Rock on, Brewster Kahle:
Online librarian from S.F. wins his fight with the FBI
"Brewster Kahle, who runs an online library in San Francisco, was appalled when his volunteer lawyers told him in November that the FBI was demanding records of all communications with one of his patrons as part of an investigation of 'international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.' ...
"He was allowed to speak publicly Wednesday under a rare settlement in which the FBI agreed to withdraw its letter and lift the gag order."
Showing posts with label libraries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label libraries. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
National Library Week
National Library Week is fast approaching! In our Digital Literacy class, we are doing a display in Gleeson Library to celebrate. Hooray!
We've each been charged with taking as much responsibility as we are willing, so here is what I will do.
Books!
I will collect the list of everyone's favorite books, and collect them from the stacks. I will make a list of them (with call numbers) to post on the back wall of the alcove, so patrons can see them even if they've been checked out.
Options: I can make something for patrons to write down their favorite books to recommend. We can talk to Gleeson Gleanings about posting our list and encouraging people to respond with their recommendations.
What will I need from the library? If they want to change the status of the books to "display" in the catalog, we'll need cooperation. If someone (e.g. Vicki Rosen) lets them know what I'm doing ahead of time, I can go to the circ. desk and ask them to do it.
If we want to do the book recommendations on Gleeson Gleanings, we'll need someone to do that post.
Fun!
We've each been charged with taking as much responsibility as we are willing, so here is what I will do.
Books!
I will collect the list of everyone's favorite books, and collect them from the stacks. I will make a list of them (with call numbers) to post on the back wall of the alcove, so patrons can see them even if they've been checked out.
Options: I can make something for patrons to write down their favorite books to recommend. We can talk to Gleeson Gleanings about posting our list and encouraging people to respond with their recommendations.
What will I need from the library? If they want to change the status of the books to "display" in the catalog, we'll need cooperation. If someone (e.g. Vicki Rosen) lets them know what I'm doing ahead of time, I can go to the circ. desk and ask them to do it.
If we want to do the book recommendations on Gleeson Gleanings, we'll need someone to do that post.
Fun!
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Gleeson Library Display
Our Digital Literacy class has taken the responsibility to fill this space:
for National Library Week in April. Our display will be in response to the questions:
What do I love about the library?
What do I wish the library offered?
I spent five semesters working at the Gleeson Library, so it's interesting to think about these questions. What I love most about the library is the books. I like Prof. Silver's idea about each of us choosing a few of our favorite books to display. Some books I would like to include are: Who Needs Donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (though it's checked out right now), Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer (also checked out), Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.
Other things I love about the library: the 24-hour atrium, the Thacher Gallery, the old card catalog on the lower level, all the places you can hide in the stacks (especially in the lower level), the carrels (those individual study cubby things - I'm not sure how I know the name for them), and all the online resources (databases, e-books, online journals, etc.). In order to represent these things, I like the idea of taking photos. I see two main options for presenting the photos (and we could do both): 1) We can get photos printed and put them on the wall, 2) We can have a slideshow running on a laptop. My vote is for option 1, first because it will save us table/counter space for other things (like books), and second because most people are just going to glance at this exhibit as they walk by. They'll take in a lot more of the photos if they can see them all at once instead of waiting for them to cycle through on a computer screen.
What would I like the library to offer? Online study room reservation, clearly designated "quiet" and "okay to talk" areas, clocks throughout the library, a better access system than the terrible gates at the front, and more music and movies (also presented more accessibly than they currently are), and book discussion groups. Smarter and nicer patrons would be cool too, but I think that's beyond the library's control. I know I'm not dreaming big here (though I did like the in-class idea of hugs and head massages), but those are practical, doable things I would like to see.
These are harder to represent than what the library has already. I like the idea of a space where patrons can say what they would like the library to offer. That makes more sense to me than just the opinions of seven students and a professor. We could encourage people to draw as well as write. We could provide colored pencils, markers, and crayons. As a digital alternative (or addition), we could set up a computer with a blog (or something) where people could write their suggestions. That way, if people were writing inappropriate things, we could easily delete them.
