
Archive for February, 2007

Should Accessing Open Wi-Fi Spots be Illegal?

In Palmer, Alaska, Brian Tanner was arrested for using the public library’s wi-fi in their parking when the library was closed. Local police had tired of chasing Tanner from various locations where he was accessing open ended wi-fi and arrested him. They confiscated his laptop to see what files Tanner had downloaded as well.

Is this really a legal issue or the responsibility of the people who hold the access points? All wi-fi hardware/software allow their owners to create password protected access so that only selected users may take advantage of it. If an owner fails to opt for this protection, does it mean they can still say “no, you can’t use it” and be legally binding?

We really haven’t set up ethical rules for the digital age yet. We still argue over ideas like privacy for users in public settings, rights applied to digital information, what can/cannot be written over emails and whether we should have some sort of program in place to restrict content to certain users on public computers.

Our computers are designed to find hotspots now and even default to open wi-fi networks when available. My Nintendo Wii has actually picked up two other open networks near my house along with my own wireless system. If an upgrade was placed into the program to access the fastest network or default to another open network when my wireless went down, would it make me criminally liable?

It seems this is more of an ethical question over a legal one. I certainly wouldn’t argue that Tanner seems to have a lack in ethics and common sense but it also seems that there were protective measures the library could take to prevent his access as well.

In the physical world we have many different legal words for the various types of theft as it is not simply a black and white issue. Are we going to find ourselves at a point where we need to do the same for the digital world as well?

On a semi-tangent; is his being chased from point to point really enough evidence to confiscate the laptop?

February 27, 2007 at 10:10 am

Not Enough Friends? Buy Some!

Not feeling “popular enough” on your MySpace page? Afraid that others have way more friends!? Scared the friends you do have aren’t good looking enough!? Concerned prospective employers and/or mates will search for you online and find you just don’t cut it!?

Don’t worry – now you can buy some VIRTUAL friends!!!

The New York Times today reports, Fake Your Space is a “business founded by Brant Walker, which offered users of MySpace.com and similar sites a way to enhance their page with photographs and comments from hired “friends” — mainly attractive models — for 99 cents a month each.”

Wow.

I’ve felt like a loser in real life, but not on the Internet. Yet. Maybe I should!?

On the other hand, if you have too many friends, or unwanted friends (!?), Mr. Walker also provides a service called BreakYourSpace.com to get rid of unwanted friends!

According to the article, all of this is perfectly legal. MySpace and Facebook have had no comment.

Is this unethical? Immoral? Is it any different from pre-arranging a cell-phone-call-bail-out when you are going on a blind date or other potentially bad social engagement? Is it any different from a totally “fake” online self? Is this “stealth technology”?

I wouldn’t worry about it too much, and anyway, if you use this service you’ll be so popular you won’t have TIME to think about issues like these!

February 26, 2007 at 5:33 pm 4 comments

User 2.0: Innovative Library Sites (Part 2 – Public Libraries)

As promised in my post on February 20th User 2.0 Innovative Library Sites (Part 1- Academic Libraries) here is Part 2 of the preliminary list of Innovative Library Sites – this time for public libraries. Thanks again to David M. Drados, PhD student at Rutgers University, SCILS, and Lynn Silipigni Connaway of OCLC. This list was compiled from suggestions of librarians from the dig_ref listserv, from journal articles, and librarian colleagues.

Again, this list is not meant to be definitive, is a work in progress designed to start a discussion. Your comments and suggestions are welcomed!

