the user is on an IP-authenticated computer. Students are using it before any proprietary, scholarly database more often than not. Librarians face the task on a daily basis of informing students of the scholary datatabases available to them in addition to, but not necessarily in lieu of, Google.
That said, with the advent of Google Scholar, as mentioned, anyone can run a search and receive dozens, hundreds of citations to publications found in scholary journals, conferences, etc. Someone working in electrical engineering can run their search on the IEEE db, run the same seach on Google Scholar, and receive more results, because other scholarly publications are indexed there besides the IEEE db.
Perhaps Mr Gorman needs to rethink his dismissal of Google's archiving project, drop the nasty tone ("Boogie woogie Google boys"? - give me a break), and revisit the issue. I wonder, is he upset because Google is undertaking something libraries might have be doing themselves, rather than in partnership with Google?
Discussion will continue. Mr Gorman's dismissal of weblogs, subsequent to his criticism of the Google digitization project, is ironic, given the interesting and thought-provoking discourse that has followed on so many of them. For that reason, he is to be genuinely thanked - many librarians and others outside the field are engaged in valuable debate as a result. Read Barbara Fister's "Google's Digitization Project - What Difference Will It Make?", in Library Issues, v25 n4, March 2005, for another perspective. Now I have to get back to work. (As posted to STLQ.)
:: My mind has been elsewhere for the past few days, for reasons known to some of you. Here in Edmonton, a few days of grey skies and wet, clammy weather ended today, with that bright, shiny thing called Sol beaming light and warmth on the city, improving everyones' moods.
I spent part of today at the TELUS Centre, where NanoForum Canada is being held. As one of the engineering librarians, building and maintaining the UA Libraries' collections in nanoscience and nanotechnology is my responsibility. NINT, The National Institute for Nanotechnology, is housed on our campus, and will move into its own building when construction is completed in 2005. At this time, faculty from at least nineteen different departments on campus are working and/or have research interests in nano-whatever.
It would be interesting to prepare a list of all the new words entering the language that begin with the prefix "nano". Today I learned two new ones: nanorosette, and nanostencil. No, "Nanook" doesn't count. A rosette is a six-membered supermacrocycle. Rosette nanotubes that self-assemble could be used as tiny scaffolds. The chemist leading this area of research is Hicham Fenniri, formerly of Purdue, but now working at the U of A as a chemisty professor and a NINT researcher.
:: With Geoff Harder, I maintain another blog, STLQ. I was pleased to learn that STLQ has received some press of late. Stephen Abram mentions STLQ in the latest issue of Information Outlook, and the blog was highlighted twice, once in a brief review, in the latest issue of SciTech News, the newsletter of a number of SLA divisions.
:: Jenny mentioned a new book out this month that I think will be worth reading, especially since I'm old enough to have lived through the period in question. The book is Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics, Edited by Jim DeRogatis and Carmél Carrillo:
Kill Your Idols is a collection of 34 essays in which some of the best rock critics of Generations X and Y address allegedly “great” albums that they despise. This anthology is every bit as thoughtful, provocative, entertaining, and valuable as Stranded, but it also returns some vital, stimulating debate to the canon of rock and roll history. Kill Your Idols is a spirited assault on a pantheon that has been foisted upon this new generation of music critics, a defiant slap in the face to the narrow and hegemonic view of rock history presented by the Baby Boom generation’s critics. As a collection of the new generation of rock writers, it is the first of its kind, as well as the first and only anthology devoted solely to critiquing rock and roll’s most sacred cows.Nothing like insurgents kicking dust in the face of the old guard. Go for it, I say. Some of the albums ripped apart by these young lions include The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street, The Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks . . . Here’s the Sex Pistols, and U2, The Joshua Tree. Will it be informed criticism, or Gen X whining? The foreword is available, as are a few reviews.
:: Hello from Nashville. Arrived yesterday on time, spent the evening hanging with a number of good friends, and made a few new ones as well. Watched the Flames game from a sports bar in the Gaylord Opryland, the largest hotel complex I have ever seen in my life. As usual with this conference, I am already running on empty, which means the more caffeine, the more awake and alert I shall be. Attended an academic librarians roundtable this morning (0730 hrs *groan*), but do not have a meeting until 1600 hrs this afternoon.
