access

Just say “NO” to RTFM or why there aren’t more women in open source?

This is loosely related to libraries, but it is related to FOSS [free and open source software] which many libraries are using or contemplating. One of the things that is consistently stressed as a benefit of open source stuff is that when you pay for people to work on your software, you are hiring talent, not paying for licenses at giant megacorporations. For some of us, this is an unqualified good thing. However, compared to megacorporation software projects, there are many fewer women working on open source projects.

Some of this has to do with the nature of the open source community, some of it has to do with technology generally. When my little video got a ton of views on YouTube, I sort of made a joke that I would know it was a success when the marriage proposals started trickling in. Other non-techies looked at me strangely when I said this, but sure enough when you look at the comments, you’ll see it. I find it all pretty amusing and not some sort of “evidence” of any sort of sexism, but I do think it points out that a woman with even a passing competency in this areana [and I’m techie but nothing like, say, Karen Coombs] is such an anomaly that people just stop and stare. I’d like more nerdy lady friends who do this sort of stuff, so I’ve been reading up on it. I found a few good things to read and I’d like to share them with you.

An old HOWTO about HOWTO encourage women in Linux.
Women in FLOSS – a presentation by Angela Byron. It’s a big pdf with 100 slides and it’s totally captivating and interesting.
Susie’s blog talks about a few of these topics and linked to my video originally which is how I got started on this topic for today.

can you control public domain images? should you?

Posted on 20May0721May07 by jessamyn

Peter Hirtle has a great post over at the LibraryLaw blog about the Smithsonian’s attempt to control reproduction and subsequent use of the materials they have made available digitally and online, many of which are in the public domain. A group called Public Resource decided to push the envelope on the Smithsonian’s terms of service, specifically their copyright notice, and downloaded all 6000+ images and made them available on Flickr where they still are. Hirtle questions the legality of what Public Resource has done, but also questions the copyright that the Smithsonian asserts.

Again, I wish the Smithsonian didn’t try to assert control over its images. And while I think that Public.Resource.Org crossed the line, it is ridiculous that anyone else can now take any of public domain images Public.Resource.Org has distributed and do whatever they want with them. (Any contract limiting use of the images can only be between the Smithsonian and Public.Resource.Org.) That is just one more reason why repositories should focus on providing good services to users, rather than attempting to establish monopoly control over images from their holdings.

Update: I made this for you.

Using wikipedia to drive traffic to a library website

Posted on 19May07 by jessamyn

Carolyn Dunford and Ann Lally from the University of Washington outline their creative project in DLib this month. They registered as Wikipedia users and created content [links or articles] that supported or used the UW’s digital collections as source material. One of my favorite things about this idea is that, thanks to the way Wikipedia works, you can both read the article and see a list of every change they made to Wikipedia via their registered handle.

Why non-scaling solutions are bad for public access to reources

Posted on 05May07 by jessamyn

Google Books has an enormous amount of material. This is good. However, they paint copyright restrictions with a wide brush and err on the side of protecting copyright holders. So, most content on Google Books that has been published post-1923 are restricted (possibly all, but definitely most). This may or may not be good for most people, but it’s certainly bad in some specific instances, like with government documents. These are in the public domain and yet you can only see “snippets” on Google Books. Rick Prelinger described this phenomenon last year. The problem still exists. The concern, apparently is that cop[yrighted material may appear within these documents — hearings especially — and since Google can’t spare the humans to do the due diligence, we all suffer with restricted access. [freegovinfo]

my first audiobook – a day in the life

Posted on 23Apr0721Mar23 by jessamyn

I had a long day at work today. I went to teeny library number one and noticed their Internet wasn’t working. Apparently it had been down for days, a service guy was on the way. I climbed around under the desk and found that the computer was plugged directly into the wireless modem which was in turn incorrectly plugged in to the cable modem. Bad ports all around. The cable was working fine. Then I went to the basement to mess with the three donated computers. They are from an insurance company. They run Win2K which is not bad in my neck of the woods. I plugged them all in and started them up and was asked for a 25 digit license code. “Hey did these computers come with any software?” I asked. “Just what’s on them.” the librarian told me. I gave her a brief rundown on how to ask the insurance people nicely if they have software licenses for the software they sort of gave us and, if they didn’t, what our legal and non-legal options were.

The situation at the library underscores the importance of having proper IT infrastructure and software licensing in place. Without a reliable Internet connection and licensed software, productivity and security can be severely compromised. This is where Identity and Access Management services can come in handy, as they provide a centralized solution for managing user identities, access, and authentication across various systems and applications. With IAM solutions, libraries and other organizations can ensure that their users have secure and authorized access to the resources they need, while also maintaining compliance with licensing agreements and other legal requirements. Additionally, IAM solutions can help prevent unauthorized access and data breaches by implementing strong authentication and authorization policies.

But that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.

What I want to talk about is audiobooks. I was present at the downloading of my other teeny library’s first audiobook today, and helped a patron get his first audiobook. The book was from Overdrive. Our library isn’t a subscriber but this patron had another library card at a place that has Overdrive. I was told when I got in that a patron with an iPod needed help getting an audiobook from this library. I said yeah he should be having some trouble, Overdrive doesn’t support Macs/iPods, or they don’t suppoer it. I launched into an explanation of DRM until I got the impression it wasn’t helping and sat and waited for the kid to show up. Turns out he didn’t have an iPod (as I suspected) and turns out he had checked out an MP3 player from the library that has the Overdrive subscription. They had offered to put the book on the MP3 player for him, but they also told him they didn’t know how to do it and suggested, according to him, that he should do it himself. So he came to the library that I work at. They told him to come back when I was working because no one there knew how to do it either. This is what we did.

restarted the computer in exec mode
went to the library website to assure that the book was “checked out” to the patron.
plugged in the MP3 player
downloaded the OverDrive Media Console
installed the Overdrive Media Console after a false start when the firewall blocked its attempt to download files to install into itself
Ran OverDrive Media Console which told us we needed a newer version of Windows Media Player
Went to the Windows site only to find that the version for our computers is Version 9, not the current version 11.
Fished around for a bit until we found version 9 and downloaded it
Installed WMP version 9.
Ran the OverDrive Media Console which said we need to get a Windows Media Security Upgrade for WMP
Installed the Windows Media Security Upgrade which is required before any DRMed files can be played
Re-ran the OverDrive Media Console
Downloaded the book
Installed the book on the MP3 player.

According to OverDrive’s website, this is about par for the course. Then of course the librarian told me that since I’d done all this with the Centurion Guard not unlocked, I’d have to do it all over again next time.

I appreciate that digital media is really where people are going, and I understand why. However, this was one of the worst user experiences I’ve had to subject a patron to in a library at any time, ever. The patron I was helping was a 13 year old kid who was totally agreeable about having to spend basically an hour getting an audiobook off a website, but I couldn’t look him in the eye and say “Yeah this is what it’s like when you want to read a book over a computer.” I just said “This is how it works when companies make dumb choices about how to sell digital content, and no one is telling them they have to do it any other way.”