“The Jackson County Library Information blog is a place to share information regarding the funding and closures of our 15 branch libraries. All fifteen branches of the Jackson County [OR] Library System will close beginning April 7, 2007 for an indefinite period of time due to lack of funding.” This is a sad sad blog, including posts like “Why Jackson County Must Close Libraries” “How you can help” and a Library Stories page. [thanks rick]
Category: libraries
A library defiled
I never really liked this song before, but now that I’ve seen the video for “Every time we touch” (which takes place in a library in a sort of “hot for teacher” manner” I’m a fan. [thanks john13!]
library too popular with teens? close it after school. brilliant!
In the article Lock the Library! Rowdy Students Are Taking Over one New Jersey library claims it has to resort to closing the library during after school hours because the library is being overrrun by unruly teenagers who are fighting, peeing on the bathroom floor and, apparently “talk[ing] back to librarians.” Here’s the library’s announcement on their website. Looks like the library will be available via phone, IM and email after school, just not in person. [thanks kelly!]
can your users “recreate” @ your library?
From The Librarian’s Rant comes this report from AL Online of a public library in Florida blocking MySpace because their Internet use policy prohibits using the computers for “chat-room access, e-mail, and recreational uses.” The actual policy goes so far as to prohibit “entertainment” use as well, so they block YouTube. Longer article here, please make sure to note the MySpace = predators assertion.
“E-problem” puts 15,000 library patrons’ info on Internet
Please read this newspaper’s account of how 15,000 library patrons’ personal information — names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, street addresses, children’s names and library card numbers — wound up accessible to the public as a result of… something happening to the systems at the Lakeland Library Cooperative in Michigan. That’s the rub, they’re not even sure. The interim director (what a lousy time to be an interim director) said that they “think there was a software malfunction” and then later in the article is paraphrased as saying “the library last month underwent a software upgrade on their system, but was not able to determine if that was the source of the problem.” Does this inspire confidence? No, it does not. E-problems?
Mistakes happen, we all know that, but this story tells me that either the reporter doesn’t understand computers enough to write about this incident, or that the person who runs the Library Cooperative does not understand what happened, or possibly both. I’m aware that there is always a third option, that they are trying to be deliberately obscure to keep people from hacking into their system, but if I were a patron of one of the affected libraries, I’d like mor information, a lot more. This is a file that is on the web, right? There should be log files that show how many times that page was accessed. Wouldn’t it be reassuring if that number was, say, three instead of perhaps a hundred? There is nothing on any of the Coop’s web sites about this incident even though the news story has been online all day (I found it through LISNews).
Oddly it looks like the previous director left the job somewhat mysteriously a few weeks ago. According to this short story, all the member libraries will be notified and 15000 new bar codes will be issued.