perfect technology for me AND a child in an 'undeveloped' country?

i think I'll buy myself and a foreign kid an XO laptop in November (when O.L.P.C. does their 'give 1 get 1' offer). The little thing has solar power, an outdoor/sunshine screen-reading mode, wireless connectivity, and can read PDF documents in a compact tablet-format. That's what I've been looking for since school started last Spring, and I haven't been able to find anything suitable, at ANY price, let alone cheaply -- I really just need something to help me get all my PDF and Web reading done for school, and maybe do a little note-taking. Being able to do it outside on gorgeous sunny days would be nice! And giving one to a kid is nice, too.

You can read more about the XO here (TerraPass article) and here (NYT article).

ah, summer vacation (all 3 weeks of it, including 10 work days)!

I am enjoying these 3 weeks off from school (between Summer and Fall terms), however, I of course have assigned myself 3 books to read during this time! I am currently really enjoying The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (I have the 1912 edition from my workplace's collection). Some friends told me the text has all kinds of strange history, including translation from English to French and back to English, and revision by Franklin at later points in life, which actually makes it that much more interesting to me because if I wanted just the facts, I would just read the Wikipedia page (or maybe the Encyclopedia Britannica if I felt that would have better accuracy)! The book is an excellent cultural artifact (especially this 1912 edition with its now-dated explanatory footnotes)!

contextualizing a book rather than banning it

I grew up reading Tintin books/comics, and loved them. I never read "Tintin in the Congo," though, currently the topic of news [perhaps it was not available in my leftie-leaning home town?]. This quote from a news article addresses something we discussed for LIS 2000 on the topic of censorship: contextualizing rather than banning.

"Remi later said he was embarrassed by the book, and some editions have had the more objectionable content removed. When an unaltered edition was brought out in Britain in 2005, it came wrapped with a warning and was written with a forward explaining the work's colonial context." [my emphasis]

what a "wikipedian protester" would look like at a political rally

from

"A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language."

He also has comics on things like open source software:

and a blog in which he talks about various things, including this post mentioning Lessig's book "Free Culture"

library science is truly interdisciplinary...

per our [overly plentiful?] discussions about porn (in class during the Cohort on-campus visit), an article on the deviant use of free laptops given to schoolchildren.

bigtime CEOs' personal libraries

Fancy schmancy personal/private libraries of big CEOs; article in NYT

quote:
“As head of a global company, everything attracts me as a reader, books about different cultures, countries, problems. I read for pleasure and to find other perspectives on how to think or solve a problem..."

it's not just copyright law that's totally snafu...

Here's an except from a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Shuchman, Miriam. "Falling through the Cracks -- Virginia Tech and the Restructuring of College Mental Health Services." NEJM. 357(2):105-110)
Falling through the Cracks — Virginia Tech and the Restructuring of College Mental Health Services

...

FERPA, HIPAA, and the Privacy of College Students

The laws and professional codes of conduct that protect a college student's right to privacy are so confusing that they have produced "massive misunderstanding," according to Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University. This claim is supported by a "Report to the President" issued by three Cabinet members in June. Confusion about federal and state privacy laws was a consistent theme in discussions that these officials held throughout the country in response to the Virginia Tech tragedy.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the college confidentiality law passed in 1974, is often interpreted as prohibiting faculty or staff members from sharing information about a student with one another or with family members unless there is an emergency, but Lake said this is a misinterpretation. FERPA was not intended to block communication between deans or professors, who may share students' academic records. It's also not aimed at blocking communication between universities and students' families, since it restricts only discussion of a student's academic record, not interactions about, say, strange behavior or illness. Yet Cabinet members "repeatedly heard reports of `information silos' within educational institutions . . . that impede appropriate information sharing."

College counseling centers may also claim that they are prevented by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) from sharing information about a student without the student's permission, but experts differ about whether and when HIPAA applies. The Cabinet members wrote that in their meetings "and in every breakout session, we heard differing interpretations and confusion about legal restrictions on the ability to share information about a person who may be a threat to self or others."

