Editorial

Who killed the electric car?

Bibliofuture — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:19:49 -0500

Seems like no one:
http://myersmotors.com/

Value for Money

StephenK — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:37:25 -0500

As I write, Twitter has been unreachable for a little over forty minutes. The outage is starting to stretch into an hour. Frankly I question what will come first tonight, the return of Twitter or the kick-off to Uncontrolled Vocabulary #42. This ping shows that the machine lives but is just not responsive:

PING twitter.com (128.121.146.100): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=0 ttl=245 time=315.044 ms 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=1 ttl=245 time=219.245 ms 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=2 ttl=245 time=447.906 ms 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=3 ttl=245 time=221.922 ms 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=4 ttl=245 time=238.351 ms 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=5 ttl=245 time=216.497 ms 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=6 ttl=245 time=233.835 ms 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=7 ttl=245 time=227.089 ms 64 bytes from 128.121.146.100: icmp_seq=8 ttl=245 time=276.421 ms ^C --- twitter.com ping statistics --- 9 packets transmitted, 9 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 216.497/266.257/447.906/71.099 ms

This has given me pause to think. Yes, online services that are free can be nice things. As CNet's Charlie Cooper has noted in a column, there is even some talk about nationalizing Twitter. The biggest question is what people want and how is it going to be paid for?

Free services online truly are not free. There are fixed overheads to consider such as connections between the server and the rest of the world let alone the electricity to keep the server running. Without an influx of cash regularly, such things do burn out. This is a fear expressed over Twitter.

While Twitter is a nice thing, I have migrated more of what I do over to Pownce. On Pownce I do have my own site where I can post Twitter-like things but can also do more. For the things that Twitter needs extensions to do, Pownce seems more readily equipped to handle such.

Why do I bring this up? The key question in dealing with free services is their reliability. Is Twitter something that is necessarily reliable for what one might do on a day-to-day basis? Do you truly get what you pay for with Twitter? Think about that for a moment.

I am not against micro-blogging. As a way to promote comity it serves a good purpose. I would almost be more in favor of a subscription site being created for library types using WordPress and the micro-blog template known as Prologue. A subscription rate of USD$1 per month per participant would certainly not pay for all costs but it would defray some.

As we enter into what will be the second hour of the Twitter outage, I can only wonder if this makes more sense than what we're in now. After all, doesn't this outage show we've gotten our money's worth? My pinging of Twitter will likely continue until they're back up.

If they're back up today...which may be according to Lynx. They're perhaps just getting crap-flooded right now. Then again, maybe I am too optimistic.

Lexicographical Longing

Bibliofuture — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:47:30 -0500

A commentary in the New York Times about the OED no longer being distributed in paper.

Entitled to What?

Bibliofuture — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:38:10 -0500

Essay by ROGER LOWENSTEIN

Virtually unnoticed during the primary season, the baby boom generation turned 62 this year and began to draw Social Security benefits. This heralded a milestone in America’s aging, and depending on which of the candidates you ask, it spells a budgetary straitjacket or possibly a looming social crisis. Over the next generation, the population of seniors will practically double, to 72 million. With more people retiring and a smaller share of people working, the strains on Social Security and especially Medicare will become evident. Over the very long term, the two programs combined are projected to consume virtually the entire federal budget. A portion of Medicare (the part that pays hospital bills) faces insolvency much sooner than that — in 2019. “The entitlement problem is here and now,” says Eugene Steuerle, a senior fellow of the Urban Institute. “It is so big and overwhelming, none of the candidates feel they can tackle it.”

Read full essay at the NYT.

Do I really want it all?

StephenK — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:10:09 -0500

The planning wiki for Uncontrolled Vocabulary showed a piece from ACRLog impacting NexGens. As a twenty-something myself, I imagine I would have some reflections about the reluctance to go into administration. I should say that that does not extend to leadership across the board. Library administration just seems to be an odd task.

The post by "StevenB" was entitled: "Sorry But You Can’t Have It All". The post cites that NexGens want better work/life balance and look negatively upon the time required. My earnest attempt at summarizing a couple paragraphs is that NexGens apparently require that leaders have a sort of master-apprentice relationship with those under their care.

Have I served previously as a library administrator? Yes. If you can imagine a twenty-five year old academic library director then you can picture what October 2006 was like for me as an acting director. In that job I was the second in command anyhow when the library director was present which resulted in my having day to day responsibility for operations about three-quarters of the library's open hours. Oddly enough, this post from ACRLog is something I am qualified to speak on.

