LISNews: The Librarian's Huge Cache

comes by way of the Associated Press via the San Francisco Gate. It takes a look at the Reagan Presidential Library. "The four-story Spanish Mission style building is paid entirely by private donations. It consists of a museum, a gift shop, and two levels holding presidential documents and artifacts. It also houses offices for the nonprofit Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, which sustains the library and museum. The Reagan Library is the largest of all the presidential libraries, with archival holdings of nearly 55 million pages of government records, over 1.5 million photographs and approximately 769,500 feet of motion picture film." Read More.

An Anonymous Patron writes "The Times Of Malta: The issues raised in the editorial Time To Revamp Libraries (May 6) once again touched on the issue of reform in the libraries and archives sector. Without entering into the merits of the particular issues mentioned in that editorial, we would like to highlight and comment on one particular aspect.

The editorial proposed a mechanism to distinguish between the type of researcher in order to decide whether to provide him/her with original or surrogate records. It stated that "...it is surely time the library made a distinction between classes of readers, allowing those with good references to have access to originals when they request them"."

An Anonymous Patron writes "A paper By By: Zapopan Muela.

As for the roles public libraries and voluntary sector agencies in the provision of such services, these are centered on these general axes:

1 roles with social responsibility, and social change

2 roles to seek and foster the welfare of the working classes, the disadvantaged, the poor, the needed and the social excluded

3 roles to alleviate and ameliorate all kinds of inequalities in the society

4. roles with a political and social commitment to foster the values of democracy and respect for human rights such the right to know, the right to be informed, the right to information access and so on; a committment towards the liberation of information;

5 roles to seek for the free of charge production, organization, and dissemination of the information

6 roles to promote community based research, like using the community profiling methodologies to gather accurate data and updating, and monitoring the users needs in their real environment."

nbruce writes "Grab a USAToday (June 9) for some reasonably in-depth stories about the government's funding, beginning with the "Gore-tax" back in 1996, to wire schools for the internet. Alaska is the poster child for funds well used and Puerto Rico is the example of pouring money into a hole in the water.We all pay for this ($2.25 billion a year) through phone taxes, and about 90% of classrooms are now wired. Lawmakers and investigators say the program is riddled with "waste, mismanagement and fraud."There seems to be enough blame to go around--greedy schools, greedy vendors, bad oversight by Congress, poor record keeping, no competitive bidding, no safe guards against waste, and extremely complicated application process. It comes as no surprise that the "solution" is a larger bureaucracy and more paperwork. I read it in paper, but here is a link to the full page story on 1A."

Hacker writes "The New Scientist Reports Typing your password or credit card number into a computer is a moment's work. But if you think your personal details disappear as soon as you hit the Return key, think again: they can sit on the computer's hard disk for years waiting for a hacker to rip them off. every so often, the computer copies the contents of its RAM onto hard disk, where it is easy prey for a hacker, who can read it directly or design a worm to email it back. The longer sensitive data stays in RAM, the more likely it is to be copied onto the disk, where it stays until it is overwritten - which might not happen for years."

Search Engine Optimization writes "A BBC Story on Matt Cutts. If anyone knows how to get their webpage to top Google's search results it is Matt Cutts.Google: Best known for its search pageMr Cutts is one of a team at Google who help webmasters and website creators tweak their pages to ensure they are properly indexed by the search engine.
Although Google's senior technology folk have filed papers about how it does what it does, it has been reluctant to say just how many servers it owns and operates.

The estimates of how many machines it has in its datacentres range from 10,000 to 80,000.

This concentration of computer power could be addressing more than 6,000 terabytes of data. "

An Anonymous Patron writes "This NYTimes Piece covers Azar Nafisi author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books."
She has gone from unknown academic émigré to literary celebrity with the startling commercial success of her book. Pushed by world events that have made Muslim women interesting to American book club readers, the book is now in its 21st week on the paperback best-seller list of The New York Times.

The stars seem aligned in her favor. So why has this Iranian professor and author been brooding as much as celebrating?"

