Dr. Richard J. Cox, head of the archives track at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, has posted a review of Lara Jennifer Moore’s Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France. I find it an intelligent review that gives a clear sense of … Read more Richard Cox reviews Lara Moore’s Restoring Order
Amy Goodman and David Goodman (of Democracy Now) have an article in the current Mother Jones magazine about the great Windsor, Connecticut librarians’ defiance of the FBI and the PATRIOT Act and ultimate court victory for all of us on constitutional grounds.
Puzzle Me, Puzzle You: “My Account” “Your Account” Which is it? The autonomous liberal subject wants to know. Whichever it is, it’s somebody’s account – mine, yours, Jacques Lacan Jr.’s, the Egg Man’s, the Walrus’s – and the password is not to be shared. I want to ponder it but I think I’ll just Be … Read more Whose space?
That’s the winning design in the IFLA/UNESCO design contest for an International Information Literacy Logo. The winning designer was Edgar Luy Perez, of Havana, Cuba. I like the logo, and I think it was a good idea to pursue in an international effort. It is part of the InfoLit Global Information Literacy Resources Directory.
This link is flying around the internet and being talked about on NPR: The Beloit List. It is a list of facts about the Millennial generation’s cultural situation that is supposed to show how amazingly unaware “they” are of things that “we” older people take for granted. I’m only linking to it to mention that … Read more About that Beloit List
I just noticed this month-old article from the Wall Street Journal: So much for the ‘looted sites’. It says that many sites of purported looting of antiquities in Southern Iraq were actually not looted, although they are in danger. I can’t claim to know what’s really going on here; this issue has a lot of … Read more Iraq sites not really looted?
Nanette Perez of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom sent out a link to this AOL study on web users’ behavior and statements regarding data privacy. The study finds, unsurprisingly, that most web users say they highly value privacy online but routinely give it up in exchange for convenience or small rewards. This study illustrates a … Read more Privacy and markets
We live in an era (no blame to Baby Boomers intended) when people in positions of authority are often uncomfortable being authority figures. With a keen memory of disliking authority in our youth, we are uneasy on the other side, surely the object of jokes and plots of circumvention by kids who love their youthful … Read more Reference librarians are authority figures with no jurisdiction
We’re told: “The Millennial generation, with their ipods and facebook profiles, are resetting the agendas for libraries, and aging Boomers are struggling to adjust by creating environments that are attractive to the new kind of student.” Right? I’m not so sure. To me it would seem more accurate to say that Boomers are projecting their … Read more Boomers and their vision of the students of today
I’ve always been appalled by British libel law as long as I’ve known about it. Basically it puts a strong onus on defendants to prove that what they have said is true, rather than on the accuser to prove that it is false. The result is an excessive real-world limitation on freedom of speech for … Read more UN says British libel law violates human rights
Melissa Adler has started a new blog on library history: Library Notes, named for Melvil Dewey’s original journal. It will include lots of postings of old articles and primary source material on libraries from the ages. Enjoy!
Public Knowledge, the DC public interest group, has a very informative discussion of ACTA – the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA is an international trade agreement now being worked out behind closed doors, outside of the relatively open framework of the the World Intellectual Property Organization. It is a so-called “executive agreement,” rather than a treaty, … Read more ACTA – Policy laundering IP
This is great: A Librarian’s Job, from the Los Angeles Times, circa 1920. Melissa Adler dug it up from the SLIS library at UW Madison and posted it on her blog. It’s just the kind of thing that I collected and compiled in Library Daylight: Tracings of Modern Librarianship, 1874-1922. One thing I love about … Read more LA Times on librarians (1920)
Jon Wiener has an editorial in Friday’s Los Angeles Times: “Pillaging Iraqi history: Shortly after Baghdad fell in 2003, the Baath Party archives were shipped to the U.S. It’s time to return them.” The editorial is a very informative summary of this important issue.
I neglected to link to this post when it was published a couple of weeks ago. The blog of the Committee of Concerned Librarians of British Columbia has an item on a somewhat disturbing training program put on by CILIP (the UK Library Association) that aims to “teach anyone how to do in-depth desk research … Read more Insta-librarian
Interpreting the Digital Human (video in Realplayer format) This is a video of a presentation by Rafael Capurro, head of the Interntational Center of Information Ethics. Capurro was the Senior Information Ethics Fellow in 2007-08 at Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) at the School of Information Studies at UW Milwaukee. This video is of … Read more Rafael Capurro: Interpreting the Digital Human (video)
A Marxist Analysis of the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (PDF) Policy Futures in Education Volume 4 Number 4, 2006 RUTH RIKOWSKI London South Bank University, United Kingdom This article examines the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). There are many WTO … Read more Ruth Rikowski on the WTO and intellectual property rights
Robert Kent, Steve Marquardt, Walter Skold, FREADOM, “Friends of Cuban Libraries”… What is that perfume, that perfume that you won’t let anyone forget? Ah, I recognize it…. It is:
We hear a lot about Radical Trust, with the emphasis being on trusting users (of systems, websites, etc.) to guide organizations. I have tried to sound a skeptical note at times, pointing out that something called “groupthink” is the danger when you decide to trust the wisdom of crowds. I’ve always most admired people whose … Read more Interface agents and human control
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books there is a review article by Hugh Eakin about the loss of Iraqi antiquities and records in the current war, titled, “The Devastation of Iraq’s Past.” From an historic standpoint, the great loss of Iraq’s cultural record and the inventions of Google will probably … Read more Review article of six books on the loss of Iraqi antiquities