SamuraiLibrarian

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2010-04-29T21:21:00.001-07:00

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Twittering

2008-12-22T20:26:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging much lately, but I have been micro-blogging over on Twitter. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/RyanLibrarian.

Librarians Sourced for Search

2008-11-12T21:08:00.000-08:00

This press release came across my desk today:

Researchers and developers from OCLC... today announced their participation in a new international effort to explore the creation of a more credible Web search experience based on input from librarians around the globe. Called the "Reference Extract," the planning phase of this project is funded through a $100,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation...

Reference Extract is envisioned as a Web search experience similar to those provided by the world’s most popular search engines. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extract will be built for maximum credibility of search results by relying on the expertise of librarians. Users will enter a search term and receive results weighted toward sites most often used by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State Library of Maryland, and over 2,000 other libraries worldwide.

I'm really excited about this, and if it comes to fruition I plan on contributing. Still, $100,000 seams like peanuts for startup... The capital invested into Cuil exceeds this small sum by several orders of magnitude, yet it's still flopped dramatically. Still, I think the idea is gold, so long as the web platform can be effectively developed, a decent user base can be established, and links really are quality.

The utility of crowd sourcing is perhaps over-rated, but given that contributors are drawn from a clearly defined group, a group that's professionally compelled to take part in this sort of activity, it just could work.

There's more on the official ReferenceExtract site.

Information Policy

2008-10-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I attended Jumpstarting the Public Sphere: Information Policy Issues for the 21st Century, a conference run by BCLA's Info Policy Committee. Apparently they were going to have blog posts from SLAIS students compelled to attend the conference by their instructors, Devon and Heather, who are members of the committee, on the bcinfopolicy.ca blog, but there's nothing yet. I can only assume that this will be forthcoming, seeing as marks likely hang in the balance. Apparently sessions were recorded and will be available via SFU campus radio online, but I don't think there's anything up yet.

The conference was excellent and was kicked off by Canadian copyfight celebrity, Michael Geist. Really, it was par for the course for Michael, and I get the impression this a talk he's given before--a lot. The main new insight I took away from his speech was that the now dead bill C-61 (Canadian DMCA) was engendered not by outright pressure from the music/movie lobby, but from the American government. We've been leaned on, and the Canadian Government is only too happy to comply like a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys. This has been a theme with Harper, that sweater wearing, media avoiding, pudgy, cold eyed Conservative patriarch. I think it's not a stretch to say that this is an issue of sovereignty.

Anyway, all the speakers were fantastic. It was nice to see David Loukidelis, the BC Privacy Commissioner, who gave an excellent talk on the regulatory climate in BC as it pertains to privacy and policy. Unfortunately, during the question period I could hear the distinct sound of an axe grinding, but these things happen.

It was also interesting (by which I mean freaking scary) to learn about TILMA (Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement), which is essentially a local version of NAFTA on steroids and crack. The BC Federation of Labour puts it more politely: "a triumph of ideology over common sense, a dubious 'solution' in search of a problem that most British Columbians never knew existed, probably because it didn't" (link).

Finally, Sam Trosow, who is always an interesting speaker, gave the closing speech on developing a critical approach to information policy. It was chewy, and I'm still digesting it.

This is true

2008-08-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

more graph humor and song chart memes

Underwhelmed by Overdrive

2008-07-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

Today I spent the better part of an hour trying to get OverDrive to work. Here in BC, OverDrive has been branded as an extension of BC Libraries: Libraries without walls, and has been licensed by the consortium for all BC public Libraries by the provincial department responsible for libraries: Public Libraries Services Branch (PLSB).

After an hour of playing with the system I was unable to get it working. This is not indicative of my skills, but of a poorly conceived product. My first issue is that client, the OverDrive Console, which I was required to install on my system, delivered error messages instead of content. To be fair, the error was engendered by problems with the Windows Media Player, but the effect was the same: a great big waste of time installing, uninstalling and restarting.

Next, the books I wanted were not in. This is ridiculous. The "books" are digital. They are infinately replicable. They are not scarce physical copies on a shelf, and to treat them as such is the imposition of an artificial limitation and an barrier to access. Surely a better contract could have been negotiated.

Finally, and this is the real deal-breaker, OverDrive does not work on any of my four MP3 players: My tablet (Nokia N800), my iPod Shuffle, my Palm (Tungston) or my phone (Motorola v3t). They've bought a service, that will not work on most hardware because most platforms cant handle the DRM (Digital Rights Management).

DRM is always a barrier to access and essentially breaks our devices, removing otherwise available functionality. For these reasons, as a librarian, I find DRM abhorrent, and I feel that as a profession we say no to DRM. We spend a lot of money on DRM locked products, and if we use our collective economic clout, vendors will listen

Copyright Conversations with Conservatives

2008-06-26T14:20:00.000-07:00

Ever since the new copyright legislation dropped, I've been meaning to post. Trouble is, there's so much wrong with C-61, I didn't know where to start. Today, however, I received a reply to an email I sent to my MP, Nina Grewal. Here's that email, followed by my reply:

Dear Mr. Vernon:

Thank you very much for your recent correspondence concerning Bill C-61.

Last week our government introduced important amendments to the Copyright Act to bring it up-to-date with advances in technology. Our approach is in line with international standards. It should be clear, however, that it is a Made-in-Canada approach that will benefit all Canadians.

For consumers, it allows the recording of webcasts and television and radio programs to be enjoyed at different times; music to be copied on devices such as MP3 players; and the copying of books, newspapers, videos and photos into different formats. It also sets statutory damages at $500 for individuals if they infringe copyright for private use--provided the material is not protected by a digital lock. (Currently, statutory damages could be as high as $20,000 for a single infringement.)

Canadian educators and students stand to benefit from uniquely Canadian reforms that would allow greater use of material posted on the Internet, the legal delivery of course material through the Internet, and electronic delivery of materials loaned between libraries.

For Canadian Internet Service Providers (ISPs), our bill includes a one-of-a-kind "notice and notice" regime. Compared to the "notice and takedown" approach that is used in other markets, it better addresses peer-to-peer file sharing, and clarifies the responsibilities of ISPs online.

Our Made-in-Canada approach strikes a proper balance between all stakeholders. It promotes the protection of creators' rights, and access by students and researchers. It means consumers can enjoy everyday uses of copyright material. And it provides fairness and clarity for industries that operate in the digital environment. Its uniquely Canadian provisions recognize that we all have a stake in fair copyright laws.

I have taken the liberty of forwarding your correspondence on to the Minister of Industry, the Hon. Jim Prentice, whose department is responsible for Bill C-61 and who can better address your specific concerns with this proposed legislation.
Thank you again for writing and please rest assured that your concerns have been duly noted.

Sincerely yours,
Nina Grewal

Member of Parliament
Fleetwood-Port Kells

I tried to maintain an even tone in my response, even though my immediate response was to call bullshit on the clearly false assertion that C-61 is a "Made-in-Canada approach strikes a proper balance between all stakeholders." Here's my response:

Dear Ms. Grewal,

Thank you for responding to my correspondence regarding Bill C-61. I still feel, however, that there are grave deficiencies with this legislation, and I hope you will take the time to personally read and respond to my concerns.

Before I continue, I'd like to explain the context for my professional and personal concern with this bill. I'm faculty at a local college, and one of my graduate degrees is a Master of Library and Information Studies from UBC. The majority of my professional work is with post-secondary students with perceptual disabilities. I am also a father.

As college faculty, C-61 worries me in that it erodes "fair dealing," the copyright tenet on which research and study depends, by restricting the fair use of copyrighted material. Put another way, quoting a paragraph from a digitally locked research study should not be a crime and is indicative of this bill failing to account for dynamic context in which research and study happens. Students and instructors need the freedom provided by a strong "fair dealing" provision to interact with the world of ideas and produce cutting edge research, ideas and products.

C-61 will also turn my colleagues, academic librarians, into copyright police. As the Canadian Library Association states in it’s June 18th press release:

Bill C-61 ignores the fact that the 2004 CCH Supreme Court Judgment already allows Canadian libraries to do desktop delivery of interlibrary loan. Bill C-61 requires libraries to lock up interlibrary loans with DRM tools, something that most libraries would not have the resources to accomplish. Bill C-61 alone would force many libraries back to delivering interlibrary loan via paper copies. "On loaning of digital content, C-61 attempts to move Canada back to the 20th Century," says Mr. Roberts. "This is clearly not workable."

Here too the proposed legislation ignores the reality of the academic process: the research cycle can take years, and researchers must maintain their research sources for this period. It is unreasonable to expect that they will delete digital copies of journal articles within a week, and maintain only paper files, for to do so would be inefficient, environmentally unsound, and unrealistic in a digital work environment.

Additionally, as someone who works with students with perceptual difficulties (individuals who have difficulty navigating the written word because of a visual impairment, learning or cognitive disability, or physical handicap), I am also particularly troubled by the blanket anti-circumvention provisions included in C-61, which undermine the exemption for people with perceptual disabilities in section 32 of the current version of the Canadian Copyright Act, which states that:

32. (1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a person, at the request of a person with a perceptual disability, or for a non-profit organization acting for his or her benefit, to

1. make a copy or sound recording of a literary, musical, artistic or dramatic work, other than a cinematographic work, in a format specially designed for persons with a perceptual disability;
2. translate, adapt or reproduce in sign language a literary or dramatic work, other than a cinematographic work, in a format specially designed for persons with a perceptual disability…

The new blanket prohibition on reformatting locked content will criminalize the reformatting of materials legally purchased by disabled students, which they need not only to study, but to function in society and democracy. This bill unfairly targets people who already have a difficult time in life, making life harder for them.

For the sake of brevity I will list only one more concern for you: as a father I am gravely worried about fines that will be levied in cases of music downloads. Your colleague, Minister Prentice, has claimed that individuals will be fined a maximum of $500 if they are caught downloading copyrighted files. As such, the family of a child who downloads an album of a dozen songs would liable for $6000. Such a fine far outweighs the crime, and serves only to put money into the accounts of big corporations who are unable to change with the technological realities of the current day. Moreover, the usual method of download for copyrighted files, such as music, is via peer-to-peer technology, a system based on simultaneous upload and download. While the proposed fine for downloading is $500, the fine for uploading is $20,000, and as such the fine for acquiring the same twelve song album via a peer-to-peer network could be $240000, a fine that would destroy most Canadian families. I am very disappointed in this punitive and unfair fine structure, and am dismayed that the Conservative Party has privileged corporate interests over their stated commitment to Canadian families.

I hope you agree that the goal of copyright legislation is to facilitate the fair circulation of ideas, to foster the innovation, and therefore develop an educated, aware and engaged citizenry. C-61 will not fulfill these goals, and will instead favor the economic goals of foreign interests over the rights of Canadian citizens. The lack of public consultation on this matter is as deeply troubling to me as the ignoring of the negative example of the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) on which--despite misleading claims to the contrary--is a clear analogue to C-61.