:: Today in our library, a student was attacked and stabbed in the arm and shoulder by three other individuals, while studying on the second floor. Most of us working in the building weren't aware anything had happened until afterwards. The student apparently bolted from the library, bleeding profusely. Soon afterwards, Campus Security, the Edmonton Police, and other officials were in the building. Currently, a section of the entrance, and the second floor, are sealed off as a crime scene. The incident made the local news, and a statement was issued by the University. In addition, the students on campus are already discussing it online.
The event and its aftermath left most of us feeling a bit unsettled. In my 25+ years as a librarian, I've never experienced anything like this.
Update on 18 March 2004: The Edmonton Journal story has been removed from their website, so here's an account of what happened from the UA Student newspaper, The Gateway.
:: Found on Hilary's site:
- Seattle's new Central Library, opening in May, 2004, is truly on the cutting edge of technology these days. In addition to wireless service available anywhere in the 11-story building, staff will use wireless "smart" communication devices a la Star Trek:
To be able to provide reference service from anywhere in a library would be interesting. We wouldn't be restricted to the information desk area when answering a question by phone, and we could move about the floors of the building without losing contact with a customer.
:: The Directors Guild of America has announced its nominations for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2003. One notable absentee is Anthony Minghella, for Cold Mountain. Overall, it hasn't been the best year for film. Sales of tickets in the USA dropped for the first time since 1991.
:: With the Spirit Rover firmly in place on Mars, the US will now move its search for WMD to the red planet itself. Meanwhile, The Beagle isn't doing too well.
:: The Writers' Union of Canada is "aghast" over cuts to Regina's public library system.
:: I'm a bit cranky tonight. Last night while falling asleep, my right eye began bothering me. This morning I woke to a burning feeling in said right eye, and it has yet to subside. I know, I should have it examined.
:: I was at the Netspeed 2003 conference today in Edmonton, and attended a number of interesting sessions, including ones covering virtual reference services, and PDAs in the library. One of the keynote speakers, Ian Whitten, currently the iCore Visiting Professor at U Lethbridge, and Director of the NZ Digital Library at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, discussed Greenstone Digital Library Software, a suite of open-source software used to build and digitize library collections. During his engaging and at time hilarious talk, he showed us examples of digitized collections created with Greenstone, including this page on castration from Basic Husbandry Practices and Veterinary Care. (The foreword of the book states: "The manuals are based upon experiences documented through a series of intensive field work activities over a one-year period with a group of livestock small-holders living and working in Cavite province of the Philippines.")
Note the picture of the farmer tossing the animal testicles onto a roof of made of galvanized iron. This is an indigenous practice done on hot days, as the belief is that the testicles will dry up faster, and thus so will the wound to the animal.
The attentive crowd watching Ian, myself included, had just finished eating lunch at this point in time.
:: I've been playing around with Blogger sites again, ones I've created to keep myself familiar with how to set up an instant blog on that site. Among these sites is my original blog from July 2002. I need to maintain familiarity so that I might sound somewhat intelligent and coherent when G and I present blogging sessions in the not-too-distant future. As some of you might notice, I'm also experimenting with the font size and styles here as well.
:: I experienced two "firsts" today. At work, we began our Librarian On-Site! service. For the first time in my 25-year career as a librarian, I left the library to do information and reference work, and went to where the users "live", on their turf. I set up shop in a large computer lab, and offered consulting to any engineering student or faculty who needed help. It was a lot of fun, especially in the second hour, when a class of chemical engineering design students descended upon me with a propane pricing and chemical property question.
The other "first" was more personal - I was fitted for a hearing aid. Yah, you read that correctly. It's wonderful getting old. I've had a version of low tone conductive deafness in my right ear since 1985 or so. It's never worsened or improved, so my ear doctor suggested I consider a hearing aid. I'm going to try it for a few weeks, and then decide whether or not to purchase (~$1,500Cdn, just a pile of chump change).
A hearing aid. I can't believe I typed those words. It seems to work well most of the time. It doesn't work well with a telephone or headset or headphones, so I'll have to get used to using the phone in my left ear. It has two settings, one for group noise (used in a meeting or a party), and a basic setting for conversation. The device feels ok in my ear, not too much of a bother, and most people I spoke to didn't even notice it. That's cool because it protects a bit of my vanity, but inside, a small part of me is very, very sad.