Most college mental health personnel follow standard medical confidentiality rules, which can be frustrating to parents and to faculty and staff members. But without a strict interpretation of confidentiality, many students might not seek care. "A large percentage of our students who come for counseling have had thoughts of suicide," said Mark Reed, director of Dartmouth College's Counseling and Health Resources Departments. "If they think, `If I whisper those words, I'm going to be kicked off campus,' that will prevent them from coming."

One answer for counseling centers is to find another person on campus who can communicate about a student more broadly. Class deans, who fill that role at Dartmouth, are free to communicate with family and faculty members. Though deans cannot know what is in the student's counseling or medical records, they can share their own concerns about a student's behavior or the concerns raised by others. Said Reed, "If family call us or the coach calls us, we'll say, `You're right to be concerned, and you may also want to share that with the dean.'" Information that comes to the dean from these other sources — not the school's health or mental health service — "is not HIPAA protected," explained Paul Appelbaum, director of the Division of Psychiatry, Law, and Ethics at Columbia University.

Another answer is to find legal counsel who can weigh the risks of breaching confidentiality against the risks of keeping it. At the University of Michigan, health care professionals have been reassured by university counsel that if a breach in confidentiality is required to preserve a student's life or mental health, the university will support them, "though it's done with great gravitas," said chief health officer Robert Winfield.

Both FERPA and HIPAA have exceptions for emergencies, but even the exceptions are confusing, and the Cabinet members found that people were generally unaware of these exceptions.

Perhaps, as Lake predicts, the Virginia Tech case will ultimately help to clarify the provisions of the privacy laws and allow crucial communication to take place."

LIS2600 assignment, due July 9: Fifteen books catalogued in Koha

As Koha is currently malfunctioning, these are the remaining 6 books I want to add:

0889367655 missing links: gender equity in science and technology for development
1403970378 defining technological literacy : towards an epistemological framework
0801872596 gender & technology: a reader
0742523721 critical communication theory: new media, science, technology and gender
0889365385 technology, gender & power in Africa
1879922231 tech-savvy: educating girls in the new computer age

------------------------------------------------------------
and this one just looks interesting by itself:
0759104298 gender in ancient cyprus

NYT article, "A Hipper Crowd of Shushers," on the "new librarian"

article quotes: "Ms. Campbell added that she became a librarian because it 'combined a geeky intellectualism' with information technology skills and social activism." ... "And though many librarians say that they, like nurses or priests, are called to the profession, they also say the job is stable, intellectually stimulating and can have reasonable hours — perfect for creative types who want to pursue their passions outside of work and don’t want to finance their pursuits by waiting tables. (The median salary for librarians was about $51,000 in 2006, according to the American Library Association-Allied Professional Organization.)"

tidbits gleaned from cyberland

A nice word of the day today from Dictionary.com: "phantasmagoria: a shifting series or succession of things seen or imagined." Also, yesterday's WOTD leads me to a nice quote: "The anger caroms around in our psyches like jagged stones. -- Randall Robinson, Defending the Spirit"

and, when I'm in Pittsburgh/Oakland, I'd like to visit this hookah bar - the Sphinx Cafe. I was turned on to hookahs in Paris when the roommate of my friend, who I was staying with, was dating someone from Egypt and regularly filling the flat with sweet-smelling fruit/tobacco smoke.

Too bad the Sphinx doesn't have any food (although they do have beverages); what seems to be their sister restaurant looks a bit far from campus: in the Penn Hills neighborhood: "King Tuts Restaurant, 200 Rodi Road, Penn Hills Shopping Center, Pittsburgh." Still, I probably would go to some length to get middle eastern food.

My favorite middle eastern hookah/food purveyor in Phil'a is Fez (Morrocan). [Wow, they have a really corny website! (never visited it before now)]

I like this blog called "the Holomorphism Exchange". I found it a little while ago, resultant from some search or other, and now I can't for the life of me remember how I found it...

