Fister on Privacy, Facebook, Google, Libraries
This is a very useful and thoughtful piece that starts with musings on Facebook and privacy issues and addresses much larger issues that affect libraries and library users and academic publishing. This is a must read.
- Face Value, By Barbara Fister, Inside Higher Ed (Feb. 18, 2008).
Sample:
Libraries have always taken privacy seriously - not because it's valuable in itself, but because it's a necessary condition for the freedom to read whatever you want without risk of penalty. When the PATRIOT Act was passed, librarians checked to make sure their databases erased the connection between a book and its borrower as soon as the book was returned. That erasure, however, makes it harder to offer the kind of personalization, such as recommendations based on previous book choices, that the public increasingly expects from online systems. After all, it's what they get from Amazon.
...[W]e've barely begun to examine the unintended consequences of the Faustian bargain we strike when we share content through privately-owned digital domains of the public sphere.
Joe Esposito pointed to this article in a posting to the liblicense-l mailing list and he says:
As I was reading this, I reflected on an ongoing conversation with a friend of mine, a former Congressional staffer, about the growing political need for Google to be declared a regulated public utiility, like the AT&T of yesteryear. Too much power in the hands of too few: it's morally wrong, and socially dangerous.
I would just add to this that, when we rely on the government to be the only official repository of all government information, we are putting too much power in the hands of too few. We are allowing the government to be the only entity that controls access to that information and the privacy or lack of privacy of all readers of that information. The solution to that is to build collections of digital government information is libraries. We have barely begun to understand the Faustian bargain we strike when we share content through a single government-controlled digital repository.
Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College. Her blog is barbara fister's place.
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CRS Report: Notable Deployments Overseas, 1798 – 2007
The Congressional Research Service has issued a report entitled (45 page pdf) Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2007, updated January 14, 2008 . It reviews hundreds of instances in which the United States has sent military forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict to protect U.S. citizens or promote U.S. interests. The listed deployments vary in size and length, legal authorization and significance. In eleven separate cases listed in bold-face type the U.S. formally declared war against foreign nations; but for most the status of the action under domestic or international law hasn't been addressed. A sample entry:
Continue reading"1798-1800 Undeclared Naval War with France. This contest included land actions, such as that in the Dominican Republic, city of Puerto Plata, where marines captured a French privateer under the guns of the forts. Congress authorized military action through a series of statutes.
1801-05 Tripoli. The First Barbary War included the U.S.S. George Washington and Philadelphia affairs and the Eaton expedition, during which a few marines landed with United States Agent William Eaton to raise a force against Tripoli in an effort to free the crew of the Philadelphia. Tripoli declared war but not the United States, although Congress authorized U.S. military action by statute."
Race and Law Wiki at Syracuse
The H. Douglas Barclay Law Library at the Syracuse University College of Law has created a Race and Law Research Wiki that it hopes will be a valuable inter-disciplinary resource for researchers. The topical organization is based on a Race and Law course syllabus and textbook. For each topic, researchers will currently find bibliographies and research guides; web resources and databases; and legislative and administrative material. The wiki also includes sections on statistics, how to find books and articles, and suggestions for relevant news sources and blogs. Emphasis in all categories is on electronic resources; however, some references to print sources have also been included. Anyone interested in contributing to the wiki can contact the librarian in charge here.
Continue readingNew Law Library Blawg from the AALL
The Washington Affairs Office of the American Association of Law Libraries has just announced the launch of its new blog. The blog, named AALL’s Washington Blawg, will highlight bills that the AALL is tracking in Congress, Action Alerts, news, resources, events and more. The blog will will cover legislative, judicial and regulatory activities on the state, national, and international levels and address important topics such as access to government information, digital authentication, copyright, and open government issues. The WAO is located at the Georgetown University Law Library in Washington, D.C., a location that allows them to work closely with the three branches of government. They are involved in several active coalitions, including the Library Copyright Alliance, OpenTheGovernment.org, and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. You can keep receive regular updates by subscribing to the RSS feed, signing up for email updates, or by visiting the blog for the latest news.
Continue readingEconomic indicators will continue!
Last week, we posted about the imminent demise of economicindicators.gov. Evidently, this news travelled quickly and DoC has decided to continue the site!! Below is the notice from the site:
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) has decided to continue the economicindicators.gov website. Featuring the economic releases from ESA’s Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the site was started by this Administration in 2002 to give greater awareness to these economic statistics. ESA initially planned to discontinue the service due to cost concerns but given the feedback ESA received, the decision has been made to continue the site and improve its functionality. A popular feature of the site is the calendar that links directly to economic indicators on the Census and BEA websites. By continuing the Economic Indicators (EI) site, the fifteen major indicators released by those bureaus will still be listed, along with links to the full text of each release. EI’s information will continue to be provided free of charge. Many users also subscribe to the site and have economic indicators and the full releases emailed to them. There are a number of technical challenges with this aspect of the EI site – the service often backs up and fails because of bandwidth issues, releases sometimes take hours to reach subscribers, and some subscribers receive multiple copies of the releases while others get none at all. The cost of maintaining the site is almost entirely attributable to operating this feature. To address these concerns we will redesign the subscription feature of economicindicators.gov. The new system, which will remain free of charge, will email an abstract and link so that users can access the full release on the source website. We believe the cost of rewriting the system will, in the long-run, be less than continuing to run the existing system. The new subscription service will be operational in the next few months. Existing subscribers of the economicindicators.gov service were offered a free trial subscription to the STAT-USA/Internet service (http://www.stat-usa.gov). A number of you have already signed up for that and we hope you will make full use of it. Thank you for your responses to last week’s notice. We look forward to continuing to provide economic indicators, in the most efficient way possible.Continue reading