Entries from July 2008 ↓

Bethel Motor Speedway is a 1/4 mile paved oval track in White Lake, NY built in 1959. The track was previously known as White Lake Speedway, White Lake Raceway, Catskill Mountain Speedway, Kauneonga Speedway, and Sullivan County Speedway. In the past 10 or so years, the track has been closed and opened a number of times. After the 2006 season, the track closed and was eventually sold to new owners. The new ownership team plans to race every Saturday night n august and September with the first race being thi cming Saturday, August 2. I already have plans for the next few Saturdays, but I hope the track does well enough to run regularly again and I do plan on attending at least once this year.

Over the past few days, I’ve been listening to Tech Therapy. Tech Therapy is a series of podcasts in which “Scott Carlson, a Chronicle reporter, and Warren Arbogast, a technology consultant who works with colleges, talk about the headaches, anxieties, and general problems you might be having with technology on your college campus.” In through the archives, I listened to an interview with William Shell, director of academic technology and computing services at Eastern Michigan University, who asks: “How can a university make faculty members aware of copyright law?” Obvious, copyright is a big issue for libraries, and I really like that the conversation brought in the idea that the IT department partner with librarians who are familiar with, and interested in, copyright and fair use issues. They also brought in some other ideas about how to educate faculty about the issues involved without being seen as “the copyright police.” All of the Tech Therapy podcasts I listened to are interesting, but this one stood out for the librarian in me since they said things like “your best friends [on this issue] are in the library.” Probably not a lot of new information with people who deal with this, but still it was nice to see these non-librarian techies advocating for the librarians on this issue.

I read with interest the call for papers for the 3rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2009). What caught my eye was the sentence of the conference focus which reads “Well-presented negative results from which generalizable conclusions can be drawn are also sought.” I’d like to see more reporting of well presented negative results at library-related conferences. Sometimes we here about negative results on e-mail lists when some asks the question “Has any tried this?” but very rarely do we have sessions that report on things that didn’t work out at conferences or read them in articles. This leads to different people try their same thing and also failing whereas if the negative results were public they could either decide to go in a different direction, or the can look at what didn’t work in the previous project and figure out a way to modify the approach so it will work.

In a number of different settings, both at work and while talking to librarians from other institutions, the subject of library statistics have come up. While all types of library statistics are always an item for discussion, in particular statistics about the size of various library collections have come up recently. While counts of traditional print materials are troublesome enough, counts of electronic resources are even more of an issue. There are just so many variables that make comparing these counts from library to library very difficult. One library may count a collection of databases as one database, while another may count each individual database separately. This is not to mention that the amount and quality of items in different databases can vary greatly.

One thing that I’ve been thinking about recently with respect to library statistics lately is what do we count that is available electronically? Specifically, should we count things that we provide access to that are freely available on the Web. For instance, if we provide a record for the Code4Lib Journal, or the dLIST (Digital Library of Information Science of Technology) should we count them as a serial or database holding respectively. How about if we add MARC records for freely available government documents from a vendor such as MARCIVE to our catalog? Does each record count as a government document although we didn’t purchase or physically possess the document. I’m not sure how many libraries count these items, but I know from talking to librarians many libraries only count items they directly pay for. I don’t think this is the correct approach. I think, especially with the high quality of many Open Access journals and other documents, the should be counted. If a librarian has taken the time and effort to evaluate a resource or collection of resources and to add it to the collection, I think it should count. Academic libraries no longer are just about physical collections of information, they are about providing access to quality information. Thus, if the library takes even minimal actions to provide access to a resource, it should be included in these counts (flawed as the are).

Andrew Pace had an interesting post about library Sacred Cow #1: patron privacy. His solution is to provide different levels of privacy to patrons. Basically his approach is having a privacy setting scale similar to what you be familiar in a web browser and let the patrons choose. Personally, I think this would be a great approach. Patrons are wise enough to make there own decisions on this. If a library choose to implement something like this, I think it would be prudent for the library to describe the pros and cons of choosing different settings (and should make the default very protective of privacy).

Many patrons would love to have this choice. On a number of occasions at the reference desk or over the phone a student or faculty member wanted to know what book they checked out a few weeks ago and I couldn’t help them because we didn’t have that information readily available. I have heard from people who work in interlibrary loan at different colleges about patrons wanting similar information about articles they requested in the past. These are just very basic examples. I think it is obvious that if we collected circulation and other information we could provide better service to our patrons, be it recommender systems, customized new book alerts, etc.

The question is, why don’t libraries do this? One reason is that no one has really built tools that can handle this type of system (although with the advent of VuFind, the eXtensible Catalog, and other projects, this is beginning to change). There are, of course, librarians who are, rightly so, worried about privacy. However, if adult patrons are giving an educated choice, this argument is almost a non sequitur to me. In fact, but not providing this choice, it is conceivable that we are opening patrons up for more risks to their privacy as they use other tools and services outside the library that will not be protected by state library privacy laws.

