I was talking about Google’s persistent cookies on my way home from the Sleater-Kinney show today. One of the things my law student boyfriend was wondering, was if there had been attempts to subpoena IP-linked cookie-enabled tracking information — from Google or elsewhere — in the course of law enforcement activities. I couldn’t point to a case. D-Lib has an article this month about Personal Digital Collections which is sort of a way of thinking about the digital information that people keep and create and present about themselves. The article explores how these digital trails are created and maintained, and what challenges they present for curators and archivists of the next generations.
Category: ‘puters
silkworm: tantalizing ideas and a few tools
“In the age of Google, Amazon and MSN, why is content in the library domain still so difficult and expensive to discover, access and share?” Read this long and informative white paper on how we can strive to make users experiences in the library more like the interconnected interactive experiences in the rest of their daily lives. More links over at It’s All Good, Common Library Environment, and some summaries and excerpts from Science Library Pad including one that just makes me salivate in a “the world might become the way I want it” way. Right now we’re mostly riding on buzz and good ideas, but it’s good to see the tech community helping create tools with the library community, as if, in some way, we were all part of the same thing.
‘Project Silkworm is based on the concept that library vendors must now collaborate in order to begin to deliver better services. This focus on participation (of both vendors and users) permeates the whole project and is captured in four key values: [1] Sharing and community over duplication and isolation, [2] Reuse over reinvention, [3] Openness and interoperability over exclusivity, [4] Experimentation over certainty…
Google Print contract, available for the reading
If you’re curious just what libraries have agreed to with their Google Print arrangements, here’s one contract [pdf] that is available online [linked from here, which is linked from here, yes, I was surprised too]. In short, it outlines what can, can’t, and must be done with the Google Digital Copy and the University of Michigan’s Digital Copy of the scanned information. In short, the digital copies of public domain works are not public domain. I’m sure no one is suprised by this, but the phrase “land grab” does come to mind as I read this contract. Of particular note:
- UM needs to find a way to restrict automated access, downloading of its content, or others making its content available for commercial purposes. This is more restrictive than public domain.
- Further UM agrees to restrict use of its content to “persons having a need to access such materials” and makes particular mention to those materials not being “disseminated to the public at large” this m ay be nothing serious, or it may be
- Google is a third party beneficiary of any agreement UM enters into with regards to the UM Digital Copy and any cooperative web service agreement such as the Digital Library Federation
- Google agrees to always make searching and showing search results of the content free.
It’s fascinating reading. I am certainly not a lawyer or copyright expert, I would be very interested in what other people have to say about this.
am I online?
Thanks to Library Web Chic, I now have a little indicator next to my IM link that shows if I’m available on IM or not. Green = yes, grey = no. Nifty.
subversive gardening, or why wikis?
A metaphor for wiki understanding: the community garden. If you’vbe got a little time to do some reading today, I’d dive into Luke’s article about Ranganathan, gardening and Wikipedia.
…there is no monolithic point of view, there is no monopoly on truth. From a critical perspective, if the object lesson centers around a Wikipedia article as the participants negotiate and carefully choose language to approximate NPOV (the Wikipedian “neutral point of view”), it’s going to be a pretty effective lesson, which will teach above all that no source — not even Wikipedia — should be taken on its own in constructing meaning. If, on the other hand, the questioning student is handed a Britannica article — equally anonymous but somehow anointed with some magical pixie-dust librarians call “authority” but fail to satisfactorily explain to anyone outside the profession — the lesson will fail (again, from a critical pedagogical perspective, at least).