As an administrator, I had a closed off office. I had little to no patron interaction. I did great cataloging and read AUTOCAT messages to keep up but otherwise was very isolated. That was very rough at times. The job was most enjoyable when I relieved other staff for their lunch breaks and had to take up roles such as supervising special collections or the education collection.

Having said that, I will explain why I do not particularly covet any directorial posts right now. Frankly, I think I would get very bored in doing such. It is not that I mind strange hours and all. I have been a substitute teacher and still hold active licensure for such with the State of Nevada. I am used to getting phone calls and having fifteen minutes to somehow manage to eat breakfast, get a shower, get dressed, and get to the school I have to work at. For me, that is just normal. The biggest issue, though, is having enough joy in the work.

In many respects, modern librarianship is not about the books. Modern librarianship is about people. Modern librarianship is about helping people meet their needs. In any setting like that I want to be on the front end serving people. While serving those who serve people can also be noble I find joy in helping people. Job satisfaction happens when I see patrons/customers/users/clients/whatever have an "Aha!" moment where their need(s) are somewhat fulfilled and their adventures can continue.

I do not see the matter as being whether you can have it all or not. If anything this is a matter of cultural gaps. Rather than ask about having it all, would it not be better to ask what defines success? Finding why there are differences in the definition of success is probably far more important than trying to keep everyone conformed to one model of success. If there has been societal change, is the old norm for success necessarily still valid?

Night of the Living 503

StephenK — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:57:43 -0500

How odd is it that Twitter offers up a 503 error again? This means that it is very possible that the servers are overly taxed. I cannot fathom how such traffic might be arrayed, though.

This poses an interesting point. With all of the chatter about Web 2.0 over the past few years, where does our infrastructure fit into the picture? While talking about infrastructure is not as sexy as showing a slide-sharing presentation, the slide-sharing presentation would not be possible otherwise.

Our economy pursued flash over substance. As the flash fades, what is there really to fall back on?

How I look at being an LISNews author

StephenK — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:41:16 -0500

I try to keep editorial statements to the podcast alone. As I end up needing author abilities to post the podcast I also have some access in posting stories. With the controversies that have erupted over the past week I think I should discuss my editorial philosophies a little bit.

I am rooted in the print news business. Once upon a time I covered education, local government, elections, and other politics. My by-line was in print quite a bit about all sorts of topics. My favorite pieces to write were ones where I got to go out to schools and report about good things happening.

As to posting story suggestions, I actually read what is submitted. I try to review such carefully. If something feels wrong, I check your links. In some cases I will do limited copy editing to improve reading ease. I try not to post obvious flame bait but do consider it appropriate to post things relative to knowledge ecology.

The recent flap over a story suggestion by Mdoneil relative to growth in media outlets in Iraq was a story I thought appropriate to post. For anybody providing reference services a post like that is appropriate. Having worked as a teacher I can fathom a teacher asking students in a high school social studies class to secure a news article from foreign news media. I know I had assignments like that pop up while I was in high school. In following each link in that post and adjusting a couple of them to point to the English versions of pages, I learned that there is quite a bit of media growth in Iraq.

Matt was right as that sort of growth in media outlets just has not been reported visibly in normal mass media channels. While I was worried about charges of the post being "political" I decided not to worry about that and have it post. I found there to be worth to that for reference librarians who might want to find competing news sources from abroad. Matt's post was balanced in terms of linking to different media outlets from different points of view. Considering delays in the updating of World Radio-Television Handbook (I have a copy here somewhere at home), there would not necessarily be a reference source able to keep up with sufficient information.

With the comments I have seen from Wisconsin about the recent post by Ian of Unemployedlibrarians infamy, I should also state a few things. First, please remember Blake cross-posted what was found on a listserv. A story suggestion was made of such prior to that, though. After seeing the story suggestion I just deleted it. Too many hallmarks were present that screamed out Ian's handiwork. After the global tongue-lashing that happened last year on iProJobs, LIBJOBS, and elsewhere that that was posted I actually was hoping it would not return this year. Evergreen work issues from one listserv had leaked out into the rest of the Internet, it appears.

Even though I saw comments from a concerned library director as well as comments from a library jobs site poster I will still go along with Blake's posting. Why? LISNews is a site that does not speak with a single voice. The authors each have their respective view of the world around them. My view of the world is likely just as different from Blake's as it would be from Great Western Dragon's. The value that that brings to the reader is hopefully a broadening of horizons with different perspectives. Blake posted with the remark that he found such on PUBLIB. Considering the day and the time, such was an appropriate thing to have happen. If anything such was far, far less sensational than what happened at Wikipedia or YouTube or Google.