  • Ann Arbor District Library (MI) Uses the open source Drupal content management system with incorporates blogging, tagging, user comments, and RSS feeds. Its location page is tied into Google Maps.
  • Arlington Heights Memorial Library (IL)
    Features “Vlogs” – Video casts.
  • Atlantic City Public Library (NJ)
    Site features podcasts as well as RSS feeds.
  • Denver Public Library (CO)
    Has RSS feeds for library news and local events, podcasts, teen MySpace Account.
  • Goshen Public Library & Historical Society (NY)
    Maintains several blogs on various topics—book reviews, computers, library news, and also has a MySpace page.
  • Hennepin County Library (MN)
    Has blogs for library news and teens, RSS feeds built into the catalog along with user reviews/comments, a MySpace account and, podcasts.
  • Memorial Hall Library (MA)
    Library director maintains a Blog and site has a wiki with an accumulated collection of reference question called “Andover Answers,” teen podcasts, and a MySpace page and an online community calendars.
  • Mesa County Public Library District (CO)
    Has a library director blog, a staff “librarian’s love” blog, and links to online book clubs.
  • Salida Regional Library (CO)
    Links to Library Elf which allows users to track due dates on checked out items; local digital archive link, downloadable audio books, director (weekly) newspaper articles, and staff recommendations.
  • Stevens County Rural Library District (WA)
    Maintains a library news blog and a public wiki project designed to create a guide to Stevens County, including local history.
  • Westerville Public Library (OH)
    Features director, teen and adult services blogs, library Flickr and MySpace presence, RSS feeds, podcasts and videocasts, user rating of catalog items with links to Amazon, B&N, Novelist and Syndetics for reviews.
  • Worthington Libraries (OH)
    Has a teen blog along with an associated MySpace site.

February 25, 2007 at 11:23 am 6 comments

Cyberbullying and Libraries

There is often a really fine line between what is funny, what is offensive and to what degree someone is offended.

Make no mistake, there is some joy to be had in bullying. It is about empowerment, positioning, status, hierarchy and the pleasure is the solidification of one’s place through the bullying act. In other words, it is largely about attention and acceptance.

And if someone is looking for attention, then the Internet is a heaven for their needs.

As much as I am a fan for social networks and social technologies I can understand peoples’ concern about its bullying potential. Text messages, Instant messages, photoshops, podcasts and blogs (forgive me if I left a few tactics out) don’t just make a myriad of methods to bully with, but also encourage the creativity of the bully… and the reward is the hundreds to thousands of hits their post may receive.

Example? Check out Ghyslain Raza, better known as the Star Wars Kid. He filmed a solo light saber sequence as part of a school project but when some of his classmates got a hold of the film, Ghyslain became an overnight cyber-celebrity. When the Canadian news source, National Post, asked him how he felt about all the ‘attention,’ he responsed “I want my life back.”

A hell for Gyshlain but incredible empowerment for the kids who posted it!

Rather than make this post solely about cyberbullying, lets think about what it could mean for libraries. Certain states have made blanket anti-bullying policies that go as strict as zero-tolerance. As sites like Myspace gain notoriety more for their negative aspects, and stories about unfortunate cyberbullying and suicide become more popularized, there is a possibility that state and federal legislature may push through DOPA-esque policies.

But before we go down that slippery slope, I’d like to ask some more some questions for us to think about:

-If we market our library as a “Safe Zone,” how safe are our teens within the library’s cyber-walls? Do we, or should we, take this into account of a Safe Zone policy?

-What will happen when someone can confirm the cyberbullying took place inside of the library?

-What, if any, measures should libraries take in order to prevent cyberbullying?

-What proactive steps can we take against cyberbullying right now?

-If we consider ourselves as a cultural center, does that mean that we consider excessive bullying as part of our culture? This one if for the Sociologists out there!

As much as I am an advocate for Freedom of Information and Freedom of Speech, I also spent many years working with teens who have been greatly affected by bullying, physically and mentally. And because I have worked with teens in a counseling setting before I became a librarian, I greatly struggle with where the line is drawn in a library.

To an extent, being bullied is a part of growing up. For some, they grow up and walk away unscathed; for others, they live an entire life around it’s effects. So where do we, as libraries, take our stand in the issue?

Sad to say… this is what I think about at 2a.m. when I can’t sleep.

February 22, 2007 at 12:38 am

A tempest has been brewing… AKA, yet even more on the scrotum story

One Troublesome Word , Article, Editorial

A tempest has been brewing over a children’s book…” begins today’s New York Times editorial. Ahhhh, the passive voice… last refuge of scoundrels.

Perhaps it is too much to expect the Old Gray Lady to acknowledge that, prior to it’s own troublesome reporting, there was nothing brewing but a fairly respectful professional discussion on librarians’ discussion lists (or as the Lady quaintly refers to them, “message boards”.)

