LibraryPlanet.com

I just finished reading Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur. I had heard it discussed on more than one podcast, so I had been looking forward to reading it. It was pretty much what I expected. Keen holds a Michael Gorman-esque view of the world, in that the only choices that matter are made by book publishers, newspapers editors, and record producers. Everyone else should stay on the sideline and be happy that they are allowed the privilege of purchasing things chosen by industry giants. He singles out Lawrence Lessig, Jimmy Wales, and Glenn Reynolds for particular scorn. And he sometimes blames Web 2.0 for issues like Internet gambling and Child pornography without making bothering to explain just how they are linked. He is also the only person I can think of that champions both COPA and Dopa. Michael Sauers does a great job of going point by point through it. If you want to read a well-written screed, I can’t think of a better one. But I don’t really consider it anything more than that.

While it hasn’t always been embraced by everyone, I think most people are willing to either give Library 2.0 a chance or just ignore it. Unfortunately, the Editorial Staff of the Tampa Tribune don’t fit into those categories. They would prefer a third path. Here are a few choice bits of wisdom.
bq.With people increasingly accessing information online, libraries have quietly grown their mission beyond simply circulating books and researching questions. Today, they also serve as computer centers, neighborhood meeting spots, art galleries, tutoring sites and even homeless centers. Some in county government believe every neighborhood deserves a library, so plans have been developed to build more and more. But such convenience carries a high cost, and taxpayers are in revolt over costs that have grown too great.
bq.But in discussing the demand for new libraries, it becomes clear that the role of libraries has evolved. You could even call it ‘mission creep.’ Today, the top priorities are more computer labs and more public meeting space. Book collections are deliberately being kept small. So make no mistake about it. The construction of new branch libraries is mostly about adding value to neighborhoods, not about getting more books to more people. If circulating books were the top priority, the library might decide it makes more sense to buy more bookmobiles, since the current two mobile units have been wildly successful.
bq.The board might also want to review its reciprocal agreement with Pasco County, a deal that’s become a mostly one-way street and gives Pasco a pass on building sufficient libraries for its neighborhoods near the county line. While we want to be good neighbors, it’s hard to see how this agreement serves Hillsborough taxpayers.
bq.Another good place to cut is the heavy focus on movies. While it makes sense for libraries to stock the classics and documentaries, there’s no reason to stock the latest Hollywood shoot ‘em up. If people want to watch such movies, the private market offers ample opportunities. Besides, libraries are having a tough time keeping track of movies, and spending much too much to replace lost copies.
bq.And in refocusing its mission, the system also should reconsider the wisdom of saying yes to social events – such as Dance Dance Revolution. While the goal is noble – getting teenagers to the library – teens who arrive to play free video games aren’t there for the books. It seems some would prefer Library 1.0. Or even 0.1.

As I wrote about a few months ago, the State Legislature of Florida decided to force reductions of county budgets across the state. Our own county has reduced their budget by 3% from previous year. This has caused a great deal of discussion about which departments are essential and which are quality of life. At present, we are facing a 10% reduction. Other Florida Libraries are facing similar circumstances. * Charlotte – Laura Kleiss Hoeft, director of the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources department, said the tax reform is forcing different programs to face problematic issues of charging people to use their facilities, including libraries, public pools and even Englewood’s new skate park. * Duval – In response to the 2007-2008 budget cuts, the library will cut nearly $3 million by reducing services and programs. The most noticeable change will be library hours. All branch libraries will be closed on Sundays with the exception of the Main Library downtown. Four regional libraries, two on the east/south side and two on the north/west side, will remain open on Sundays during the school year. On Mondays, the regional branches will close, leaving only the Main Library open. The branch libraries will operate Tuesday through Saturday. The cut also includes a $500,000 reduction for new books and materials, like DVDs and CDs. * Hillsborough – Even the Director of Libraries in Hillsborough County plans to start his workday putting books back on the shelves. As part of proposed budget cuts, most of the employees who restock books now, called pages, would be eliminated. Seven new park projects and seven new library projects are also being shelved for now. The Director of Libraries says it means people without libraries in the University and Sulpher Springs areas, will have to keep waiting. But Joe Stines hopes library users won’t notice the change. * Miami-Dade – In his proposed budget, Mayor Carlos Alvarez called for opening seven new libraries already under construction but canceling plans for four others because the county cannot afford to staff and operate them. * Sarasota – In Sarasota, libraries could be among the hardest-hit services. Director Sarabeth Kalajian proposed a $12.9 million library budget for 2008, but leaders have suggested a 7 percent cut. The cut could eliminate four positions and trim library hours from 4721/2 to 440 per week. The loss of hours, which could cut six to eight hours per week from the North Sarasota Library, would lead to a loss of some of the programs libraries offer, such as art workshops and computer classes. There is one glimmer of hope… * St. Lucie – Commissioners decided last week to find funding in the budget so libraries in the county aren’t shuttered one day a week to save cash. Commissioners also shifted $8,000 back to the library’s budget to keep the Bookmobile operating during the summer. However, if the legislature is successful in getting the proposed tax changes that they are looking for next year, this will all be minor.