I implore you to encourage your party to remove this bill from the table, and consult with Canadians, for we are not "consumers," as your colleague Minister Prentice so often refers to us, but we are "users" and "creators," and we have the right to a balanced approach which C-61 does not offer.

Sincerely,
Ryan Vernon

CC: Prime Minister Harper
Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry
Josee Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage
James Rajotte, Chair of the House of Commons Industry Committee

I wonder if I'll receive a response... If I do I'll be sure to post it, with commentary.

Imitation is the best form of flattery?

2008-06-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

Oh, the injustice of it all! I've been ripped off by Wired... Here's their post, here's mine.

ETUG wrap up

2008-05-31T12:41:00.000-07:00

ETUG's over. All in all a very positive experience and the most grass-roots of 4 conferences I've attended in the last 4 months. Other sessions I didn't blog about were

Open source content: cultivating a culture of sharing our creativity with Chris Gratham. There was an interesting wiki for this session, but unfortunately the URL hasn't been added to the ETUG site.
Modeling Human Creativity with Steve DiPaola. Very interesting and wide-ranging. The best resource for this one is Steve's website: http://www.dipaola.org.
Mobile Content with David Vogt, Executive Director of the Mobile MUSE Network. We had an interesting discussion about things like citywide wifi, the politics of mobile computing and space as a function of electronically mediated interaction. The MUSE network website is http://mobilemuse.ca.

One other anecdote: I've been carrying around an ASUS Eee PC lately (more about this in a future post) and it generated a fair amount of interest at ETUG, even when I was sitting next to the guy with the mac air. Sucker.

What's on your Horizon?

2008-05-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

Facilitators: Cyprien Lomas and Scott Leslie

Description: A conversation about the 2008 NMC Horizon Report. Each year the New Media Consortium produces The Horizon Report (http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Main_Page), an attempt to forecast some of the emerging technologies and forces that will affect education in the coming years. This year’s report identified grassroots video, collaboration webs, mobile broadband, data mashups, collective intelligence and social operating systems as 6 emerging technologies that will influence higher education over the next 5 years. Join two of the Horizon Report's Advisory Board members for an open discussion about the newly released 2008 report, as well as an opportunity to share your own experiences around a host of innovative and disruptive technologies that are offering both new opportunities and challenges for educators and support staff.

I actually took copious notes for this session, but the session wiki and the horizon document itself pretty much cover it. Both of these links contain a lot of useful information, and the wiki particularly has links to several very interesting online apps / tools.

ETUG: Pachyderm

2008-05-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

Session: Pachyderm: Rich media presentations (2 hr hands-on lab)

Facilitators: Negin Mirriahi and Angela Lam

Description: No technical skills required! This hands-on workshop will introduce Pachyderm, an easy-to-use open source flash based multimedia authoring tool designed for instructors, instructional designers, and students who have little or no skills in multimedia development. Participants will be shown samples of finished Pachyderm presentations and guided through creating their own sample presentation that could be uploaded on any website or imported into a Course Management System. Arts ISIT within the Faculty of Arts at UBC has been one of the initial developers of Pachyderm and currently supports the use of Pachyderm at UBC for both face-to-face and online distance classes.

Pachyderm 2.0

Open source rich media web publishing tool.

Flash based. Requires no local install.

Templates available—seems largely template based, but it's difficult to edit existing templates.

End constant can be uploaded to server or CMS.

Not really accessible... no default alt tag... difficult to parse with a screen reader.

Advantages:

Easy to use
Instructors will not require a lot of support

Limitations:

highly visual.
Limited number of template
hard to change the templates
templates must be build in flash, and therefore requires programming experience to modify.
Totally inaccessible.
Hard to make changes on the fly: requires storyboarding.

Bottom line: A good session, but this is not a useful tool, not only because of its lack of accessibility, but also because it lacks flexibility and an intuitive interface.

ETUG: Educational Technology Users Group

2008-05-29T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'm at the ETUG conference right now:

The Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG) is a community of BC post-secondary educational practitioners focused on the ways in which learning and teaching can be enhanced through technology.

I'm pleasantly surprised at the quality of this little conference. It's very grassroots and the right kind of nerdy. Perhaps next year I'll submit a request to speak.

In any case, notes from the conference floor will follow.

A note for conference organizers: recently I also attended the BCLA and CLA conferences, but they didn't offer free WIFI for participants, so they merited no blogging on my part.

Influential reads

2008-04-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

In January I wrote, "It would be interesting to take a bunch of really smart individuals and ask them what book made them the smartest..." It seems that the New Scientist has done much the same thing. Here's the list:

1. Farthest North - Steve Jones, geneticist
2. The Art of the Soluble - V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist
3. Animal Liberation - Jane Goodall, primatologist
4. The Foundation trilogy - Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist
5. Alice in Wonderland - Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist
6. One, Two, Three... Infinity - Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist
7. The Idea of a Social Science - Harry Collins, sociologist of science
8. Handbook of Mathematical Functions - Peter Atkins, chemist
9. The Mind of a Mnemonist - Oliver Sacks, neurologist
10. A Mathematician's Apology - Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician
11. The Leopard - Susan Greenfield, neurophysiologist
12. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior - Frans de Waal, psychologist and ethologist
13. Catch-22 / The First Three Minutes - Lawrence Krauss, physicist
14. William James, Writings 1878-1910 - Daniel Everett, linguist
15. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Chris Frith, neuroscientist
16. The Naked Ape - Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
17. King Solomon's Ring - Marion Stamp Dawkins, Zoologist

(via boing boing)

Lame

2008-03-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

So I just spent my Saturday evening in front of my computer. Lame ass.

Anyway, I added a link to this blog's RSS feed, added a blogger profile pic, and updated my online resume. It's not that I'm looking for a job--I'm enjoying my new job very much, thank you--but if you want to steal me away by showering me with fat wads of cash, send me an email and we can discuss it.

Family

2008-03-29T21:04:00.000-07:00

The family is coming along nicely... You'll notice the literal hierarchy:

Dress Up!

2008-03-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

LibrarianDressUp.com

I wish they had a male version of this.

CSUN: An accessible approach to usability testing

2008-03-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Neil
Web Content Manager
AFB

Use research: benchmark for effectiveness.

Remote usability testing helps recruit a good mix.

Define user group.
Is there special equipment required?
Access criterion is more important than disability in their experience is more a function access method than disability.

Sampling techniques:
Snowballing, find one person and then use their contacts.
Random sampling, good but more suited to a lager population.
Quota sampling, fill specific criteria until defined number is met.
Opportunity sampling, finding folks who are at particular place, like a conference. Might be biased.

Recruitment strategies:
Organizations
lists
personal connections
programs

Types of research
Focus groups: more informal; usually most useful as a starting place. What people think they need.

Card sorting: How people sort information. Provide cards and see how people sort them. May need to be done creatively for his to be accessible, ie with Braille or large print.

Prototyping: can be useful early.

Heuristic review: use preexisting standards. Don't reinvent the wheel.

User's experience interviews: what are the user's expectations based on design.

Quantitative testing: time spent on task, keystrokes, etc.

Benefits of remote testing: real world testing, reduces burden on the user.

Links to web design standards cited on presentation slides.

Continue to ask for comments after a product is live.

CSUN: Riding the wave: Electronic gaming for persons with disabilities

2008-03-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

Head mouse: for PC Mac, pointing device.

Coplaying: where one person playing a game with the direction of another. Showed a father son playing a FPS.

Leads to productive learning and work.

Unbelievable vid of a kid who can only use move his thumb. Plays fps and war craft.

Neither presenter has expertise with gaming for folks with visual impairment.

CSUN: DAISY Production from a Text Source

2008-03-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

Ron Stewart, Peter Proscia, Dennis Leas, Reed Shaffner and George Kerscher

Starting in MS Word adding in headings and alt tags.
Using DAISY Converter to convert the doc to daisy.
Requires TTS: Text To Speech, for audio output.

Eclipse Wizard: another DAISY production tool. Eclipse has other tools as well. Seems like a good tool.
Uses DNA file format: Small file which contains text and structure information. DNA can export to a wide range of devices.

MS Word export to DAISY.
Goals: -reduce barriers to baseline production.
-Clean up what people consume.
-Bring DAISY to mainstream population.
New beta available on source forge on May 21.

gh, LLC
Service: media conversion.
Product: gh Player
quick ad dirty text to DAISY with minimal heading information.

DAISY pipeline
Open source / accessible
Adequate for larger production.

A few notes here: DAISY Pipeline is a tool that CILS currently uses as part of our DAISY production process. I was particularly impressed with Eclipse, and I think we’ll demo it once we’re back in the office. The other useful tool will be the MS Word export to DAISY tool, which should significantly lower the barrier to basic DAISY production for many people. It seems to me that this will be useful for professors and other instructors who need to make materials available to students.

We also met with George Kerscher while at CSUN… He moderated this session. He's a man who really seems to understand the things, and he’s a strong advocate for DAISY. A little while ago I posted a YouTube vid of him discussing DAISY.

CSUN: Best Practices in Accessibility: An IT Perspective

2008-03-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

IT Industry Council, Accessibility committee.
Members on this panel: Nokia, Cannon, RIM, AOL and HP.
Moderated by Ken Salaets.

Nokia: making accessible mobile devices. Also accessible software such as readers.
Open architecture that allows others to develop accessibly apps.

Cannon: now making accessible copying / multifunction device. Universal design approach. Offering audio and speech recognition.
Import of AT as part of brand image.
Focus on preparing to serve the aging population.

RIM: Canadian! Formalized accessibility processes within product development and customer interactions. Universal design approach.
Focus on industry collaboration.
Develop customers for life, ie ageing boomers.

AOL: Awareness, responsibility, collaboration. Working on captioning on the web.
Accessible webmail product. 4.5% AOL webmail views through accessible streams.

HP: Good term: coopitition.
Also looking at age related disabilities... Good business case here.
Good question to ask yourself: Accessible to whom, doing what, in what environment.
HP.com/accessibility

Overview:
Import of developing corporate culture.
Cooperation.
Dedicated staff resources (advocates) with other people on-board.

NB: Although it wasn’t explicitly stated, the business case underpinning this session was that companies are incorporating assistive technology more and more, but nit because it’s the right thing to do: a legislated mandate to accommodate and an aging population make assistive tech both legally necessary and potentially profitable.

CSUN: Improving access to web interaction at Google

2008-03-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

Charles L Chen and T.V. Raman

Content and interaction underpin the web.
Content accessibility is well addressed, interaction not so much.

Presentation notes posted at Google accessibility group.

Web 1.0 static web controls
Web 2.0 dynamic websites, usually not standard controls or HTML.

WAI-ARIA maps between 2.0 widgets and 1.0
Also interprets dynamic / updating content.
Web apps with WAI-ARIA: you need your web app to include WAI-ARIA as well as a WAI-ARIA enabled browser.

Design principles Web Development Tool kit
ARIA automatically included
keyboard support
widgets accessible by default

Gap analysis
script enhanced as tool to allow assistive technology to access dynamic content currently not available.

Google reader now ARIA accessible. It's the test.