LIS2600 assignment, due July 1 - (2nd of 2 posting requirements): Grazr widget

see sidebar.

I don't understand why my Scopus saved search [on "digital divide" AND "library" OR "libraries"] RSS feed (via Bloglines) is not working, either in the Grazr widget or on Bloglines... when I preview the subscription while adding it to Bloglines, the list populates with search results, but afterwards -- nada.

perhaps it has something to do with the sercure-server-only access to Scopus?

LIS2600 assignment, due July 1 - (1st of 2 posting requirements): tag cloud generated by ZoomClouds

[EDITED 7/2/07: It's sort of working now; I can see the cloud! (Working as well as it's ever going to? It's kinds messy...)] [EDIT 7/6/07: It hasn't been working at all the past few days.]

ZoomClouds is not working to generate a tag cloud of my combined feeds (from this blog and my Del.icio.us and Connotea accounts). I copied and pasted the HTML from my ZoomClouds page into this blog layout (on the top right), but -- nothing. (I couldn't see it at my ZoomClouds URL either - maybe you can?) I tried both SuprGlu and FeedBlendr to create the integrated/source feed for my cloud. And, like some of the other students, I keep getting redirected to the Spanish-language eGrupos site, which apparently hosts ZoomClouds...

raspberries and the nutritional value of information

today while I was picking raspberries, I found a wild blackberry bramble growing and fruiting right there next to my (relatively tame) raspberry patch. What a luxury and rarity -- I got something for nothing! Thanks to the birds for their droppings in my yard!

Eating fresh fruit out of my garden usually makes me feel a kind of haughty pity (which I wish was just pure compassion) for people who only ever eat their berries out of plastic boxes from supermarket shelves, which "berries" taste almost nothing like the fruit they claim to be, and which have been pumped full of chemical fertilizers, coated with chemical pesticides, picked before ripe (to increase the length of shelf-life), shipped across thousands of miles (usually), and sold at a high price that fluctuates regularly according to the performance of the market, and the availability of the crop.

this is much like what I feel about knowledge lately, innocent fresh young ripe ideas. these days, the average consumer is sold ideas that have been guarded jealously from the moment of conception (to protect them in their infancy from competitor-pests), developed overly quickly for the sake of budget, slapped into a sleek contract/patent box, pushed through whatever arm of government controls their regulation and/or market, and sold to consumers/citizens-of-the-world at great cost, in a guise that little resembles their original/natural form; aren't they paler, blander, older, less nutritious, and possibly even toxic/harmful, much like those supermarket raspberries? And, when's the last time you were browsing the supermarket shelves and they were giving away free food? When's the last time you were in a Borders and they were giving away free books & CDs? Or a BestBuy and they were giving away free (good) software?

The nice thing about the Web: there're a lot of good ideas here that you can get for nothing. Thanks to the writers/programmers/bloggers/people for their droppings into cyberspace...

to see ourselves as others see us

someone has made a movie showing librarians in their actual, beautifully wide-ranging forms. here's an article about the movie, which just premiered at the ALA conference in Washington.

Online books and Digital Library projects at Penn

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ Digital Library projects at Penn

AND, there is an online books site hosted by the Penn Libraries, managed by a self-proclaimed "computer scientist who works in a library."

'twas a "rain dogs" morning, happily... and speaking of pirates...

Keith Richards (long-time Tom Waits co-conspirator) was perfectly cast as the pirate librarian (for lack of a better term), and Johnny Depp's character's Dad, in the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie! I kept thinking of that Tom Waits line from a different album: "I don't need no make-up/ I got real scars".

Speaking of pirates, here's a book that looks interesting -- maybe in 2 years (after grad school) I'll have time to read it: Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. It's referred to in Vaidhyanathan's "Anarchist in the Libary".

when "thoughts" become "information" -- how much is really worth saving?

I like this listserv post from the Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List last December. "The list is sponsored by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) as a service to ARSC members and the archival community at large."

when a library book isn't good enough...

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System. Basic Books Publishers, paperback, ISBN: 0465089852.