Normally, libraries wouldn't be considered places where job-related injuries and worker's compensation claims are a big problem, but the situation at the Santa Cruz Public Library seems a little out of control. Of the 140 employees, over half have filed disability claims within the past six years. Read More.

nbruce writes "I'm sorry I can't find a free link to this story, but check today's (June 8, B-1) edition of Wall Street Journal, or the on-line edition, if your library subscribes. The brief story was good news/bad news for wi-fi. A rapid spread of wi-fi at airports is a boon to travelers, but a battle for the tenants of airports.The airports' baggage handlers may have their own system, and outside companies can interfere or completely shut it down. The airports want to install their own system, and charge their tenants (the airlines) to use it. Some companies, like UPS, which has invested $120 million in their own system, may have incompatible systems. UPS and some airlines are pressing FCC to stop airports from limiting wi-fi usage to their own systems."

Nicolas Morin writes "I'd like to point members of this list to the current issue of the french webzine BiblioAcid [http://www.biblioacid.org/revue/]. It's a 18p. pdf with 3 articles (in French) about OSS in libraries:
* Eric Lease Morgan. "Logiciels libres et bibliothèques". [Open Source Software and libraries] About OSS in libraries in general (not that Eric writes in French, we translated his contribution...)
* Myself about the specific issue of a GPLed ILS: "Pour un logiciel libre"
* Martin Sévigny. "présentation de ADNX et de SDX". A presentation of SDX: it's an OSS using a database, java servlets (Tomcat), an xslt processor (Saxon), a search engine (Lucene) and Cocoon to manipulate and search XML documents. On top of it you can add Pleade, another application to manipulate and search EAD documents specifically. see http://adnx.org/sdx/en/index.html for a brief overview in english. ADNX is the association that supports these developments."

It's a few weeks before the end of the fiscal year here and at the beginning of last week we had 3 (count 'em 3) temps show up in our department. Neither manager had a clue they were coming. Yay. They are supposed to be helping with the receiving and barcoding of new materials, which would require them to have pcs. Well, our IT department is so over loaded that they have yet to set-up their pcs fully. What bothers me is that these 3 people are here for only 1 month... so by the time they get the job down pat it is time for them to be sent to another locale. We will really need them next month when we lose 2 barcoders to retirement, and have a crummy budget year ahead with no idea when we'll be able to replace them. I understand the need to use the money that we recieved for temps but isn't this a little late to try and spend $$ and help out a very busy department?

I am currently downloading a free trial of Intellisync software for my Pocket PC. I refuse to try to fight with Microsoft to transfer my license from my old PC to my new PC, and then have to pay $100 for the craptacular program known as Outlook anyway.
I am wondering though if I can use Outlook and Activesync on my home PC and Intellisync and the Outlook substitute I am downloading on my work PC. I am downloading them at home on slow as crud dial up and burning them to CD to see how the CD reader works. I am going to also try burning WinZip and OOo on to disk so I don't have to download them on every PC I set up.
Today I have lots of desk time scheduled, which irks me. I really need some time to set up these PCs. Honestly, it would only take a few days if I had undivided time to do it. Alas, I guess that's the peril of being systems and librarian all in one title. Somedays I prefer the systems bit, but I do always enjoy the librarian bit. But when there's so much to be done that sort of needs to be done, it's a little tough to sit on the desk.
Friday was declared a state holiday in honor of that Reagan guy (only kidding, Reagan is the first president I really remember...). The whole national day of mourning thing is kind of funny. Not saying that we shouldn't remember the guy or his family. Alzheimer's is a terrible way to go. He did certainly have an effect on the country as it is today (no matter how you feel about it). But I get this mental image of us all as Sims standing around crying. It's rather comical.
So what does it mean that the governor declared a state holiday? For me, absolutely nothing. I have to wait for the mayor to think it's appropriate to declare it a holiday. I don't know how likely that is.
But I'm hoping for a day off to weep. Um, or weed the garden and feed the snakes.
Of course, I could also use the extra day at work to get PCs for Everyone (yay!) out.