A fun field trip for our class would be to go into the library storage space on Lone Mountain. You go through the Del Santo Reading Room, and there's a door in the back leading to the storage space. There are a few floors of books that used to be where they had closed stacks at the Lone Mountain College library. Now it's space for books that don't circulate very often. It's dark and hot and stuffy in there. Kind of scary when you're alone. If I were a ghost on Lone Mountain, I would definitely hang out in there.
for National Library Week in April. Our display will be in response to the questions:
What do I love about the library?
What do I wish the library offered?
I spent five semesters working at the Gleeson Library, so it's interesting to think about these questions. What I love most about the library is the books. I like Prof. Silver's idea about each of us choosing a few of our favorite books to display. Some books I would like to include are: Who Needs Donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (though it's checked out right now), Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer (also checked out), Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.
Other things I love about the library: the 24-hour atrium, the Thacher Gallery, the old card catalog on the lower level, all the places you can hide in the stacks (especially in the lower level), the carrels (those individual study cubby things - I'm not sure how I know the name for them), and all the online resources (databases, e-books, online journals, etc.). In order to represent these things, I like the idea of taking photos. I see two main options for presenting the photos (and we could do both): 1) We can get photos printed and put them on the wall, 2) We can have a slideshow running on a laptop. My vote is for option 1, first because it will save us table/counter space for other things (like books), and second because most people are just going to glance at this exhibit as they walk by. They'll take in a lot more of the photos if they can see them all at once instead of waiting for them to cycle through on a computer screen.
What would I like the library to offer? Online study room reservation, clearly designated "quiet" and "okay to talk" areas, clocks throughout the library, a better access system than the terrible gates at the front, and more music and movies (also presented more accessibly than they currently are), and book discussion groups. Smarter and nicer patrons would be cool too, but I think that's beyond the library's control. I know I'm not dreaming big here (though I did like the in-class idea of hugs and head massages), but those are practical, doable things I would like to see.
These are harder to represent than what the library has already. I like the idea of a space where patrons can say what they would like the library to offer. That makes more sense to me than just the opinions of seven students and a professor. We could encourage people to draw as well as write. We could provide colored pencils, markers, and crayons. As a digital alternative (or addition), we could set up a computer with a blog (or something) where people could write their suggestions. That way, if people were writing inappropriate things, we could easily delete them.
A fun field trip for our class would be to go into the library storage space on Lone Mountain. You go through the Del Santo Reading Room, and there's a door in the back leading to the storage space. There are a few floors of books that used to be where they had closed stacks at the Lone Mountain College library. Now it's space for books that don't circulate very often. It's dark and hot and stuffy in there. Kind of scary when you're alone. If I were a ghost on Lone Mountain, I would definitely hang out in there.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Preliminary thoughts on Brewster Kahle
Okay, this is going to have to be a short post because it is getting very late, but after reading this interview with Brewster Kahle, I am completely stoked on libraries. I love this question and answer:
I have mixed feelings about Google. One the one hand, it is a wonderful search engine, and they have lots of really awesome stuff, like Gmail. On the other hand, they have so much power, and while they haven't been too irresponsible so far (I don't think), I am very wary about one company having so much control. I'm sure many of Google's employees have excellent intentions, but as a for-profit and publicly traded company, the primary goal is to make money, which can lead to lots of problems. I haven't spent of a lot of time on the Googlization of Everything, but I'll be interested to read more about this specific issue of Google's power.
Back to Brewster Kahle, the Open Content Alliance sounds wonderful. Books should be digitized, and we need to make it open, free of digital rights management, and accessible to all.
Random information I have learned about Brewster Kahle recently: He is a major donor to Streetside Stories. Also, he (or his people) are able to make an exabyte of space fit in a shipping container. (A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, a petabyte is a thousand terabytes, and an exabyte is a thousand petabytes. That's a lot, folks.) I'm not sure what the implications of this are, but judging by the reactions of the computer science people I was with, this is impressive.
Another quote (also from "Scan This Book!"):
He knows how to go straight to my heart: Pro-free, uncensored, unmediated information and anti-commercial.As a “digital librarian” and an Internet pioneer, how do you view the library system?