:: More news about the OCLC-Library Hotel lawsuit is emerging. According to the Sept 26 Library Journal Academic Newswire (to which I have no e-access, and which I cannot quote for 60 days according to its redistribution rules, and therefore am paraphrasing), OCLC has tried, for three years, to get the owners of The Library Hotel to sign a simple agreement regarding use of the DDC. The agreement would in effect acknowledge that The Library Hotel's use of the DDC was done with permission of OCLC. The owner of the hotel is a man named Henry Kallan, and according to the OCLC lawyer, Joseph Dreitler, they heard nothing from him for two years. Then, in 2002, Dreitler noted that, "He basically told OCLC to get lost." At the moment, the hotel has denied any wrongdoing, and the General Manager, Craig Spitzer, has advised that Kallan is on vacation and will speak with the press when he returns.
At this point, I think I'm siding with OCLC.
Stay tuned. Who would've thought that the library world could get this exciting? I wonder what Melvil would do? Why doesn't OCLC have a press release about this on their web site? And what's up with the Library Hotel Erotica Package, and its special Erotic Literature Room? Mmm...classify that under, "rrrrrrrrrrr".
:: Randy Cohen writes perhaps my favorite column, The Ethicist (ID and PW: podbay), for the NYTimes Magazine. He is the author of The Good, The Bad & The Difference: How to Tell Right From Wrong in Everyday Situations. In the Sept 7, 2003, issue of the NYTimes Magazine, he responded to a question from a high school student regarding the use of online resources at a university attended by her brother, by using his password to gain access. I work at a university with a large number of online resources, and wonder how often this happens, since we are unable to patrol who actually is using passwords when off campus. Here is the question and Cohen's response:
A: If the library access your brother offered was, as I gather, unauthorized, then it wasn't his to offer, and it certainly wasn't yours to accept. (He's not allowed to swipe college office supplies and send them to you, either. Too bad, I know. But that's ethics for you.) Were he to have done the research for you -- something rare in the annals of big brotherhood -- that wouldn't change things. His library privileges, presumably, permit him to do his own work, not to set up a reference service. That he pays a lot of tuition is beside the point: those who shoulder Ivy prices must obey the rules, too.
What's more, the university could indeed lose if all students passed along their passwords to reference-hungry relatives. An overloaded system with delays for legit users is no boon to higher learning. But even if the school doesn't lose, you'd be on shaky moral ground. Yours is the same rationalization of those who hook up their own cable TV's or sneak onto the subway (or, more rarely, hook up their own cable TV's on the subway). For these services to be sustained -- libraries, HBO or IRT -- each user must pay his or her fair share.
On the bright side, there are many fine public libraries right there in Florida (if the Legislature hasn't cut their budget), as well as many publicly accessible sites for online research.
Cohen, Randy. The way we live now: 9-7-03: the ethicist - nuclear strategy. New York Times Magazine, Sept 7, 2003, p28.
:: Well, I am proud, actually, but lately, my profession is doing what it can to make itself look, er, stoopid. First comes the librarian action figure, in which the action involves telling you to, basically, shut up. (Other superhero action figures save the world - our action figure tells you to stop talking.) Now comes word that OCLC, the Online Computer Library Center, is suing The Library Hotel in NYC for using the Dewey Decimal System as its theme. The Library Hotel divides each of its floors according to the DDC, meaning that each floor and room on that floor is dedicated to a specific subject in the classification.
OCLC owns the rights to the DDC, is concerned that people visiting the web site might think the hotel is connected with the owner of the classification system. From the hotel's website:
The Library Hotel in New York City is the first hotel ever to offer its guest over 6,000 volumes organized throughout the hotel by the DDC. Each of the 10 guestrooms floors honors one of the 10 categories of the DDC and each of the 60 rooms is uniquely adorned with a collection of books and art exploring a distinctive topic within the category or floor it belongs to.
:: The stereotypical image of my profession has been reinforced with the debut of a doll wearing sensible shoes, a long, dull dress, and a cardigan sweater, and a moveable arm that "shushes" you. In July, Nancy Pearl, the librarian after whom the doll is based, advised the rest of us in the profession that how we would react to it would be based on how secure we are in our own work:
A better model might have been the Librarian Avenger. Look it up, baby!
