More delightful anti-USA PATRIOT Act reading from Homefront Confidential. This one focuses more on journalists, but really, isn’t it about all of us? Lots of good data in this article.
Author: jessamyn
I’ve read at least one good thing a day on this blog
Top ten reasons why anti-spyware legislation is dumb, from the new blog that I’ve been reading a lot of, Technology Liberation Front written by Adam Thierer over at the Cato Institute.
whoops! talk to me about emerging tech
Whoops, my talk on emerging technology is in Newport New Hampshire, not Newport Vermont. If anyone wants to drop me a line and give me some good examples of emerging technology in libraries besides the obvious [blogs, RSS, IM, virtual reference] I’d love to hear about it.
hi – 16sep
Hi. The Wired article link has been doing some travelling and I am getting some very odd email in my inbox. My favorite email from today would have to be the one that said “The idea that there is a coterie of guerilla librarians running around this world demanding freedoms, and liberties too often taken for granted is enough to make me smile.”
Google Google everywhere
But back to my number two boyfriend: Google. As you know, all librarians are in love with Google and we are all anxiously awaiting the days when it will put us out of a job…. OK I am kidding. However, we all love to talk about Google. Here are two non-librarian perspectives on Google. One which tells us how people search Google and other search engines. Is it any surprise that Google says that “Searchers become expert searchers very quickly” using Google? No, it isn’t. The second article is by a sysadmin pal of mine who went to a talk about Google’s place in research and librarianship. He was a bit suprised at all the gushing admiration he saw. He wrote this post: Google is Good? Talking about how while Google may not be evil, it both is and is not, good.
In the market of information, we tend to believe that the results Google provides are “most relevant”. In fact, the concept of relevance is redefined…. It is as if every time you searched for Apartheid, you got back a USA Today article on the end of Apartheid. This would be useful if you wanted a generalist knowledge, but it would be less useful if you had to study a specialist sub-area of the topic. To sum, as we begin to trust Google as a central knowledge authority, we do become more “dumb.” By accepting generalist documents and valuing ordered results, we’re buying into the system. There is inherent danger here; I feel that for many reasons, this danger is lost on most.