March 2000

Staffing shortages close library

The Savannah
Morning News has a Story on the lack of
libarians in a new library. The article does not say
what caused the shortage. Because of staffing shortages, the
library originally opened at just eight hours a week and
that was increased as new people were hired.
Is this good news for those
currently working on their MLS?

The Savannah
Morning News has a Story on the lack of
libarians in a new library. The article does not say
what caused the shortage. Because of staffing shortages, the
library originally opened at just eight hours a week and
that was increased as new people were hired.
Is this good news for those
currently working on their MLS?
In January the hours doubled to 16 hours a week. By February
the hours were bumped up to 20 per week and March 14 they
were increased a third time to 40 hours a week — a big
increase, but still 30 hours short of their 70-hour-a-week
goal.

\”Now we\’re only 10 hours away,\” said library spokeswoman
Margaret Williams. \”That\’s why this opening is grand.\”
Frequent library user Sara Barto said she\’s had trouble
keeping up with the many changes in the library schedule,
but she\’ll be happy to adjust to the latest changes.
\”I think it\’s marvelous,\” Barto said. \”I think they\’re
taking some steps in the right direction.

March 28, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

The geek ego

Frank Ryan writes \”Here is a good story – and a true
one!

A consultant colleague who specialised in thesaurus
construction was at a party. She was button-holed by an IT
\”techie\” who was very keen to make an impression. In the
course of their conversation he realised that what they
had in common was \”databases\”. He described at length a
database of internal documents that he and his colleagues
had constructed and how after a few thousand records they
started to add \”tags\” to the records i.e. specific
words describing their content.

At this point my colleague interrupted and said \”Oh, you
mean a thesaurus of controlled terms\”.
The downcast
techie replied \”Has this been done before\”?

March 28, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Dharna in Pondicherry.

The Hindu, Online edition of India\’s National Newspaper on indiaserver.com, has a story on a dharna going on in Pondicherry.

\”Members of the Pondicherry State Library and Information Assistants Association will stage a dharna in front of the Assembly premises on March 27 (the day when budget session of the Assembly is scheduled to begin). \”

The Hindu, Online edition of India\’s National Newspaper on indiaserver.com, has a story on a dharna going on in Pondicherry.

\”Members of the Pondicherry State Library and Information Assistants Association will stage a dharna in front of the Assembly premises on March 27 (the day when budget session of the Assembly is scheduled to begin). \”A spokesman of the Association said a policy of discrimination was adopted by the administration in offering pay scales to the library and information assistants. The Association seeks Rs. 5500-9000 to information assistants, Rs. 6500-10500 to senior library and information assistants and Rs. 7500-12000 for assistant library and information officers retrospectively from January 1996.


The other demands are immediate release of recruitment rules, Assured Career Progression scheme, regularisation of staff working on adhoc basis, filling of all vacant posts and deployment of part-time staff recruited for libraries to the places of work.


Before bifurcation of libraries into two categories as public librarians and school librarians, all librarians working in branch libraries and schools were designated as assistant librarians. With the implementation of the Library Review Committee, the assistant librarians in public libraries were designated as Library and Information Assistants and their pay scales were upgraded as per the norms in the Review Committee report.


The school librarians were given higher pay scales as per the Library Review Committee report as in

March 28, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Cyborgs and Semantic Interoperability

Thomas J. Hennen Jr. writes \”This is (partly) satire.

In the February 2000 issue of Wired Magazine is the article \”Cyborg 1.0\” It is subtitled: \”Kevin Warwick outlines his plan to become one with his computer.\” Warwick, what a great irony, for catalogers, no? Warwick, a research in Great Britain, not a Framework or \”container.\” decribes his experiment to implant a chip in his arm and an attempt to record his emotions and then play them back to his nervous system, eventually, he hopes, over the web! He fears heights, so he will climb a cliff, record the emotion and play it back to his nervous system over the net. Spooky, no? See:
wired.com for the full story.

Readers may be familiar with the attempts by library folk to catalog the net using the Dublin Core and the Warwick Framework. (References below). These catalogers worry that the net is being indexed by search engines that can\’t possibly keep up with fast growing and chaotic web resources.

Thomas J. Hennen Jr. writes \”This is (partly) satire.

In the February 2000 issue of Wired Magazine is the article \”Cyborg 1.0\” It is subtitled: \”Kevin Warwick outlines his plan to become one with his computer.\” Warwick, what a great irony, for catalogers, no? Warwick, a research in Great Britain, not a Framework or \”container.\” decribes his experiment to implant a chip in his arm and an attempt to record his emotions and then play them back to his nervous system, eventually, he hopes, over the web! He fears heights, so he will climb a cliff, record the emotion and play it back to his nervous system over the net. Spooky, no? See:
wired.com for the full story.