New feature for Google search page: key navigation with reader (JAWS) automatically loads next page when scrolling through results.

CSUN Session: Web accessibility: legal ramifications & awareness within higher education.

2008-03-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

Cynthia Wadell, ICDRI

1 Americans with disabilities act.
2 UK case.
3 UN treaty on rights for persons with disabilities.

1
Defined: impaired abilities.
Protection from discrimination in employment practices... What if inaccessible website?
Import of accessibility officer and complaint procedure.
NB: Exact legal ramifications specific, here, to US
law... ADA = Americans with Disabilities Act.

2
Latif vs. PMI
UK based case.
Applied to US companies operating in the UK.

3
UN treaty on rights of persons with disabilities.
Impacts ~350 million people world wide.
At least 125 countries have signed.
-Process of alignment of laws internationally.

Resources:
Cynthia's book: Web Accessibility. (2006)
cynthiasays.com free online web accessibility checker.
-Not a substitute for human judgment.
Cynthia's digital divide paper available on line. Linked from ICDRI.org website.

CSUN Session: Accessible PDF authoring

2008-03-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Greg Pisoky and Pete De Vasto
from Adobe

ISO 32000 standard for PDF

Adobe reader: works with screen readers, magnifiers, alternative input devices.
MSAA compliant user interface.
Reader now has ocr, automatic tagging built in, reflow to organize columns & images.

Word processing.
Adobe pdf maker works with MS office.
MS also has a pdf maker as a free download.
OpenOffice writer can export accessible pdf as well.

Content prep:
-Do not apply formats and fonts for editing. Use rather styles and headings.
-Never trust software to do anything.
-Check your work manually.
Automated tool for checking and repair prior to pfd publication. LK4 technology.
Adobe offers tools for postproduction pdf accessibility correction.

Word techniques:
-Apply normal style, global remove tabs, formatting (bold etc).
-Wordwise book =good resource.
-Format picture, web tab can allow you to insert alt text.
-Use headings in word. This is accessibility best practice, and also general design best practice. There are short cuts and tools to make this easier.

Adobe PDF Maker has accessibility options.

NB: print as PDF does not create accessible PDF, rather you must save as a PDF.

-Checking and repair.
New version of acrobat pro has accessibility checking: start with accessibility report.

For handout (not up yet):
Anderw Kirkpatrick’s accessibility blog: blogs.adobe.com/accessibility

CSUN: Keynote notes

2008-03-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

Jonn Williams (Introduction).
Talked about the development of assistive technology.
Referenced two sites:
Assistive technology News: www.atechnews.com
My MS My Way: www.mymsmyway.com

Keynote: Jim Fruchterman

Raising the floor for people with disability.

Former Caltech rocket scientist.
Current social entreprenure: www.benetech.org
Makes software to track social injustice.
Also runs BookShare, providing accessible ebooks: www.bookshare.org

Williams' original idea: pattern recognition app for blind people.

Became involved with ocr to speech systems in 1970s. Projects transitioned into Arkenstone - which was organized as nonprofit.
Arkenstone succeeded through the 90s. Arkenstone bought by freedom scientific. Benetech emerged later with larger mandate, including human-rights.
Software for human rights groups, including who dif what to whom database. Ie Milosevic trial.

Other venture; BookShare. Community scans and proofs and uploads to the book share library.

Current vision for assistive technology
1 drop price by a factor of ten. As with other technology that has penetrated like cellular phones.
2 Cell phone seen as new platform for assistive technology.
3 Open source is third component.
Mentioned also creative commons.

Raising the floor granted 32 million to pursue free e-text and assistive technology.

Weather Relativity.

2008-03-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

I just arrived in LA for CSUN. It's about 22 degrees and sunny here. I mention this because if it were this warm in Canada everyone would be in shorts and tank-tops. Even when it warmed up to about 10 degrees a few weeks ago, far too many people took the opportunity to display their flabby, white Canadian winter flesh. Here, most people have on long shirts and jackets--in the 20+ degrees weather.

It just goes to show that everything is relative: I'm sure that in eastern Canada they'll be in shorts as soon as it warms to zero... poor SOBs.

DAISY

2008-03-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

Here's a primer for CSUN. It's about Daisy books (Digital Accessible Information SYstem), an accessable electronic book format useful to print-disabled folks.

Here's the vid:

CSUN Conference 2008

2008-03-06T18:57:00.000-08:00

Next week I'm going to be at the CSUN technology and persons with disability conference in LA. Assuming I can get a wi-fi signal, I'm going to blog the convention from the floor using my Nokia N800. In fact, this is my test post with the N800, and I think it's going swimmingly.

Canadian Copyright Dumbassedness

2008-02-23T22:14:00.000-08:00

Not long ago I received a response to an email I sent to Nina Grewal regarding proposed changes to Canadian copyright law:

Dear Mr. Vernon:

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding possible amendments to the Copyright Act. This matter has attracted considerable public attention and has led to letter writing campaigns organized by organizations such as Digital Copyright Canada to influence public policy makers.

The development of digital media and digital communication technologies has fostered a revolution in the manner that we seek entertainment, communicate with others, and otherwise express ourselves. Because of the obvious problems created by the fact that digital content is easily reproduced and distributed, revisions to the law have become necessary to clarify the scope and substance of protection of intellectual property rights, particular the copyright, in the digital age.

The Government of Canada is in the process of considering revisions to the Copyright Act in order to ensure that Canada's copyright framework remains relevant in the rapidly changing digital environment.

There is an expectation that Canadian legislation will mirror laws passed in the United States (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998) and the European Union (European Union Copyright Directive, 2001). Both of these laws were put into place to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization Performances and Phonograms treaties adopted in December 1996. Canada signed these treaties in 1997, and is, therefore, like those jurisdictions also obliged to implement legislative changes demanded by the treaties.

The Government of Canada wants to protect the rights of creators and rights holders while at the same time striking the proper balance between their rights and those of consumers. In drafting new legislation, the government is taking into account the concerns of all interested parties and wants to ensure that every aspect of reforming the legislation will be properly analyzed. We are also looking at measures under taken by other countries and will determine if they are suitable for Canada. Once all of this is done the Industry Minister will introduce a bill in the House of Commons. This will likely occur early in the New Year.

Thank you again for writing on this important matter. Please rest assured that your opinions have been duly noted.

Sincerely yours,

Nina Grewal
Member of Parliament
Fleetwood-Port Kells

I'd like to go through a few points here...

Firstly, Ms. Grewal's statement that "[t]his matter has attracted considerable public attention and has led to letter writing campaigns organized by organizations such as Digital Copyright Canada to influence public policy makers" is inane. I know this. I sent her the email. It seems to me that she's just lifted the paragraph from a briefing paper. This suggests she doesn't actually know what's going on, and moreover that she can't even plagiarize effectively.

(This would be a good time to point out how sketchy her husband's activities were when he was an MP. Given her intimate relationship with this obvious shyster, it boggles my mind that she got reelected. )

Secondly, that "[t}here is an expectation that Canadian legislation will mirror laws passed in the United States (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998) and the European Union (European Union Copyright Directive, 2001)" seems to confirm our worst fears. The DMCA, for example, is garbage: it criminalizes music fans, it restricts the ways in which legally acquired content can be used, it prevents hardware owners from using their hardware in the ways they want, and it prevents the development of new technology. As Cory Doctorow writes, "The US's approach to enforcing copyright in the digital age has resulted in 20,000 lawsuits against music fans, technology companies being sued out of existence for making new multi-purpose tools, and has not put one penny into the pocket of an artist or reduced downloading one bit. The USA stepped into uncharted territory in 1998 with the DMCA and fell off a cliff -- that was reckless, but following them off the cliff is insane."

Thirdly, there's nothing in Ms. Grewal's letter about consultation. It seems her party is too busy kowtowing to corporate lobbyists to even bother consulting with the electorate.

Anyway, we're now "early in the New Year..." I wonder how this is going to pan out. I guess we'll have to see how if the house can navigate a potential vote of non-confidence.

lols

2008-02-14T20:29:00.000-08:00

Why is this stuff so funny?

No matter how grumpy I am, this stuff always makes me smile.

Bunch of Librarian Blogs

2008-02-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

We're a bloggy bunch... Here are some Librarian blogs that I like:

Open Access Academic Publishing

2008-02-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

The NYT writes,

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish -- on the Web, at least -- free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday's vote would apply only to Harvard's arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university's prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.

The strangle-hold that the academic publishing industry has on academia astounds me: universitys give away their work for free in the form of published research, and then they are forced to buy it back at astronomical rates in the form of print journals and database subscriptions. While I suspect that some academics like that their research is ensconced within the ivory tower, restricted discourse available to only the elite, it also seems to me that it would be best if that discourse were freely available to the general public. I'm not suggesting that the peer review system be dismantled, quality control in academia is absolutely essential to for any discipline to advance its knowledge and processes, but why enforce what is now an arbitrary and harmful barrier to entry? The only reason to continue with the present system is to foster elitism and protect the profits of corporations such as ProQuest and Elsevier.

Thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for the link.

Grammys

2008-02-10T21:40:00.000-08:00

The Grammys are on right now... Does anyone care?

I, for one, couldn't be bothered to do more than flip by those lame jokes and lamer musicians.

New things

2008-02-07T22:27:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I accepted a new job at a local college. I have mixed feelings about leaving my present employer, but what the hell, how can could I refuse real vacation time, a better pay scale and stability.

Posts regarding job related flux to follow, I'm sure...

Things doing...

2008-02-01T16:43:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a few weeks. Lots going on that I can't talk about yet. In the meantime, here's a link to a post I made over at the Alcuin Blog a little while ago.

Books that make you dumb

2008-01-25T18:09:00.000-08:00

Usually I find it's the self-help books that knock down the old IQ, but according to this chart, booksthatmakeyoudumb, the book that'll make you the dumbest is "Zane." I can only conclude that the author of this chart has been reading quite a bit of "Zane" because "Zane" is an author, not a book. According to the same chart, the book that makes you the least dumb is Lolita. I read it a few years ago, but I'm not sure it made me any smarter. It did make me feel awfully uncomfortable while reading it on public transit: I was afraid that someone would read over my shoulder and think that I had something in common with old Humbert Humbert.

I've read a lot of books... Two degrees in literature plus 35 hours a week spent in a library will do that to you, but the book that made me the smartest was 1984. I read 1984 at the particularly impressionable age of 17, and its exploration of power, discourse, socialization and surveillance have been issues that have interested me ever since. Put another way, 1984 made me smarter because it catalyzed my interest which encouraged me to read further.

It would be interesting to take a bunch of really smart individuals and ask them what book made them the smartest...

Print-on-Demand. It's Here.

2008-01-04T17:32:00.000-08:00

Insofar as publishing is "the activity of making information available for public view," the internet has been democratizing publishing for some time now. These days, in Canada at least, anyone can go to a public library, access the Internet, and start a blog at Blogger, all for free. Put another way, with the World Wide Web the barrier to entry for publishing is almost nonexistent, requiring only basic computer skills.

