Blogging Section of SLA-IT

Internet Archive & the FBI

I wrote about the Internet Archive back in February after returning from the Code4Lib conference.  Since then I have been checking out the site to see all of the awesome information it had available.  Yesterday I found out that the FBI was targeting the Internet Archive for information about one or more of its visitors. 

This from LISNews:

On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a National Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site.

Like many libraries, the Internet Archive was unable to provide the information requested because it keeps all browsing information anonymous.

This from DownloadSquad:

Seeing that the Internet Archive archives public information, that anonymous browsing is allowed, and all that's required to sign up for an account is an email address, username and password (Kahle says IP addresses aren't logged) it doesn't seem as though the FBI will really find much helpful information. They will find a whole lot of Grateful Dead recordings, if that's any consolation.

The original report from Wired can be found here.

This just brings home the issues of privacy we're facing in the library and digital world.  If we continue to digitize our content - new laws are bound to pop up trying to make libraries keep more personal information ... this is just the beginning.

Introduction to the Participatory Library testbed

Earlier this month, David Lankes released video on his blog talking about the new Participatory Library Test Bed (see below).  Earlier this year, Lankes, along his fellow Syracuse University facility members Joanne Silverstein and Scott Nicholson, released a report on this topic.: Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation.  Indeed, it did start a conversation that is continuing.  There is even a blog focused on this topic.

So why should you care about this?  They're talking about the sames things we're talking about (if not here, then in the corners of our libraries).  We might benefit from listening in -- or even participating in -- their conversations.

 

Article on corporate blogging

Big Firms Banking on "Blogosphere" is just a short article on Canada.com on blogging in the business world but it's interesting. It mentions executives and employee blogging as well as publicity brought by new employees that are established bloggers.

And oh, a photo features one of my favorite Montréal-based bloggers, Blork (who is not a corporate blogger by the way).

Oops, missed it!

It seems that June 14 was the 3rd Annual Internation Weblogger's Day (or InWeDay). I'll keep an eye out for it next year.

The idea of this site is to unite webloggers from across the world in a petition to the global community for a such a day as an "international weblogger's day". While yet an unofficial event, webloggers can commemorate the work of their peers by celebrating this day. Furthermore, InWeDay, as it is now called in some places, is a not-for-profit concept.

Libraries, MySpace and Facebook

Some libraries, some public and some academic, are creating presences on social software systems like MySpace and Facebook. Why not? Go where your users are.

The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story in the May 19th edition (available electronically now with a subscription), The Library at CUNY's Brooklyn College Makes Friends on MySpace.

Meredith Farkas, of Information Wants to be Free, published an insightful post on the subject (and complete with links at the end) on May 10th.

Be careful, this is the kind of stuff that will give you ideas galore...

Update: Brian Matthews just published an article on the subject in the latest C&RL News: Do you Facebook? Networking with students online, C&RL News, Vol 67, No 5., pp. 306, May 2006.

Haven't got the chance to read it yet. But if you do, let us know what you think.

If you are going to add a gaming component to your web site...

An article on TechWeb states:

The survey of over 3,000 American adults found the usual -- more men (45 percent) than women (35 percent) play computer and/or video games -- but it also uncovered some new statistics. Women, for instance, prefer to play games solo, while men are more likely to play with others, whether on- or offline.

So if you are going to add a gaming component to something you are building, you should keep in mind this different in how men and women like to play.

Report: The Internet’s Growing Role in Life’s Major Moments

Are you using the Internet to help you make important decisions?  If the answer is "yes," you're not alone.  The latest Pew Internet & American Life report says:

Our surveys show that 45% of internet users, or about 60 million Americans, say that the internet helped them make big decisions or negotiate their way through major episodes in their lives in the previous two years.

What does this mean for our libraries?  It means that we need to ensure that the we provide resources or pointers to resources online for our users, so that they still see us as a place (virtual in this case) to go to research important decisions.

Social networking tools

Tonight I'm talking to the local Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) chapter about blogs and social networking tools. I hope that I'll be preaching to the choir (as the saying goes), but I won't know that until I meet the group.  (Here's the presentation.)

What have I learned as I prepared for this talk?

As background research for this and some of the workshops I'm giving this spring, I have been reading about the Millennials and thinking about how they use technology.  We are surrounded by Millennials, but I suspect that we don't think hard about what their technology-using habits mean to us.  We also "forget" that how they do things is "it."  As the generations grow older and leave this earth, how the Millennials do things -- and the generations that come after them -- will drive how information is searched for and used. 

Although we hope that they will adopt some of our tools, techniques and behaviors, the reality is that the tools, techniques and behaviors of the Millennial will prevail in the long run.  Just as ours prevailed over those of our parents and grandparents.  This, of course, creates incredible challenges and opportunities for us, as well as some frustrations.  The "old dogs" must learn new tricks in order to try to keep pace with the Millennials. 

I hope that we and our libraries are up to the challenge of creating tools and resources that are geared for this generation.  I see that some libraries are adapting and changing.  Hopefully more will so they will remain relevant.

A Generation Serves Notice: It's a Moving Target

In "A Generation Serves Notice: It's a Moving Target," from the New York Times, the author talks about current technology usage:

Among those with access to the Internet, for instance, e-mail services are as likely to be used by teenagers (89 percent) as by retirees (90 percent), according to Pew researchers. Creating a blog is another matter. Roughly 40 percent of teenage and 20-something Internet users do so, but just 9 percent of 30-somethings. Nearly 80 percent of online teenagers and adults 28 and younger report regularly visiting blogs, compared with just 30 percent of adults 29 to 40. About 44 percent of that older group sends text messages by cellphone, compared with 60 percent of the younger group.

Assuming that none of us are teenagers, I guess that makes those reading the SLA-IT blog part of an interesting minority.

Blooks

Looks like it's a day of musings for me today... I recently learned about the term "blook". I knew about the phenomena but not that it had a name! The term is either used for a book whose content is based on entries published on a blog (like Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton); or for a book serialized on a blog (like hackoff.com by Tom Evslin). There is even now a Blooker Prize, launched last October by self-publishing outfit Lulu. From what I can see, blooks so far are mostly based on blogs of the personal musings type.

But as more professional blogs are being published; as academics reportedly use blogs more and more to propose, promote and exchange ideas and theories, I'm wondering if there will be blooks based on that content. Maybe academics already do, in scientific publications, without exactly citing their blog as a source of information but using it a source of inspiration.

Finally, a question, would you buy a book for your collection based on blog entries that could be read for free on the Net?

Podcast: word of the year

The term 'podcast' has been declared Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Wasn't it last year that "weblog" was the word of the year?