An Anonymous Patron writes "For Whom the Gate Tolls?, by Stevan Harnad. How and Why to Free the Refereed Research Literature
Online Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving, Now:
Just as there is no longer any need for research or researchers to be constrained by the access-blocking restrictions of paper distribution, there is no longer any need to be constrained by the impact-blocking financial fire-walls of Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View (S/L/P) tolls for this give-away literature. Its author/researchers have always donated their research reports for free (and its referee/researchers have refereed for free), with the sole goal of maximizing their impact on subsequent research (by accessing the eyes and minds of fellow-researchers, present and future) and hence on society."

I've seen it in the journals and comments at LISNews, and I've been seeing it for years at Slashdot:
"The moderators are out to get me"
"Disagree with the moderators and you're in trouble"
"Censorship!"
"Unfair!"
and so on….
Today I will explain the great LISNews moderator conspiracy.

Tinfoil hats on:
We're out to get you. Just you, you've been singled out because we don't like you. We don’t like what you say. We don't like what you do, and we don't like how you smell.
Now take your tinfoil hat off, for the truth.

LISNews, unlike Slashdot, has just several thousand visitors a day (Slashdot probably does that in an hour). LISNews, unlike Slashdot, gives almost everyone with an account the power to moderate (and I think metamoderate now) each and every day. On any given day the actual number of people who choose to moderate is rather low, but the fact remains, it can be any number of well over 3,000 people who moderate any one comment. There is no group of moderators that have the power to take you down. No moderator clique that has the power to take away all your karma. The entire LISNews community is "the moderator" and unless you've managed to anger over 3,000 people, they're not all out to get you. Chances are, if you have a comment that ended up at -1, you deserved it.

The moderation system was put in place to make good comments stand out, and to make bad comments disappear (for those who choose to ignore them.) Anything below 0 is for the most part not seen by many people, and any number above 1 is read by most everyone. At a busy site like Slashdot it's possible to browse at +5 and see the best of the best, and not worry much about missing anything (At LISNews, I'd stick with +2, or even just +1).

There are just a few simple rules to moderating. You can't comment and moderate on the same thread. You can't moderate your own comments. You're limited to just 5 points a day (one point = 1 vote). And you can't moderate more than once on a comment. That's about it. Exceptions to that rule: those of us with super-secret and exciting authors powers can moderate all we want (I've seen very little evidence of abuse, we really have better things to do most of the time).

Metamoderation allows anyone to moderate the moderations. I think I now have the code set to allow everyone metamoderation powers each day as well. When moderating, you give support to a comment, when metamoderating, you give support to a moderation. So as you metamoderate, you're simply agreeing with how someone else moderated a comment. Those who are frequently disagreed with are denied moderating powers. (note: I *think* everyone can metamoderate, can you confirm that?)

I know this is not a perfect system, especially here, we just don't have enough people participating to make it hit on all 8 cylinders, but it's a system that does a pretty good job. It's rare for a comment to make it all the way up to 5 (comments can range from -1 to +5), it's actually rare for a comment to be moderated more than 2 or 3 times (comments can be moderated a total of 10 times). There are opportunities for abuse and mischief, but for the most part it just doesn't happen. People who moderate and metamoderate do a good job, it's just that simple. They're not out to get you. We all do what we can to make it a useful and interesting site to be a part of.

So if you think "the moderators" are out to get you, you're just paranoid, and you probably need a new tinfoil hat.

The ALA Has A Page on The Librarian Education & Development Act of 2003
Bill # H.R.2674.On July 28, 2003, Representative Xavier Becerra (D-CA) introduced the Librarian Education and Development Act of 2003 (H.R. 2674). The Librarian Education and Development Act amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide for certain types of student loan forgiveness for librarians in low-income areas where public schools have a combined average of 30 percent or more of their total student enrollments composed of children counted as disadvantaged under title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

An Anonymous Patron writes "This Is A PDF Report. No mentions of libraries from what I've seen, but they did cover many issues close to libraries. They seem to focus on what p2p is doing to school networks, they say P2P is slowing networks, along with the obvious legal troubles."