Perhaps it is too much to ask that, having started this hooha (if that’s the right word–gulp), the Lady restrain from invoking comparison’s with Marian the librarian. Surely this is writing at it’s absolute laziest! Hey Lady, while you were at it, couldn’t you have thrown in a comment or two mentioning that librarians’ commitment to intellectual freedom is generally, oh I don’t know, as tall as an oak? As deep as the sea?

(Note to the NY Times editorial board: The next time you want to disabuse your readership of the “Marian the Librarian” stereotype, it might be more effective to point out that REAL librarians don’t fit the stereotype, rather than pointing out that Marian herself was actually quite a bawdy gal, judging from her reading habits.

Check this out: It wouldn’t be fair to characterize Arthur Sulzberger’s comment that “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either” by saying that he’s kind of like Nero, fiddling while the MSM burns. You know why? Because Nero really played the LYRE. See how that works?)

But I get it, Lady. mentioning Marian, was really just an easy transition to mentioning her love of Balzac, which sounds kind of like “ball sack” which is another way of saying scrotum (giggle, snigger), so we can all see how wonderfully witty, cultured, well-read, AND terribly bawdy the Times editorial board is. Look out Dorothy Parker, you’ve got competition! Oh wait, you’ve been dead for 40 years. My bad.

Well anyway Lady, thanks for throwing in that last bit about helping children on their journey from ignorance to knowledge, blahdiddy, blah, blah, and for not using the word “shhhh” anywhere in the (final draft) of the editorial.

February 21, 2007 at 2:54 am 5 comments

User 2.0: Innovative Library Sites (Part 1 – Academic Libraries)

You may recognize this illustration from the work published in Diffusion of Innovations (1995) by the late Everett Rogers. A few weeks ago I posted a query on the dig_ref listserv asking this savvy group of librarians interested in virtual reference services to nominate the library sites that are the most “innovative” in terms of integrating Web 2.0 / social software applications. I have also incorporated sites discussed in programs I attended at ALA Mid-Winter in Seattle (January 2007), suggested by colleagues, or noted in listservs or journal articles.

Today I am posting the preliminary list of Innovative Academic Libraries from these sources. Eash listing also has a very brief note about social software applications featured by the library’s website. I would like to thank David M. Dragos, Ph.D. student at Rutgers SCILS and Lynn Silipigni Connaway of OCLC for their help in compiling this list.

Again, this list is preliminary and not meant to be exhaustive, but rather to start a discussion. They are in alphabetical order.

I would like to invite you to leave a comment if your academic library is an innovator or if you know of others!

My next post (within the next day or so) will be Part 2 – Innovative Public Libraries.

Innovative Academic Library Websites

February 20, 2007 at 9:18 pm 12 comments

Books that Would be Awesome Band Names

To me, there really aren’t a lot of great things about weeding, minus the ability to evict any dust mites that may have made homes in our literature. But if there is one thing I love doing, is looking at book titles and making note of them for their appeal, oscurity, dated or, in this post, their potential awesomeness for a band name.
Here are my Top 10 choices:

Hi Tech Babies
The Princess of Neptune

February 15, 2007 at 9:44 am 3 comments

Older Posts


Creative Commons

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Disclaimer: The thoughts expressed on this blog are those of the authors and are not intended to reflect the views of our employers.

A Note on the history of posts

Please note that all Library Garden posts dated earlier than September 13,2009 originally appeared on our Blogger site. These posts have been imported to this site as a convenience when searching the entire site for content.

If you are interested in seeing the original post, with formatting and comments in tact, please bring up the original post at our old Blogger site.

Thanks for reading Library Garden!

wordpress
visitors

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 43 other followers
http://librarygarden.net/2007/02/
librarygarden.net
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-11
74566
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:ZFXQF6I3FGNBMTMCCQVXRGGR3HWXRAGC
<urn:uuid:2bc5cabc-924a-4cd0-a031-d78bfa0746ed>
2015-03-01T23:27:32Z
192.0.78.25
sha1:IYUG2YJKALAUUYATB3MAG3CXCINZ3ZRS
<urn:uuid:7f589a83-f8ee-464d-ad48-124c98186098>
http://librarygarden.net/2007/02/
length
response
<urn:uuid:f8ebe8fd-94ec-4b11-8a24-59fe4a784126>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-11
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for February 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf