If you've ever been on a committee that ties its work to the library association's two-times-a-year cycle, you know how frustrating and inefficient that is. With only two working meetings a year it takes many years to get anything done. This accounts for some of the slowness of the accomplishments of our profession. And obviously that pace is not serving us well in this fast-changing world.
As proof that it can get better, I cite a recent project I was on that was organized by the ALA Office of Information Technology Policy. Our goal was to produce a set of principles relating to digitization and digital resources, to get those principles reviewed by a wide professional audience, and to have them passed by ALA Council so that they would enter into the ALA Handbook as association policy. We did it all in barely over a year by harnessing the (less than perfect) technology of the ALA web site. Essentially we placed our principles on the ALA Blog and sent email to all ALA units asking for comments. We had prepared the way by visiting numerous meetings at ALA in Seattle but definitely had not managed to contact every potential respondent. Over two months there were thousands of viewings of the principles and many dozen comments. We also received comments via email. By the time we presented the principles at ALA Council in Washington, D.C. we had some major groups signed on as supporters, including ALCTS and LITA. We also had visible proof that our work had been made public and reviewed.
This was a relatively small project, but it gives me some hope that we can break out of the cycle of working on ALA activities for only four days twice a year. If we are going to move our profession forward, we have to be able to harness the technology to get needed work done. Blogs, wikis, shared editing of documents -- if we do it right, the two meetings can become times when we get face-to-face with each other for the pleasure of each other's company, and not to sit in a windowless room editing some document by committee.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Grace Hopper's Stone
Whenever I visit Washington D.C. I try to find time to go to Arlington Cemetery. I don't visit the famous graves. Instead I trudge along the main road to a point at the far corner overlooking the Pentagon, which is where my father is buried. Well, in-urned, actually, since he was not important enough for an actual burial. In the military, you carry your rank with you to the grave, literally.
It so happens that I pass by the grave of Grace Hopper on the way to the columbarium, and I always stop and pay my respects.
Arlington is nothing if not military. All of the headstones are identical (with a few famous exceptions), and no decoration is allowed. There are particular occasions on which you can leave flowers or flags (like Memorial Day), but the rest of the time it's just green grass and white headstones. So people have a habit of marking their presence by placing a small stone on top of the headstone. I find it to be very touching, a tiny bit of civil disobedience. I don't think I have ever been to Grace's grave when there wasn't a stone on it. To me it's a great reminder that others also visit her and care. So here is her current stone. And if you visit, please clean the bird crap off her headstone, and add a pebble if you can find one. (She's located at 59-973)
It so happens that I pass by the grave of Grace Hopper on the way to the columbarium, and I always stop and pay my respects.
Arlington is nothing if not military. All of the headstones are identical (with a few famous exceptions), and no decoration is allowed. There are particular occasions on which you can leave flowers or flags (like Memorial Day), but the rest of the time it's just green grass and white headstones. So people have a habit of marking their presence by placing a small stone on top of the headstone. I find it to be very touching, a tiny bit of civil disobedience. I don't think I have ever been to Grace's grave when there wasn't a stone on it. To me it's a great reminder that others also visit her and care. So here is her current stone. And if you visit, please clean the bird crap off her headstone, and add a pebble if you can find one. (She's located at 59-973)
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Some quick notes from ALA
Catalog front-ends are the new kids on the block in the exhibits. You can see Aquabrowser, Endeca, Primo, and others. It's clear that the separation of the user interface from the ILS is well underway. Aquabrowser has a new product for small libraries called Aquabrowser online where they will host a library's front-end for a monthly fee. This might be a great way for libraries to try out a front-end without having to make the full commitment of a purchase. It would also be an excellent way for a library to show its board the possibilities before asking for an allocation of funds.
There's a lot of buzz about RDA which is now looming on the near horizon. Work is going forward to begin training and implementation plans. At the same time, I have yet to speak to a cataloger who thinks that RDA is workable as a set of cataloging rules. I suspect that what has happened is that the JSC, in its desire to define a neutral set of data elements, has created a product that is neither a rigorous set of data elements nor a set of cataloging rules. I can't help but see this in familiar terms: "stay the course." In other words, we've gotten ourselves into an expensive mess that we can't easily get out of. To admit failure is unthinkable after all of this time and expense. At least the RDA process isn't creating actual casualties. I blogged one of the RDA sessions at the ALCTS blog: http://blogs.ala.org/digiblog.php.
And if you think that e-books are dead, you should visit the 20-some booths exhibiting e-book products, as well as audio books. OverDrive is now serving up movies and games along with its e-book products, all mainly used by public libraries.
