As seen on the Freenet page and elsewhere, this essay by John Gilmore (of the EFF) explains why you should care about the efforts of industry to protect content through arbitrary technical means. Read it and send a copy to your colleagues. 🙂
AnnaKh
The Real Thing: Democracy as a Contact Sport
Here is an article by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, of Focus on the Corporation fame, about the recent donation of 20,000 Coke ads to the Library of Congress. They attended the reception at the Jefferson Building, questioned the use of a public library to promote junk food, were thrown out and told never to return. I guess it was their physical removal that prompted them to title the story The Real Thing: Democracy as a Contact Sport.
The Thomas Jefferson quote in the article is wonderfully ironic: \”I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws our country.\”
Bibliographic Tools for the Alternative Press
Many librarians with collection development responsibilities who understand the importance of the Alternative Press still don\’t select from it, saying they don\’t know how to find those materials or don\’t have the time. Bibliographic Tools for the Alternative Press, a regular feature in Counterpoise, the review journal of the Alternative Press, is a bibliography of resources you can use for exactly that purpose. (Of course, the reason we need to select from the alternative press is that the mainstream press does not provide a full range of perspectives, being slanted by its corporate point of view.)
Reliable Resource?
In a survey conducted by Buson-Marstelle, one third of reporters interviewed claimed that the internet is their first point of reference. 57 percent were said to faithfully believe that the Internet was a reliable source of information. On an even more interesting note, only a quarter of these journalists said that they would turn to their company’s archives or library for information.[more]
We can only hope that these news professionals have been given the training needed to discern the true quality and reliability of online information. Unfortunately notorious past mistakes suggest that this may not be the case.
E-learning Reviewed
The recently convened Web-based Education Commission was made up of a diverse group of businesspeople, lawmakers and educators, including John Gage, director of science for Sun Microsystems, Rep. Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), and Florence McGinn, a teacher and founder of an online literary magazine. (one has to ask where the librarians were.)
The recent report released by the commision has received mixed reviews. These varying opinions are available in this article, \’E-Learning is Good; Now What?\’, from Wired Magazine.
“Will Libraries Survive?”
Geoffrey Nunberg argues in this article that they certainly will, and he is hi tech enough to be a major researcher at the Xerox PARC lab (he is a linguist.) This article is a couple of years old but still feels fresh. It provides a nice bird\’s eye view of American libraries and how they fit into the whole contemporary \”information\” landscape. He addresses many of the problems that libraries are beginning to face in the current situation and has suggestions for how they can be dealt with.
Rare 3rd Candidate for ALA President
It happens infrequently, but it has happened before. Occassionally a third candidate enters the race for ALA President. Occassionally, that third canididate has also won. This year Maurice (Mitch) Freedman is running, in addition to Ken Haycock and William Sannwald. ALA put out a press release announcing Mitch\’s candidacy. The text of his campaign flyer is inside, if you want to read further.
It happens infrequently, but it has happened before. Occassionally a third candidate enters the race for ALA President. Occassionally, that third canididate has also won. This year Maurice (Mitch) Freedman is running, in addition to Ken Haycock and William Sannwald. ALA put out a press release announcing Mitch\’s candidacy. The text of his campaign flyer is inside, if you want to read further.Maurice J. (Mitch) Freedman for ALA President
Why Im running for ALA President:
I want to be ALA President because librarianship is not simply a profession to me. Keeping Americas libraries free, open, uncensored and well funded is my passion. My career has been on the front lines of Librarianship.
I know how to organize people and resources, to lead in tough situations, and to achieve results.
