Daniel

File this under “Not dead yet! In fact still thriving!” department. If we still had departments.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development’s November 9, 2007 Information Exchange Newsletter had this to say about the Petersburg Public Library:

More than 54,000 customers came through the library doors and read, watched, or listened to over 66,229 items. That’s roughly 21 items for each person in Petersburg. These measures set a new record for library use in the town.

Click here to read the full report: http://www.ci.petersburg.ak.us/library/FY07.pdf.

How many record-breaking libraries will we need to get rid of the “dying libraries” meme?

It looks like Petersburg is gearing up to build a new library for the community and someone has established a blog to push the project forward.

A November 2, 2007 National Journal article titled, “NSA Sought Data Before 9/11” details the efforts of the Bush Administration to get pretty much all communications traffic back in February 2001. At least one telephone company, Qwest, refused:

Another source said that the NSA wanted to analyze the calls, e-mails, and other transmissions crossing Qwest’s lines, to detect patterns of suspicious activity. Telecom carriers routinely monitor their networks for fraudulent activity, the former White House official noted, and so the companies “have an enormous amount of intelligence-gathering” capability. They don’t have to target individual customers to “look for wacky behavior,” or “groups communicating with each other in strange patterns.” That information could augment intelligence that the NSA and other agencies were gathering from other sources, the former official said.

Qwest’s then-chief executive officer, Joseph Nacchio, rejected the NSA’s request. “He didn’t want to go along with that,” and his refusal was not greeted warmly in the intelligence community, the former White House official said. Another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official, said that other companies, both before and after 9/11, had less of a problem complying with government requests if they were accompanied by a legal order. The ex-official added that some companies were willing to offer data and to assist the government “as necessary” on a voluntary basis, without a court order.

A November 2, 2007 National Journal article titled, “NSA Sought Data Before 9/11” details the efforts of the Bush Administration to get pretty much all communications traffic back in February 2001. At least one telephone company, Qwest, refused:

Another source said that the NSA wanted to analyze the calls, e-mails, and other transmissions crossing Qwest’s lines, to detect patterns of suspicious activity. Telecom carriers routinely monitor their networks for fraudulent activity, the former White House official noted, and so the companies “have an enormous amount of intelligence-gathering” capability. They don’t have to target individual customers to “look for wacky behavior,” or “groups communicating with each other in strange patterns.” That information could augment intelligence that the NSA and other agencies were gathering from other sources, the former official said.

Qwest’s then-chief executive officer, Joseph Nacchio, rejected the NSA’s request. “He didn’t want to go along with that,” and his refusal was not greeted warmly in the intelligence community, the former White House official said. Another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official, said that other companies, both before and after 9/11, had less of a problem complying with government requests if they were accompanied by a legal order. The ex-official added that some companies were willing to offer data and to assist the government “as necessary” on a voluntary basis, without a court order.

The article goes on to talk about areas where Qwest did cooperate with NSA and indicates that the White House knew they were asking telcos to violate US statutes:

Nacchio, it appears, believed that the NSA’s pre-9/11 request for access to Qwest’s network was illegal. The former White House official said that the intelligence-gathering was not targeted at Qwest’s U.S. customers, but he acknowledged that handing over customer information without a lawful order could violate the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that extended wiretapping restrictions on phone calls to include electronic information transmitted by and stored in a computer.

According to the San Jose Business Journal, Yahoo!’s General Counsel apologized to two US House committees over testimony given on Yahoo’s cooperation with China in Internet issues:

In a statement released Thursday, Sunnyvale-based Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) Executive Vice President and General Counsel Michael Callahan said, “Months after I testified before two House subcommittees on Yahoo’s approach to business in China, I realized Yahoo had additional information about a 2004 order issued by the Chinese government seeking information about a Yahoo China user. I neglected to directly alert the committee of this new information, and that oversight led to a misunderstanding that I deeply regret and have apologized to the committee for creating.”

The article states that Mr. Callahan learned about the 2004 order in December 2006, so one wonders why it took him 11 months to fix the oversight.

If you work in a one-person (or so) library, you might be interested in OPL Plus, a blog written by librarian and author Judith A. Siess. Ms. Siess is the author of the OPL Sourcebook: A Guide for Solo and Small Libraries (Information Today, 2001) and several other books.