I see the library system in this country as a $12 billion industry dedicated to preservation and access of materials that are not mediated through a corporate experience. You don't have to sign a nondisclosure form to come up with a new idea in a library. In libraries, materials are preserved in original form, uncensored. The alternative is that the materials people learn from are forever mediated by a relatively small number of commercial companies in terms of selection and presentation. This is one of the biggest issues facing libraries in the future: what services will they perform, and what services will be performed by companies or by nonprofits acting like companies. If all content is moderated by a few companies in the digital world, we'll have a giant bookstore rather than a library system.
I have mixed feelings about Google. One the one hand, it is a wonderful search engine, and they have lots of really awesome stuff, like Gmail. On the other hand, they have so much power, and while they haven't been too irresponsible so far (I don't think), I am very wary about one company having so much control. I'm sure many of Google's employees have excellent intentions, but as a for-profit and publicly traded company, the primary goal is to make money, which can lead to lots of problems. I haven't spent of a lot of time on the Googlization of Everything, but I'll be interested to read more about this specific issue of Google's power.
Back to Brewster Kahle, the Open Content Alliance sounds wonderful. Books should be digitized, and we need to make it open, free of digital rights management, and accessible to all.
Random information I have learned about Brewster Kahle recently: He is a major donor to Streetside Stories. Also, he (or his people) are able to make an exabyte of space fit in a shipping container. (A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, a petabyte is a thousand terabytes, and an exabyte is a thousand petabytes. That's a lot, folks.) I'm not sure what the implications of this are, but judging by the reactions of the computer science people I was with, this is impressive.
Another quote (also from "Scan This Book!"):
We have to recognize that it's not only possible but it is our responsibility to bring digital services to the world. If we can build this next generation in the open, the same way the open network and the open software infrastructure of the Internet developed, it will be the librarians' day. Media companies, the Googles and Microsofts, they will play their roles. They'll bring things to hundreds of millions. But they will never bring things to our patrons the way we can as librarians.I'm really excited to hear him talk. One question I have is what do they do to protect all this data they're archiving? What do they do to make sure it won't be lost? Do they back it up all the time? Do they have servers spread out geographically? I can just imagine a giant magnet falling on their roof and erasing everything (okay, that probably wouldn't happen, but something along those lines). It's a lot easier to erase digital information, especially accidentally, than it is to destroy a paper book (which this article brings up). This is something I've thought about when people talk about blogs as future historical archives. How do we know it will stay online, especially if someone else is hosting it? Google is doing pretty well for itself now, but things change so fast that it could disappear, along with every blog hosted by Blogger, in just a few years. People who are careful will save it and post it somewhere new, but think of all that could be lost. Web pages can require active maintenance - I know I've had web pages which no longer exist, and many of the web sites I frequented in my early teens aren't there any more. This is why something like the Internet Archive is so wonderful, but they'll have to guard their data carefully. This is another reason it's so good that their work is DRM-free, so if something happens to Internet Archive, their work can still be used by other people.
Sarah Houghton-Jan on the Future of Libraries
For my Digital Literacy class this Tuesday we attended a lecture at the San Francisco Public Library by Sarah Houghton-Jan, a.k.a. the Librarian in Black. She is the Digital Futures Manager at the San José Public Library, and the focus of her talk was on the future of libraries. She identified some of the issues that libraries are facing and talked about some things she sees for the future of libraries.
She talked about a lot, so this is a selection of some of her main points. I'll look forward to reading other people's accounts of/thoughts on the lecture.
She said that libraries aren't used to change, and when technology began to develop so rapidly, libraries were slow to catch on. In the meantime, many companies and the population in general moved way ahead. As a result, libraries lost their role as primary sources of information, being replaced with online resources. At the same time, however, the number of digital library users is growing exponentially. Those are users which only use the library's online resources and never come into the physical library building. She said that libraries are not doing a very good job of counting those people because they never see them. These users are becoming unhappy because their needs are not being addressed. Her advice to libraries: listen to the digital users.