Conversely, up until recently there's been a significant barrier to entry when it comes to good old fashioned ink on paper, especially in book form. Usually an author has to convince a publisher that a sufficient number of his or her books will sell to turn a profit, or failing at this an author could opt for so called vanity publishing, fronting the money to publish a run of their own book.

This is no longer the case. As this article suggests, print on demand technology is here:

New printing technologies are making published authors of legions of aspiring writers, a population that once toiled for years on tomes that might not see the light of day. The vast majority of today's instant authors may sell only a few dozen copies of their books, but on-demand publishing is letting thousands realize the ambitions of generations of would-be writers.

With this technology the economics of scale cease to apply: if all you want is one book, you can have it printed for you; if you have orders for 25 books the next day, you can have them printed... There's no limit and no significant price difference for volume.

The above quoted article links to three sites that offer print-on-demand:

Cross-posted to the Alcuin Blog.

Christmas

2008-01-02T12:01:00.000-08:00

Christmas was a success. I've always been told that it's extra exciting with kids, and it's true.

Here are the pictures:

Secret Compartment Book for Nokia N800

2007-12-18T19:44:00.000-08:00

Last night I decided to make a secret compartment book after watching a clip showing how it's done.

I used an old medical text, Aequanimitas, that I found in the library book sale. I chose this book because it's not worth much (according to ABE), because it's the right size and because it has a slip-cover. Originally I wanted to use a copy of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation because that's what Neo uses in the Matrix to hide his stash in, but it turns out that hardcover copies of this title are too dear for me to want to cut.

In any case, Aequanimitas was on hand, as were all the other materials I needed: glue, a small utility knife, a ruler, plastic wrap and a paint brush.

I separated the first 25 pages using plastic wrap, and then applied the glue to the outer edge of the pages with the paintbrush.

If I do this again, I'll use a more concentrated glue solution. The solution I used was approximately 40% glue and 60% water, but it would be better if the ratio was reversed. I used WeldBond, but I'm sure any wood glue would work

Next, I piled a bunch of other books on top of Aequanimitas so that it the glue solution wouldn't warp the paper.

I let the glue dry for about an hour, removed the stack of books and then used a ruler to lay out guidelines for my cut.

Before I cut I used a cordless drill to drill the corners, which made it much easier to cut square corners. The small box-cutter also worked well, and imperfections in the cutting are largely because of operator error and not so much because of the tool itself.

Once the cutting was complete, I applied glue to the edges of the secret compartment and again to the outer edge of the book. I restacked the other books on top of it, and left it to dry overnight.

I'm fairly pleased with the end result. If I were to make another I would be more careful to keep my top page clean. I might also borrow a rotary tool to do the cutting with--this would speed up the process and make it easier to make a straight cut. You could also line the compartment with fabric if you wanted, or use a magnet to keep it shut if you wanted to carry it with you, although in this case the slip-cover ensures that it won't spill open.

Microsoft gets it wrong, again

2007-12-15T13:05:00.000-08:00

Microsoft just opened up the beta for Office Live Workspace, and once again they've gotten it wrong. Although Office Live Workspace allows users to share documents online and collaborate with others over the internet, sadly its utility is severely limited because Microsoft Office is still required for full functionality. In its favor it's free (although MS Office isn't) and it gives 250 MB of storage (far less than Google Docs or other online word processing services), but this is overshadowed by its reliance upon the desktop dinosaur, Office.

Me, I still use Office because it's what we use at work, but I'm not going to install it on my next PC. I'll be using a combination of OpenOffice and Google Docs.

The Future and Portable Computing

2007-12-14T17:26:00.000-08:00

Boing Boing recently pointed me to a Scientific American article, What Web Celebs Want. I'm totally on the same page as Ray Kurzweil. He wants a Nokia N82 phone. I am a big fan of the Nokia N series, and just today bought a Nokia N800.

I haven't played with it much yet--I'll install the newest OS before I do--but I'm excited. I believe that smaller, cheaper portable devices are the future of computing. Although most of us still run relatively powerful desktop systems, you likely don't need to unless you're a gamer or doing a lot of image editing. These days, an Asus Eee ($400 laptop) is more than adequate, you can do image editing online with it using Picnik or other tools.

This Picnik example is important, because it's indicative of the trend that will make cheaper portable hardware not only viable, but preferable: processes requiring significant resources increasingly live on servers, not end-users' terminals. What people usually need is access to the Internet, and all the better if it's cheep and portable.

A side effect of this will also be the end of Microsoft's (already crumbling) hegemony. Microsoft products are expensive to buy, expensive to run (think of the silly amount of computing power it takes to run Vista), and use DRM to reduce functionality. With my Nokia N800 or with the Asus Eee I can edit photos with Picnic, create documents, presentations, or spread-sheets with Google Docs, share my pictures with Flickr, send email via POP3 or webmail, check my RSS feeds, listen to podcasts, update my blog, watch YouTube, all from anywhere with Wi-Fi...

...which brings me back round to Ray Kurzweil's other Christmas wish, VR glasses:

Virtual displays using devices in our eyeglasses that beam images directly to the retina. Prototypes of these already exist. So my vision of computing and communicating in the future includes retina-mounted devices that can create stationary virtual displays even as we move our heads, and full-immersion visual-auditory virtual reality and augmented real reality. We'll be online all the time with very high-bandwidth wireless communication. Computing and communication will be a self-organizing mesh of nodes, so if you need a million computers for a second, it will be available to you. We'll live in a blend of real and virtual reality, and it won't always be clear where one stops and the other begins.

Maybe I read too much Sci-Fi, but I believe we can extrapolate the emergence of this kind of device from current trends, and in the not too distant future. Our N800s, Eees and other portable devices indicate we're well on our way.

Balanced Copyright Reform

2007-12-13T11:04:00.000-08:00

Check out Online Rights Canada's new action alert, "Support Balanced Copyright Reform."

As they say, "Copyright reform legislation may be on the horizon. Tell your MPs to keep it balanced!" I wrote a letter to my MP... You should too.

Celebrity look alike.

2007-12-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

Today someone told me I look like Paul Maurice, coach of the despicable Toronto Leafs.

What do you think?

Open vs. Closed

2007-11-24T10:37:00.000-08:00

Or Google vs Bell.

I know who I'm rooting for...

The Passive Librarian

2007-11-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

This just in: "Most people who work in libraries are passive by nature... [s]o it's difficult for them, at times, to say no or to eject people from the library. That goes against the grain of their nature." (Link).

Holy stereotype, BatGirl. It's been my experience that library folk aren't particularly passive. It's true that we're in the business of customer service, so we try to help people. It's also true that many of us are public servants, and the "servant" part of this phrase means that we have have a duty to accommodate, but this accommodation only goes so far. I think we deal with conflict very well, thank you, perhaps better than your average Joe off the street. I would venture to say that communication is a large part of our job, here in the library, and many of us can use our communication skills to build understanding and diffuse problems. When all else fails, though, we ask problem people to leave, and when that fails, we call the police.

In any case, the guy who I quoted above, Warren Graham, is apparently another librarian with a black belt: he's got a website with some wonderful pictures of black belt librarians. I totally love this one:
Mmmmmm. I wonder if I could get my picture on his site...

Golden Compass

2007-11-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

The headline reads: 'Golden Compass' draws ire of the Catholic League: Watchdog group says film pushes an atheist agenda.

I haven't yet read the His Dark Materials trilogy, but I'm damn well going to now that I've been told it's baaaaad. I checked the number of requests on this title, and they've sky-rocketed recently, so I'm not the only one. This bodes well for film at the box-office.

Better yet, I hear from one of my colleagues that there's an inflammatory email making the rounds (see here), and we can expect complaints.

I quite hope the film is just as atheistic in its world-view as its detractors would like us to believe. Hooray for a multiplicity of opinions expressed in books and film, I say. If we can have The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with its Christian underpinnings, why can't we have The Golden Compass with atheistic underpinnings.

13% of Library of Congress Collection Missing

2007-10-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

Materials Missing At Library Of Congress...

Perhaps they need to do some shelf reading. Or maybe they should hire me, I mean my skill-set is perfect to help them solve this little issue: not only am I a certified librarian, but with my superhuman samurai skills I could fend off potential thieves or any who would dare misshelve a book. Of course you wouldn't want to swing a katana in the LC (blood on the books), but you could use less bloody ju-jitsu techniques. I recommend the oma plata when defending your collection because you control you opponent's arms so they can't pull books off the stacks while you choke them out.

Just saying...

Podcast Fiction

2007-10-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

For about the last year and a half I've been listening to podcasts. If you're not familiar with podcasting--which is a pun on broadcasting--it's basically RSS syndicated audio. That is, you subscribe to a podcast, and as a new episode is released it's downloaded directly to your computer or MP3 player.

For me, podcasts have largely replaced radio because I can pick what I want to listen to, and when I want to listen to it. One of my favorite things to listen to is podcasted fiction. What's out there is of varying quality, but a lot of it is good, some of it is exceptional. Here's a list of some worthwhile stuff:

EscapePod: SciFi and Fantasy stories. The editor of this podcast, Steve Eley, is willing to take risks, which makes for some very interesting stories, although there have been a number of misses. The last episode, "Results," was a hit. It explores the effects of a future where eugenics are normalized. Every bit as interesting as Gattaca, but from a very different perspective.
PsuedoPod: Horror Stories, and sister podcast to EscapePod. While PsuedoPod takes perhaps fewer risks, its stories are of similarly high quality. My favorite is one of the first, "Little Boy Leg Bone," which gave me a new appreciation for the horror genre.
Jack Palms Series by Seth Harwood: Badass crime noir. Definitely one of my top three podcast novels. Seth is a phenomenal author, and these books are exciting, and not just because of the sex and violence.
One Among the Sleepless by Mike Bennett: Fiction, but with a twist (murder, insanity, kinky sex, arson, urination and more, all with humor). Also one of my top three.
How to Disappear Completely by Myke Bartlett: A magic realism detective story. Also in my top three.
Other worthwhile podcast fiction includes:

Number One with a Bullet by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff.
7th Son trilogy by J.C. Hutchins.
Electricity by Myke Bartlett
Fortress Draconis by Michael A Stackpole
Hall of Mirrors by Mike Bennett
A Long Way from Disney by Seth Harwood

Future Champ

2007-10-12T20:45:00.001-07:00

DSC_0038
Originally uploaded by bigguspillus

Look at this kid... He's ready to go.

Actually, he has no idea what the boxing glove is for, he just likes it because he sees me putting it into my gym bag. Still, I think he'll be ready for martial arts by 5.

He may not grow up to be a SamuraiLibrarian, but he will be a SamuraiSomething.

Politically Correct

2007-10-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Last night somebody came to the library and asked me if we had any books to help her learn "Indo- Canadian."

Eventually she settled for a book on Punjabi.

Cat vs Baby

2007-09-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

As one astute observer noted: I haz saem prolem, kitteh!

Robert Jordan, 1948 - 2007

2007-09-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

I read that Robert Jordan has also passed. Jordan leaves his epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, unfinished, with the 12th and final book having been scheduled for a 2009 release.

