Libology Blog

The 2008 Presidential Election Search Engine is a Google Custom Search Engine created by the University of Kansas Library.

It is a great resource in that one can find the needles of information in the haystack of campaign rhetoric.

found via “Organizing the 2008 Presidential Election”, from College and Resource Libraries, October 2008, p. 540.

The Annenberg Media website at learner.org is a resource that offers on-demand streaming video for “schools, colleges, libraries, public broadcasting stations, public access channels, and other community agencies”.

These are top-notch programs, several which I recognize as having been used in college-level learning. I stumbled upon this site while attempting to locate a replacement copy of one of the videos offered on the site.  They do require registration (free) in order to view the video streams.

Subject areas include:

• Arts
• Foreign Language
• Literature and Language Arts
• Mathematics
• Science
• Social Studies and History

Two additional subject area not listed on the site’s menu are:

• Education
• Education Reform

I am not sure why these aren’t listed, but here they are in case you find them helpful.  Chalk this up to my always being curious about how web menus are set up (thanks RFS!)

The quality of the video stream is as good as any I have encountered.  The only suggestion I have to the viewer is if you are using Firefox, you should install the MediaPlayerConnect add-on.  You will find this to be a great addition to the browser and saves you from all the WMP (Windows Media Player) plugin mess.

Jessamyn has the best overview of the Sarah Palin / Librarian debate that I have seen so far.  The key to this, and to any other emotionally charged story, is to check your facts, and remember that everyone gets it wrong sometimes (so don’t be so sure about something even if you are sure).

Unrelated, but soberingly relevant, is the United Airlines “bankruptcy” story from a couple of days ago.  The source seemed reliable, but the information was old.  Again, some basic fact checking in the early stages of this would have saved a whole lot of grief.

Update:  This New York Times article has a great overview of the UAL story… (thanks LISNews )

I am a bit of a political junkie… and it generally won’t spill over onto this blog. However, one resource that I have found very interesting when examining Ohio and New Hampshire results has been Google Maps coverage of the primaries. They haven’t committed to doing all 50 states, but the service has been popular, and I suspect that they will continue at least as long as the nominations are in play. As for November… who knows??

• Google LatLong Blog entry
• Iowa page
• New Hampshire page

found via Search Engine Land

Three items have caught my eye this past week, and they all point in the same direction, even though they each are about something fairly specific:

1. First was an article about a bill working its way through the Ohio General Assembly. If passed as is, it would mandate that all state schools must provide via. their libraries two copies of every textbook used in their classes. The cost, in todays textbook market, would start in the hundreds of thousands. (received via the OhioLink-gen listserv)
2. Next was an article in ars technica about the federal education bill that would require colleges and universities to police their networks in order to prevent file sharing. (I wonder if universities will be able to allow legal file sharing at the same time? Some don’t, apparently.) The bill would also mandate that colleges and universities provide an alternate means of acquiring copyrighted files… meaning that they would need to partner with music subscription services. (found on The Patry Copyright blog )
3. Last was an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education detailing a project that works to provide textbooks to people in developing countries. These include donated used texts, but the focus is increasingly moving towards free and open textbooks available online. (found on Open Access News )

Put these together and what do you get? An incredible amount of pressure, financially and legally, placed on educational institutions to move towards open access. If a significant number of texts in use on a campus are available as open access, the issue of providing them becomes more a matter of format (print vs. screen) than of anything else. Look at the costs involved for policing and providing copyrighted materials. Open texts, as well as other open access media, will look very attractive to those who have to implement these laws (assuming they pass).

Think of squeezing a watermelon seed between two fingers… at some point it will move in a particular direction, and very quickly. Be prepared….

There is a bill being voted upon by the U.S. Senate on October 15th which will potentially open up a great deal of research being done with National Institute of Health (NIH) funding.  The bill will mandate that the public (as well as other researchers) have access to research funded through grants by the NIH.  Similar language has already passed a House vote in a budget bill, and so if this is approved in the Senate it is likely to become law.

The ALA has an easy to use site to allow people to send e-mails to their senators (just enter your zip code), and Digital Scholarship has some well-phrased suggestions for the text.  I did my own summary, after reading through the above pages.  Use if you like, but think about how you could state it in your own words, as well:

Dear Senator xxxxx:

As a library staff member, a blogger, and a U.S. citizen, I feel strongly that government sponsored research should be as open and available for everyone’s benefit as possible. This will lead to greater understanding of health issues, and will assist in focusing research more effectively in the future, which will save time, money, and lives. Open Access is the most effective way to do this with the NIH research.

For further information, the resources and talking points at http://www.digital-scholarship.org/other/nihtext.htm contain a great deal of merit. Also, Peter Suber’s website has excellent information: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

Thank you for your consideration on this important topic.
 