Readers may be familiar with the attempts by library folk to catalog the net using the Dublin Core and the Warwick Framework. (References below). These catalogers worry that the net is being indexed by search engines that can\’t possibly keep up with fast growing and chaotic web resources. They seek semantic interoperability – tell me that\’s not an eight bit concept! They worry that on the web there is no controlled vocabulary such as one finds in cataloging rules.

The word means one thing to an engineer, quite another thing to a orthodontist, still another to a card player. Search engines will never catch the nuances without the help of catalogers for the web. Enter the Dublin Core, the OCLC CORC project and the Warwick framework, to try to catch, rather than reap, the whirlwind.

Therefore, even though we haven\’t even BEGUN to properly catalog the web that we already have, we must now, it appears, turn to emotions! My question is: where does one turn in Sears List of Subject Headings or the Dewey Decimal system for some of the following emotions. ( am sure Publibbers will think of many more.)


Emotion 1: That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize, just as you slam the door, that the keys are still in the car.


Emotion 2: That raw, I wish it were the weekend thought, when the patron slams the books down on the desk and shouts \”I am a taxpayer, and…\”


Emotion 3: That helpless feeling when your teenage daughter asks if you would be more bothered by a tongue piercing or a tatoo…


See and see also 🙂


Dublin Core
http://purl.oclc.org/dc/

Warwick Framework
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november97/daniel/11daniel.html

CORC Project
http://www.oclc.org/oclc/research/projects/corc/index.htm


Still wondering at times, just how much more digital it can get, so, sign me,
-datcalmguy.


Web site: http://www.haplr-index.com

Electronic mail: [email protected]

\”

March 28, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Publish Online Or Perish?

The Standard has a good story on E-Books from the business point of view.

\”The book publishing industry relies on a business model that dates back centuries – and it likes it that way, thank you very much. While every other media industry has flocked to the Net, the staid book world has used the Web for merely advertising its latest releases.


But the page is turning. \”

The Standard has a good story on E-Books from the business point of view.

\”The book publishing industry relies on a business model that dates back centuries – and it likes it that way, thank you very much. While every other media industry has flocked to the Net, the staid book world has used the Web for merely advertising its latest releases.


But the page is turning. \”With a handful of Internet deals, declarations and innovations, book publishing is being thrown into flux. Last week, Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Middelhoff said the company\’s Random House unit plans to digitize nearly its entire list of books, paving the way, observers say, for electronic distribution on the Net. In November, Barnes & Noble snapped up a chunk of iUniverse, an on-demand electronic publisher. And last month horror-scribe Stephen King\’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, startled the book crowd by moving over 400,000 copies of his 66-page electronic novella in one day – exclusively over the Internet. The book\’s apt title: Riding the Bullet.

These moves threaten to shake the foundation that supports the $22 billion industry: the traditional relationships between booksellers and publishers, both trade and academic. \”You will see very, very soon authors become publishers,\” says Stephen Riggio, vice chairman and acting chief executive of Barnesandnoble.com. \”You will see publishers become booksellers. You will see booksellers become publishers, and you\’ll see authors become booksellers.\”

March 28, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Bill collectors heed libraries page

This Story from The Orlando Sentinel, has a great first line:


\”If you hate being shushed by librarians, brace yourself for something even worse: A collection agency may soon be calling about those long-overdue books. The Seminole County Public Library System is joining a handful of others in Florida taking advantage of a 1996 law allowing public libraries to use collection agencies to go after their worst offenders.\”


Of course they do arrest people for overdure books in FL too.

This Story from The Orlando Sentinel, has a great first line:


\”If you hate being shushed by librarians, brace yourself for something even worse: A collection agency may soon be calling about those long-overdue books. The Seminole County Public Library System is joining a handful of others in Florida taking advantage of a 1996 law allowing public libraries to use collection agencies to go after their worst offenders.\”


Of course they do arrest people for overdure books in FL too.

Perhaps the most extreme measures were taken in Clearwater, which passed a law that
made failing to return library materials a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $500
or 60 days in jail. Police there arrested two people and briefly jailed them earlier this
year for failing to return materials to the Clearwater Public Library.

No one is considering a similar crackdown in Central Florida. And not everyone agrees
collection agencies are needed, either. Officials with the Orange County Library System
insist their strategy of suspending borrowing privileges until patrons return overdue
books is sufficient.

"We think it\’s as good as you could possibly get it," director Dorothy Field
said.

In Lake County, officials rely on special events such as "fine-free weeks" to
encourage patrons to return overdue materials.