Google is here with one of the most mistaken campaigns I've ever seen at an ALA. They are holding a "find the info" contest that starts out: "You're an undercover government agent. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: find the info you need, and find it fast." Don't they know the history that libraries have with "undercover government agents?" However, there are prizes, so I assume that librarians are playing along. It's amazing what people will do for a free key ring or a post-it note pad.
There's a lot of buzz about RDA which is now looming on the near horizon. Work is going forward to begin training and implementation plans. At the same time, I have yet to speak to a cataloger who thinks that RDA is workable as a set of cataloging rules. I suspect that what has happened is that the JSC, in its desire to define a neutral set of data elements, has created a product that is neither a rigorous set of data elements nor a set of cataloging rules. I can't help but see this in familiar terms: "stay the course." In other words, we've gotten ourselves into an expensive mess that we can't easily get out of. To admit failure is unthinkable after all of this time and expense. At least the RDA process isn't creating actual casualties. I blogged one of the RDA sessions at the ALCTS blog: http://blogs.ala.org/digiblog.php.
And if you think that e-books are dead, you should visit the 20-some booths exhibiting e-book products, as well as audio books. OverDrive is now serving up movies and games along with its e-book products, all mainly used by public libraries.
Google is here with one of the most mistaken campaigns I've ever seen at an ALA. They are holding a "find the info" contest that starts out: "You're an undercover government agent. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: find the info you need, and find it fast." Don't they know the history that libraries have with "undercover government agents?" However, there are prizes, so I assume that librarians are playing along. It's amazing what people will do for a free key ring or a post-it note pad.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Privacy Audit
I had the pleasure of working with San Francisco Public Library on an audit of their records relating to patrons and patron activity. This doesn't sound like an exciting activity, but in fact the staff I worked with there really got behind the project. Basically, we (they, really) ferreted out all of those nooks and crannies where patrons sign up for things, or where they leave some footprint in a system or on a sheet of paper. We looked at remote services and ad hoc practices in the branches, including use of things like MySpace and instant messaging to communicate with teen readers. There were some surprises (mainly files in the desks of those folks who feel they have to keep everything, just in case) and a few sticky issues (what to do with held books that are placed on public shelves? Use the patron's name? Use the patron's library card number, which they usually don't know?).
The final report to the Library Commission is online as a PDF. The actual results of the audit ended up being over 80 pages, with copies of all of the forms and all of the printed and emailed outputs from the library. You can see the blank forms that we started with here. And this is the Word template that we used for the final audit results, one page for each document or system. In my copious spare time (which seems non-existent at the moment) I will try to mock up a few filled in forms so people can see what the final data looks like.
In any case, here's a library that can now say "We know where our data is, who has access to it, and how long it is kept." That's pretty good.
The final report to the Library Commission is online as a PDF. The actual results of the audit ended up being over 80 pages, with copies of all of the forms and all of the printed and emailed outputs from the library. You can see the blank forms that we started with here. And this is the Word template that we used for the final audit results, one page for each document or system. In my copious spare time (which seems non-existent at the moment) I will try to mock up a few filled in forms so people can see what the final data looks like.
In any case, here's a library that can now say "We know where our data is, who has access to it, and how long it is kept." That's pretty good.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Google source
I may be the last person to discover this, but I was alerted to the oddities of Google's "html" source in a book that I picked up in Turin -- one that is definitely critical of Google, but in a decidedly European way (where else could you find that there are numerous Marxist criticisms of Google and its power over information?). So I now ask you: have you looked at the source code for Google's pages?
First, do this: run your mouse over the buttons on Google's home page. (There are only two of them.) We've all had drummed into us that every .gif needs an alt text for the purposes of accessibility. Hmmm. No alt text appears.
Now, look at the source code to confirm that the buttons don't have alt text. Hmmm. No buttons. At least, no "img" tag. There's a lot of code here, and I can find this:
But there's very little here that I recognize as standard html. I tried running some basic accessibility tests on the page (I'm no expert in this area, so my tests may have been too simple) and there were some errors, but none of the ones I saw were considered terribly important. I don't know, however, if the accessibility testing software understood the Google source code, nor if typical screen reading software would be able to determine from the code that there are buttons and that those buttons have names. So if anyone has any insight into this, I would be very interested to hear it.
Note that all of Google's pages seem to use this non-html style coding. I'm willing to believe that it is more efficient this way, but I wonder about what it means for compatibility, for competition, and for users.
First, do this: run your mouse over the buttons on Google's home page. (There are only two of them.) We've all had drummed into us that every .gif needs an alt text for the purposes of accessibility. Hmmm. No alt text appears.
