SLA Academic Division

Some good news about Delicious

It's nice to get the occasional good bit of news when it comes to leaked information.

Yesterday, the wired world was rocked by the news of a leaked slide from an internal Yahoo! webcast indicating that the company was planning to eliminate the social bookmarking service Delicious. Considering the number of academic libraries that use Delicious as the basis for resources like course and subject guides, it seemed like the sort of news that we should help get around.

As it turns out, we get to share some good news instead: according to the Delicious blog, Yahoo! plans to sell the service rather than shut it down. While this bodes well -- or at least, better -- for the service, those of you utilizing Delicious on a personal or professional basis may want to take advantage of its helpful export option. And those of you who'd prefer to see the service go open source, there's a Twitter petition just for you.

Have a good weekend!

A note on Wikileaks

On Saturday, The Lede -- a blog at The New York Times -- posted some confirmation of news that had started spreading the day before: Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs had sent an email to its students "warning them to avoid posting comments online about the leaked diplomatic cables, if they ever hope to work for the State Department." The Lede linked to a copy of the email, as posted on The Arabist:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department.  He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,
Office of Career Services

While I have yet to hear of such notices being sent to students at similar programs, this is the sort of thing academic librarians working with said programs in the US should be aware of, regardless of their own opinions of how various organizations are addressing the Wikileaks cables.