For now, for school, I am reading a library copy of this book, but suddenly I have realized I - MUST - OWN - MY - OWN - COPY. I need this book to live in my house with me. (As if that will help me KNOW the contents.) And I want to take lots of notes in the margins (which less scrupulous users of library books do in library books, regardless).

life and work in the digital age

be careful what you blog! A recent article in the Harvard Business Review contemplates the situation of a potential new hire with a 'questionable' online past...

"June 2007 > We Googled You.

HBR Case Study

In This Article:

• The Candidate
• Bullish on a China Shop
• The First Impression
• Page Nine News
• Ex Post Facebook
• The Decision Point
• Case Commentary by John G. Palfrey, Jr.
• Case Commentary by Jeffrey A. Joerres
• Case Commentary by danah m. boyd
• Case Commentary by Michael Fertik

We Googled You

Hathaway Jones’s CEO has found a promising candidate to open the company’s flagship store in Shanghai. Should a revelation on the Internet disqualify her now?

by Diane Coutu"

LIS2600 assignment, due June 24 - (2nd of 2 posting requirements): URL for my custom Google Search Engine

It's called Gender and Technology

It's not as refined yet as I'd like it to be; I'll keep tweaking it.

LIS2600 assignment, due June 24 - (1st of 2 posting requirements): URL for Scopus search results via Bloglines

My Scopus search terms were "digital divide" AND "library" OR "libraries".

Here is the URL for my public folder in Bloglines, containing the search results.

in case you were wondering which planet and astrological sign rule your e-mail (so you know who to plead with when it's not working)...

from the New Moon article at lunarliving.org...
[my emphases]

"Have you ever heard people describe Gemini as a lot of talk and air? True that Gemini includes the energy of communication, but it is so much more. It also influences learning, intellect, interactions with siblings and distant relatives, interactions with neighbors, and short distance travel. Prior to the industrial revolution, short distance involved being able to walk some place within a day or two, and if you were lucky enough to have an animal you could ride, you could probably get there faster. It also involved writing letters or reading the newspaper. With the advance of technology, Gemini now encompasses even more, such as the use of the Internet, email, chat rooms, message boards, electronic newspapers, listening to the radio via satellite and watching television on the computer. We are bombarded with information from so many different directions. And, we can travel by plane thousands of miles in a matter of hours instead of days/months. Most modes of transportation, like cars, bikes, scooters and even roller skates are under the Gemini influence. Virtually anything with wheels is a Gemini object. Telephones, teleconferences, and modems are also Gemini territory. As we become more global and multi-media oriented, the lines between Here and There are becoming blurred; harder to define because our neighbors are not simply the people who live within our local community, but also our "media" community. With instant news, we feel alarmed when tragic events happen to our neighbors hundreds of miles away because the media brings those faces and situations into our lives within minutes of tragedy striking. We no longer need to wait for the newspaper to show up on our doorstep. The information that streams into our lives with the help of technology at the blink of an eye is influenced by Mercury. And Gemini feeds on the excitement of it all. The hardest thing for Gemini influenced individuals to do is to find a sense of peace, calm, and relaxation."

the medieval helpdesk - deskside support!

imagining when the book format was the newest technology...

at the end (after subtitles end):
helpguy: Have you read the user manual?
Ansgar: Manual??
helpguy: There should be a user manual that comes with it. It must be this.
Ansgar: Oh yes. That one. But see, there you have the same problem again. Can't open it.
helpguy: Hmmm... I guess we should have thought of that.