Ms Pearl works for Seattle Public Library, and knew she wanted to be a librarian when she was 10 years old. She is the author of Book Lust: Recommended Reading For Every Mood, Moment and Reason. An interview with Pearl is available here. Meanwhile, the backlash from other librarians has been fierce, and the doll isn't even for sale until October.
But hey, judge for yourself! The manufacturer, Archie McPhee, also sells a ceramic smoking baby, Dick, The Albino Bowler, Pee Guy (really!), a pig catapult, and of course, Jesus Christ himself. What illustrious company!
Bottom line: because of the publicity regarding the doll, she'll sell more copies of her book than she could ever imagine, and McPhee will sell more copies of the doll than it could have predicted. Good for both of them, but forgive me if I pass on buying one myself.
Do you own a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)? I don't, but have been thinking about it for some time. Yet technology seems to move faster than one can keep up in the 21st century. Ephraim Schwartz, editor at large at Infoworld writes that General Motors believes the time may be approaching for you to get rid of your PDA.
General Motors announced last week that it will partner with wireless carrier Nextel to use Nextel’s Motorola cell phones with data capabilities to market a field-force management application to its commercial truck fleet customers. The announcement casts a shadow over the future of handheld devices in the business marketplace.The technology includes GPS, Java, and push-to-talk, and in tandem with ease of use, it becomes hard to chose a handheld over a handset. Cell phones are also considerably cheaper than PDAs.By selecting a cellular phone, GM in essence said no to Palm, HP, and Microsoft.
IT departments should consider the reasoning behind GM’s decision before recommending a handheld solution of their own.
Can someone slow technology down for just a few minutes, please? (From: Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends)
:: From the Boston Globe comes this report on the Iraq National Library: " Contrary to widespread belief, the antique books of Iraq's National Library were not stolen by thieves last month but were removed for safe keeping by self-appointed guardians of Iraq's cultural heritage." (Thanks, Derryl.)
In my previous entry, I lamented cynically about the chances of the Province increasing funding to libraries in Alberta. I learned this morning, via a colleague, that this in fact is happening. At the recent Alberta Library Conference, the Minister of Community Development noted that this funding increase was just the start. This is good news, and is encouraging to know the government is seeing value in its investment in local libraries and library systems in Alberta.
:: In today's Edmonton Journal comes a column by Scott McKeen, titled: Civilization's safe after all. Libraries are cool again. Um, er, well...duh. Those of us in the profession have a news flash for Mr McKeen - our hallowed halls of employment were never uncool. Dude. McKeen observes that when All Things Pop Culture exploded (in the 90s, I presume), such as computers (read: Internet), home theatre, big box bookstores, instant gratification, and so on, the prediction was people would stop frequenting libraries, and by extension, their services. I've been a librarian for 25 years, and don't recall any particular point in time when my colleagues and I thought the sky was falling on our vocation and the buildings in which we work(ed). Read McKeen's column, and one might conclude that it's a modern miracle libraries didn't collapse from within when the Internet and Napster and stadium seat theatres and Digimon and all these fast food thrills took hold of Planet Earth. Well, public libraries at least. In academic and college libraries, we've spent the last 10 years doing our best to help students understand why the Internet isn't the Answer to Everything, and why their research and studies will take them to the library and its resources. *Cough*. (BTW, am I the only person who thinks the Edmonton Journal's web site really, really sucks? Like, badly? Unfortunately, the EJ website is the mirror image of all newspapers in Canada owned by the National Post.)
In fairness to McKeen, he does sing the praises of (public) libraries, and notes that Alberta municipalities are lobbying our provincial government for higher library grants. Um, I won't lose sleep waiting for that to happen very soon - increased library funding in Alberta could lead to a better educated populace. God forbid that might happen here.
:: Speaking of public libraries, this is such a cool idea, I wish someone in Canada would do it, too: The Third Annual New York Times Librarian Awards for public librarians across the United States. This year the awards have gone national in the USA.
:: An interesting "editorial observer" on William Gibson by Brent Staples in the 11 May 2003 NYTimes: A Prince of Cyberpunk Fiction Moves Into the Mainstream. (Note: ID and PW: podbay)
:: Have you been following the amazing success of Apple's iTunes? The iTunes Music Store sold over 1,000,000 songs (@$0.99US a pop) in one week. Read Rebecca's observations. Interestingly enough, hackers have already found a way to share the tunes among Macintosh owners.
