News

Questions of provenance

StephenK — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:31:49 -0400

Glenn Harlan Reynolds linked to a post at the law professors group blog known as The Volokh Conspiracy. Jim Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, wrote a post discussing a purported list of books that Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska sought the banning of during her tenure as Mayor of Wasilla. One place this was posted was at Jessamyn West's blog in a comments section as well as on a USENET group known as alt.gossip.celebrities.

Lindgren raised a serious question about the list by noting timings. At the time of the inquiries by Palin, none of the Harry Potter books listed had yet been printed in the United States let alone the United Kingdom. Jessamyn's original post has been updated to note that there is no supporting documentation for the list at all thus produced. One possible source for the list's origins can be found at one library's page on its Banned Books display. As the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom refers to the Harry Potter books collectively as a series as seen here.

Unless there is a TARDIS involved, something may be amiss with this.

Tips for the worried librarian relative to Gustav

StephenK — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:53:40 -0400

As seen in the past, hurricanes are big news. We worry about loved ones and the electronic communications bring us ever closer. As noted in the response to Hurricane Katrina, communications were a major issue. Rumors easily spread out of the Superdome and due to those massive communications nets those rumors whipped up pretty drastic hysteria.

What can a librarian do in this? The first thing to do is to be patient. While librarianship is sometimes considered a helping profession it must be remembered that a drive on our parts to help must be tempered with caution. The time to start thinking about donations of physical goods is best after landfall rather than before. The best thing that can be donated before landfall is money because that is far more fungible than a roll of toilet paper might be in terms of procuring goods. Money allows for those directly impacted to make decisions about how to respond rather than such being made in a disconnected place. The after-action reports from Katrina showed that while folks outside the impacted area might have been well-meaning sometimes the bulk donation of some types of physical goods was not quite effective.

Communications will be presumably impacted by this event. LISTen will not be reporting on Gustav. Rather than get details second-hand from LISTen a pointer is given below instead to an experimental podcast from the National Hurricane Center that may be issued as often as hourly. In this case it is best to get it directly rather than filtered. Care must be taken to ensure that telephone communications are not disrupted by attempting to contact loved ones that might still be in the projected impact area. If you receive a message that circuits are busy, it is best to wait as it may be a while before congestion clears. Many emergency response plans prioritize telephone traffic to support emergency response traffic first so continually trying might only cause you grief rather than relief. Individuals impacted by the storm should have registered with the American Red Cross "Safe and Well" system which is set up to help alleviate circuit congestion issues.

Even though it is a holiday weekend in the United States, the hard part is having to wait. Folks abroad also may have worries too. The links below are commended as ways to keep yourself up to date as well as for sharing with others who may have concerns.

Useful links:
American Red Cross "Safe and Well" Site
Tip sheet by the American Red Cross on hurricane evacuation
American Red Cross Gustav Newsroom
American Radio Relay League's links to resources
List of groups from National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster who you could donate funds to that might aid relief efforts
Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy highlights a report about charities that performed best in responding to the 2005 storms
Details about the National Hurricane Center Podcast
Gustav Information Center on Ning
Podcasts available from The Weather Channel
CNN reporting on Hurricane Gustav
RSS feed for CNN hourly news audio
RSS feed for CNN twice a day news video
ABC World News webcast via FeedBurner

Boolean alive and well at the DOJ

John — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:17:55 -0400

That dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy (previous coverage) has been in the news again recently, complete with the purported LexisNexis search terms that were used to screen candidates:

[first name of a candidate] and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

More at Washington Monthly.

Resiliency And Redundancy Underscored

StephenK — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:32:30 -0400

CNN, among others, reports that an earthquake ranging 5.6-5.8 hit in Chino Hills outside Los Angeles. It will be days before a final magnitude score for the earthquake is settled upon. The report by MSNBC notes that location is key to whether damage occurs.

Much of this brings up a point we don't think about in librarianship too much. If we rely on a remote server that gets hit by a natural disaster, what do we do? Do we have local backups? Is there something we can fail over to?

A prime example of a problem is Twitter. The majority of Twitter's servers are located in one of the most geologically active areas of North America. If an earthquake hit, Twitter would be probably toast without a backup outside San Francisco.

Great centralization may be great for cognitive processing but it is so vulnerable. During the Cold War it was found that a way to disrupt the Soviet side was to blow up a factory. Typically all production was centered in a single factory. If you hit the shoe factory, there might not be shoes for a while. If you hit the radio factory, folks might have to turn to smugglers from Western Europe to bring in Telefunken devices and other such things.