I am concerned about privacy as much as most librarians, but at some point we have to make a decision. If we are going to make information and services available to patrons there is always an offset between privacy and access. The only way we could avoid all possible privacy implications about patrons using our resources is to not make any resources available to them. So, we are already making a sliding scale between access/service and privacy — only we aren’t letting the patron make their own decision. We are making it for them. One thing I believe libraries need to be concerned with is the amount of information available outside of libraries. If we don’t make our quality information easily available, people will go elsewhere. If this happens in large enough numbers, we won’t have to worry about patron privacy, because we won’t have any patrons.

In one of the comments to this post, Roy Tennant mentioned that he is that he is baffled by the reflectance to adopt a solution such as Pace proposes. Roy writes “I think a lot of folks have forgotten the days when there were cards in the book that listed everyone who had checked the book out. Where was privacy then?” This is a good question. Some librarians like to dwell on all of today’s privacy risks while at the same time ignoring what libraries have done long before the turn of the century and the advent of Library 2.0.

Whenever a discussion about Library 2.0 applications come up in a conference session or an an e-mail list, almost invariably someone brings up privacy as a reason not to do this. Recently, I remember reading a blog post, e-mail, or article (sorry, I couldn’t find it anywhere) where someone questioned if the real reason some librarians bring up privacy in because they are afraid or against change. I wouldn’t go that far, but I do think that it may be part of it. I do believe most librarians are legitimately concerned about privacy – however we shouldn’t let this concern be the end-all of our being. We need to find ways to provide these enhanced services while still working to protect privacy of our patrons. I think Pace’s concept could be one tool in our arsenal for doing this.

I haven’t been able to find a copy of the complaint yet, but Apple has finally sued Psystar Corp over the Mac clones they have been marketing. The articles seem to claim that the lawsuit is based on copyright infringement. I assume they are also saying they are violating the EULA. The copyright issue would, as far as I can tell, apply if Psystar is modifying any non-Open Source code (remember, some of OS X is licensed with a BSD license). It will be interesting to see how far Psystar takes this. In past interviews they claimed that the EULA Apple has is violating U.S. monopoly laws. It would also be interesting to see how far this suit tests the idea of the EULA and if Psystar can somehow test to see if the first sale doctrine when it comes to shrink-wrap software will held up in courts.My guess is that Apple probably has a good chance of winning, or otherwise having this case settled in their favor, this based on the merits (and it doesn’t help Psystar that they have many more resources to fight this case in court). However, I would like to see some of the terms of these more thorughly EULA tested in court. Hopefully I’ll find a copy of the complaint sometime soon so I can actually see what Apple alleges in the complaint instead of some tech-writers interpretation.

I just read an interesting article on CNBC.com that dealt with the issue of non-exempt employees using BlackBerry’s and other electronic devices during after work hours. The article claimed that “Workplace BlackBerry Use May Spur Lawsuits. Basically the premise is that people who use a work supplied BlackBerry after work to do anything related to their job are working and if they are non-exempt they should be paid overtime. I’m exempt so my employer has nothing to worry about, but it is something managers should keep in mind if they are issuing these devices to non-exempt employees. The article suggests having policies in place for after-work usage of BlackBerry’s and also e-mail. It was also suggested that employers either not issue these devices or ask non-exempt employees to leave them at the office.

There was also some interesting stats in the article that I can relate to. According to the article, a survey by Cohesive Knowledge Solutions showed that the “average professional spends 50 minutes a day sending emails after work.” Also a “recent CareerBuilder.com survey, 25 percent of workers said they plan to stay in contact with work during their vacations, and 9 percent said their bosses wanted them to be working or at least checking voicemail and email while on vacation.” I am sure that I am not the only person involved with library technology that can relate to these numbers. Actually, I am surprised that the number was only 9 percent who had bosses who wanted them to check their e-mail on vacation, but I guess the CareerBuilder.com survey probably was based on a broader audience of job seekers.

It is true that new communication technology has made the workplace 24/7. This blurring of the lines between work and play is an interesting phenomenon and I think many of the best systems people in libraries I know truly do lead a blended life. Working and advocating for technology for libraries (esp. those who work on Open Source Software for libraries) is part of their being. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. In fact, I think it can be a good thing (as long as ones boss understands that the effort you put into work outside of work requires some flexibility on their end as well). However, people that lead this blended life need to make sure they make time for their family, friends, and themselves. I personally have been trying to go without checking work e-mail as much on the weekends and after I leave work. It is hard because it will only take a minute or two. Of course, then you see some e-mails that will only take you a minute or two to get off your to do list, and then all of a sudden, you have easily used up the reported 50 minutes a day outside of work checking e-mails.