She went through quite a few reasons people don't like or don't use libraries. One problem is that if you want a popular item, a new item, or something the library doesn't have, it's a long and potentially expensive process to get a hold of it. If the library has it but it's checked out, you can put a hold on it, but then you have to wait till that person returns it, and one or more people could have put holds on it ahead of you, meaning you'll have to wait that much longer. Another option is interlibrary loan (ILL), which is slow, complicated, and often costs money (when I worked at Gleeson Library, I would process ILL requests occasionally, and it was simpler than she described, but it is a slow process). She said that she and her husband, who both work in libraries and could literally have materials delivered to their desks, often resort to buying things online so they don't have to wait for them from the library. Something that some libraries have experimented with is when a patron wants something the library doesn't have, the library orders it from Amazon and has it shipped directly to the patron. Apparently Amazon will do some preliminary processing (e.g. barcode, labeling) for the library before sending it. It's turned out to be cheaper and faster than ILL. She has a blog entry dealing with this here. Be sure to read the comments. Even if this became common, I still see an important place for ILL. This is probably more applicable in academic libraries than public libraries, but a lot of things aren't available on Amazon (*gasp*). Many of the ILL requests I processed were for journal articles, for example. I would go up in the stacks, find the bound volume of periodicals, make a photocopy, scan it (most of the time), and send it to the library that requested it. We had this nifty software that is standard enough that most libraries had it, and we could send the document electronically straight from the scanning software; otherwise we would fax or snail mail. I asked her her thoughts on alternatives like Link+ (similar to ILL but among a smaller number of libraries geographically close to each other, way faster, very easy, and free), and she seemed to think it can be good, but if users don't find what they're looking for there, they tend to give up and think that's their last/only option, which is not good.
I wonder how common it is for people to buy stuff when they can't get it immediately from the library. Besides books for my classes, which I usually need for a long period of time, and may need to mark up, I have a really hard time buying books when I know I can get them for free. It has been rare for me to want a book that was not available through any of the libraries I can access (including the Link+ network). Usually that's only been when I'm researching obscure topics for a class. When I do buy books (usually for school), I rarely buy books new if it's possible to get them used for cheaper. If I thought to myself, "Hey, I'd like to read ____" and my library didn't have it on hand, I would not just go ahead and buy it, especially not if I could order it through Link+ and get it within a week. Even if that weren't available, books are expensive, and I wouldn't spend $20 on a whim, especially one I would only want to read once. Maybe I'm just cheap/poor. (As my dad says, "You already have a book." Next time I'm home, I want to take pictures of the huge numbers of books in my house to share with the internet. We have a building in our backyard that used to be a garage, but we converted into a "library room." It is filled with books. I'll save that for a later blog entry.) However, if the only option to get a book a library doesn't have on hand is to buy it, that brings up serious issues of access across economic levels. That's what's so great about libraries: they're free. They bridge economic divides, making information available to everyone. Libraries should do whatever they can to maintain and promote that.
Moving on from that, something interesting she said was that digital rights management is a huge problem for libraries in terms of home access to digital materials. I never would have thought about this, but it makes a lot of sense. She thinks libraries can play a big role in changing this. Along similar lines, she told us that libraries have a very few choices for where to buy their catalog software, and they have to keep paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue using it - not because they're getting new features or upgrades, but just because the companies say they have to. Because of this, libraries are starting to develop open source catalog software. This is something else she sees for libraries' futures. Nice.
Another thing she says libraries need to do is embrace the democratization of information and expertise. Librarians need to let go of telling people the "right way" to do things. Libraries need to allow the user to have more control and incorporate things like tagging, social labeling, decentralized data creation (such as user-created reading lists), and social organization of data. This is interesting and potentially cool, but the little librarian inside me keeps saying "no, no, people will mess stuff up." Fortunately, the little librarian inside of me is probably wrong because people have shown that they're good at this sort of thing and they'll improve what's already there. It's also a really good way to engage people with their libraries.
This is really just a smattering of what she covered in her excellent talk, but I'm sure the things she spoke about will come up again, and I will blog some more.
She talked about a lot, so this is a selection of some of her main points. I'll look forward to reading other people's accounts of/thoughts on the lecture.
She said that libraries aren't used to change, and when technology began to develop so rapidly, libraries were slow to catch on. In the meantime, many companies and the population in general moved way ahead. As a result, libraries lost their role as primary sources of information, being replaced with online resources. At the same time, however, the number of digital library users is growing exponentially. Those are users which only use the library's online resources and never come into the physical library building. She said that libraries are not doing a very good job of counting those people because they never see them. These users are becoming unhappy because their needs are not being addressed. Her advice to libraries: listen to the digital users.