The first book in the series, The Eye of the World, was originally published in 1990, and I read it the following summer when my dad brought it home from the book-mobile. Somehow the book captured my 14 year old imagination, and although I no longer read much fantasy, I always buy the new Jordan book on the day of its release. I'm not the only one to be excited about the new Jordan book: at the library we get multiples upon multiples, and the furor on release day is second only to that engendered by Harry Potter.

A recent blog post (which seems to have disappeared from the blog?!?) indicated that before he died he shared his vision for the final book of the series, A Memory of Light, with his wife and brother, and I've read elsewhere that he left notes as well. I have no doubt that his publisher, Tor, would choose to publish his final book, finished by someone else, posthumously--there's a lot of money to be made there--but I wonder what decision his wife will make.

In any case, a huge fan community has grown around Jordan and his books, and although I wouldn't consider myself part of this community, it's apparent from my infrequent perusals of Dragonmount and Jordan's blog that Jordan himself played an active positive role in the community. He will be missed by his fan community and by his family.

Practical Extraction & Reporting Language or Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister

2007-09-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

Perl, that is.

So I'm spending the weekend taking a two day course in Perl. The course is taught by John Durno of my Alma mater, U.Vic, and Mark Jordan of SFU. I took a course from Mark at SLAIS called Developing Digital Collections, which was excellent.

My programing skills are old, insignificant and highly imperfect, so I'm finding the course challenging, but stimulating. Here's one of my first programs:

#Define an array of 5 words
@fruit = ("apple", "orange", "banana", "grape", "kiwi");

foreach $item (@fruit) {
$string = &my_subroutine ($item);
print "$string\n";
}

#For each word, upper case the first letter
sub my_subroutine {
my ($string) = @_;
my $uc_string = ucfirst($string);
return $uc_string;
}

Cool, eh?

The thing is that I've got a direct application for this stuff. What I'm going to do is write a script to parse an SQL report (tab delimited text) and reformat that report into an html document. Basically all I have to do is output existent data with HTML tags. Simple for someone who knows what they're doing, but hard for me... Nevertheless, it's a tenable project, and I should learn a thing or two along the way.

If you're interested in this course, here's the course website.

There will never be a car like this again

2007-08-31T14:03:00.000-07:00

This week we sold the old 1991 Mazda 323. Heather had this car since 1994: she got it the summer before grade 12. We replaced it with a new Mazda 3 GS, which we love, but in all likelihood we will not have this car, or any other, for 13 years.

So fare well, little Mazda, you got me through 3 university degrees, Heather through 2 plus high school, not to mention a cat, baby, major moves and an accident with a police cruiser (it was their fault).

Face Book

2007-08-19T22:28:00.000-07:00

So I finally joined FaceBook. I've never used crack, but I imagine that FaceBook must be similarly addictive. I probably spent about an hour and a half playing around with it. I have so little free time, believe you me I have better things to do with an hour and a half. Anyway, if you're a fellow FaceBook user, and you're my friend, search and ye shalt find. If you don't, email me at the addy on this blog and I'll send you my proper email address.

Pictures

2007-08-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

We've been back from Kuquot for a few weeks now, and I've been lax in my posting. It was a good trip, and my freezer is full of fish. There is a complete Flickr set, take a look here.

Nothing else important going on. Eric grows, I go to work, Heather gets ready to go to work in September.

I've a couple of projects in the works... If I find enough time to get anything done with them, I'll blog here.

In Kyuquot

2007-07-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

We're in Kyuquot now, and we spent the day relaxing after a very long journey out here. Yesterday went like this: up at 5:20 to pack the car, ferry at 7:45, Nanimo at 9:45, lunch in Campbell River, Woss around 2:00, Fair harbour at 4:00 Kyuquot at 4:30.

The fishing starts Monday.

2007-07-19T20:22:00.000-07:00

Gone fishing... Back in a week!

Wired cites Wikipedia

2007-07-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

One of the sites I check almost daily is Wired. A lot of the content is old news to me because I subscribe to the dead tree publication, but they have some fantastic blogs, particularly Game|Life, and Geek Dad. Today on the front page I came across this: July 10, 1997: Neanderthal DNA Suggests a Separate, Unequal Being. Interesting, yes; blog worthy, not really... Except for the attribution at the bottom of the article: "Source: Associated Press, Wikipedia."

I think this is the first time I've seen Wikipedia listed as a source in a reputable publication. I'm know there are plenty of academics and (even) librarians wailing, railing and generally gnashing their teeth right now, but I say "Bravo!" I use Wikipedia on a daily basis, often to quickly familiarize myself with a topic as I conduct a reference interview, if the topic is obscure, or to double check a fact found elsewhere. Like information from any other source, you evaluate, and move on. It's not like Britannica is perfect either. In any case, leaving the well-worn arguments aside, whatever you think about Wikipedia, I can almost guarantee that no matter how great your library, your resources can't touch Wikipedia for information about the new Battlestar Galactica or Gabriel Gonzaga (can't wait to see the show he puts on with Coture).

The other day I heard one of my senior colleagues admit, as if confessing a sin, "I love Wikipedia." I admit it too... and look, no guilt.

Craig's list

2007-07-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

Lately we've been cleaning out our storage locker and selling some of our stuff on Craig's List. We listed some items last weekend and have had responses come in in dribs and drabs. Heather mentioned this to a friend who uses Craig's List more than us, and they made an interesting observation: if you post on the weekend you get far fewer results than if you post during a week day, presumably because people are surfing Craig's List at work.

There an interesting economics (freakonomics) paper in there somewhere...

Early Literacy

2007-07-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

I know that all parents think that their children are exceptional, but my son, at the age of 14 months, has started reading himself to bed. Okay, so maybe he's not "reading," but he is looking at books and turning the pages.

I'd like to take credit, but the teachers in the family outnumber the librarians two to one... but we all work together.

Trying something new...

2007-07-01T21:48:00.001-07:00

Up until now this has been a semi anonymous blog that I used when I had thoughts about librarianship. Today, however, I rehosted SamuraiLibrarian on my own doman, RyanVernon.ca. While I still plan on blogging things that interest me as a librarian, I also plan on including more personal content, as with my previous two posts. I'll also be writing about my other interest, things like computers, video games and martial arts.

Speaking of martial arts, the place I train these days, CMA / Crossfit Langley, has an interesting blog. Check out this picture from last week. I'm the one pulling up into a head stand at the back of the right-hand row.

Klimb Pictures

2007-07-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Here's mom and I at the summit of the Kusam Klimb...

There are more pics in my Flickr account

Kusam Klimb

2007-06-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I competed in the Kusam Klimb, a 23 km race / hike with 1473 meter elevation gain over the first seven km. One way to look at this is that over 7 km you go from sea level (9m) to top of a mountain (1482m) with four feet of snow. Here's a map.

I have been exercising a lot lately, but not hiking, so I was a bit concerned, but it turned out that the combination of training with strength training, jogging and martial arts was sufficient prep. I was able to power up the steep sections relatively easily, and had to slow up a bit to wait for my partner, otherwise known as mom. Unfortunately, at about the 18km mark my knees began to trouble me, and I slowed us down significantly. In any case, we finished in about 7.5 hours.

Next year it might be fun to get a library team together for this...

I did this event with my camera, and as soon as I update my Flickr account I'll post the pics here.

I Never Thought I'd Agree with Censorship, but..

2007-05-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

There's a group in Hong Kong complaining that the Bible has too much sex, violence and other assorted nastiness. Although my reading of the Bible is both distant and imperfect, this seems to me to be the truth. Personally I don't hold this against the Bible, most of my favorite books have at least some sex and/or violence, but I like the way that this complaint is being made so as to use the fundamentalists' own logic against them.

Here's the article.

It seems likely that there'll be the usual railing against Harry Potter when the next and final volume appears appears on July 21st. When the calls for censorship come on the grounds of promotion of the supernatural, I hope someone calls for a ban on the bible for the same reason.

If a good library has something to offend everyone, a good librarian should be able to to offend anyone.

Artificial Intelligence to Replace Librarians

2007-04-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

First of all, what is this "Artificial Intelligence" and where can I get some?

Seriously, I wonder how many people saw this:

Washington, D.C., March 30, 2007 - The Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate of the United States Library of Congress this morning announced a new initiative for its cataloging workflow. A pilot program -- expected to launch by late spring -- will involve outsourcing several resource description operations to Mountain View, California-based Google.

Under the new arrangement, MARC records for titles from Google Book Search publishing partners will be created by the Google indexing system. The original cataloging of these works will be accomplished automatically by a software program.

“Think of it as an electronic brain,” said Richard Sumner, a Google representative speaking about the computing equipment involved in the new alliance. “Our artificial intelligence systems can fully handle descriptive and subject cataloging.”

A senior administration official at the Library of Congress, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the pilot program has the potential to expand to the point of eliminating the need for any professional catalogers. The source also mentioned plans to migrate the OPAC to LibraryThing and turn the American Memory site into a Wiki. (Link)

The folks in my local tech services saw this before I sent it to them, and it seems they thought it was for real. Honestly, I think that some kind of advanced computer program might be able to handle some descriptive cataloguing, providing it was fed good information, but the day a computer can effectively assign subject headings is the day we hit singularity.

Bad Blogger

2007-04-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

I suspect the few people who used to read this blog don't any more... I'm afraid I was suffering from a severe case of parenthood, which brought on the the secondary condition of blogfade. My boy's getting older, though, and I think I'm starting to get used to the sleep deprivation, so I think I'll start posting again, for my own interest, if not anyone else's.

650 _0 $aElectronic books.

2006-09-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

I'm all for ebooks... I've actually read a couple online. (Check out Cory Doctorow's fiction on Craphound and Charles Stross's Accelerando, all released under a creative commons licence). But this device... I mean, have a look for yourself.

It seems to me that if ebooks are going to succeed--and it seems that they are, to some degree at least--that it's not going to be because of some strage reader; rather, I suspect it will be because a critical mass of people will start reading on their phones, iPods, PDAs, PCs and the various bits of emergent hardware spawned through convergence. Still, I wonder what kind of reaction you'd get if you whipped that thing out on a bus. Heck, I should buy one now and sell it on eBay in 20 years as a historical oddity. I'd probably make good money.

The Future

2006-09-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

I just came across an article by Marina Gorbis and BoingBoing's David Pescovitz entitled "Bursting Tech Bubbles Before They Balloon". From the perspective of a librarian and science fiction fan, this is a very interesting article:

The survey was conducted earlier this year to learn what developments IEEE Fellows expect in science and technology in the next 10 to 50 years. They ought to foresee such things better than most, because they have so much to do with bringing them about.

Of course, it's notoriously difficult to predict the future--I'm still waiting for my robot butler--but insofar as the IEEE Fellows forecast trends not specific occurrences, it seems to me that their predictions might have some validity.