March 28, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Hackers had Gates credit card data

I know it\’s not exactly funny, or exactly relevant, but News.com is reporting that A teenager arrested in Wales for allegedly hacking into e-commerce Web sites obtained the credit card details of Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and the world\’s richest man. You can read the full story Here

March 27, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

tool offers privacy without crippling browsing habits

In a folow up to our What Banner Ads are saying about us story, CNN has this in depth story on one company, IDcide, that has developed a cure for this by providing a browser plug-in that discriminates between first-party (coming from the site you\’re visiting) and third-party (coming from other servers) cookies. The tool, called the Privacy Companion, can provide varying levels of security — either blocking no cookies, just third-party cookies, or all cookies.

In a folow up to our What Banner Ads are saying about us story, CNN has this in depth story on one company, IDcide, that has developed a cure for this by providing a browser plug-in that discriminates between first-party (coming from the site you\’re visiting) and third-party (coming from other servers) cookies. The tool, called the Privacy Companion, can provide varying levels of security — either blocking no cookies, just third-party cookies, or all cookies.For example, the New York Times on the Web requires a free login before entering. If you have cookies disabled, you won\’t be automatically let back in when you return to the site. But a tool like Privacy Companion can allow the first-party cookie from the Times to let you into the site, but disallow third-party cookies from ad companies that track your habits while you\’re there. As the tracking networks work through the banner ads, those ads appear broken with the security in place.

If the networks are allowed to track, they can record all sorts of information about your habits. Security consultant and privacy watchdog Richard M. Smith showed how DoubleClick can mine personal data from a user\’s habits on such popular Web sites as AltaVista, Travelocity, DrKoop.com, Buy.com and the Internet Movie Database. By visiting less than 10 sites, the network had his name, street address, e-mail address and birthday. The ad company also saved transactional information such as the route of a plane trip, what search terms he used in a search engine, and what products he browsed on e-commerce sites.

March 27, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Lawsuit to put reverse engineering to the test

The Boston Globe has a report on a program, called CPHack, that will let any Cyber Patrol user decipher the list and that also deciphers the main password for Cyber Patrol. Anybody with this password can turn off Cyber Patrol, thus defeating the purpose of the program. Slashdot has a great story on this issue too. Now Mattel attorneys are bulk-emailing subpoenas even to people who linked to the cphack code!

The Boston Globe has a report on a program, called CPHack, that will let any Cyber Patrol user decipher the list and that also deciphers the main password for Cyber Patrol. Anybody with this password can turn off Cyber Patrol, thus defeating the purpose of the program. Slashdot has a great story on this issue too. Now Mattel attorneys are bulk-emailing subpoenas even to people who linked to the cphack code!

That court has issued a temporary restraining order against the two men, requiring that they stop distributing CPHack. The court will hold another hearing on the matter today and may issue a preliminary injunction against Jansson and Skala.

To show support for the two men, Net users around the world have put copies of CPHack on their own sites. Schwartz said that Microsystems Software is contacting these users\’ Internet service providers, demanding they delete the software from their customers\’ sites. That move has roused the anger of the American Civil Liberties Union, which will appear in court today to support the right of Net users to post the software.

The outcome of the case could turn on whether the court decides Jansson and Skala had a right to reverse engineer Cyber Patrol.

March 27, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

So much for musty libraries


The Roanoke Times Has this nice story on how well the
Chesapeake Public Library System is doing.

\”Last year,
an article in the magazine American Libraries ranked the
Chesapeake system seventh best in the nation among libraries
serving a population between 100,000 and 250,000.
    On the local level, 99.4 percent of Chesapeake\’s
residents approve of their library service, the highest mark
earned by any branch of the city\’s government.


The Roanoke Times Has this nice story on how well the
Chesapeake Public Library System is doing.

\”Last year,
an article in the magazine American Libraries ranked the
Chesapeake system seventh best in the nation among libraries
serving a population between 100,000 and 250,000.
    On the local level, 99.4 percent of Chesapeake\’s
residents approve of their library service, the highest mark
earned by any branch of the city\’s government.

Librarians in the Chesapeake and Rappahannock systems
attribute their successes to a few common traits. Both
libraries are almost obsessed with giving patrons what they
want. Both have dynamic leaders willing to play politics in
the fight for funding. Both have spent efficiently. Both
emphasize creative presentation. And both serve communities
with an abiding interest in improving quality of life.

    Roanoke librarians wish their system could achieve the
same level of esteem. No one would describe its main branch
on Jefferson Street as heavenly. With shadowy corners,
cramped stacks and a bland paint job, it more closely
resembles a giant old storage locker.

    The Roanoke system\’s flaws have been publicized before.
But the real question remains: Can Roanoke transform its
aging libraries into a point of pride?

    Yes, says Peggy Stillman, Chesapeake\’s city librarian.
And she doesn\’t even know the particulars of the problem.

March 27, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

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