The president of NYPL makes over $800,000 a year even as NYPL is selling assets to raise needed funds and NYPL has some of the lowest starting salaries of any urban library system. For shame. [juice]
a few from the mailbag
There has been a definite drop-of fin email since I decided to get rid of the mailform and just post my email address which is a definite shame. However, I don’t get a lot of mail, so having to wade through hundreds of spam emails per day just to read a note or two was not worth my while. In any case, people still send me inteersting stuff, here is a sampling of what I’ve liked recently.
- The Monster Librarian – a reader’s advisory site for horror fiction readers. I especially enjoyed the Genre Reader’s Bill of Rights.
- AskMeNow – supposed to be “your mobile lifestyle network” it’s a fee-based ($0.25) IM readyref service you can access from your phone. Check out their editorial policies.
- Bryan pointed me towards this great WordPress comment spam reducer. You may have noticed a painfully simple comment challenge where you have to answer the question “what color is red?” If you get it right, you can leave a comment. It’s done wonders for the maintenance time I spend here.
- Paul sent along this great little bookplate from this awesome book blog. Paul has his own awesome book blog.
- Josh from LibLime — remember them, they do install.support of Koha — write to tellme they have an RSS feed for their news page and alerting me to their new fancy Koha ZOOM ILS. It’s very Googly, try it out at Nelsonville Public Library.
the long awaited speaking survey results!
Rachel Singer Gordon has made two posts out of the speaking survey. One of them is just the results, the other is the comments from respondents. I just got back from speaking at three library events, and was reimbursed differently for all three for various reasons. I was probably also compensated differently from the other people I spoke with, which is a little weird to think about. I hope that this wrap-up helps level the playing field for those who want a bit more information. Nice job Rachel, thanks!
is this the CIPA lawsuit we have been waiting for?
Seth links to an ACLU-WA press release which states that they are helping three patrons and a non-profit bring a lawsuit against the North Central Regional Library System in Eastern Washington for not allowing adult patrons to disable the SmartFilter filtering software that the library places on its public access computers. No statement from the library in the ACLU press release, or on their own website at this point. I hope they can resolve this in some amicable way that involves a whole new tough look at CIPA and the overfiltering that often happens in the name of compliance. From the press release:
Bess blocks a very broad array of lawful information, and the NCRL has refused to unblock sites for patrons.
The lawsuit contends that the library system’s policy of refusing to disable its Internet filters at the request of adults who wish to conduct bona fide research or to access the Web for other lawful purposes violates the United States and Washington State constitutions. The suit seeks an order directing the NCRL to provide unblocked access to the Internet when adults request it.
As you may recall, CIPA mandates that libraries who get E-rate money “have the ability to block minors from seeing “visual depictions” of sexual activity” which usually involves installing filters.
However, the Supreme Court decision also made it clear that if these filters wound up blocking constitutionally protected speech from adults, there might be trouble. That is to say, the law was judged to be constitutional on its face, but it was undetermined whether the law was also constitutional as it is applied. This lawsuit may help untangle some of that
In the meantime, according to the Public Libraries and the Internet report issued by the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at the College of Information, Florida State University (at around p. 100 but read the whole thing) “15.3% (+/- 3.6%) of libraries [surveyed] said [t]he library has applied for E-rate in the past, but because of the need to comply with CIPA, our library decided not to apply in 2006.” This is a damned shame. The Institute surveyed almost 5,000 libraries, a pretty large group of libraries. To hear that over 700 libraries decided to forego E-rate money to avoid the burden of filtering… well what does that tell you?
determining the cultural health of an area by looking at its libraries
I think this is a politically smart thing to do. Iowa governor Tom Vilsack’s wife Christine Vilsack visited 500 libraries during her term as state’s first lady. [libraryola]