The Information Commons: A Public Policy Report, By Nancy Kranich.In the face of dramatic consolidation in the media industry and new laws that increase its control over intellectual products, the emerging concept of the information commons offers new ways for producing and sharing information, creative works, and democratic discussion.
The fifth in FEPP's series of detailed policy reports, The Information Commons is the first comprehensive, easy-to-read summary of a new movement that offers exciting alternatives to today's increasing restrictions on access to information, scholarly research, and other resources so necessary for democracy.

Charles Davis writes "It is known as a catalogue of 'marvel for the eyes' and tomorrow the public will be able to judge for themselves at last.
A previously unknown medieval Arabic map with the earliest representation of an identified 'England' - a tiny, egg-shaped lump - is to go on public display in Oxford. The unique and, until now, unseen map is part of a manuscript called the Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels, which was originally put together, probably in the Nile Delta region, at some point before AD1050 and was then copied around 150 years later in Egypt. It reflects the achievements of the classical age of Islamic civilisation and gives an unrivalled picture of the relationship between east and west in that period.
More at
The Oxley, and
and
The Guardian"

nbruce writes ""It's portable, durable and lets you read your favourite website on the move. Yes, the hottest new online trend is... ordinary paper. Thanks to advances in digital printing and some nifty new web services, anyone with enough words to fill a book can now be published free - and webloggers, in particular, have been quick to take up the offer." So says Andrew Losowsky who reports on services that turn your blogs into books. He describes and provides links to several companies that will pull together your hasty, disjointed and wordy blogs into a print-on-paper book."

What deliciously appropriate timing for ChuckB to whine about us free speakers picking on the Republican National Guard of Amerika, since I've just finished
another commentary about the Christian Taliban. This one is at my site (and is a special screening; this commentary won't be accessible to the public until the fifteenth or so), and it ranks up there with my comparison of Bush with Adolf Hitler. And it is equally appropriate, because in both cases the issues are intrinsically the same.

The Republican Sniveling Guard can't stand the heat and hasn't got the brains to get out of the bitchin', so they are trying to silence criticism by creating a chilling effect.

Really, people, if the RNG of Amerika and its drones don't like these comparisons, then why in the name of all that is holy do they so dogmatically insist on drawing such obvious parallels between themselves and such odious specimens? For that matter, in what way is the RNG of A not the Taliban?

Harken back to your first day of algebra class. Teacher comes in and draws a large circle on the blackboard, and follows that up with two smaller circles, both inside the larger one. "This circle," teach says, "is a set. Both smaller circles are also sets, and at the same time they are subsets of the larger set."

Label those smaller circles. Call one: Christian fanaticism. Call the other: Islamic fanaticism. Call the larger one: The Set of All Religious Intolerance and Fanaticism.

See where I'm going with this?

Fanatics of the various subsets, of course, don't see themselves as members of that larger set, they see themselves as belonging to a separate set which is outside the larger one. They say to themselves, "I am of Set A, therefore I cannot possibly have anything in common with members of Set B." This is an artificial distinction. The rational person makes distinctions thusly: "That is of the Set of Religious Intolerance; subcategory: Christian. That is of the Set of Religious Intolerance; subcategory: Islamic."

At bottom, all fanaticism is fanaticism. The ideology driving it is simply a specious excuse for bloodyhandedness.

Surf the chronology at my site. Read Jan Goodwin's article about life under the Taliban, and you will be able to find numerous parallels between the Islamist Taliban and the Christian Taliban. About the only thing for which I don't have a parallel at the moment is attempting to regulate the length of hair and beards by fiat and then jailing people for not seeing a barber. But I'm willing to bet that beating women for exposing their ankles in the streets of Kabul started out with an idea analogous to the anti-butt crack legislation of Louisianastan. Certainly, the "morality" behind both movements is the same.

In the meantime, I for one refuse to allow the self-righteous sniveling of the Republican National Guard of Amerika, and its drones, to stop me from calling a spade a spade.