She went through quite a few reasons people don't like or don't use libraries. One problem is that if you want a popular item, a new item, or something the library doesn't have, it's a long and potentially expensive process to get a hold of it. If the library has it but it's checked out, you can put a hold on it, but then you have to wait till that person returns it, and one or more people could have put holds on it ahead of you, meaning you'll have to wait that much longer. Another option is interlibrary loan (ILL), which is slow, complicated, and often costs money (when I worked at Gleeson Library, I would process ILL requests occasionally, and it was simpler than she described, but it is a slow process). She said that she and her husband, who both work in libraries and could literally have materials delivered to their desks, often resort to buying things online so they don't have to wait for them from the library. Something that some libraries have experimented with is when a patron wants something the library doesn't have, the library orders it from Amazon and has it shipped directly to the patron. Apparently Amazon will do some preliminary processing (e.g. barcode, labeling) for the library before sending it. It's turned out to be cheaper and faster than ILL. She has a blog entry dealing with this here. Be sure to read the comments. Even if this became common, I still see an important place for ILL. This is probably more applicable in academic libraries than public libraries, but a lot of things aren't available on Amazon (*gasp*). Many of the ILL requests I processed were for journal articles, for example. I would go up in the stacks, find the bound volume of periodicals, make a photocopy, scan it (most of the time), and send it to the library that requested it. We had this nifty software that is standard enough that most libraries had it, and we could send the document electronically straight from the scanning software; otherwise we would fax or snail mail. I asked her her thoughts on alternatives like Link+ (similar to ILL but among a smaller number of libraries geographically close to each other, way faster, very easy, and free), and she seemed to think it can be good, but if users don't find what they're looking for there, they tend to give up and think that's their last/only option, which is not good.
I wonder how common it is for people to buy stuff when they can't get it immediately from the library. Besides books for my classes, which I usually need for a long period of time, and may need to mark up, I have a really hard time buying books when I know I can get them for free. It has been rare for me to want a book that was not available through any of the libraries I can access (including the Link+ network). Usually that's only been when I'm researching obscure topics for a class. When I do buy books (usually for school), I rarely buy books new if it's possible to get them used for cheaper. If I thought to myself, "Hey, I'd like to read ____" and my library didn't have it on hand, I would not just go ahead and buy it, especially not if I could order it through Link+ and get it within a week. Even if that weren't available, books are expensive, and I wouldn't spend $20 on a whim, especially one I would only want to read once. Maybe I'm just cheap/poor. (As my dad says, "You already have a book." Next time I'm home, I want to take pictures of the huge numbers of books in my house to share with the internet. We have a building in our backyard that used to be a garage, but we converted into a "library room." It is filled with books. I'll save that for a later blog entry.) However, if the only option to get a book a library doesn't have on hand is to buy it, that brings up serious issues of access across economic levels. That's what's so great about libraries: they're free. They bridge economic divides, making information available to everyone. Libraries should do whatever they can to maintain and promote that.
Moving on from that, something interesting she said was that digital rights management is a huge problem for libraries in terms of home access to digital materials. I never would have thought about this, but it makes a lot of sense. She thinks libraries can play a big role in changing this. Along similar lines, she told us that libraries have a very few choices for where to buy their catalog software, and they have to keep paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue using it - not because they're getting new features or upgrades, but just because the companies say they have to. Because of this, libraries are starting to develop open source catalog software. This is something else she sees for libraries' futures. Nice.
Another thing she says libraries need to do is embrace the democratization of information and expertise. Librarians need to let go of telling people the "right way" to do things. Libraries need to allow the user to have more control and incorporate things like tagging, social labeling, decentralized data creation (such as user-created reading lists), and social organization of data. This is interesting and potentially cool, but the little librarian inside me keeps saying "no, no, people will mess stuff up." Fortunately, the little librarian inside of me is probably wrong because people have shown that they're good at this sort of thing and they'll improve what's already there. It's also a really good way to engage people with their libraries.
This is really just a smattering of what she covered in her excellent talk, but I'm sure the things she spoke about will come up again, and I will blog some more.
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