Keep in mind that while it is in the best interests of librarians to access to bibliographic records be as open as possible — to facilitate record-sharing, search and retrieval of items in a library and just our collective knowledgebase generally — it is often NOT in the interests of library companies, or libraries who act like companies, to share their data such that other people or libraries can use it to do what they want with it. So goes the saga of NYPL vs ibiblio, a long and not at all complicated tale concerning their records and what is or is not copyrightable about them. Special appearance by OCLC and their revised policies about records sharing.
Month: April 2007
viewer mail: gaming in libraries & deepfreeze
I got this from a reader. I know when I am out of my league but I bet some readers here will have good insight and/or advice. If you can help out my librarian friend here, please leave a note in the comments.
Do you have any thoughts/comments re: on line gaming in the public library? You know, I thought we were all set with installing Deep Freeze on the machines–sure, let the anyone download anything, restart the computer and “poof” it’s all back to it’s original state.
But then the YAs started playing “Gunz” and our new Dell is flipping out –multiple windows opening, can’t even type in a web address, cannot get Deep Freeze to “thaw”.
I feel frustrated–I really don’t want to be this negative librarian posting “no gaming” signs, albeit in a positive manner.
Any experiences along this line? Whaddya think about allowing anything to be downloaded? I really am questioning Deep Free’s strength at this moment.
MySpace and Social Tools
I have had to lobby this week to have the IT people that manage the computer filtering at the school I work with to give adults access to MySpace. In fact, I don’t even know if any of the adults that come to computer drop-in time at the hich school ever even try to access MySpace, but I know if they try, they can’t.
The larger problem is that the filtering software they use to keep kids off of a ton of different sites during the school day (Surf Control, if it matters) behaves … erratically. I have computer logins specifically for my adult students and every now and again I go to help them do something and find that Google is blocked. Not Gmail, just plain old Google.com. So I call the IT people and ask them to fix it and they usually do. However, since I actually need to be able to access sites like Google during my evening classes, we’ve reached a compromise where they turn the filter off between 3 (after school) and 8 pm. However, they also track all the traffic that goes through the network during this time. They noticed, they said, that people were accessing MySpace. The implication was that 1) MySpace is against the rules and 2) MySpace has no value whatsoever and 3) even adults don’t have the right to use the computer networks to access social software sites.
So, I went to work and explained that the adults who come to drop-in time shoudl pretty much have the right to look at whatever they want, that MySpace is fine — I hadn’t been looking at MySpace but I had a page on MySpace that I might want to look at — and that the reports of MySpace’s dangers have bee greatly overrated. Read the article. Fewer teens are receiving unwanted online solicitations than they were in 1999. Despite this, we get laws like DOPA. That’s lousy.
Computers where? Computers IN LIBRARIES!
Hi. This is just to say I’ll be at Computers in Libraries next week. I’ll be giving a little talk called Pimp My Firefox, only the name is slightly different in the program. It’s about making Firefox do your bidding and how to customize it for various types of library staff and users. I think it will be fun. However, I am speaking at the same time as Meredith: 11:15 on Monday, April 16th. So, if you have to make a tough choice, I will not feel bad if you go see her talk. I am just sorry that I can not see her talk.
Also, I am planning my trip to DC. I may drive from Vermont. If there is someone that could benefit from a ride down on Sunday sometime, please let me know. I will be staying in DC for the week, so this is likely a one-way-only offer. Alternately if there is someone in the Northern New England area who is already driving, I would be happy to pay for gas to not have to drive.
One more logistical note: I am staying at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City on Sunday night. The CiL crew is putting me up since I am speaking. However, they are not putting me up the next night and the hotel is totally booked, so I either have to find alternate accomodations or move on and miss some of Tuesday’s activities. I have many options in DC and Maryland and would not be heartbroken to have to move on early. However, if anyone out there has a room with space Monday night, I would chip in a pint of maple syrup (and whatever else you’d like, up to and including cash) and regale you with stories of small town librarianship for a chance to stay through Tuesday. I added my name to the CiL Roomshare page, we’ll see what turns up. I seem to be all set for this part, thanks for the notes everyone.
From DC, I’ll be taking a quick detour to Dodge City, Kansas to be giving a talk about “the whole 2.0 thing” which I am looking forward to a great deal. I’ll be a little distracted at CiL, but if you see me running around, please do say hello.
Naked Librarians
Thanks to Dorothea for pointing out that it’s CSS Naked Day. Simply put, you toss up your website without a stylesheet. Then you see if you can still read it and use it. Then you think about web standards and intentional usability and good web design. It’s time to show off your <body>, for a good cause. If you don’t normally look at this website through anything other than an RSS reader come check it out.