‘puters

best practices for OSPs

Because your library IS an Online Service Provider, and because your library has a commitment to patron privacy, you should read the EFF guide to Best Practices for Online Service Providers.

“OSP owners must deal with requests from law enforcement and lawyers to hand over private user information and logs. Yet, compliance with these demands takes away from an OSP’s goal of providing users with reliable, secure network services. In this paper, EFF offers some suggestions, both legal and technical, for best practices that balance the needs of OSPs and their users’ privacy and civil liberties.”

some content isn’t there and you can’t get the old stuff

Posted on 29Dec04 by jessamyn

Why searching Google for online resources is like buying a CD at Wal-Mart. [libinblack]

DRM – start learning

Posted on 29Dec04 by jessamyn

All librarians who interact with multimedia at all [that is to say “all librarians”] should start understanding Digital Rights Management issues now. Jenny has a few good anecdotes about why buying items with DRM can be the equivalnet of bad customer service for libraries.

LISFeeds – now attractive!

Posted on 29Dec04 by jessamyn

The new LISFeeds covers 131 blogs and even has a search function. The new and today’s items options means you can do a quick check-in with the LIS world with one click. Plus, it’s attractive. Nice job Blake [and Steven for getting the whole ball rolling on this in the first place, mazel tov on the new job].

what is going on in ILS nowadays?

Posted on 27Dec04 by jessamyn

While this is just a series of slides, I think a narrative can be made that combines them in lieu of the actual talk that was given. Library Technology 2004: The Current State of Library Automation and Future Trends. Of particular note: bigger libraries, and more of them, are going with similar vendors so consolidation of large library resources becomes simpler and searching gets more federated. And, on the next to last slide, “Small, rural libraries continue to struggle with automation.” Too bad. [unalog]