jessamyn

direct democracy @ your library conference

I’m not sure how many people really feel like they need to have a say in how ALA conducts its business. Membership Meetings at ALA have been a chance for rank and file ALA-ers to have a chance to discuss issues and write, discuss and even pass resolutions. In the past, the quorum for the meetings was set sufficiently high [1% of membership] that it was hard to get the requisite number of people for them to act offically.

Thanks to a bylaws amendment ratified by membership, quorum is now set at 75 members, though the bylaws currently do not reflect this online [don’t get me started on how hard it was to pry all of this information out of the ALA website]. There are at least two resolutions coming before membership this time around. I’ll be at both of these meetings. If you want to get a peek at ALA democracy in action, the meetings are at

Saturday 4-5 pm [before Barak]
Monday 11:30-12:30

ALA bloggers list

Posted on 22Jun0522Jun05 by jessamyn

Meredith’s ALA blog has a list of people who will be blogging at the ALA Conference. I leave tomorrow. My schedule is here. I like meeting folks, though my time is getting pretty well-spoken for. If you see me in the hallway, or eating alone, please come up and say hello.

Personal Digital Collections

Posted on 22Jun05 by jessamyn

I was talking about Google’s persistent cookies on my way home from the Sleater-Kinney show today. One of the things my law student boyfriend was wondering, was if there had been attempts to subpoena IP-linked cookie-enabled tracking information — from Google or elsewhere — in the course of law enforcement activities. I couldn’t point to a case. D-Lib has an article this month about Personal Digital Collections which is sort of a way of thinking about the digital information that people keep and create and present about themselves. The article explores how these digital trails are created and maintained, and what challenges they present for curators and archivists of the next generations.

libdex sold!

Posted on 22Jun05 by jessamyn

Looks like Peter Scott has sold his site Libdex, one of the best compendiums of library web sites, OPACs, library bloggers and other librariana around.

silkworm: tantalizing ideas and a few tools

Posted on 20Jun05 by jessamyn

“In the age of Google, Amazon and MSN, why is content in the library domain still so difficult and expensive to discover, access and share?” Read this long and informative white paper on how we can strive to make users experiences in the library more like the interconnected interactive experiences in the rest of their daily lives. More links over at It’s All Good, Common Library Environment, and some summaries and excerpts from Science Library Pad including one that just makes me salivate in a “the world might become the way I want it” way. Right now we’re mostly riding on buzz and good ideas, but it’s good to see the tech community helping create tools with the library community, as if, in some way, we were all part of the same thing.

‘Project Silkworm is based on the concept that library vendors must now collaborate in order to begin to deliver better services. This focus on participation (of both vendors and users) permeates the whole project and is captured in four key values: [1] Sharing and community over duplication and isolation, [2] Reuse over reinvention, [3] Openness and interoperability over exclusivity, [4] Experimentation over certainty…