The key thing to remember is that LISNews is a human creation. It cannot be perfect although everybody tries. We are all imperfect creatures on Earth. If you have a concern about something I post, wrote, say, or what have you then please contact me. About USD$60 is paid quarterly to have those numbers open for people to call. Why let it only be an Australian politician who has called me using one of those numbers?

Boston Globe editorial against privatizing public libraries

Anonymous Patron — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:44:36 -0500

Tuesday's Boston Globe has an editorial against privatizing public libraries:

"Libraries serve as the heart and mind of their communities, welcoming preschool children to the world of reading and connecting adults to books, movies, music and the vast reaches of the Internet. They aren't as vital as police or fire services, but neither are they as easily outsourced as park maintenance or garbage collection.

Privatizing libraries elsewhere in the country has yielded mixed results. A private company can only work within the budget that it's given, and its goal is to spend sparingly, or cut back, in order to make a profit. For example, Library Systems and Services, a Maryland company, manages public libraries in California, Kansas, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas."

Massachusetts is home to the nation's first free public library. That's a legacy worth preserving. Municipal belt-tightening only goes so far. It's up to the taxpaying public to make the investment - to protect a vital source of information and insight."

Also the Swiss Army Librarian has a posting on the privatization issue:

Libraries As The People's University: A Charge To Keep

StephenK — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:27:54 -0500

More than this is available in this week's podcast! --

Over the week that was I happened upon an article in the Daily Telegraph. In an opinion piece entitled, How the Rumour Mill mafia is destroying everybody's savings, Jeff Randall discussed the concept of the Rumor Mill and how it impacts our Amazoogle World today.

A matter like this has everything to do with librarianship....

I must quote the opening lead to his piece: "Much has dried up in today's money markets. Confidence, trust and integrity have been burnt away by a blazing credit crunch. For many investors, the landscape is looking like a parched river bed on which the bare bones of their once-lucrative savings are turning white."

The rest of the piece outlined the specifics of how some scares in the financial markets were initiated by acts of communication. To see the collapse of Northern Rock and Bear Sterns in a different light, such was fueled by the creation of panic among investors. The banks themselves were apparently in decent condition. What hit them hard was the creation of panic. As noted later in Mr. Randall's piece, the transactions in markets are not matters of spreading risks but rather are matters akin to what I would find at casinos near me like Sunset Station and the Gold Rush Casino.

While at first glance this may seem to be a great lecture in social policy the question is naturally begged as to what this might have to do with librarianship. A matter like this has everything to do with librarianship. While we may be invading the spaces of Web 2.0 we still cannot escape the responsibility of being the People's University.

What should a librarian do? First and foremost we have to include the teaching of responsibility if we teach classes about Web 2.0 things. While Web 2.0 technologies make the world a smaller place they also have dangers to them. The biggest one is the ability to instigate panics. With things such as "Rick Rolls" and other such matters, the means of capturing someone's attention grow.

While innocent pranks may be one thing, what if those techniques are used for something more sinister? There are already some preliminary reports in the Telegraph about actual "dirty tricks" units being established to try to knock banks down. In one report, an unnamed hedge fund based in London mounted a cyber-attack to batter bank HSBC to short a stock. Many of the techniques employed are similar to those used in pranks for fun.

What helps fuel economic problems? Communications. Prior to the Great Depression there were earlier instances of economic collapse in the United States. It took a while but the country weathered them. With the creation of a mass media it became harder to get out of such due to reinforcement of views that no hope is in sight.

Now take the perceived decline of established news media relevance and mix in the disintermediation brought about by things such as blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and the like. Considering how human beings rarely act on rational impulses once a climate of fear is created, we have a quite avoidable powder keg waiting. The role of a librarian in all this is simple yet new. In a culture that Andrew Keen has termed as the Cult of the Amateur, librarians must now turn to a form of teaching that is not merely about how to find the books wanted on the shelf. We have to teach content creators morality. Just because something can be done does not mean that it necessarily should be done.

As was said originally about atomic power, we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. The question now is, what moral standards should govern these feats of software engineering?

In Defense Of Complaining

Blake — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:05:34 -0600

Complain about a company, and you'll be accused of being a whiner. But markets thrive on information, so it's every customer's right to complain, and every company's obligation to shut up and listen, says columnist Cory Doctorow.