I hope you can excuse my informal tone, but this interviewer for this article — Libraries Turning to iPod and ITunes — did the entire interview over IM, which was really pretty great.
Month: February 2006
me: 4 x 4 x 4
People must have caught on that I’m not usually the web-meme type. But then, it’s easy to say that and then wonder “Why doesn’t anyone want to know what *I* watch on teevee?” Anyhow, thanks to Rebecca Blood (and maybe others who I somehow missed) here’s some minutiae about me.
Four Jobs I’ve Had
I scored the essays on the achievement tests, I slung packages for UPS, I set up a news library in Romania, I am a librarian. (more)
Four movies I can watch over and over
I don’t really watch movies over and over, here are a few I’ve watched more than once or twice, historically: Repo Man, Princess Bride, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Liquid Sky
Four TV Shows I Love to Watch
I don’t love to watch any TV shows regularly. I do love to download stuff from the Internet that resembles television (without commercials) and watch it all at once on long cold winter weekends. Current faves: The IT Crowd, The Office (American, we’re done with the British Office), The Wire and that may be it.
Four Places I’ve Been on Vacation
Alabama, Budapest, Alaska’s Inside Passage, the woods
Four Favorite Dishes
saffron risotto, bacon cheeseburgers from the Miss Florence Diner, whatever is on special at The Wayside, fresh baked bread (is bread a dish?)
Four Websites I Visit Daily
Ask Metafilter, Flickr, Wikipedia, Google News
Four Places I’d Rather Be
right here in the spring, right here in the autumn, right here in the summer, Australia
Four Books I Recommend
Time Traveler’s Wife, Gold Bug Variations, How Things Don’t Work, The Book on the Book Shelf
Four Bloggers I’m Tagging
my sister, my boyfriend, my colleague and my frequent roommate.
speed dating @ your library
Bib-dating is Dutch for “library dating.” 300 librarians across Brussels and Flanders have been trained to host library dating sessions where they offer participants wine, books and a good opportunity to meet other single bookworms. Of course, you have to let people drink in the library… [thanks eoin]
what are your state’s filtering laws?
I spoke to a librarian at a rural library today. She works ten hours a week — well she’s paid for ten and works many more. The library has one computer, and that computer has dial-up access. Her board is considering getting her a second computer, so that she can do her work while the library is open and patrons are using the other one. She has also been talking to them about possibly getting broadband access. She and I discussed creating a web page for the library, maybe thinking about wireless in the longer-term future. Money is tight, as you can imagine. When I mentioned thinking about E-rate assistance for connectivity, she wasn’t enthusiastic. I’m not sure if this is because of CIPA or other reasons, but we’re looking into alternatives.
Vermont is not one of the states that has its own filtering laws in addition to the laws laid down by CIPA. What I did not know was that twenty-one states have filtering laws that apply to schools and/or libraries. Some of these just require libraries to have an Internet use policy concerning public/patron use of the Internet, but many go much farther than that. The Utah code, for example:
Prohibits a public library from receiving state funds unless the library implements and enforces measures to filter Internet access to certain types of images; allows a public library to block materials that are not specified in this bill; and allows a public library to disable a filter under certain circumstances. Requires local school boards to adopt and enforce a policy to restrict access to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material.
The National Council on State Legislatures has a page outlining all these state laws with links to the actual state legislation: Children and the Internet: Laws Relating to Filtering, Blocking and Usage Policies in Schools and Libraries
why johnny librarian can’t code
A thoughtful and amusing post from Caveat Lector. It’s not just that librarians can’t code, it’s that they can’t even agree that coding is what (some) librarians ought to be doing.
Librarians can’t code because too many librarians and library schools have their noses so far up in the air about computers that they are neither recruiting coders (which is purest, sheerest madness—why are we not using the exodus of women from comp sci to our advantage?) nor creating them.