Category: ala

The assignment for today is to read this “The Perils of Strong Copyright”

The ALA web site is one year old. Karen Schneider has some okay things to say about where she hopes the site is going. From a councilor’s perspective, I can see where progress is being made. From a user perspective what I see is not all that different from what I saw a year ago. A search engine that barely works, pages and formatting that appear and disappear without warning [anyone seen the Member and Customer Service Center lately? all I see is a login box], lack of responsiveness to member email, and an overall sense that no one in charge really “gets” the web. Smaller insults include a really hard-to-use navigational structure, “shorter” URLs that aren’t, and clunky design accentuated with ad hoc elements that seem to exist for proof-of-concept rather than to be functioning parts of an overall web site. On the bright side, I thought the online elections went pretty well. Then again, I got a paper ballot.

I just filled out my [paper] ballot for the ALA elections. I mostly voted for the progressive candidates, a few oddballs, and my pal Step Schmidt who convinced me to run for Council myself and whose entry about why she is running — as well as her personal statement that was included with the ballot — resonated deeply with me.

One of my favorite colleagues during my brief tenure as a VISTA volunteer at Seattle Public was Tracie Hall who now directs ALA’s office for Diversity. She’s full of spirit and good ideas. Their office now has a bulletin, Versed, available on the website [bad URL, good content] that comes out five times a year and discusses best practices and skillsharing in library-diversity work.

Technobiblio is more polite than I am so I will just say this: charging $25/day per user for wireless Internet access at ALA is total bullshit. Not that I am such a junkie that I will whine and complain that I can’t get my fix, but it is out of scale for a) the actual cost per user of providing this service and b) what other equivalent vendors charge. I don’t need wireless throughout the whole center [though it would be nice and far from impossible technologically] I’d just like a few hotspots where I can sit with my laptop and check my email. Shorter lines at the Internet cafes [where one well-placed wireless router could accomplish all of this for $99 for everyone forever] and happier people who can use their own software. It’s astonishing that this is such an impossible endeavor to do well, or even to approach realistically.