Sincerely,
Rick Mason
xxx-xxx-xxxx
Library Support Staff blog
http://blog.librarysupportstaff.org/

The Diary of Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraqi National Library and Archive is available via the British Library website.  In the diary, Dr. Eskander details the day-to-day challenges faced by the library staff as they attempt to do their work, and live their lives, in what has to be one of the most challenging environments for librarianship.

found on MetaFilter

The British Government has rejected an extension of copyright beyond the current 50 year term.  This is interesting for a few reasons, including the impending rush of British Invasion music becoming royalty-free, but mostly because it may signal a sea change in the world’s approach to copyright terms.

It is far from over, however, as music publisher’s and musicians are working to pass EU legislation to extend protection beyond the current limits.

found on The Patry Copyright Blog

Lawrence Lessig, chair of Creative Commons, writer for Wired Magazine, and much much more, has announced that he is changing the course of his life, and will be attempting to champion the cause of a democratic society.  Don’t read my wholly  inadequate summary, however:  he words it quite eloquently.

from lessig blog

A newly released study, Taxpayer Return-on-Investment (ROI) in Pennsylvania Public Libraries (Pdf), comes to an interesting and positive conclusion:  for every $10 of tax money invested in public libraries, the Pennsylvania taxpayers receive a return of $55.

found on ResourceShelf

Reed Elsevier, the European publishing corporation behind over 15,000 journals, is being challenged by one of them, The Lancet, in regards to its commercial involvement in the arms trade.

This connects to libraries in several ways: subscriptions to many print journals, as well as online access, are purchased by libraries, meaning we help to support the company’s activities; until recently, Elsevier was the owner of Endeavor (Pdf), the creator of the Voyager ILS; and in a broader sense, a company involved in both the trade of arms and the publishing of medical journals faces certain contradictions, which eventually raises questions about the quality of information that we provide from their journals.

It is important that we understand the details of this issue, and that we can understand the ways in which this can affect people and institutions. Individually we may not be able to do much, but our collective understanding, attitude, and action will make more of a difference in the world than we may realize.

Sources:

• Open Access News
• Lancet correspondence on the arms trade issue (Pdf)
• Guardian (UK) newspaper article
• Forbes magazine (AP) article

Lawrence Lessig has an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times called “Make Way for Copyright Chaos“, which discusses a shift towards the courts when interpreting copyright law.

from ©ollectanea

Wouldn’t it be nice if there existed a web page containing links to all the Blue Books for the states? There are two:

ALA’s GODORT Wiki

Bradley University’s Wiki

If you look under the history tab for each of the pages, you will see that Bradley University’s page was the likely source for the GODORT page.

from ResourceShelf

Digital versions of books by and about Abraham Lincoln, brought to you by the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and the Open Content Alliance.

from ResourceShelf

The existence of this web site has been leaked early, so there isn’t much to see (yet), but WikiLeaks is striving to combine the principles of WikiPedia and The Smoking Gun.

Have a document, or other information, that you feel should be public information?  Simply post it to their upcoming wiki, if and when they go live, and the world will have access to it.  Combined with anonymous browsing, this could prove to be a more direct channel for those unauthorized pieces of government and corporate information than the usual press channels.

from WiredNews

Here is a good PDF summary of the background and issues involved with the EPA library closings.  This is likely to be addressed by the new congress, and there will likely by a fair amount of emotion involved when it does.

from ResourceShelf

Although we still have two weeks left to generate a top ten news story, LISNews has their Ten Stories that Shaped 2006 list compiled.

from Web4Lib listserv

As an update to this post, it seems that the situation with the EPA library is getting worse.

Presumably in response to a congressional request to halt the closure of its libraries, the EPA is removing thousands of documents from its web servers, and has sold $40,000 worth of library furniture in their Chicago library for a total of $350. The woman who bought the furniture is estimating that she will re-sell it for $80,000 (perhaps when the EPA changes course again and buys its own furniture back).

(Darn! I could use a few good bookshelves right about now at a bargain price!)

from ResourceShelf

The report from the Iraq Study Group is available as a pdf download here.

This article, dated a few weeks ago, on a Chicago news radio station’s website makes it sound as though libraries are more dangerous than they are.

I suspect that many of the “thousands of files” depicting the crimes were either a question of interpretation (”I know pornography when I see it”) or relatively minor issues that, perhaps like my former place of employment, the staff wouldn’t initiate calling police unless we actually witnessed it ourselves.

If you are not familiar with it, though, check out Illinois’ Library Records Confidentiality Act for yourself. I think it benefits more than harms, and that in a criminal investigation, obtaining a subpoena for things such as telephone and library records would be part of an established process. Why should it have taken 2 days to obtain one in this case?

By the way, the act does not cover a library hiding criminal activity, as the article suggests, just circulation and usage records.