If elected, I will:
Fight restrictions on access to information in all formats
Advocate for increased status, salaries and visibility of all librarians and library workers
Develop programs & policies that help us put a human face on cyberspace
Lobby for fair use regardless of format
Help ensure that our libraries bridge the digital divide
Combat the privatization of public information and libraries
Promote programs to increase the diversity of library staff and library users
- Promote recruitment, education, retention and pay equity for youth services librarians
Qualifications:
I …
care deeply about libraries and my entire career demonstrates the depth of my commitment in all of the settings in which I have worked.
have a strong commitment to the mission of libraries as a public good and as an essential means to inform society and maintain our democracy
can understand and articulate issues, and know how to work creatively toward solutions.
have developed consensus building skillsas head of a cooperative systemthat are especially valuable for dealing with the needs of competing units and perspectives in ALA
know how to use technology as a means to better serve the user, and have been recognized for this, e.g. as a recipient of the LITA Award for Achievement
have been a staunch defender of intellectual freedom
was the only librarian who participated and testified in the ACLU/ALA lawsuit to overthrow New York States harmful to minors Internet law
received the ACLU/Westchester Award in large part for the role I played.
successfully automated cataloging at the Hennepin County Library by creating an authority controlled book catalog that was state-of-the-art in photocomposition, computer filing, usability by the public, and that employed bias-free and contemporary terminology.
as Executive Assistant, was part of the management team at LC\’s Processing Department for two massive projects, the National Program for Acquisition and Cataloging (NPAC), and the Mansell National Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints. It was great training for future challenges.
Selected ALA & Other Assignments (too numerous to list all):
Elected to the ALA Council for five terms
President of LITA
ALA Pay Equity Committee, Chair
ALA Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship, Member
ALCTS Planning Committee, Member
PLA Committee on Cataloging Needs of Public Libraries, Chair
SRRT Action Council
Chair of the intellectual freedom committees in Minnesota and New York
Experience
- Director, Westchester Library System, 1982-
- Associate Professor, School of Library Service, Columbia University
- Coordinator of Technical Services: The New York Public Library Branch Libraries
- Manager, Technical Services Division, Hennepin (MN) County Library
- Manager of Library Processing, Information Dynamics Corporation
- Executive Assistant, Processing Department, Library of Congress
- Assistant Head, African-Asian Exchange Section, Exchange & Gift Division, Library of Congress
- Outstanding Library School Graduate Special Recruit, Library of Congress
- Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, 2000-, The U*N*A*B*A*S*H*E*D LibrarianTM,
The How I Run My Library Good LetterSM
Consultant on four continents for such libraries as:
- National Library of Latvia,
- Pusan (Korea) National University Library
- Jomo Kenyatta Library at the University of Nairobi
- Mississauga (Ontario) Library System
- State Library of California (a statewide networking & interlibrary resource sharing study)
- City and County Public Libraries of San Diego, and numerous others.
Extensive Publications on technology, public libraries & intellectual freedom
Education
- Newark (NJ) Rutgers, BA
- University of California, Berkeley, School of Librarianship, MLS
- Rutgers University, PhD
Petitions for Freedman Committee: Leigh Estabrook, University of Illinois, GSLIS; Martin Gomez, Brooklyn Public Library; Deborah Jacobs, Seattle Public Library; Samuel Morrison, Broward County (FL) Public Library; Sarah Pritchard, UC Santa Barbara; Harriet Selverstone, Norwalk (CT) Schools; Sherrie Schmidt, Arizona State University
Information Services for Higher Ed.: A New Competitive Space
Carol Ann Hughes, the head of collections at Questia.com, has a new article out in Dlib called Information Services for Higher Education
A New Competitive Space. She writes, \”Any organization that undertakes an educational mission in our society is now and will increasingly be surrounded by alternative information service suppliers … it is likely that … alternatives will come from the for-profit sector.\”
I Spy
Competitive intelligence according to Janelle Brown is a growing but terribly dull profession.[more]
Although the plot may not be as action-packed as the reviewer would have liked, the new book from Adam Penenberg and Marc Barry\’s,\”Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America,\” may still prove interesting to the serious corporate librarian.
Organize This!
Her company is called \’The Organized Library\’ and Judith Tapiero makes a living out of managing corporate information chaos.[more]
Catch this article from 1099 the magazine for the independent professional. Yet another example of what the innovative librarian can do in the age of information overload.
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