(thanks to YouTube commentors for translation)

books in my world at the moment

On my nightstand are: "Bestiary: Or the Parade of Orpheus" which is Apollinaire poems in both French & English (with lovely modern woodcut illustrations), a We'moon datebook my sister gave me, and several different diaries (the old-fashioned, hardbound paper ones, of course!). But what I'm actively reading now doesn't fit on my nightstand -- it's "Discovering Computers 2008", required for school. This and the other books I'm reading for school [some of which can be seen in the "Customers who bought this item also bought" feature at the Amazon page for "Discovering Computers"; a nifty little Web2.0 doodad, eh?] are in the locale of my favorite reading area -- the papasan chair in the living room [my cushion is purple, though].

support public access to health information, the National Library of Medicine and NIH

Action Alert: Support increased funding for the NIH and public access to health information

The House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education is expected to mark-up its fiscal year 2008 funding bill during the week of June 4. This bill provides annual appropriations for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including the National Library of Medicine.

You are encouraged to contact members of the House Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee and your own member of the House of Representatives to ask them to support a 6.7% funding increase for NIH, to provide the resources necessary to construct a new facility for the National Library of Medicine, and to make the NIH public access policy that requires authors to submit their articles into PubMed Central as soon as possible, but no later than 12 months, mandatory.

Download the complete action alert (PDF, 30KB), including background and contact information.

library activism opportunity in DC, Mon June 25th

American Library Association
Washington Office Newsline

ALAWON
Volume 16, Number 064
June 4, 2007
________________________________

Volunteers Needed for Library Day on the Hill
________________________________

The ALA Washington Office is seeking 50 volunteers for
Library Day on the Hill <http://www.ala.org/dayonthehill>!
Volunteers will have the unique opportunity to join
thousands of librarians who will walk the corridors of
Capitol Hill and show the value of libraries to
Members of Congress. A description of volunteer posts and
duties appears below.


Volunteers are needed to:
1. Greet participants and direct them to buses;
2. Distribute free T-shirts;
3. Direct participants to Congressional Office Buildings;
4. Distribute informational handout to event participants;
5. Be in front of each Congressional Building directing
participants to their representatives' offices and answer questions.

Two training and briefing sessions will be held for volunteers on
Monday, June 25, in the Convention Center, Room 204-C.
* First Session: 1:30 - 2:15 p.m.
* Second Session: 2:30 - 3:15 p.m.

For more information on volunteering or to volunteer please send an
email to Erin Haggerty at ehaggerty@alawash.org.
________________________________
<http://www.capwiz.com/ala/home/>
Click here <http://www.capwiz.com/ala/home/>  or the logo above to:
*  Jump to ALA's Legislative Action Center
*  See what library legislation is hot
*  Send a letter or fax to Congress

U.S. Capitol switchboard 202-225-3121
ALAWON Editor:
Andy Bridges

To subscribe or unsubscribe, please click here
<http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/washnews/news.cfm> .


All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association
may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with
appropriate credits.

ALA Washington Office
Emily Sheketoff, Executive Director
1615 New Hampshire Ave NW, First Floor
Washington, D.C. 20009
202.628.8410 (V)
202.628.8419 (F)

Office of Government Relations
Lynne Bradley, Director;
Melanie Anderson, Don Essex, Erin Haggerty, Miriam Nisbet, Tara Olivero,
Rosalind Reynolds

Office for Information Technology Policy
Rick Weingarten, Director;
Mark Bard, Carrie Lowe, Kathy Mitchell, Carrie Russell

what about a library without books? (which is more & more the direction we're heading)

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
-Cicero (106 BCE - 43 BCE) (Attributed)

I want one of these computer-pens, please!

"The Livescribe paper-based computing platform – a smartpen, paper, software applications, and development tools – will be available online beginning in Q4. The smartpen will be less than $200. Additional dot paper will be available at prices comparable to standard paper products. Click on the animations to get a sneak peek!"

the intersection of Asking and Knowing

The "Genius and Misfit Aren't Synonyms, or Are They?" article in NYT includes the following passages: "“All the ideas that mattered to me came from outsiders,” [Steve Wozniak of Apple] recalls" and "When everyone says that something is true, be very skeptical, Mr. Grove [of Intel] advised. Question the obvious."