They identify five themes which they feel will drive change over the coming decades:

"Computation and Bandwidth to Burn" involves the shift of computing power and network connectivity from scarcity to utter abundance; "Sensory Transformation" hints at what happens when, as Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, puts it, "things start to think"; "Lightweight Infrastructure" is precisely the opposite of the railways, fiber-optic networks, centralized power distribution, and other massively expensive and complicated projects of the 20th century; "Small World" is what happens when nanotechnology starts to get real and is integrated with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and biosystems; and finally, "Extending Biology" is what results when a broad array of technologies, from genetic engineering to bioinformatics, are applied to create new life forms and reshape existing ones.

Unfortunately, they seem to feel that Moore's Law will eventually succumb to the inevitability of physics, so if they're right we'll have to content ourselves to reading about Charles Stross' or Ken McLeod's vision of the singularity, not experiencing it, but an abundance of bandwidth and distributed networks will doubtless cause massive change, especially for those of us in the information business.

I know the end of the book has been touted for some time now, and while I am sure the book will persist, just as the manuscript did in the wake of Gutenberg, it seems clear that there will be an abundance of information available electronically, and thanks to ever widening networks, this information will be increasingly available. I believe that almost all librarians see the initial effects of this daily: people have come to expect information quickly and consider tasks like looking up an entry in an encyclopedia or placing an interlibrary loan request the be the height of drudgery. Perhaps I'm overstating things, but like it or not we're increasingly seeing a migration of information into an electronic medium. DRM or no, the printed word is no longer seen as the path of least resistance to information, even if this is in fact not yet the case.

This begs the question, how as librarians do we remain relevant. My answer: judicially embrace change. It would be a move of unparalleled foolishness to throw away our books and journals, but at the same time we must move forward and provide access to information in a digital medium--and we must do so in a way that that is accessible to the end user. Databases and digital collections are a good start, but it seems to me there's work to be done to enable things like more transparent authentication and less invasive DRM. And there's my personal wish: please, make it that all libraries offer free fast wireless connections.

Titillating Library Pics

2006-09-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

I recently came across this "Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut" (totally work safe) on Random Musings from the Desert. All I have to say is wow. I think I'd feel more like a priest than a librarian going to work places like these, although I really can't complain about the architecture of my current workspace, which was designed by Patku architects.

I'd like to link directly to the photos of the Newton Library on the Patku site, but it's one of these horrible flash things that doesn't allow deep linking. It's amazing how many architectural and design sites don't allow deep linking. You'd think these people would know better...

Making excuses

2006-06-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

Posts have been thin lately. My wife and I received a permanent visitor about six weeks ago. He might only weigh ten pounds or so, but he insists on eating every two to three hours, which makes it hard for us to sleep. He's not much of a talker, but he is a wonderful listener, and I prefer to spend my non-work time with him rather then on the blog. Also, I'm now editing the blog for the Alcuin Society, so much of my blogging effort is going there.

This said, I will continue to maintain the blog and will continue to update it from time to time. Hey, some of the best blogs only have sporadic posting...

Inventor of MARC dies?

2006-05-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I got this email from a nonlibrarian friend, which is strange in and of itself:

Yesterday's NYT (p.C3) reported the passing of the developer of
MARC records.

I feel I owe her so much.

Are we talking about the same MARC, as in MARC 21--MAchine Readable Cataloging?

Although I work with MARC every day, I'm no expert (I can't tell you why the 246 field dosen't end with a punctuation), I seem to recall that the MARC standard was arrived at via committee. Anyway, I googled "MARC inventor dies" and some other obvious searches, but I came up dry.

I must check the NY times for May 3, I suppose...

Innovative library design

2006-04-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

Recently I came across this library design. It's both green and unbelievably cool looking. Some cities like Vancouver and Seattle have done a very good job at creating architecturally noteworthy main libraries, and it seems that such architectural innovation has created vibrant communal spaces in what can be a fractured urban reality. My library system has some very well designed facilities, a few are even architecturally noteworthy, but what we don't have is a prominent main branch. I believe in the branch system (smaller branches diffused throughout the community serving the unique needs of each area), but I think a main branch can help focus attention on the library and serve as a focal point for the community itself. While this library might not be best for my community, I'd love to see what could be done where I live. In fact, there is a main library slated in my municipality's ten year plan--I hope it gets built, and I hope it's something special.

Gaming

2006-04-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've done one of these, but sometimes my 47% geekyness comes out...

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Fighter

Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered 'normal'.

Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.

Fighters are the warriors. They use weapons to accomplish their goals. This isn't to say that they aren't intelligent, but that they do, in fact, believe that violence is frequently the answer.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan!

I must confess, I did play the odd role-playing game in high school, and still remember those times fondly. I actually still have a bag full of dice in a drawer somewhere. In any case, I think that gamers get a bad rap. Gaming involves community, creativity and literacy, all of which are good things. Some people might label it escapist, and their certainly is an element of this in it, but the focus of gaming is storytelling, and storytelling is an instinctive human activity--one that helps us understand the world. It seems to me that gaming is actually a beneficial pastime, and in any event a far, far better use of time than sitting on the couch watching TV.

Librarians who feel the way I do will likely be interested in Afternoon Adventures With Dungeons & Dragons. I passed this link on to one of our Children's librarians, but to no avail. In any case, I've filed it away and perhaps one day I'll make a pitch to run this program myself.

RIP Jane Jacobs

2006-04-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

Jane Jacobs passed away yesterday at the 89. I've read her two most recent books, The Nature of Economies and Dark Age Ahead, and they were both profoundly influenced the way I see the world. Hearing about her passing has caused me to reflect on her work and activism, and there are two things for which I really remember her: Jane Jacobs' detractors came from both the right and left ends of the political spectrum, which speaks to her ability to follow her own creative reasoning and avoid being dragged down by ideology, which is a ability I wish I could better develop; she always maintained that she was merely a "regular person" and if she had a gift it was being articulate--if this is the case it gives me hope that through articulate discussion and thought that the human race can better understand and improve the world we live in. The world needs more people like Jane Jacobs, and while we are the poorer for her loss, she left behind a significant body of work. I plan on reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities in the near future.

Info overload

2006-04-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

Came across this: The Cure for information overload. The implications are truly Saussurean.

A sad and unusual incident

2006-04-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I worked at one of our branch libraries. This is a small library that serves a highly diverse community that is facing many challenges. I've personally witnessed problems in this community manifest in the forms of poverty, gangs, drugs, illiteracy and neglect. It's a tough place, but all the staff at the branch do a wonderful job, and go out of their way to learn people's names and make the library a welcoming and safe environment for everyone. Whenever I'm in charge of a branch I haven't been at for a while, I make sure to read the incident reports that have been filed since my last visit. Usual problems involve children and teens who are loud, disruptive and/or aggressive because of boredom or possibly drugs. Other incidents included unattended children left at the library and minor vandalism.

This day, something unusual happened. Shortly after lunch, a patron approached the desk and advised me that there were fish in the sink in the men's room. I checked, and someone had plugged the drain of the sink with a wad of paper-towel, and there were two gold-fish swimming in it. I went to the staff room, found a Ziploc container, and then returned to the men's room where a I coaxed the fish into the container. I tried to make sure that the water was room temperature and that the lid was ajar so they could get air. One of the ladies who work in the circ. department volunteered to adopt them, but when it was time to go home, they were dead.

2006-03-05T14:54:00.000-08:00

Recently, I started working two days a week in our Collections Services department as a cataloguer. It's an interesting and rewarding challenge, and although I can find my way around a MARC record, I still have a lot to learn.

One of the interesting benefits of this job is that a lot of books come across my desk--ones which often don't make it into Kirkus or any of the other major publications we use for selection. Actually, having too many books that I want to read seems to be a bit of an occupational hazard. I often get late fines because of this.

Anyway, there have been two books that have come across my desk lately that I find particularly interesting, not that I want to read them, but they raise interesting issues.

The first book is Show it in public : everything you need to know to show a film in public / Graham Peat and Angela Pressburger. The cover tells us (all you cataloguers should make a "500" note) that this is "The companion guide to showamovie.ca." I find it a bit disconcerting that it takes a 222 page book to help some poor teacher show a movie to her class. Frankly, I know a lot of teachers--I'm married to one--and I doubt that many of them go through the process to obtain legal right to show a film to their class. In situations where individuals are profiting from showing someone else's film, by all means, do the paper work and collect royalties, but why threaten schools and libraries with legal action when they're spreading the work about your product. Nobody wants do do less with their media, and convoluted and expensive copyright regulations and DRM only serve to alienate consumers and generate ill will.

The other book that came across my desk is Yes you can! : home repairs made easy / [Amy Wynn Pastor] ... Amy Wynn is one of the carpenters from Trading Spaces, the home renovation show on TLC. The interesting thing is that while her name is all over the cover in such a way as to make one believe that she is the author ("by Amy Wynn Pastor"), she's not; in fact, there is a small note in the T.P. verso listing someone else as the "writer." While Amy Wynn's name might be on the cover and her pictures throughout, I doubt she did little more than pose for the photo shoots. Now, I'm sure this happens all the time... Amy Wynn's name is a brand, and even though she, as a person, may not be able to write a book, she is passed off as the author. I, for one, feel that this is more than a little dishonest. Really, I should be used to being lied to my marketers, but I suppose that I always felt like the author / book connection was somewhat unsullied. In this world where we are increasingly alienated from the production of the goods we buy, it was always grounding to feel as if you know who your reading material came from. You might have no idea where the chicken on your dinner table were raised, or have any idea about the provenance of your iPod, but it seems to me that you could always be reasonable sure about the maker--the author--of the book you were currently reading. I'm sure this sort of thing goes on all the time, but it makes me sad.

Cat!

2006-03-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

Given last night's heavy post, here are some obligatory librarian cat pics:

Tonight's soap-box.

2006-03-02T00:36:00.000-08:00

I was watching The Hour with George Stromboloupolous, and in a lead up to an interview with David Frasier, the Canadian Brigadier-General in charge of UN operations in what I think can reasonably be described as The War In Afghanistan, George played a clip of Prime Minister Harper saying,

I was very distressed to read suggestions by some Liberal MPs this week at the caucus meeting that they might want to question that involvement, that they might want to have a vote. You do not send men and women into harm's way on a dangerous mission with the support of our party and other Canadians, and then decide when they're over there that you're not sure you should have sent them. That's not the way this government is going to behave. link

Now, as you know if you've been reading the blog, I do not agree with the Conservative party on a number if issues; however, I do support them in some of their policies, such as increased funding for our military, which has been systematically underfunded for years. I also think that Canadian involvement in the removal of the Taliban and subsequent rebuilding of Afghanistan is largely tenable. Harper's comments, though, make me a little nervous. While anything less than a firm resolve when sending soldiers into a dangerous war zone where some of them will die would be reprehensible, Harper's assertion that it's not okay to change your mind or engage in a democratic vote is a little troubling. As a nation we must be willing to admit mistakes when they occur, and take real steps to correct those mistakes. I'm not saying that we've made a mistake, but war and nation building are complex operations, and we're human: mistakes will occur. To remain committed to a course of action uncritically--without dialogue-- is both foolish and dangerous, and when a government makes assertions which uncritically affirm military deployment, and question the patriotism of those who do, I can't but think that we've taken a baby step down the road to fascism.

If Harper's comments represent a baby step, the American government has taken a stride or two in its persistent unwillingness to engage in dialogue, even with its own citizenry, as well as in attempts to institute pervasive surveillance and act unilaterally. As has been said before, there is the feeling of 1914 in the air, and this makes it all the more important to engage in dialogue. While I doubt that the west would crumble before a wave a terrorist attacks if I'm allowed to leave my Canadian passport at home when I visit my neighbors to the south, we do need to discuss security, wherever we live. But the point is that we must discuss: not to discuss leads to the imposition of one ideology from the top down, which so far as I know has never has never given rise to a stable society in which the people have generally been satisfied; rather, it's given rise to dictatorships. Besides, if you're so sure you're right, why not discuss it... You might bring some of your detractors around to your way of thinking.

With that rant out of the way, I think I'll get off my soap-box and go to bed...

Published!

2006-02-28T22:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a good week. For the last year I've been working as a guest editor on a special double anniversary edition of Amphora, the journal of the Alcuin Society, and on Monday it was printed. I'm looking forward to it arriving in the mail in the next week or so, inclusive in my introduction, which you could say is my first published article.

I've also recently submitted a review of John Scalzi's Questions for a Soldier to Escape Pod, and it was accepted, so I've now got to record it and send it in. How exciting! If you haven't listed to Escape od, it's a paying market for short speculative fiction, and they publish short stories, many by recognized authors, with comparable quality to stories you'll find in major sci-fi mags, like Asimov's. Even if you don't think you're interested in sci-fi, I think you should check it out. Hearing some good sci-fi might just change your mind.

Hopefully, these small publications will lead to bigger and better things: I've got two more articles in the planning phase, one on copyright issues for book collectors for Amphora and one for a library publication like CLA's Feliciter or the BCLA Reporter on digital rights management (DRM) and the library open source tradition. I've also got some short-stories in the tubes. If any of these turn out well enough I might look into getting them published. In any case, I'll make everything of interest available on my website proper shortly, as soon as I finish considering the pros and cons of blog anonymity...

NSG

2006-02-22T17:41:00.000-08:00

In keeping in the same vein as my last post, recently I've discovered I love all these on line quizzes that assign you a type based on something from pop culture. They're a lot like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, but without the pretense to scientific accuracy. I must say, I'm pleased that on the "Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in" quiz, that my crew is that of Serenity, but I'm not quite sure what to think about being most like the Green Lantern, according to the "Which superhero are you" quiz.

Of course, these things are fun when you take them for what they're worth, but I heard a story on the weekend from a friend of mine that illustrates how quizzes of little more value can be taken too far. This friend works for a large financial institution where all of their employees have undergone some type indicator test, and now they must list their type in all emails that they send so that colleagues will know how to respond to them. What the hell? I doesn't take a genius to see that these quizzes operate using binary axises that don't account for human complexity and ambiguity, and are based on self perception and even wishful thinking. In the case of a test administered by an employer, I know I would "cheat" by skewing my answers toward the qualities that my employer would find most attractive. First you put people in a literal box, and then a categorical box... That must do wonders for morale.

In any case, this is just a small bit of the consultant driven madness that he has to deal with. Of course, he's got to sort out his own problems and escape the cubicle farm on his own. As someone who has, to use Douglas Coupland's term, escaped the "veal fattening pens," I'd like to show my support for my friend, so for the rest of today I'm going to attach the acronym NSG to the subject line of all my emails: Nerd / Serenity / Green Lantern.

Nerd, Geek or Dork?

2006-02-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

According to this highly scientific test, it's as I feared... I'm a nerd:

Pure Nerd
78 % Nerd, 47% Geek, 26% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

I scored better than half in Nerd, earning me the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

The test tracked 3 variables: How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 89% on nerdiness
You scored higher than 68% on geekosity
You scored higher than 37% on dork points

By the way, I fond the link to this test on this livejoural site.

More on Sam Bulte and other Pernicious Politicians

2006-01-19T10:04:00.000-08:00

Further to my last post, check out this huge steamer that Sam Bulte dropped. She's been caught lying and now she's threatening to sue Professor Michael Geist... Poor Sam.

I actually hope she does, because Geist appears to be speaking the truth, whereas Bulte is clearly a lying politician who takes money from entertainment industry as recompense for delivery of pro industry, anti user legislation. The resulting media circus would only serve to drag her through the mud and create public debate over both digital rights issues and special interest lobbying.

It's corruption like Bulte's that has brought the Liberal Party of Canada to its knees--you can't tell me that the Liberals would be in this mess without the sponsorship scandal. Frankly, it wouldn't be a bad thing for the Liberals to fall, but they're going to be replaced by the fiscally questionable, anti gay, anti abortionist, pro war, pro Bush Stephen Harper and his merry band of power hungry, right wingers. I'll say one thing: the Liberals are largely responsible for the strong Canadian economy we're currently experiencing, and I don't think that Harper and company have the experience or the wisdom to manage the economy, effectively lower taxes and increase services. Last time someone promised me this I got stuck with a drunk driver at the wheel of my province, Gordon Campbell. And yes, Campbell is responsible for a world of increased service fees, lower minimum wage (dubbed training wage), dramatically increasing the number of people living on the streets, and yes, tax cuts, but they mostly only help a the very rich and corporate interests.

Digital Freedom

2006-01-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been doing good work for some time now protecting individuals from heavy-handed copyright legislation, questionable litigation and pernicious digital rights management (DRM) practices. Certainly, things look grim in the States where the EFF seems to focus the bulk of its resources, but rights are being eroded in Canada too, and for some time we've needed a user organization to provide a counterpoint to corporate special interests. This has become highly salient with the recent news (spread all over Boing Boing) about Liberal Sam Bulte (currently seeking re-election) who accepts large sums of money from the entertainment industry and then promotes legislation that subverts public interests in favor of her corporate pals.

As such, I'm pleased to see that an organization called Online Rights Canada (ORC) has formed to promote "the public's interest in technology and information policy." ORC is just getting started, and I hope that they turn out to be a strong, viable voice in opposition to the corporate special interest groups. If you can, why not help them out by signing their petition, which reads:

WE THE UNDERSIGNED DECLARE:

We believe that the politicians who craft copyright policy should not take money from a small, wealthy subset of the people whom copyright is intended to serve. In order to address this conflict of interest, we request that Canadian politicians sign the following Copyright Pledge:

"No Member of Parliament who has accepted financial contributions or other benefits from (i) a copyright lobby group, (ii) its corporate members, or (iii) senior executives as well as (iv) a copyright collective shall serve as Minister of Canadian Heritage or as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, nor sit on any legislative committee (parliamentary or standing committees) conducting hearings or deliberations on copyright matters."

For further reading on Sam Bulte and her "close connection between Canada' s Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage and the largely U.S.-backed copyright lobby ," check out Professor Michael Geist's article, originally published in the Toronto Star--one of the few papers in Canada not owned by the right leaning CanWest Global conglomerate.

Libraries: the original open source

2006-01-14T00:57:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I attended a meeting at my library which went over procedures in our computer room. Mostly it was basic stuff like how to hook up the video projector, how to operate the computer reservation software, our policys regarding the use USB devices like flash drives, and that sort of thing. At some point the conversation came around to problems that some patrons experience trying to open nonstandard document file types--that's anything that's not a MSWord .doc file. Simply put, people with Word Perfect, Apple Works or even MS Works are unable to use our facilities to edit or even open their files. The reality is that MS Office is expensive, and not everyone can afford the software even if they can afford a computer.

I, of course, outlined some advantages of OpenOffice and suggested that we install it on all our machines; after all, it's freely available to everyone, and I do see people coming in occasionally with documents in the OpenOffice format wanting to access them. I was shocked at the response: it seems that because we are a public library and our information systems are administered by City Hall's IT department, we must conform to their policy that no "free" software be installed on our machines... I find it abhorrent that we, an institution mandated to fulfill the information needs of patrons, often those who do not have other readily available means to access information, are are unable to effect a minor change that would significantly increase the value of the services we provide for those who need it most.

I don't understand the reluctance to use free tools. No one benefits from this, except for perhaps malevolent corporate behemoths such as Microsoft. Libraries are the original open source. Heck, before Gutenberg invented the printing press, libraries facilitated the dissemination of information by providing repositories of information that could be copied. Although it was a slow and laborious process, libraries allowed for spread of precious information. I can guarantee installing a couple copies of OpenOffice and perhaps a FireFox or two is a lot easier than copying Plato by hand. As they say in the magical world of the "Internet," WTF man... and in any case you can't tell me the City does not use the odd Perl script or employ the add Linux server.

This move to block open source / free software goes against everything I believe as a professional librarian, and I'm damn well going to do something about it. Don't screw with librarians. We have pens and swords.

Hello to 2006...

2006-01-05T19:18:00.000-08:00

so long to 2005. It was a good year for me, on a personal level, but in other respects I hope it's a year we will not see the likes of again.

In 2005 I graduated from library school and got my first professional job. Less importantly, I also got my black-belt; more importantly, my wife and I made the decision to start a family--the big event is scheduled to go down at the end of May. So, for me, 2005 was a year of positive change, and I expect the momentum to carry on into this New Year with the arrival of the Little Samurai, the progression of my career, and perhaps a major move.

It seems as if 2005 also generated a lot of momentum socially and politically, but unfortunately this momentum is heading in the wrong direction: copyright laws have taken a turn for the draconian, the war in Iraq (which was initiated under false premises) is leaving a bloody legacy, doublethink and newspeak issue forth from major media outlets and the President alike, surveillance of public and private spaces increases, the world has been largely unable to deal with a number of significant natural disasters, and governments continue to ignore the erosion of the environment.

Yet, I'm not pessimistic, at least not for the long run. It seems to me that people have had enough, and so long as we're in a democracy the people are sovereign. All around I see sings of resistance, whether i's a journalist with enough guts to tell the truth, an organization fighting intellectual tyranny, or some one who has just had enough and is willing to say so. Even if this isn't a real democracy, which it may or may not be, the power to catalyze positive change in the hands of the people, and as people wake up and acknowledge the truth of things, this will become apparent.

In the movies

2005-12-11T16:27:00.000-08:00

I just discovered a very interesting film project currently underway: The Hollywood librarian : librarians in cinema and society / Ann M. Seidl. The website explains,

The Hollywood Librarian: Librarians in Cinema and Society, now in production, will be the first full-length film to focus on the work and lives of librarians in the entertaining and appealing context of American movies. American film contains hundreds of examples of librarians and libraries on screen -- some positive, some negative, some laughable and some dead wrong. Films such as Sophie's Choice, Philadelphia and It's a Wonderful Life show librarians as negative stereotypes. The librarians in Lorenzo's Oil, Desk Set and The Shawshank Redemption, on the other hand, are competent and professional. Dozens of interviews of real librarians will be interwoven with movie clips of cinematic librarians and serve as transitions between the themes of censorship, intellectual freedom, children and librarians, pay equity and funding issues, and the value of reading.