OPL Plus bills itself as a “blog for librarians in all smaller libraries, not just for one-person or solo librarians–all kinds of libraries, anywhere in the world. Management information, links, and marketing tips that you can use right now.”

The blog is library-focused yet eclectic and might be a good resource for a harried solo librarian only able to monitor LISNews and one or two other feeds.

Full Disclosure: OPL Plus featured my blog in September, but I would have recommended this resource anyway.

Thanks to Walter for doing something that I concede I should have done before posting my original accusation. He e-mailed LfF about their status. He reproduces this reply in his journal:

Hi Walter:

Rothstein & Memsic is the design company that was given the job of creating and registering our website. It also designed the LfF logo and submitted it to us for approval. Our dealings with that company were only about the LfF website and logo. Contrary to what a LISnews poster recently asserted, we are not a front group for any entity or company. We are simply an organization of librarians.

The group of librarians who founded LfF did approach Stand With Us for sponsorship. Stand With Us agreed to do so and we are affiliated with it. A growing number of our librarian-members have the access code for the posting of articles on the website, which they continue to do. Librarian-members also pick the list of links from our website to others. The LfF librarians who do not have our website access code can and do recommend items to be added.

Sincerely yours,
Andy for LfF
[email protected]

I concede here while I could logically say that there was some sort of relationship between LfF, StandWithUs and R&M, there was no hard evidence allowing me to logically conclude that therefore LfF was simply a tool of R&M and/or StandWithUs. Andy’s note gives a believable relationship among the parties that I, Daniel, do not intend to contest further.

So I apologize to LISNews readers for asserting something before I could prove it one way or another. I still stand by the suggestions I made for the group.

If you’d like a short video to introduce staff or administrators to the concept of virtual reference, check out this YouTube video from the Arlington Heights Memorial Library.

This approximately five minute video discusses why a library might want to have a virtual service and has a short demo of IM reference.

This seems to be a video by librarians for librarians, but worth watching for anyone not involved in IM reference who doesn’t have a lot of time to research the issues.

Arlington Heights has posted a number of other videos on YouTube, some of which do seem to be more patron oriented.

Update:11/26 – Daniel withdrew his assertion that LfF is a front group for the advertising firm Rothstein & Memsic

Thanks to Walter for doing something that I concede I should have done before posting my original accusation. He e-mailed LfF about their status. He reproduces this reply in his journal:

Hi Walter:

Rothstein & Memsic is the design company that was given the job of creating and registering our website. It also designed the LfF logo and submitted it to us for approval. Our dealings with that company were only about the LfF website and logo. Contrary to what a LISnews poster recently asserted, we are not a front group for any entity or company. We are simply an organization of librarians.

The group of librarians who founded LfF did approach Stand With Us for sponsorship. Stand With Us agreed to do so and we are affiliated with it. A growing number of our librarian-members have the access code for the posting of articles on the website, which they continue to do. Librarian-members also pick the list of links from our website to others. The LfF librarians who do not have our website access code can and do recommend items to be added.

Sincerely yours,Andy for LfF – –
[email protected]

Update:11/26 – Daniel withdrew his assertion that LfF is a front group for the advertising firm Rothstein & Memsic

Thanks to Walter for doing something that I concede I should have done before posting my original accusation. He e-mailed LfF about their status. He reproduces this reply in his journal:

Hi Walter:

Rothstein & Memsic is the design company that was given the job of creating and registering our website. It also designed the LfF logo and submitted it to us for approval. Our dealings with that company were only about the LfF website and logo. Contrary to what a LISnews poster recently asserted, we are not a front group for any entity or company. We are simply an organization of librarians.

The group of librarians who founded LfF did approach Stand With Us for sponsorship. Stand With Us agreed to do so and we are affiliated with it. A growing number of our librarian-members have the access code for the posting of articles on the website, which they continue to do. Librarian-members also pick the list of links from our website to others. The LfF librarians who do not have our website access code can and do recommend items to be added.

Sincerely yours,Andy for LfF – –
[email protected]

I concede here while I could logically say that there was some sort of relationship between LfF, StandWithUs and R&M, there was no hard evidence allowing me to logically conclude that therefore LfF was simply a tool of R&M and/or StandWithUs. Andy’s note gives a believable relationship among the parties that I, Daniel, do not intend to contest further.

So I apologize to LISNews readers for asserting something before I could prove it one way or another. I still stand by the suggestions I made for the group.

Librarians For Fairness is a PR front.

