Since the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001 librarians have become increasingly expert at protecting information freedoms from an unprecedented degree of governmental scrutiny - aptly described by K. G. Schneider as "antispeech legislation" in 2002, the Patriot Act was reinstated in 2006 with few revisions. In libraries, privacy is paramount. We offer open... Continue Reading →
future of libraries, part III: fingertips to fingertips panel session (or, god bless yugma)
I just finished my first experiment in virtual conference presentation using Skype/Yugma, and it went marvelously well - I did a 20 minute voice and video over IP/M reference talk for a panel session at the Future of Libraries, Part III conference in San Fransisco, which I unfortunately attended from a study room at Alden... Continue Reading →
msnbc on encore
MSNBC ran a piece on September 16th about Innovative Interfaces' new dynamic catalog platform, Encore. Innovative's CEO Jerry Kline is quoted saying "it's for libraries that want to compete effectively on the Web and give the best access possible to the books, images and full-text electronic articles in their collection." This ostensibly means offering integrated... Continue Reading →
the great user debate
Saw a post on O'Reilly Radar today about something that has always bothered me a bit about working libraries - which is the lesser of three semantic evils: "user", "customer", or "patron"? According to Jimmy Guterman, "as has often been noted, there are only two industries that refer to their customers as users: high tech... Continue Reading →
info-mational 