:: The talk in libraries these days (well, one of the "talks", anyway), is wireless - when are we going there, how can we make best use of it, how will it change what we do, and in the cases of many libraries already wireless, what has its impact been on what we do. The Wireless Librarian brings together resources for librarians and the experience of working in libraries with wireless technology.
Wireless technology has been with us since the 1890s, thanks to Marconi. In the October 1945 issue of Wireless World, Arthur C Clarke wrote a four-page article called "Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?" He proposed that satellites in geosynchronous orbit, spaced 120° apart at 36,000 feet, could achieve instant global communication coverage. Scoffed at initially, his proposed "relays", which would be part of orbiting space stations, evolved into today's communication satellites, or comsats.
Thanks to Derryl for bringing this web site to my attention.
:: Test Below, I mentioned the snow to which we woke up last Sunday. Well, that snow melted, we had a few warm days, and then yesterday it started snowing again. Oh yes, it's May 5th. Anyway, it's been snowing now for 24 hours. It's getting ridiculous. Check out my backyard and the front of my house at 8:30 pm MDT tonight. The grass is green, by the way, and until two days ago, I had plans to mow my lawn for the first time.
In the meantime, to remind me of warmer climes, I uploaded a few photos using a free photo gallery program called Web Album Generator. Thanks to Dania for telling me about this one.
:: Changing gears, this 1 May 2003 editorial in the Wall Street Journal got it right regarding the WHO's embarrassing and baffling travel advisory to Toronto re: SARS, noting that no new cases have been reported in Toronto since April 9th, and that all 144 cases have been traced to one person who had visited Hong Kong. The WHO did lift its travel advisory, and John Fund writes that the American Library Association will make the right decision regarding holding the joint ALA/CLA conference in Toronto, where up to 25,000 people are expected to attend. Thankfully, the day after the editorial appeared, ALA did just that.
:: Did you know that the planets, satellites and spacecraft in our solar system have been assigned IP addresses by the Interplanetary Internet (IPN)? If you are interested, participate in the ongoing discussion. (Thanks, Karlin.)
¦¦ The sickening, unfortunate news from Iraq continues unabated. In addition to 170,000 artifacts in the National Museum having been looted or destroyed, the Iraq National Library was in flames as well on April 13. The building was so thoroughly torched that heat still radiated 50 paces from the front door. From the April 13 NYTimes:
By tonight, virtually nothing was left of the library and its tens of thousands of old manuscripts and books, and of archives like Iraqi newspapers tracing the country's turbulent history from the era of Ottoman rule through to Mr. Hussein. Reading rooms and the stacks where the collections were stored were reduced to smoking vistas of blackened rubble
The US Administration has finally acknowledged the seriousness of the destruction and looting, and has pledged to recover and repair antiquities. One wonders if this will happen.
The destruction of libraries continued with the Islamic Library of Qur’ans set ablaze. Here is an account from the Arab News. I hope all librarians around the world will gather together to help Iraq rebuild its history.
¦¦ The war in Iraq has brought death to many innocents and soldiers, a shortage of supplies, food and water, and the serious need for humanitarian aid of all kinds. Unfortunately, anarchy continues to spread in the larger cities, including Basra.
There have been many photo galleries available with astonishing images of the events as they have unfolded in Iraq in the past three weeks.
For a librarian, this is perhaps the most disturbing image of all: a thoughtless assault on what belongs to everyone: information, knowledge, data, all that is contained on the shelves and via the computers of a library. Who knows what was going through this man's mind as he relentlessly threw the books to the floor of an already badly damaged and abandoned library. I wonder about the students, staff and faculty, there to teach, study and learn, their lives and work interrupted by war. For those fortunate enough to return to this college, it will be a long and arduous time of rebuilding and recovery.
In the past, librarians in first world countries have rallied to help librarians and libraries in less fortunate countries to salvage their collections when serious damage has happened to them, be it the result of fire, flooding, or in this case, war and anarchy. I hope that our larger library community is able to learn, in a short time, more about the extent of damage and loss faced by the library at Basra Polytechnic College, and other libraries in Iraq that may be suffering the same fate. Hopefully we can then respond with help to restore books to their shelves and dignity to their lives.