Now, look at the source code to confirm that the buttons don't have alt text. Hmmm. No buttons. At least, no "img" tag. There's a lot of code here, and I can find this:
<input name=btnI type=submit value="I'm Feeling Lucky">
But there's very little here that I recognize as standard html. I tried running some basic accessibility tests on the page (I'm no expert in this area, so my tests may have been too simple) and there were some errors, but none of the ones I saw were considered terribly important. I don't know, however, if the accessibility testing software understood the Google source code, nor if typical screen reading software would be able to determine from the code that there are buttons and that those buttons have names. So if anyone has any insight into this, I would be very interested to hear it.
Note that all of Google's pages seem to use this non-html style coding. I'm willing to believe that it is more efficient this way, but I wonder about what it means for compatibility, for competition, and for users.
Friday, May 25, 2007
The DMCA's Silver Lining
I've just returned from the UMUC conference on copyright, this year with a theme of Copyright Utopia. This is the seventh year that UMUC has held this conference and the first that I have attended, and it was an excellent two days with many interesting talks. I'll mention here two in particular, that of Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who talked about the "mashup culture," and that of William "Terry" Fisher, Director, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School, who proposed a solution to the file sharing hoopla.
von Lohmann showed a number of highly entertaining videos from YouTube, all of which had some level of potential copyright infringement. As he explained, content of this nature would never appear through traditional media channels such as television or even theaters or bookstores. The reason? Because of carrier liability; that is, because a TV station or bookstore could be held liable for the content that it makes available, even if it didn't create that content. Thanks to the DMCA and its provision that treats internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers, organizations like Youtube cannot be held responsible for the content that flows across the portion of the internet that they control, as long as the organization has a "take-down" procedure in place to respond to complaints of copyright or trademark violation.
The restrictions on liability in the DMCA were the result of heavy lobbying by ISPs interested in preserving their own bottom line. This has had the unintended effect of creating free speech zones on the net that we don't have in other media. The result is that we are now seeing a huge amount of creative re-use of copyrighted material, and even of material that is owned by some of the more powerful and more assertive of copyright holders. A prime example is a video explaining copyright that is constructed entirely of snippets from Disney films. It opens with a "parody" of the FBI warning that reads:
Whether or not such works are infringing is open to interpretation, but as von Lohmann explains you can't even wonder about infringement if the works do not get distributed in the first place. This is a brave new world.
Terry Fisher ran through a wide swath of possible solutions to today's copyright environment with an interesting proposal that seems to be a kind of ASCAP for all intellectual property.
This system, called Noank Media, is operating today primarily in China and Canada. In China they are charging $20 per year per user. Twenty bucks doesn't seem like much, but that is probably a significant fee in China, which is definitely a country where you can make it up on volume. The main thing is that Noank is an "all you can eat" model rather than a "pay per view" one. The copyright holders get paid in proportion to the relative use of their content. It's slice of the pie, not whatever the market can bear. However, if copyright holders go for it their content will get the kind of exposure it does today on peer-to-peer networks but as a revenue stream.
P2P was a big topic at the conference because of the RIAA's recent wave of letters to college students. The RIAA appears to be targeting about 400 students per month that it identifies as having illegally downloaded music files. The letters are sent to the university to be distributed to the named students, in an obvious attempt to make the university a party to the action. The students are offered a "buy-out" of $3,000 to avoid an actual lawsuit. The role of the university is an interesting one -- in this case, the files are on the students' computers, so the university can't act as an ISP with a "take down" policy. It's not clear at all whether the university has any responsibility for the actions of its students in relation to non-university activities, even if they are illegal. Many universities have set up or licensed music download services to try to offer the students a legal alternative to P2P downloading, and some of the universities that have received the RIAA letters do offer such services. It's an uneasy role for the educational institutions to be in, and some of the conference participants felt strongly that the RIAA is attempting to use the universities to create a precedent that will undermine the DMCA's ISP immunity.
von Lohmann showed a number of highly entertaining videos from YouTube, all of which had some level of potential copyright infringement. As he explained, content of this nature would never appear through traditional media channels such as television or even theaters or bookstores. The reason? Because of carrier liability; that is, because a TV station or bookstore could be held liable for the content that it makes available, even if it didn't create that content. Thanks to the DMCA and its provision that treats internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers, organizations like Youtube cannot be held responsible for the content that flows across the portion of the internet that they control, as long as the organization has a "take-down" procedure in place to respond to complaints of copyright or trademark violation.
The restrictions on liability in the DMCA were the result of heavy lobbying by ISPs interested in preserving their own bottom line. This has had the unintended effect of creating free speech zones on the net that we don't have in other media. The result is that we are now seeing a huge amount of creative re-use of copyrighted material, and even of material that is owned by some of the more powerful and more assertive of copyright holders. A prime example is a video explaining copyright that is constructed entirely of snippets from Disney films. It opens with a "parody" of the FBI warning that reads:
WARNING. Federal law allows citizens to reproduce, distribute, or exhibit portions of copyright motion pictures, video tapes, or video discs under certain circumstances without authorization of the copyright holder. This infringement of copyright is called "Fair use" and is allowed for purposes of criticism, news reporting, teaching, and parody.
Whether or not such works are infringing is open to interpretation, but as von Lohmann explains you can't even wonder about infringement if the works do not get distributed in the first place. This is a brave new world.
Terry Fisher ran through a wide swath of possible solutions to today's copyright environment with an interesting proposal that seems to be a kind of ASCAP for all intellectual property.
In brief, here's how the system works: In each country, copyright owners (record companies, music publishers, film studios, etc.) authorize Noank to distribute digital copies of their works. Noank, in turn, enters into contracts with major network service providers: broadband consumer ISPs; mobile phone providers; and universities. Noank provides the service providers' end-users with unlimited downloading, streaming, and copying licenses. In return, each access provider pays Noank a fee on behalf of each of its end-users (consumers, students, employees). 85% of the money collected from these content fees is distributed to content copyright owners. A small software program on the users' device counts the content use. That information (automatically aggregated to protect users' privacy) is used to determine the amount of money paid to each copyright owner.
This system, called Noank Media, is operating today primarily in China and Canada. In China they are charging $20 per year per user. Twenty bucks doesn't seem like much, but that is probably a significant fee in China, which is definitely a country where you can make it up on volume. The main thing is that Noank is an "all you can eat" model rather than a "pay per view" one. The copyright holders get paid in proportion to the relative use of their content. It's slice of the pie, not whatever the market can bear. However, if copyright holders go for it their content will get the kind of exposure it does today on peer-to-peer networks but as a revenue stream.
P2P was a big topic at the conference because of the RIAA's recent wave of letters to college students. The RIAA appears to be targeting about 400 students per month that it identifies as having illegally downloaded music files. The letters are sent to the university to be distributed to the named students, in an obvious attempt to make the university a party to the action. The students are offered a "buy-out" of $3,000 to avoid an actual lawsuit. The role of the university is an interesting one -- in this case, the files are on the students' computers, so the university can't act as an ISP with a "take down" policy. It's not clear at all whether the university has any responsibility for the actions of its students in relation to non-university activities, even if they are illegal. Many universities have set up or licensed music download services to try to offer the students a legal alternative to P2P downloading, and some of the universities that have received the RIAA letters do offer such services. It's an uneasy role for the educational institutions to be in, and some of the conference participants felt strongly that the RIAA is attempting to use the universities to create a precedent that will undermine the DMCA's ISP immunity.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Books, books everywhere... but not libraries
A walk through Turin's downtown reveals a thriving book culture. There are many dozens of independent bookstores, of all stripes, from those specializing in elegant tomes of art and architecture to one that carries books on the theme of "taste": books on wine, chocolate, cheese. There are bookstores that are in elegant stores with gorgeous wood shelves, and there are bookstores that pile their books on tables in the wide walkways of the downtown.
A book on Turin bookstores lists 69 stores. It also lists 26 libraries, but they are barely recognizable as libraries in the American sense. To begin with, they have few users, and not much space for people. Next, entering them is intimidating. Not only do you have to have a library card to check out books, in some cases you have to show your card to enter the library. There are many that do not have open shelves, or as I found in the gorgeous "royal library" in the center of town, the books are locked behind glass. The catalog of that library is not only on cards, they are written by hand. Admittedly, this is a library of historical interest, an archive. It holds the famous self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, and two of the three solid wood desks at the library are taken up with giant computer screens where you can look at a digitized image of the page, enlarge it and even turn the image sideways. No, I don't know why you'd want to, but there it is.
A book on Turin bookstores lists 69 stores. It also lists 26 libraries, but they are barely recognizable as libraries in the American sense. To begin with, they have few users, and not much space for people. Next, entering them is intimidating. Not only do you have to have a library card to check out books, in some cases you have to show your card to enter the library. There are many that do not have open shelves, or as I found in the gorgeous "royal library" in the center of town, the books are locked behind glass. The catalog of that library is not only on cards, they are written by hand. Admittedly, this is a library of historical interest, an archive. It holds the famous self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, and two of the three solid wood desks at the library are taken up with giant computer screens where you can look at a digitized image of the page, enlarge it and even turn the image sideways. No, I don't know why you'd want to, but there it is.
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