Ann Seidl has a nice web site up for her upcoming film The Hollywood Librarian. I saw her present clips that she was assembling for this at the Vermont Library Association conference a few years ago and I think it’s going to be great.
ALA CMS RFP, OMG!
Looks like ALA is going to get a new CMS for dealing with their web site and they have sent out an RFP [pdf]. We can yammer all we want about how this should have been done last time, and debate what damage was done by two years of a substandard web site, but it’s a step forward to at least try to do it right the second time and hope too many people haven’t joined SLA or ASIS in the meantime. Here are my comments to the Council list, and here are Karen Schneider’s.
underfunded libraries
I’d love to see an update, with hard data, of this map of underfunded libraries. Rochelle points out the questions she has when she does what any librarian should do and evalutates her source. If anyone has more info about this, feel free to help her out. Id lvoe to see something like this [with hard data, updated for 2005] on the main page of the PLA web site, updated daily.
so you call me crassly egotistical and then get huffy when I call you a fool?
It’s becoming a bit of a tired meme. Insult all bloggers using overgeneralizations and snarky language, closely track posts about your article in the blogosphere, report back, quoting nasty remarks and say this proves your point that all bloggers are just the way you said they are. I’m as worried about civil discourse as the next person — the lack of it on Council lists sometimes disturbs me — but I’ve also always thought that the best way to ensure that things stayed civil was not to call total strangers names in a public forum in the first place. Perhaps it’s just me. [thanks rikhei]
fingerprints will be used for computer login at Naperville Public
I would really like to know what privacy or security problems public libraries have that need to be solved with expensive biometrics equipment and patron ID-ing via fingerprints? Please note that I am not related to Naperville Public Library director Mark West who seems to have a willful misunderstanding of the difference between a fingerpint and a bar code. Please also note that US Biometrics who sold the library the system is headquartered in Naperville Illinois. Here are some more specifics about their arrangement with the library. Note the obligatory library pervert tossed in to the article just to make people think that this level of increased security is necessary for some crime-fighting reason. If you read through to page 2 of the article you’ll notice that only one other library system in the US uses fingerprint IDs on a voluntary basis. The library serves 400,000 people. 1,787 patrons use it. How do you think that works out, in terms of return on investment? [thanks jill]