A library specializing in the history of artificial intelligence, whose collection was built over a 20 year period by one librarian in particular, together with 150 work stations and equipment worth over £500,000 was destroyed by fire in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Dec 14th. Ouch! As a fellow librarian, I empathize with how hard it must be to come to terms with such a loss.
In Florida, a manufacturer is producing a set of trading cards which feature portraits of victims of the Sept 11 attacks. He apparently has the approval of the families of each victim shown on the individual cards, which will sell for $2.50US each. Families will receive 8% royalties. The manufacturer denies he is cashing in on tragedy, but rather, is "providing a service to these families." Do you agree? I don't - I think it's really difficult to justify this. I might be more amenable if all the profits went to charity after costs, but that isn't possible when a for-profit enterprise is behind such a product.
Today in NYC, another seven new plans for the rebuilding of the WTC site were unveiled. My first reactions are not that positive, but I believe I need to study the designs further. The design from Richard Meier and Partners appears as an enormous hash mark from a distance, for example. You can see them here, and vote for your choice. Clicking on each entry opens another window with different views of the proposed sites, and each graphic within the new window moves while you are looking at it, a nice touch. (Warning: pop-up windows)
A fascinating interview with Jessamyn West, creator of Librarian.net, is available in the latest issue of Library Juice.
I don't know if this is the basis for a Broadway musical, but it's a heckuva start, as they might say in Minnesota. This was staged without the other library patrons having any idea what was about to happen, so it appears; watch their reactions. I love it - it's totally brilliant.
In other news, trying to load Gallery nearly reduced me to tears last night. Tonight I mucked around a bit more, downloading and unzipping binary NetPBM files (it's ok, my brain hurts too), and I did some CHMOD shyte. Finally, I submitted a long message on their user forum. I'm beginning to wonder, is it worth it?
So instead, I built my first PHP page last night. I have no idea what the coding means. And I played on my computer, over and over and really loud, Trusty Chords, by Hot Water Music. This is music to exorcise the demons. Listening wasn't enough - I blew the dust from my Telecaster, plugged it into my AmpCan, took a minute to decipher the chord structure of the song, and played along like I was in a punk band. HA!
Today, people at work reaffirmed my faith in humanity.
Isn't life sweet?
Lawrence Lessig, a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, is currently leading a constitutional challenge of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which when passed, extended existing and future copyrights in the USA by 20 years. The campaign is called Free the Mouse, after Mickey Mouse - Disney's original copyright on Mickey Mouse expires in 2003. Lessig is arguing against the continual extension of copyright in the USA, which has happened 11 times in the past 40 years. The argument is that it prevents the flow of creative material into the public domain. There is much more to it, and the essential details are here.
Lessig has lost this case twice, and is now presenting to the US Supreme Court. The October 10th Economist features an update on Lessig's fight to reduce copyright protection.
The copyright issue is a tough one - as a librarian and musician, I can see both sides. When I copy an article 135 times for a class I'm teaching, I complete a log so that proper payment gets made (often not to the author, however). As a musician, I support downloading of music, but not for resale. I don't believe this makes me a hypocrite - musicians like Metallica's Lars Ulrich, who led the charge that brought down Napster, have not suffered greatly from downloading. Those that have suffered need to look in the mirror, and question the quality of their product before blaming the web.
For me, the issue is that through the Internet and downloading, I am exposed to more artists than would be humanly possible otherwise. In many cases, downloading of music has led me to purchase indie CDs I would have never heard of otherwise. The same applies to popular music of late. I borrow music from the public library, and if I like it enough, I'll buy it. If I don't like it enough, I might download one or two songs, and that's it. Why should I fork over hard-earned cash for a product that's subpar at best? I think this is the larger issue facing creators of artistic works.
Janis Ian wrote a convincing essay in favour of downloading, and followed it up with a second piece, on the fallout from her first writing. It's worth your while to read them. She notes, in her second piece, that there are "three operative issues that explain the entertainment industry's heavy-handed response to the concept of downloading music from the Internet". Let me share with you her first issue:
"1. Control. The music industry is no different from any other huge corporation, be it Mobil Oil or the Catholic church. When faced with a new technology or a new product that will revolutionize their business, their response is predictable:
a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
b. Control it. And if they cannot,
c. Control the consumer who wishes to use it, and the legislators and laws that are supposed to protect that consumer." - Janis Ian
