Library Tech Confidential

From Publishers Sue Georgia State University Over E-Reserves [Library Journal] :

The federal lawsuit was filed against Georgia State University (GSU) in Atlanta by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and SAGE Publications, and supported by the Association of American Publishers(AAP). It charges GSU with “pervasive, flagrant, and ongoing unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials” via its “electronic course reserves service, its Blackboard/WebCT Vista electronic course management system, and its departmental web pages and hyperlinked online syllabi available on websites and computer servers controlled by GSU. [read more]

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Table making library staff ill [YorkRegion.com] :

The main floor service desk [at Richmond Hill Public Library’s Central branch] has been cordoned off for nearly four weeks, ever since staff working at it complained of symptoms ranging from illness to allergic reactions, a librarian at the branch said. The desktop led two staff members to seek medical attention, one of which had to be hospitalized, the librarian added….

“(The hospitalization) was an unrelated matter when [a librarian] was at the doctor and that landed her in the hospital,” [the library’s Director of Public Service] said… “She had allergies, but when she was there they found something else. She wasn’t hospitalized, because of the desk.” [read more]

I previously blogged about Wifi at the Toronto Reference Library, but neglected to note that the Toronto Public Library now offers free wireless internet access at 31 of its 99 branches. They’ve even got a Google map showing wifi-enabled branches.

That reminds me, now that TPL has its own decent Google map of branches, I should either comprehensively update or decommission mine. 

I was going to be spend my Saturday at the MaRS Centre attending participating in Metronauts’ Transit Camp un-conference, but unfortunately I didn’t feel well this morning. What’s an un-conference, you ask? Here’s how they describe it:

…participants create the content of the sessions throughout the day. The event structure is open and fueled by participation. Propose a session on a topic you’re passionate about and engage your fellow participants in conversation. Participation can also mean active listening, and recording of sessions, but there are no observers. Participants are asked to sign the Metronauts Pledge as a commitment to help create a positive environment for everyone.

While much of the pledge basically boils down to ‘play nice with others’, the following bit is truly fascinating:

3. You agree that all materials (text, photography, videos, etc.) and design artifacts posted to this website for which you own the rights shall be covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike license.

I’ve warmed up to the idea of assigning ‘open’ licenses to certain kinds of IP after the fact - photos posted to Flickr, say - but had never encountered the idea of promising to do so beforehand. This makes perfect sense for a semi-public gathering of like-minded activist/enthusiasts, especially given that this conference is meant to generate useful ideas for Metrolinx, a public body charged with coordinating public transit across the GTA. It also strikes me as vastly preferable to increasingly common, massive, dense, super-legalese, sketchy click-through EULAs from various online services that insist users assign unlimited, irrevocable, worldwide commercial rights to all content uploaded to the service.

Update: If you’re curious, notes and other information from today’s event are available via Metronauts’ wiki. Spacing’s coverage is also worth checking out.

The Toronto Public Library has announced several useful improvements to its catalogue and website, most notably lists of ‘newest titles’ by audience (adult, teen, children) and type (fiction/nonfiction, graphic, large print).

Still no baked-in RSS feeds, unfortunately, and I’m not having much success producing one with Feedity or any of my other go-to scraping tools. Ah, well, I guess progress is progress.

Update: Still no luck on the ‘newest’ lists, but I have been able to come up with a feed for Toronto Public Library news scraped from this page. Hopefully some of you will find it useful (and if you do, let me know!)

Reviewing John Broughton’s Wikipedia: The Missing Manual in The New York Review of Books, Nicholson Baker hilariously describes that mightiest of social media reference work free-for-alls as follows:

It’s like some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks. [read more]

[via Library Juice]

As a library ‘paraprofessional’, I greatly enjoyed this post over at The Liminal Librarian (Update: a solid follow-up post rebutting many arguments advanced in opposition to her original post is now also available). One of the choicest bits:

We’re not doctors, we’re not lawyers, and we can’t compare library school with law or medical school. We don’t have a monopoly on intellectual freedom or finding information. In some cases, sure, a MLS adds value [but] there are also MLS librarians who spend their days reading the newspaper and ignoring their patrons. Yes, librarians like to categorize things, but people aren’t so easily catalogable, folks…No, I’m not saying that everyone who works in a library is a librarian. I’m saying that people who are doing the work of a professional librarian, who contribute to our profession, who keep up with the profession, and who are committed to the principles of the field, deserve the title of librarian — regardless of their degree status.

This commenter’s views also really hit home, given my (nascent) plan to take a shot at the MISt part-time as a long-term career-building move:

My entree into the world of library work made me want to turn tail and run, not become a librarian: the issue of who is “real” and who is not is way too reoccurring… Only through a gracious mentor/boss was I encouraged to become a “real” librarian - and her urging was so that I would be able to make a career of it (financially), and for no other reason. MLS in hand I guard carefully against absorbing any of that poisonous mentality!

