Category: access

why don’t we say more about Bush’s information ethics?

Posted on by jessamyn

Also from Library Juice, why isn’t ALA or any other large organization taking on some of the more egregious affronts to free access to information perpetuated by the Bush Administration? My guess? ALAs non-profit status and their fear of protecting it are going to make it difficult for them to challenge the administration’s policies even when these policies run counter to the continued operation of our profession. That’s a real drag.

Secrecy, propaganda and disinformation represent three core evils in government from an information ethics point of view. As such, they are the aspects of Bush administration policy and practice that ALA is eminently justified in publicly addressing.

the web for the blind, or the clueless

Posted on by jessamyn

I spent some time today with three novice computer users. Two were fairly bright people who were challenged but ultimately victorious in their struggles with the mouse and with Windows. One had a lot of trouble scanning a web page to look for whatever the “action item” was that she had to click on. So, finding the “send” button on her email, finding the “attach file” button after browsing for a file, or finding the “log off” button were very frustrating and took minutes for her each time.

This corroborates what we know about novice users, or users with cognitive impairments: they read every word on a web page and have a hard time getting the hang of cues that are communicated with colors or other subtle indicators. For them, web-based email like Yahoo [with its enormous ads and complicated interface] is more of a punishment than a pleasure. No wonder people still use AOL. This is just really a roundabout way of passing on a few links about accessibility:

threats to digital information

Posted on by jessamyn

JD Lasica’s list of Top 10 assaults on digital liberties could just as easily be titled “Top 10 assaults on digital libraries” as diglet rightly points out. Of particular note to libraries is #10. I’ve been hearing more and more about libraries being strongarmed into consortia that requires them to forego IT and filtering decisionmaking, independent collection development and in some cases even in-house cataloging staff. Keep your eyes open to changed in your digital information environment, and the legislation that constantly surrounds it, so that you can be an advocate for access by your patrons.

Ontology is Overrated, or, why DDC is not good for organizing the web

Posted on by jessamyn

Please go read this very long article about classification: Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags. I know it looks like it’s about computers, but it is also about libraries and tags, and sense-making and why you can’t gracefully take library classification schemes and slap them on to web pages. Go. Go now and read and learn.

It’s tempting to think that the classification schemes that libraries have optimized for in the past can be extended in an uncomplicated way into the digital world. This badly underestimates, in my view, the degree to which what libraries have historically been managing an entirely different problem.

It comes down ultimately to a question of philosophy. Does the world make sense or do we make sense of the world? If you believe the world makes sense, then anyone who tries to make sense of the world differently than you is presenting you with a situation that needs to be reconciled formally, because if you get it wrong, you’re getting it wrong about the real world…. If, on the other hand, you believe that we make sense of the world, if we are, from a bunch of different points of view, applying some kind of sense to the world, then you don’t privilege one top level of sense-making over the other.

[thanks adam]