While the phrase Librarians for Fairness conjures up librarians running out to right the wrongs of biases, in reality the group (or at least it’s domain) is a front for the PR group Rothstein & Memsic.

How do we know this? By analyzing whois registrations. First we look up the whois record for librariansforfairness.org and find:

Domain ID:D104508833-LROR
Domain Name:LIBRARIANSFORFAIRNESS.ORG
Created On:08-Jun-2004 17:12:27 UTC
Last Updated On:24-Mar-2006 23:27:15 UTC
Expiration Date:08-Jun-2009 17:12:27 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Go Daddy Software, Inc. (R91-LROR)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:GODA-06880655
Registrant Name:Roz Rothstein
Registrant Organization:StandWithUs
Registrant Street1:332 N. La Brea Ave.
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Los Angeles
Registrant State/Province:California
Registrant Postal Code:90036

Standwithus, according to its web site, is “A pro Israel advocacy organization advocates for a secure future for Israel”, and it lists librariansforfairness as one of its sub sites. A quick Google search shows that Roz Rothstein is StandWithUs’ National Director and a frequent contributer to Front Page Magazine. Couldn’t find whether she had a library degree.

The whois registration for StandWithUs.com provides this info:

Registrant:
Rothstein & Memsic

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: STANDWITHUS.COM

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.WEBCONTROLCENTER.COM
NS2.WEBCONTROLCENTER.COM

This Rothstein & Memsic appears to be a PR Firm and I didn’t see any other likely contenders. If you find any, please leave a comment.

I don’t know about you, but I dislike astroturf groups. Whoever R&M’s client is should just come forward and deal with librarians directly instead of pretending to be colleagues.

Update: 11/21 14:13 GMT by B :For those of you who missed it, this one might not make much sense… This is an update to This Post I made on Sunday.

Update:11/26 – Daniel withdrew his assertion that LfF is a front group for the advertising firm Rothstein & Memsic

The Catholic Worker Digest (CWD), a librarian-produced abstract service for the Catholic Worker newspaper has a new home at http://catholicworkerdigest.blogspot.com.

Moving to a blog format will enable faster updating of the CWD and allow for reader comment, according to Daniel Cornwall, proprietor of the Digest.

Please let LISNews of any other library/librarian produced, web-available abstract or indexing service of publications.

Kelly writes “The subject line for this item is quoted from a policeman in a police video where a housewife, Abby Newton, is stopped for no reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahooGbQrUs&eurl=“

Daniel’s note: YouTube notes this clip as being part of Alex’s Jones’- 911 Road to Tyranny series. So there might be more to the story than meets the eye.

We report, you judge for yourself.

Many people use libraries to access their e-mail and MySpace accounts. These people need to know that the phishers have latched onto MySpace notification e-mails. These e-mails are sent when you get new messages, friend requests, etc. They all look very similar and contain very little unique information.

The message below the fold appears to be a regular MySpace message notification e-mail, but the URLs and the sender are not standard MySpace addresses. I haven’t tried the links, but it’s a safe bet that they led to links that will ask for information that can be used for hacking activities. Although a close look reveals the e-mail to be fake, I think the first inclination of most MySpace users, including me, would be to click on the URL without reading the rest of the standard message. The only reason I didn’t is because my MySpace account is keyed to my home e-mail, so getting a MySpace message at work made me instantly suspicious.

Read more for text of phishy MySpace e-mail.

-----Original Message-----
From: New MySpace Message [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 8:58 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: New message from Joseph on MySpace sent on Oct 05 10:50:00 -4 2006


You've got a new song from Joseph on MySpace!

Click here to hear your MySpace music:
http://myspace.mp3piat.com/?reloc.cfm=6&id=33277


Click here to get 5-free songs downloaded to Your Space:
http://myspace.mp3piat.com/?reloc.cfm=6&id=3327764492_5free


-------------------------

At MySpace we care about your privacy. We have sent you this notification to facilitate your use as a member of the MySpace service. If you don't want to receive emails like this to your external email account in the future, change your Account Settings to "Do not send me notification emails"

Click here to change your Account Settings:
http://myspace.mp3piat.com/?account.settings=update=6&id=33277


MySpace Inc. - 1900 Wilshire Blvd. 2109, Los Angeles, CA 90403-5400 USA

)2006 MySpace Inc. All Rights Reserved
-----------------

You and your patrons have been warned.