Vast Active Library and Information Science blog. From a recent library science graduate in Wellington, New Zealand. A focus on reference and current awareness tools and issues, especially free, web-based resources.

 
It's fairly common knowledge that librarians tend to the liberal end of the political spectrum, for good or bad. We're expected (if only by ourselves) to have fairly similar, and liberal, views on issues such as censorship and intellectual freedom, and client privacy (second link via LIS News).

Which is why I was surprised by some recent discussion in one of my classes. We were talking about internet resources, and whether anything should be done about the availability of pornographic material online. A topic we're all familiar with, I'm sure. What was interesting was the number of people who came down in favour of using filters to block access to explicit sites. As has been stated before, filtering isn't anywhere near perfect.

Nonetheless, a significant number of my classmates were of the opinion that filtering was a good thing - with one comment being along the lines of "we shouldn't provide access to anything that we wouldn't purchase in hard copy. We don't subscribe to Hustler, why should we allow patrons to access porn?". Well, yes, but the issue isn't that simple. When it comes to a choice between denying patrons access to legitimate websites, or permitting them to potentially access pornography, I think it's clear that librarians need to stand up for the widest possible access to information. A further point to consider is that censorship is a slippery slope - we shouldn't be giving any ground to those who wish to silence opposing points of view - it may start with pornography, but it could easily move on to gay rights, or unpopular political views.

No censorship of any kind. Let the patrons decide.

| posted by Simon at 12:27 pm

 
Sweet! The Coaching Info Service has added an RSS feed of new articles. This is perfect use of the technology - the site carries really useful articles, but they are posted erratically rather than to a fixed schedule, so I often forget to check back. No need to worry about that anymore.

| posted by Simon at 10:41 am

 
As I'm typing this I note that Wilco's A Ghost is Born is currently the number one selling Music CD on Amazon. This is in spite of the fact that the album's been available on P2P for a long time (I've had it for weeks - I just ordered the CD as well) or via their website.

Wow! Band supports filetrading. Band sells progressively more albums.

And I need to mention JustAFan here again. It's a site set up by fans of Wilco, as a means of showing thanks to the band for its support of filesharing and for trusting its fans by making material available online prior to official release. The organisers are taking donations for Doctors Without Borders (Medicins Sans Frontiers) as a means of demonstrating their thanks to Wilco (Wilco were involved in choosing the specific charity). When I tried to donate a few weeks ago, their PayPal account was playing up, so I made a direct donation to MSF. Worthy cause, and a great way of showing support to a forward-thinking group of musicians. (Who also make incredible music).

| posted by Simon at 12:18 pm

 
I wanted to point out that I first heard both the Ladybug Transistor and the Magnetic Fields via downloaded MP3s. I now own pretty much all the Magnetic Fields' records, and I'm working on acquiring the rest, and Stephen Merritt's other work. I had heard of them before I downloaded them, but I probably wouldn't have bought the albums unheard. As for the Ladybug Transistor, they are completely unknown here, and I wouldn't have been able to find their albums even if I wanted to.

My point? P2P filesharing got me interested in these artists, and made money for them and their record company. (Or at least it would be if the record company website actually allowed me to order and pay for the CDs).


| posted by Simon at 12:07 pm

 
I've been experiencing some frustrations with attempting to purchase goods online recently. I've been trying to order some CDs by a relatively obscure New York band called the Ladybug Transistor. I can't find their records on the best NZ online stores - Smoke or Real Groovy. Eventually, I track down their record company's website - Merge Records. I see that Merge also releases some of my favourite artists - the Magnetic Fields, the Clean, etc. So I order me some CDs.

I get all the way through the ordering process, supply my credit card details, and the site tells me I've entered too many characters in my address line. Now, newsflash guys - I typed my address there. That's how it's written. If I wrote it any other way, it wouldn't match the records on my credit card. But it tells me this after I've entered all my CC details, and tells me to hit the back button and make changes. So if I do that, I get a "this page contains post data, do you want to resend?" message. And if I do that, I run the risk of resending my credit card details and paying twice.

So naturally, I don't do that. Instead, I email them, asking if they've received my order or not. Guess what? No reply. Which really leaves me wondering if they want me to buy their records or not.

As an aside, people building international websites need to realise that not everyone does things the way they do in their country. For example, the US uses 5 digit zip codes. New Zealand uses 4 digits, but they aren't required and hardly anyone bothers with them. The UK uses anything from 2 to 8 alpha-numeric characters. Web forms need to be flexible enough to allow for this (my favourite was the site that had a drop-down menu for you to select which country you were in, but also REQUIRED you to select a US state or territory!).

| posted by Simon at 11:54 am

 
So I hadn't had a chance to play with the new features in Blogger till yesterday. The main item of interest is the profile section. Much like Friendster (and probably other social networking services, I don't know) it lets you list interests, hobbies, favourite books and music, and click through to see the profiles of anyone else with the same interest.

Using 'location' as a hyperlink, I managed to find a blogger in the same town as me, with similar tastes in music and even working in a library. Interesting, I was still under the impression I was the only NZ librarian blogging...obviously not :-)

But the really interesting thing to me is how this could function as a social networking tool. I've already browsed profiles of a lot of people with similar interests, and the means are certainly there to contact them if I wanted to. Just another way of interacting with people I could never get to know otherwise. I wonder if anyone's using it for this purpose yet? They must be...

| posted by Simon at 12:35 pm

 

Testing out photoblogging. Me, last year. My hair is longer now, and I don't normally wear a pink neck scarf (it was a team-building exercise, OK?) 

| posted by Simon at 8:19 pm

 
I'm sure this has already been blogged to death, but I didn't see anything (it was probably posted while I was on hiatus in the USA). But I did look at searchenginewatch.com, and there isn't a review of it up there, yet.

