librarian.net

while I was away at ALA, reblogged links not to miss

I’ve got one more privacy related post, but this is just a few things I’ve seen, noticed and liked. My goal for the summer was to catch up and stay caught up on RSS feeds, either through thinning my list, developing better habits or deciding to only follow friends and family, or only work people. I did a little of all of those and have been caught up for weeks now, even through ALA.

Quick privacy-related link: why is was it so hard to find Google’s privacy policy? Also, if you’re not familiar with the Google/Viacom lawsuit, now is a good time to get familiar.
Speaking of Google, does anyone feel, like Sarah does, that they punk’d us?
Ryan Dechamps tries out an EEE PC thinking about its potential use in a public library setting.
Laura does some thinking out loud about the 2.0 aesthetic and what matters to us versus what matters to our patrons.
David Lee King talks about Twitter best practices. Some very sensible suggestions for people who are newly starting out with Twitter, the how and the why.
An older but good post from Lichen about a session she went to at NELA about library-wise IT proficiencies. That is, what proficiencies should we expect all library staff to have?

the thing about privacy

Posted on 01Jul0802Jul08 by jessamyn

Now that I’ve gotten back from ALA and gotten some sleep, I’ve been ruminating over privacy topics some more. The panel went well. I also read Cory Doctorow’s book Little Brother on the way home — they were giving away copies at the panel — and enjoyed it quite a lot. It’s a YA just-barely-dystopian book about a terrorist-seeming event and the Bay Area lockdown that follows and how a group of tech savvy teens respond, and how others respond. It’s a good book.

During the panel, we were talking about things you’d want to keep private that you don’t necessarily need to keep secret. Sex and bathroom activities were two obvious examples. This then led to a discussion, more like hitting on a few points, about library records and how there is a difference between trashing them — so you can legitimately say “we don’t have any records to show you” — and obscuring them, say through encryption, so that the records are available to, say, patrons and yet not to librarians or, it follows, to law enforcement. I found this idea intriguing. Now that we’ve done a decent job making the point that patron library data is data that we protect, maybe we can make that protection more sophisticated so we don’t have to protect it by completely eradicating it. Maybe.

Anyhow, I got grabbed outside of the panel by Library Journal and I talked a little bit about this.

Also can I just say that Library Journal’s coverage of ALA was really engaging and worth reading this year? I haven’t been following ALA conferences in a while but I was surprised how much I enjoyed reading about this one in addition to attending it.

Privacy Revolution – not quite live-blogging

Posted on 01Jul0801Jul08 by jessamyn

I enjoyed the panel presentation. Jenny Levine and Kate Sheehan were both there blogging along with me. It was fun to keep an eye on twitter/chat/email and still pay enough attention to manage to ask a few questions and just learn things. Here is a slightly edited version of what I was writing during the event. My apologies of the lateness of this post. As I was heading home my own local library where I am a sometimes employee was dealing with their own privacy and law enforcement issue. Tough stuff. Click through for details, didn’t want to put this all on the front page. Continue reading “Privacy Revolution – not quite live-blogging”

Prvicay Revolution – Privacy Initiative

Posted on 29Jun08 by jessamyn

ALA has finally got a blog post up about the privacy initiative that is part of the driving force behind the panel discussion today.

Blogging the ALA Privacy Panel

Posted on 25Jun0817Apr25 by jessamyn

I was invited to be a blogger for the Privacy: Is it Time for a Revolution? panel happening this Sunday from 1:30-3:00 in room 201D at the convention center. Speakers will be Cory Doctorow, Dan Roth from Wired, and Beth Givens, the director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. This is supposed to be a “debate” but I really sort of think it’s mostly going to be a discussion of the erosion of the idea of privacy and what librarians are or should be doing about it. I’m looking forward to hearing it all three of these speakers have years (decades?) of experience and sharp minds. Cory I know is an engaging and at times provocative speaker.

I’m assuming they got some grant money for this, because I received a very slick-looking concept paper about the idea, complete with comprehensive background information (email me if you’d like a copy). Interestingly enough, it arrived on the same day I stumbled upon an article on 99Bitcoins crypto betting sites — highlighting how privacy and transparency are becoming key topics even in niche areas of the digital economy. They also ponied up money for a domain: PrivacyRevolution.org. Unfortunately, the domain has been parked at GoDaddy until pretty much today, so my blogging about it will be minimal since I’m getting on a plane in 12 hours and will have limited net access until sometime Friday. There is a survey there that I encourage you to take.

You can also follow their twitter stream and they will be following the Librarian Society of the World Meebo chatroom. I’ve offered to pose some questions to the panelists from people who can’t be there [i.e. you, dear readers] though I’m a little worried this is late in the game for anyone heading to ALA. In any case, if there is a privacy-and-librarians topic that you are dying to ask a question about to these panelists, please put it in the comments here and I’ll be happy to do my best. Jenny Levine is the other guest blogger so stay tuned here and there for more information about this as it comes in.