Tag: library

hi – 28feb

Posted on by jessamyn

Hi. Sometimes getting people on board with a new idea is just as easy as plowing forward with a positive attitude and hoping that people will either sign on and share your excitement, or at least watch cautiously and be willing to be convinced. Two examples from today

  1. ALA Council is going to have an online “face book” to help people familiarize themselves with their appointed and elected Council reps. Big props to Leslie Burger for this one, but I helped a little.
  2. The Roxbury Free Library in Roxbury Vermont now has a URL and a mini web page. Big props to Susan D’Amico for being willing to learn about domain shopping and I helped with a little hosting while they plan their next step. What a nice little achievement to take to town meeting, don’t you think?

In both these cases, someone in a position of authority basically had to make a decision, flip a switch, say “yea” or “nay” to a new idea, decide to do something different. With some some help from people with good information (me in these cases, and others) whole new things spring up, new combinations of information, new methods of delivery. How neat is that?

while you were midwintering….

Posted on by jessamyn

Hi. I’m back and very tired. Midwinter went fairly well from my perspective. Council meetings seemed effective. I got to see most of the people i tried to see and had some nice serendipitous meetings with others. My company was part usual suspects and part people I’d never met before including a healthy dose of library students. I learned things. I took a lot of public transportation in an unfamiliar city. I stayed within my budget and I got home feeling smarter than when I left. I have a stack of paperwork that I’d like to share parts of with you but it will need to wait until the weekend.

In the meantime, while we were all at the meeting, this happened “City stalls FBI access in library” referring to the librarian at the Newton Free Library in Massachusetts who wouldn’t let FBI agents in to search library computers without a warrant after there had been emailed threats directed towards Brandeis University sent from one of the library computers. According to an article in the Boston Herald, this was done with the mayor’s knowledge and backing but everyone seems set to blame the librarian anyhow. This was a big enough news items to be the butt of a lot of jokes on talk radio by the time I was driving home from the airport. I’m just starting to read about this story, but correct me if I’m wrong, couldn’t the agents have just asked for the data on the computers, using the USA PATRIOT Act as their legal justification? This seems like a case where they were reluctant to for some reason. The Boston Globe article on the subject says this

[B]y the time a warrant became an issue, law enforcement officials had determined there was no imminent danger and decided to cooperate with Newton officials, Marcinkiewicz said. She said no arrests had been made as of yesterday afternoon. [emphasis mine]