A9 is a new(ish) search engine, courtesy of Amazon. It's also got a nice little directory, based on The Open Directory. So far, so standard. What's interesting are the enhancements, available when clicking on site info, which utilise the same features as seen on Amazon itself. Site ranking and usage statistics, site speed measurement, inbound links, site description and screenshot, and, coolest of all, a 'people who visit this page also visit' feature.

Here's
the profile of this blog. WHat I find interesting is that I'm not familiar with some of those sites, so this is a great way of getting recommendations of new sites to check out.

I'm impressed.

| posted by Simon at 7:19 pm

 
Library Journal has an article titled Born with the Chip, which discusses the characteristics of the new generation of library patrons - those who were born into the digital generation, and have different expectations from the rest of us. I feel like I'm on a cusp between the internet and non-internet generations. On the one hand, I'm comfortable on the net/web, I'm old enough to remember making the switch between text-only and graphical browsers. On the other, I'm still not really comfortable with chat, TXT-speak, etc. But these are things I am going to have to be able to work with.

Maybe I should start referring to myself as part of the 'Cusp Generation' (I'm a year or so too old to qualify as NexGen, apparently).

| posted by Simon at 5:34 pm

 
"this is what librarianship is not:

* It is not about checking books in and out.

* It is not about sitting at a reference desk and hoping people will ask you a question.

* It is not just picking a bunch of books for the library or adding a bunch of links to the website.

* It is not merely working 8 to 5 or putting in time.

* It is not getting that MLS and figuring you're done with education."

Source: Canby, Susan Fifer. 2004. "Librarians and Leadership". Information Outlook May 2004. Vol. 8, Iss. 5; pg. 24, 4 pgs.

| posted by Simon at 5:00 pm

 
"This web site provides links to a report and graphs from a research project aimed at determining the impact of digital information resources on the role of research library collection managers in 5 English speaking countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States."

This research was conducted by Daniel Dorner of the School of Information Management at Victoria University, where I'm studying. The survey and the report are online. (The report is 38p, PDF).

| posted by Simon at 12:58 pm

 
In the "this should be bleeding obvious" department - a student from Essex in England is suing his university (Evening Standard, 27 May 2004) for failing him on the grounds of plagiarism. His argument being that he wasn't punished until his third year. He seems to be claiming that because he got away with it for that long, it's OK.

I wonder how well the plagiarism issue was emphasised by the university? I know for my courses it would be almost impossible to claim ignorance, it's really hammered home.

So OK, I'm back posting. I was on hiatus while I went to the US, and after what happened there* I didn't feel much like posting or updating here. Things are looking a bit brighter now, and I've taken a reassessment of my life, and what I was doing with my time online. I guess this is a better use of my time than some of the things I was doing, so I'm continuing, but trying to shift away from just linking to the same stories everyone else is linking, and hopefully add more of my own thoughts.

*I went over in an attempt to further a long-distance relationship with someone I'd met last August. It didn't work out. Such is life.

| posted by Simon at 6:16 pm

 
Another MeFi link, I'm afraid. This time the discussion is more interesting than the link - Fucking Google It!. Basically it's a webpage you refer someone to when they ask a "stupid" question:

"Google Is Your Friend
All Smart People Use Google
You Appear To Not Be One Of Them

Someone thinks you are an idiot because you were too stupid to check Google before asking a question. They gave you a link to this site as a joke. The fact that you followed it pretty much proves the point.

Hope that helps."

What scares me is the assumption, both on this site and by some in the MeFi thread, that Google is the answer to everything. And this comment, in an otherwise sharp post:

"The same is true at your local library. I can look up creationism and come away with a dozen books doing their damndest to dress up religion as science. At least on the web I'll get some counter arguments."

Ouch! So much for our cherished belief that we're putting accross both sides of an argument. I do somewhat sympathise, though - my local public library, while generally good, has a large section of books which enthuse about graphology (handwriting analysis) filed in the psychology section. Now, anyone who's studied industrial psychology, as I have, knows that the literature shows very, very poor results for graphology as a predictor of job performance. But there doesn't seem to be much support given to this viewpoint in the library's collection.

Makes me wish I had a MeFi account though, so I could provide an information professional's perspective (also to correct the claim that Yahoo! uses Alltheweb's database, when according to Greg Notess it uses a modified Inktomi db.

(Yes, I know Jenny posted this before I did, but I saw it on MeFi before I saw it on her site, I just didn't have time to post this because I was at work. Honest ;-) )

| posted by Simon at 6:05 pm

 
The Two Things - "For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.� Via Metafilter.

Some interesting suggestions for various disciplines. I spent, ooooh, at least two minutes trying to think what the "Two Things" might be for Library Science. Those two minutes took me as far as Ranganathan:

1. Books are for use
2. Save the time of the reader.

I think that actually works - you can assume that the other three laws ('each book its reader', 'each reader his [or her] book' and 'libraries are growing organisms')are applications of those two. OK, I'm on slightly shaky ground with the last one, but if you assume that "growing" means "evolving" rather than "ever-incrasing in size" then collection development/management is really an application of the first two laws (we're getting rid of unused or useless resources, so we can replace them with more appropriate ones, because books are meant to be used, and so that we can save the reader's time).

While it's more of a humourous exercise than a genuine attempt at epistimology, I think there's some merit in this Two Things theory.

| posted by Simon at 5:55 pm