It should be interesting. I wonder if anyone other than librarians will watch it. I certainly will order a copy for my branch and put it on the DVD display... of course I'll want first dibs.

On a related note, my library was recently graced with the presence of the Man himself, the Muscles from Brussels, "Wham, bam, thank you Van Damme." Yes, our building was set upon by hordes of self-important film underlings and numerous minions of Hollywood. They had, in fact, occupied the rec. center that we share our building with, and not unlike the American military in Iraq, they ran roughshod over the local inhabitants. As Grand Moff Tarkin once said, "Fear will keep the local systems in line." Indeed, their not having control of the library didn't stop them from attempting to usurp our half the building. There was one particular incident where an actor (who I'm sure I recognize from Highlander the TV series) and a puffed-up production assistant wire hiding in our foyer, trying to stay out of a shot, I think, with very a loud walkie-talkie. I hate to perpetuate the myth of the shushing librarian, but it was quite loud, inappropriate and unnecessary, so my colleague, who was in charge at that time, went to speak with them. They got in his face, told him off... after all, they were making an important movie, (yea right, it's called The Hard Corps and is going straight to DVD). He asked to speak with their site manager, which he did. They weren't so much of a pain in the ass after that.

I did get to see the Jean-Claude though. He's shorter than I thought, and even at his advanced age more bendy then I could ever hope to be. Coming to martial-arts later in life (around the age of 25) I've never achieved great flexibility, but Jean-Claude is in a significantly lighter weight class than I had expected and still bendy enough to kick me in the head. I would have invited him in to the library to check out our back issues of Black-Belt Magazine, but I was afraid of being swarmed by production assistants.

E-books

2005-10-30T20:52:00.000-08:00

I just came across this: "E-books attract young writers." I'm glad to see this trend beginning to get some of the press it disserves. This competition, in which unpublished writers submit works in hopes of being published online by Oxfordbookstore.com, will hopefully generate some good publicity for both individual authors and the fiction in an electronic medium.

I'm a big proponent of electronic books, and have been since I first found Project Gutenberg; indeed, there have been a number of e-books which I've read in electronic format and enjoyed very much:

Down and out in the magic kingdom / Cory Doctorow
Someone comes to town, someone leaves town / Cory Doctorow
Blind Shrike / Richard Kadrey
The Secret Agent / Joseph Conrad
Kim / Rudyard Kipling

There's also some great sites with short fiction:

It seems to me that the time of the e-book is here. I know publishers made a doomed effort to roll out the e-book a few years ago, but kids today have their thumbs firmly affixed to their cell phones in an ongoing SMS orgy, and they are not attached to the print paradigm like those of us with more than two decade under our belts. It's obvious that it's easy to access mind boggling amounts of content for free, and the necessary hardware is increasingly available also: to move, store and read electronic text, all you need is a PC/Mac, laptop, palmtop, PDA, PSP, iPod or cell phone.

I shudder to think how far behind the leading edge most libraries are. My library system doesn't even have a Wi-Fi network, which is an error of significant magnitude. It's true that the bulk of our users (and many of our employees) have little of no idea what Wi-Fi is, and no idea about significant Web 2.0 developments like RSS, but the further we fall behind the leading edge the more difficult it will be to maintain our relevancy, and in my mind relevancy is directly connected to continued funding. We need to anticipate our users' demands so they come to us; if we wait until they ask for things like Wi-Fi and RSS feeds, and then say "no, we don't have that yet," we've already shown that we're not relevant, that they should go elsewhere to fulfill their information need. It's our job to facilitate access to information--to fulfill information needs--and if we're not doing this, we're not doing our jobs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a book hater: books are valuable and useful resources, and often objects of art in and of themselves, but just as the manuscript was not made extinct by the printing press, the book won't be made extinct by the computer. Different media are better for different things. In my work bag I carry hand written notes (manuscripts), books (printed text) and a USB flash-drive (electronic text). Each has it's own strengths and weaknesses, and they all work together.

But my point is this: increased access to information is the primary characteristic of this Late Modern age, and if we as librarians want to maintain our place as purveyors of information, we must not only change with the times, but we must be catalysts for change itself.

The Copyfight in Libraryland

2005-10-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting debate going on right now in my library. One of the publishers that we buy directly from has made the decision not to sell books with CD-ROMs in them to libraries, so we're not going to get them. My instant reaction was, "screw this, lets just go get the same titles through another vendor or at a bookstore." On the other hand, another one of my colleagues (one with more pull than I) feels that to go elsewhere we would subvert the intent of the publisher's policy, and that it's essentially the publisher's call. A third colleague (who I have merely temporarily taken over this particular collection responsibility from) feels that we should try to acquire the books without the CD-ROM.

What to do. What to do.

The copyfighter in me instantly wants to just go and get the materials from a bookstore. I mean, we pay for the information and our patrons, I feel, deserve it. I get very nervous when publishers start denying libraries access to their materials, and I suspect, given the current move towards DRM and hyper-restrictive copyright laws, that this is only the beginning. Call me paranoid, but with the AL's actions to block the Homeland Security law in the US, there's got to be a certain right-wing element that is not going to be sympathetic to ye olde library.

In any case, I don't want to antagonize anyone or any publisher needlessly, but I also believe that insofar as we have a legal right to collect material, we should if it fill an information need for our patrons. The kicker is that I believe that it's in the best interest of this publisher to allow us to purchase and use their materials. Not only are they getting sales out of it directly, but also it's free advertising, and a public service that costs them nothing. Indeed, if people find something useful at the library--something that for them is a worthwhile reference--they will often buy it. Sure some people will photocopy or burn, but they're generally not the ones who were going to buy it in the first place.

The truth is that the "try before you buy" approach works. I have purchased copies of Cory Doctorow's and Charles Stross' books for the library as a direct result of their making works freely available online. (You should check out Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Accelerando.)

So do I want to subvert the intent of this publisher's intent, you bet. But what I really want to do is tell them that their fear isn't necessary, and that by placing such restrictions on their product, they are doing themselves and others a disservice. I hope you agree.

Amazon Shorts, etc.

2005-10-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

I just found out about the coolest thing today: Amazon Shorts. It's kinda like iTunes, but cheaper, and without all the lame DRM. You can download short works, fiction and non-fiction, from well-known and not so well-known authors. It's cheep too, a mere 50 cents.

Of course, I have already succumbed to the usual librarian pitfall, and have about five books in the que waiting to be read, starting with the very latest Robert Jordan. Very geeky of me, I know, but Sci-Fi / Fantasy purchasing is one of my responsibilities at the moment, so really being a Sci-Fi / Fantasy nerd is necessary.

That reminds me, check what Ernest Cline had to say about other nerd necessities:

I want porno movies that are made with guys like me in mind:
Guys who know that the sexiest thing in the world
is a woman who is smarter than you are.

You can have the whole cheerleading squad,
I want the girl in the tweed skirt and the horn-rimmed glasses:
Betty Finnebowski, the valedictorian.
Oh yes.
First I want to copy her Trig homework,
and then I want to make mad, passionate love to her
for hours and hours
until she reluctantly asks if we can stop
because she doesn't want to miss Battlestar Galactica.
Suma cum laude, baby!
That is what I call erotic...

In my kind of porno movies the girls wouldn't even have to get naked.
They'd just take the guys down to the rec room and
beat them repeatedly at chess
and then talk to them for hours about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
or the underlying social metaphors in the Aliens movies.

Once again, it's funny because it's true.

Vonnegut

2005-10-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

I came across an article yesterday on Kurt Vonnegut called "Vonnegut, on politics, presidents and librarians." Vonnegut makes several good points about things like oil, Gorge W. Bush and Librarians. I like this bit:

Music (especially the blues) cheers him, as do people who behave decently. Librarians, too -- "not famous for their physical strength" -- who resist having books removed from shelves and refuse to give names of people who have checked out certain books in the era of the Patriot Act.
"The America I loved," he writes, "still exists in the front desks of public libraries."

Although I might have once respected US of A, I never loved America, unless you count the bit north of the 49th parallel. These days, the ubiquitous hypocrisy and double-think that comes from that quarter makes me feel emotions that verge on the opposite of love. But I know what Vonnegut means: central to the library philosophy are the notions of respect, democracy and empowerment.

Vonnegut was off on one thing though: I don't know how he figures we're "not famous for [our] physical strength." I know more than one 6+ foot librarian who hits the gym, do-jo or do-jang on a regular basis. You try swinging 'round a katana, staff or stick for an hour or two, and you'll see what I mean.

Conspiracy theory meets katana

2005-10-06T23:25:00.000-07:00

Lately, the conspiracy theorists have been coming out of the woodwork. I love the earnest way some of these people pursue their pet theory. My most recent conspiracy theorist was researching Charlemagne. Although this gentleman took great pains to explain his theory to me, I'm afraid I wasn't quite equal to the task. In any case, the theory goes something like this: Charlemagne brought Christianity to the Saxons--sword in one hand, bible in the other--but what he brought was in fact some kind of false Christianity. In reality, he was setting himself up as a Christ figure or perhaps totally manufacturing the religion of Christianity (never mind that this was the 8th century AD). I should note that somehow the fact that he was tall is important to this, but I'm a little foggy on the "why" of it. In any case, the Saxons were really some lost tribe of Israel (there was some convoluted semi-etymological tangent here) so all of us of Saxon or Anglo-Saxon descent are actually Jewish and were tricked by Charlemagne into worshiping him, er Christ, er whatever. Did I mention that the world is going to end in a few years because of this? It has something to do with good old Charlemagne and the Feast of the Tabernacle, but I'm not sure what, although the issue is confused somewhat by the problem of leap years, I'm told.

I know what you're thinking: "This is totally plausible," and "OMFG the world is ending. Head for the hills! Head for the hills!" Seriously though, the thing I love about this all is that you can go to your library, hunt for the information your looking for and put it together in the way you want. It's free, and fun, and even in the wackiest theory or idea there can be a kernel of real insight. After all, I too believe that members of certain religions have been grossly, if willingly, mislead, and even if Mr. Conspiracy's way of coming to this insight has been a tad unconventional, in my opinion it's a valid insight. In any case, in Library Land the Ivory Tower, George Bush and common sense need not interfere, for I, your friendly Samurai Librarian, is there to help you find the facts you're looking for--Katana in one hand Britannica in the other.

Found Object 1

2005-09-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

Often things you find left in the library are as humorous as the goings on. This is perhaps not the best example, but nothing all that funny or interesting happened last night, in fact people were a little edgy.

I found this note while tidying up the computer room at the end of my shift:

Strange.

Premiere post

2005-09-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

As I librarian, I'm regularly exposed to interesting and funny people and ideas. Indeed, a number of my older colleagues have often told me that they should write a book, but why write a book that would never get published, when you can blog.

The goal of this blog is not to bitch and moan about being tired and or the annoying things that happen during the course of the day, but to record the funny, weird and wonderful goings on in Library Land.