“See https://code.nla.gov.au/ for open source code from the National Library of Australia” [thanks roy]
Category: ‘puters
what is the cloud, please
People at drop-in time who are just learning to use email have been asking me if I know what “the cloud” is lately. I assume the NY Times wrote something about it. I know it well enough to explain it to someone who also doesn’t know what Bcc is, but I wasn’t sure I understood it enough to be talking to other librarians about it. Here is a good First Monday article that spells out a lot of it: Where is the cloud? Geography, economics, environment, and jurisdiction in cloud computing. Some more discussion about how this affects libraries from the latest Library 2.0 Gang podcast. [thanks justin!]
iphone apps for librarians
I rarely post others’ lists, this is an exception. I have an iphone that isn’t a phone per se, but I can load applications on it and carry it around with me and pretend I have important business to attend to. Kenley Neufeld made a nice post a ways back about top 10 iphone applications for librarians. What do you have on yours? What should I have on mine?
Reminders of courteous behavior instead of filters in San Jose
I read it first on Librarian in Black but liked the coverage of the Mercury News. The San Jose Public Library decided to not add filters to the public library computers after a year and a half of debate. One of the points made by the article is that startup costs to add filters would be about $90,000 with annual maintenance costs of $5,000. You can read the final policy statement here (pdf). In includes the fact that, out of almost 1.4 million computer login sessions at SJ Public Libraries (excluding the King Library), library staff received two complaints of lewd behavior and only one complaint to staff about pornography viewing. The King Library, the main library, had a similar number of login sessions and 14 complaints about pornography viewing.
A few things going on, googley and otherwise
I’ve been reading more, typing less. My super-bloggy friends told me lat year sometime that a lot of their friends were blogging less and Twittering more. I was surprised to hear that since it hadn’t really trickled down to my neck of the woods yet, but lately it has. While I still stay on top of my RSS feeds, I suspect that I can only do that because people are blogging less. I don’t know if they’re twittering more, having babies, buying houses or doing something else. I know what I’ve been doing: reading.
I’ve also been travelling which is probably not a totally fun thing to read about [if I could delete everyone’s tweets from airports, I would — unless they’re me looking for someone to hang out with when my flight has been delayed] but I go through periods of educating, followed by periods of learning, etc. I also made a resolution to myself for this year to write new talks (some similar slides okay, all similar slides against the rules) so when I give talks, they’re more work but also better, I think. I’ll be doing a 2.0 talk in upstate New York for NCLS and then a few talks at NJLA next week. Lots of writing, good stuff to pass on.
What’s been really on my mind lately is the Google Books settlement. I happen to be lucky that an old time friend of mine from the blogger days, James Grimmelmann, is one of the major players in the “explain this to everyone” field day that is going on. He’s also a keen legal mind and a great writer so it’s been a joy to read what he and others have been writing. Here are some links to essays that may help you understand things.
- James Grimelmann lays out principles and recommendations for the settlement, back in November
- The Google Book Settlement and the Public Domain by Mary Minow
- The Google Book Settlement at Columbia Part 1, Part 2 – slightly old, really worth reading
- James Grimmelmann and Siva Vaidhyanathan discuss the settlement at Georgetown (bullet point notes)
- A note about how the Internet Archive has gotten involved. Read the letter for more.