I drafted a blog post on this subject months ago, but decided to bite my tongue until I have a little more workplace experience under my belt. In a nutshell: I empathize with established librarians’ anxiety over ‘deprofessionalization’ and other threats to the library status quo in the digital age, but casually dissing paraprofessionals (especially those with non-library university degrees) is extremely counterproductive, at best. For the non-nutshell version, see my comment below.

Photo credit: “MLIS” by Flickr user herzogbr of Swiss Army Librarian (Creative Commons)

Poking around the Royal Ontario Museum’s website in preparation for a visit to Darwin: The Evolution Revolution, I discovered the freely downloadable Director’s Choice Audio Tour. If you’re into that sort of thing, loading this onto your iPod or other MP3 player before a visit to the ROM will save you the $5.00 audio tour rental fee (check out their podcasts, too).

Chumby is an eminently hackable, wifi-enabled, open-source, widget displaying ambient device currently in pre-release (full launch in early 2008).For now, you can play with a plethora of widgets that pull data from tons of popular sites and web2.0 services as well as pretty much anything else via RSS. Best of all, you can try setting up your own channels (essentially pre-programmed widget slideshows) and view them using an embeded ‘virtual’ Chumby like the one above.

It pulls down content from the web via wifi, but suffers from the need to be plugged in to draw power rather than incorporating a battery. With any luck, some enterprising hardware hacker will come up with a simple way to add an external battery (or, dream on, an internal one plus a handy docking station).

Price? ~$180USD. Do not want!

Soon, the City of Toronto will release a final report detailing its highly-anticipated and long overdue redevelopment of Union Station (our downtown subway, regional bus and regional/long-distance rail terminal).

Plans that the City has made available so far emphasize expanded retail space to complement the mostly food-centric vendors already onsite. Local transit whiz Steve Munro has a great overview of the station’s present and possible future.

You know what I think would be great? A storefront-style branch of the Toronto Public Library.

The idea(s):

• Beefy holds pick-up desk for commuters to pick up reading material for their trip home, an upcoming weekend at the cottage, or to help their kids with homework.
• Information desk, maps and a reference collection tailored for tourists and other travellers to augment the Travellers’ Aid booth that never seems to be open.
• With the ability to place holds well in advance online, it’s very convenient for patrons, and materials could be transferred in from other branches and checked out at the Union Station branch like any other.

The problem(s):

• By definition, commuters passing through Union aren’t from Toronto. This is a lot of effort to serve the clientele of other municipalities’ library systems.
• Optics (and ethics) of rolling out new services aimed at white-collar, middle-class adult commuters from the exurbs at the percieved expense of disadvantaged children in the City’s own priority neighbourhoods.
• Any bookstores that move into the new retail space will strenuously object, potentially demanding some kind of exclusivity arrangement with the City.
• Difficult delivery truck access to the branch for pickups and deliveries of materials coming in from other branches (though this doesn’t seem to stop the other storefront operations in the station).

Oh, well. It seemed like a good idea for about five minutes.

Photo credit: “Union Station, Toronto” by Flickr user StarbuckGuy
(Creative Commons)

A few days ago I posted about my increasing expectation that any and all content streams will be available by RSS. I was treated to further proof of my over-reliance on feeds this morning when Netvibes, my aggregator of choice, was down during breakfast.

Lately I’ve been checking Netvibes in lieu of a morning paper (though I do hit several local and non-local newspaper feeds that way) and, today, it felt exactly as though my morning paper had gone mysteriously missing. I was utterly lost.

It’s just not possible to skim the web-based version of a newspaper as you would in print; with a good feed reader and well-implemented feeds, however, it’s possible to approximate the balance between the capacity to see everything briefly at the level of headlines and ledes without overwhelming the user, while maintaining the ability to easily drill down to the content of whole articles you’re interested in.

Another lesson here is that dependence on web-based applications is risky, and that maintaining a failover option (an alternate web-based service or, gasp, a desktop-based application) is crucial for critical tasks.

You know, mission-critical tasks… like having something to read while you do the ‘ol bagel-and-coffee morning ‘nutrition’ routine.

Based on the substantial props given by Peter Morville over at findability.org, I’m strongly considering pre-ordering — or at least heavily hinting after, holiday wishlist-wise — William Jones’ Keeping Found Things Found, a sample chapter of which is available online right now.

Come to think of it, it might be time to finally check out Ambient Findability (sample chapter), Morville’s own book. I’ve meant to pick it up for ages, but WorldCat confirms that local public libraries don’t seem to have shared my enthusiasm for the title.