Author: jessamyn

pay me more, I know IT

Posted on by jessamyn

Law librarians in Scotland are commanding higher salaries because they are responsible for more IT. Now how can we make this true for public librarians?

Legal librarians were now responsible for managing powerful online information services and practice tools, as well as for teams of researchers and for ensuring that lawyers knew how to use the latest research tools and had all the extra information they needed for the specialisations. [shelf]

a little plug from across the pond

Posted on by jessamyn

Hey, librarian.net is the Guardian Unlimited’s pick of the day today, neat!

Librarians are naturally good bloggers, and many of them have set up superb weblogs that are great reading, regardless of whether you’ve ever darkened the door of your local library. Today’s pick, Jessamyn West’s Librarian.net, is one of the best.
Posted in me!

why the USA PATRIOT Act isn’t the solution

Posted on by jessamyn

How does academic freedom roll into this whole USA PATRIOT Act thing? An interesting opinion piece from the Salt Lake Tribune.

Security in a free country requires respecting our fundamental liberties, not discarding them before outsiders even try to take them away. The Patriot Act is, in large part, a distraction in the effort to reduce terror. Al-Qaida is no more likely to be stopped in the libraries and Web searches of the University of Utah than it is on the   battlefields and among the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
   Free societies win because freedom and justice are stronger than their opposites. Even if we eliminate our own freedoms at home and fight brutally abroad, we will still be only a third-rate oppressor. We can never out-torture or out-spy or out-suppress al-Qaida or the dictatorships of the world.