Meredith and Jenny have both posted very astute summaries of technology competencies that either are or should be required for incoming professionals to the librarianship field. Meredith focuses on what you should think about learning while you’re at school and Jenny adapts a list of skills for educators into her 20 Technology Skills Every Librarian Should Have list. Not a surprise that there is more than a little overlap between these lists. If you’re already out of school and in the field, think of this as a laundry list of opportunities for professional development, or catalysts for librarian skillshares.
Month: July 2005
loan forgiveness, the librarian shortage and Laura Bush
ALA press release touts student loan forgiveness for librarians in low income areas while managing to hype the librarian shortage we’re all still wondering about and gives a tip of the hat to Laura Bush. I looked for more information on the Librarian Education and Development Act in several places online and could not find specific reference to the information the press release discussed. Anyone else? [update: you guys scare me sometimes, you’re so fast with this – here’s the link, and here’s another one]
USA PATRIOT Act extension one step closer
The House voted to make 14 out of 16 USAPA provisions permanent yesterday. The bill — HR 3199 –that they approved also proposed 10 year extensions to our favorite section, Section 215, with an interesting change.
One amendment, passed by a 402-26 vote, requires the FBI director to personally approve any request for library or bookstore records.
Open CRS and USAPA
I read a mailing list called Secrecy News via RSS. One of the things they frequently link to are Congressional Research Service reports. These produce some of the best research out there on various important topics. They are public domain content and are free as in beer. However it’s often easier to find these documents via fee-based services than out on the open web despite web sites like Open CRS. There is a newish report that should be required reading for all librarians: Libraries and the USA PATRIOT Act, originally published in February 2003 now updated for July 2005.
former Health and Human Services Secretary chips himself
I don’t care if Tommy Thompson is going to chip himself, I’m still not sold on RFID technology for libraries as it’s being marketed and implemented currently. Let’s get real here. There’s a difference between voluntarily tagging yourself and having tagging being a prerequisite for your school or library. Would TT’s tag have his social security number on it? What about his library reading record? This article looks to be nothing more than a cheap stunt hyping VeriChip’s system of linking information on your chip to a database that could contain your health information. Like many nifty technology tools, this one only becomes useful when it becomes ubiquitous which seems to me to be a long ways off. Getting this sort of coverage would [or should] mean open standards to lower prices, encourage innovation, reduce vendor lock-in and encourage growth generally.
And, speaking of RFID, Laura Smart’s URL to her excellent Library RFID site has changed. You can find all her content here: http://libraryrfid.net/wordpress