While there are Web 2.0 sites with great promise, the biggest worry is excessive centralization. If a site goes down, what do you do? If you had important documents saved only to GoogleDocs, what do you do when it goes away? The recent Amazon S3 outage showed just how fragile cloud computing is as it requires a near-perfect world without disruption in which to operate effectively.

There are some moves afoot for decentralization. The PGP web of trust is one great example of decentralizing a backbone to a public-key encryption system. identi.ca is based off a program licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License. The underlying software, known as Laconica, allows for decentralized microblogging across multiple servers. A major step forward in creating resilience is decentralization.

When the one big server blows up, where will you go for your data?

Yahoo and The Dangers of DRM

Great Western Dragon — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:40:55 -0400

This week, Yahoo Music e-mailed customers who purchased music from their site and let them know that as of September 30, 2008, Yahoo Music will go dark.

And they will take the DRM key servers down with it.

That means that anyone who legally purchased tunes through Yahoo Music will lose the right to transfer that music to other devices or computers, even though they paid for that right.

Microsoft's MSN Music sent a similar notice out earlier this year, but acquiesced to leaving the DRM servers online until 2011.

Once again, this truly provides food for thought for libraries signing up for content services who cripple their wares with DRM. When they decide to leave, they can take their toys with them. Unfortunately, they can also take your toys with them too.

Why Newspapers Shouldn't Allow Comments

Blake — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:27:22 -0400

Why Newspapers Shouldn't Allow Comments: a newspaper is not a blog—not even its online version. Conversely, a blog is not a newspaper. Comments are thought to be an added value to a newspaper's site—providing another reason to read. You come for the article, and stay for the interesting discussion. The only problem is, there is no interesting discussion. Almost never. Not even from the mythical supersmart New York Times readers.

The mythical supersmart LISNews readers almost always carry on interesting discussions!

Wall Street Journal cheapskate encourages readers to go to the library

Anonymous Patron — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:48:39 -0400

The Wall Street Journal Cheapskate recommends that readers actually go to the library! See the full story at The Wall St Journal. Also see Today's Followup: Readers do you find that sometimes the juggle prevents you from making the most budget-wise choices?

Twitter Scooped NBC on Russert's Death

Great Western Dragon — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:23:21 -0400

In the world of broadcast news, it's normally a given courtesy that, when a well known news personality dies, the station they worked for will be the first to break the news after the family has been notified. It's one of the unwritten rules of journalism.

In the case of beloved NBC newsman Tim Russert, Twitter scooped the massive network on the big story.

Turns out that a minor lackey at the station heard the news and, assuming it was public knowledge, edited Russert's Wikipedia page to reflect the death. Someone at the station caught it, which makes me wonder who they pay to watch Wikipedia, and changed it back some eleven minutes later.

Too late.

By the time they made the changes, the story was already out on Twitter.

Iowa Floods: Information and News

dubuquer — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:02:25 -0400

Iowa Floods: Information and News
Adult Services Blog, Carnegie-Stout Public Library, Dubuque

Iowa Road Closures, Travel Advisories and Maps
Iowa 511 Traveler Information

Flood Safety
Iowa Department of Transportation

Flood-Related Disease Precautions and Information
Iowa Department of Health

Iowa State Agencies Assisting in Disaster Recovery
Iowa Governor's Office

Individual Disaster Assistance
Iowa Department of Human Services

June Severe Weather
Iowa Homeland Security & Emergency Management

National Weather Service
NOAA

Flood Clean Up
Iowa State University Extension

Iowa Flood News
Des Moines Register

Iowa Natural Disasters 2008
Iowa Public Television

Iowa Flood News, Pictures, and Stories
48Web Consulting

Bits, Bands and Books

Pete — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:02:12 -0400

In his New York Times column, Paul Krugman reflects on the the digitization of everything and how this will change the economics of publishing as we know it.

"Basically, the Kindle’s lightness and reflective display mean that it offers a reading experience almost comparable to that of reading a traditional book. This leaves the user free to appreciate the convenience factor: the Kindle can store the text of many books, and when you order a new book, it’s literally in your hands within a couple of minutes.

It’s a good enough package that my guess is that digital readers will soon become common, perhaps even the usual way we read books.

How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won’t last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices. "