I've noticed that people will put up with a lot of "bad behavior" from a person if that person is very valuable or knowledgable on a topic. Does that mean the person is both the "trouble maker" AND the "answer person" mentioned by Marc Smith in the Educause podcasts [Part 1] (where the trouble makers are 'poisoning the well' while the answer people are those 2% of people who answer 90% of the community's questions)? Perhaps the average genius (if there is such a thing) is more often the troublemaker than the question-answerer; it does seem that genius comes with a social cost. How does that relate to what I've heard about workplace sociology, that you can get more done and be better respected by being easy to work with than you can by being, say, a perfectionist (which reminds me of the small uproar among some FastTrackers when we were told the motto is "Completion Not Perfection"). I suppose perfectionism is far from genius, and that most workplaces do not tolerate much genius in the workers; I suppose most societies don't tolerate much genius.

What is the balance between having an answer and asking a question? One genius I know in particular seems to keep a constant balance of Knowing and Asking. He knows BECAUSE he has asked and because he was determined to find an answer even when no one could give it to him, or when no one else had even thought to formulate the question...

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wonderful/helpful use of vlogging (video blogging)

this really helps me with my research, looking into buying a tablet-type computer...

a video comparison of 2 different tablet-type (UMPC, ultra mobile PC) machines, by Hugo Ortega

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Kuhn on the brain (forever after?)

I think Kuhn is definitely going to stick with me, at least for the duration of my MLIS studies, if not forever after; when I read in Baker's Double Fold about the destruction of library material, I think of how Kuhn's new paradigms destroy the old in order to dis- and replace them... it's a violent revolution, and Baker does a good job making it seem bloody, too!

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Oh Zotero!

I think Zotero may be my new best friend... and I missed the cutoff date for being Millenial by a few years, so I'm not exactly psyched that my new best friend is software...

"Earmarks" DB; an interesting recent item from the U Penn Van Pelt Library's news webpage

from the U Penn Van Pelt Library's news webpage

"(05-APR-07) Earmarks 'ear-mark, v. To set aside (money, etc.) for a particular purpose (OED 2nd, 1989). The OMB's new database is now online.

---

The US Office of Management and Budget's new Earmarks database gathers together information from federal agencies on funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly allocate funds, currently for FY05. For more information: Lauris Olson, Social Sciences Bibliographer"

[my emphasis]

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I don't have time to post my thoughts/comments at the moment -- but they are good thoughts/comments, trust me! :)

Testing ScribeFire to generate this post; also, the intended use of this blog

I actually used to use the LiveJournal widget to update my LiveJournal/personal blog, but eventually I found it faster/easier just to update directly at my LJ blog page... so yes, I've had a blog before, but never while I was formally in school, and also never required!

I'm intending to use this as a school-assignments notes/musings space, almost like my written notebooks used to be when I was in undergrad, and so far it is indeed working to help me organize my thoughts (which was always one important function of keeping notes). now, if only Blogger will stay online and not crash (as I fear it will do although it's given me no reason to doubt as much), then I can also use it for the other function of taking notes: review in advance of papers/quizzes/exams! Here's hoping...

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notes on Kuhn's favorite words/ideas thus far (how many more might there be in the final pages I haven't got to yet?)

scientist [N.B. always male, i.e. "he" "his" "man" "men"]; paradigm, articulate/-d, precision, coherence, uniformity, anticipation/expectation, crisis, accuracy, failure, application, utility, equipment/apparatus/tools, theory/-ies, puzzle/"problem" [as in a challenge to solve, problem-solving], anomaly/-ies, acceptance, dominance of a posteriori knowledge / empiricism, nature/"the world"/fact

commencing to post

Today is the first day of my first semester of MLIS studies. It's been 7 years since I graduated from college, and tomorrow is my 5th wedding anniversary. While these facts are attempting to conspire to make me feel old, I in fact feel rejuvinated by starting something this big and new. I'm halfway through the 1st required book, Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," and I feel smarter already -- a good antidote to that sinking feeling I experience when considering the vast quantity of reading, absorbing, analyzing, discussing and pondering I will have to do over the next 2 years... But still -- hooray for grad school! Here's to new beginnings!