I think in order to make this all work and not become over-consuming is good time management skills. I think this is even more so with tenure-track (and other) positions that require publications and/or presentations. While there are thousands of time management books out there, the one I recommend is Time Management for System Administrators by Tom Limoncelli. What I like about Limoncelli’s book that I haven’t seen in the other books I have browsed it is is geared towards people with jobs that require constant interruption (think “The printer is broken!”). I also like that he doesn’t just talk about time management at work. His book discusses how to manage your personal time as well as your professional time. For someone with a blended work/personal life this is a good, and possibly only, approach. One example of how he does this is suggest that if there is a chore that you have to do all of the time that you don’t particularly enjoy and it can be outsourced at a reasonable rate and quality, you should do so. For example, if you hate doing laundry, why don’t you pay the local laundromat that offers full service to do it for you. Sure it costs more than if you did it yourself, but your time is valuable. You could be getting paid to hack code for more than it would cost you to pay someone to do laundry. As I said laundry is just an example, maybe for you it is cleaning your house or mowing your lawn, or any number of other things. Another gem in his book is the calendaring and to-do list management. I really can’t do his system justice in this short blog post, but I will say that his approach can work with a PDA or a PAA (a Personal Analog Assistant – i.e. a daily planner notebook) and you should purchase the book or take it of your local library and give it a try. It really isn’t that complicated (if it was, it wouldn’t work) but I have found it effective. The basica premise with the to-do list is to have manual intervention every day on your tasks. If they get automatically moved by your calendering software, you’ll never get to them. The other part is to make sure you don’t get these long endless lists. As I said read the book to learn how he does it.

While in France (report on the conference coming soon) I was using my trusty little digital camera to take photos until my 2 GB SD card filled up. At this point, I decided to delete a number of photos that I already loaded onto my computer that I forgot to delete previously. Unfortunately, a wombat jumped on my camera and selected “Delete All” on me [1]. Well, the first thing I did once I noticed this was to chase the wombat away. After that, I took the card out of the camera and put it somewhere for safe keeping. It is important, esp. on a full disk, not to write to the disk until after you recover the images or you mat lose some of them. Upon returning to the USA, I needed to figure out a way to recover these files. The camera, look must computing devices, basically just deletes the pointer to the files. The files are still there, just with no name or location information. Knowing I wasn’t the first person ever to have this problem, I looked on the Internet for solutions. What I found was PhotoRec. PhotoRec, available as GPL licensed Open Source software is:

file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks and CDRom and lost pictures (thus, its ‘Photo Recovery’ name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media’s filesystem has been severely damaged or re-formatted.

PhotoRec is a command line utility and there are binaries for Windows, Linux, OS2, and Mac OS X on their web site. I’m sure there are other programs out there – maybe even ones with a pretty graphic interface — but this did what I wanted so I didn’t try anything else. The first thing I had to do was install PhotoRec (it was in the Ubuntu repository, so that was easy). After installing it, I made an image of the SD disk using dd. The actual command I used to do this on my Ubuntu install was:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=image.dd

after that, I basically followed the step-by-step directions on the PhotoRec Wiki. Worked like a charm and I got all my photos back. Well, all of them except the one I tried to get of the wombat that caused all of my files to be deleted in the first place.

[1] I don’t know what a wombat was doing in France, but this is my story and I’m sticking to it. After all, I would never accidentally delete any files by myself.

The newest issue of Binghamton University Libraries’ LibraryLinks newsletter is out. Check it out if you want to read about BUL. On page 10, there is a brief “Meet Edward Corrado, Head of Library Technology” write-up by Caryl Ward,

The way I read it, it isn’t a 100% done deal, but it appears Venezuela’s National Library is going to migrate to Koha. Big news for people in the Koha camp I would say! Here is the press release:

Venezuela’s National Library evaluated, decided to deploy
the Koha Integrated Library System
========================================

On the first half of 2008, Venezuela’s National Library
(BNV) evaluated the Koha ILS and other FLOSS-based
ILSs, together with a proprietary ILS, and decided to
deploy Koha in two phases for the Library’s catalogue,
which includes more than two million records, and the
National Public Library System.

The evaluation was made by the Information Technology
Office, and starting February 2008, three independent
Koha consultants were asked for technical help in order
to evaluate Koha strengths and shortcomings, and
possible development/improvement plans, as well as an
important migration plan from the legacy NOTIS system.
Circulation, acquisitions and patrons weren’t regarded
as critical modules of the ILS, while Cataloguing,
Authorities and Serials were given special attention.

Ailé Filippi and Mariana González, licensed librarians,
deployed a full Koha demonstration and worked for
two months with the BNV librarians in order to establish
the desired functionality level. BNV librarians wanted a
new input system for MARC records which allow them
to manually input all fields and subfields, and a very
particular notation for holdings which allows to specify
the specific Public Library where the item is held.

On the other hand, José Miguel Parrella Romero, an
IT consultant, worked with BNV’s IT Office in order
to recommend and install the latest Koha3 snapshot,
and configured a working proof of concept using Zebra
for more than 70 thousand simulated records. BNV
staff export data from NOTIS and use a proprietary
tool to convert those records to an ISIS database, so
it was necessary to write a computer program which
migrates those records to MARC.

While the project is currently waiting for further actions,
Fernando Báez, BNVs General Manager, and Sergio Teijero,
IT Consultant for BNV, have exposed BNV intentions to
fully deploy the Koha ILS in short term, migrating over
2 million records and providing access to thousands of
Public Libraries and users around the World who would
like to access BNV catalogue information using Koha3
OPAC, while renewing BNV’s IT platform.