Apparently, some members of Congress were so impressed by John Edward’s fictional campaign pledge, that they are going ahead and planning to enact the measures now. The House of Representatives is going to focus on file-sharing.
bq.Members of Congress Monday lashed out at the chief executive of a popular filesharing service after it was revealed that classified information was easily accessible via his and other P2P systems. Mark Gorton, chief executive of The Lime Group and Limewire P2P service, however, appeared bewildered that people were using Limewire to access confidential information. “I had no idea that there was the amount of classified information out there or that there were people who were actively looking for that,” Gorton told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. – Chloe Albanesius Rather than curb the behavior of government employees, it makes much more sense to regulate or even ban the software. Of course, The Senate isn’t going to settle for one class of application when there is a more obvious target.
bq.US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited. Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) both argued that Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children. – Adam Thomas Perhaps it is time to look back on how the Supreme Court felt a decade ago.
bq.The record demonstrates that the growth of the Internet has been and continues to be phenomenal. As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship. – John Paul Stevens This is no more constitutional than it was a decade ago. And interestingly, the two Justices who had the most reservations about the decision then (O’Connor and Rehnquist) are not even on the Court. But let’s hope we don’t go through all of this again.

I think there are some librarians that are a little too eager to abandon everything we have been doing for the last 130 years. But I also think we do need to be finding ways to move forward before we get left behind. There are still too far too many libraries that barely qualify as “1.0.”
bq.My bet is that a new generation of information specialists, probably just being born, will discover a Wild West world waiting for them, brimming with data and opinion over which they can impose some order and judgment. And the more traditional (by then) library mind-set will have a new lease on life with a new face and more modern trimmings. We won’t have lost anything in the meantime. The application openness and non-industry-specific standards and acceptance of user-provided data will stay with us, having changed the library landscape in significant and lasting ways.- Candy Zemon I do hope, though, that I don’t have to wait until after I retire to see some of the things that should already be happening.

bq.There are two related but distinct phenomena here. One is in-library gaming activities, including organized tournaments and open gaming time. The other is the circulation of games, gaming devices, and other gaming materials. The Ann Arbor District Library, which excels at gaming tournaments, does not circulate games. Eli Neiburger from the AADL, who also spoke during the first day of this symposium, does not want to put the library in direct competition with Blockbuster and other retail game rental businesses. Nicholson’s research found that only 20 percent of the libraries surveyed actually circulate games. – Tom Peters We use to use the “not competing with Blockbuster” argument to not buy the latest big budget Hollywood films. We don’t anymore and I am not sure, in retrospect, why we ever thought that was a logical argument. And this doesn’t seem to be a universal policy at AADL, either.

When I first started reading about this, I thought I stumbled over an old thread from years ago. But this is all new. Apparently, Dave is upset about FeedBurner and Google.
bq.So now someone at Google “owns” Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone. – Dave Winer Robert is as well.
bq.But, what really is cooking here is that RSS has been moved to big companies to control. How so? Well, the RSS Advisory board, which includes members from Cisco, Yahoo, Netscape, FeedBurner (er, Google), Microsoft, and Bloglines and this new unofficial board is changing the RSS spec all the time (they are now up to version 2.0.9. UPDATE: which only represents a couple of changes, according to comments left on this post). – Robert Scoble Sam makes a point.
bq.Oh, and as to the recent spec “clarification” that was recently made to the alternate specification that also happens to call itself RSS 2.0? FeedBurner’s CTO voted against it. – Sam Ruby For myself, I would simply point out that Jenny Levine works for something other than a big company. Other than something to laugh about, RSS politics have gotten really old to me. Especially when there is a better alternative.

I just had the chance to lay my hands on eight copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but I didn’t even look at the title page. That I saw elsewhere.
bq.It didn’t take long for Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books, to send us a takedown notice for our post “The Latest Harry Potter Book Hits BitTorrent.” In an email yesterday, Mark S. Seidenfeld, an attorney for Scholastic, demanded that we “act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material or items claimed to be infringing” and referred to the post. The full text of the notice is below. A print article in USA Today says that they are contacting every site that has mentioned this story and demanding it be taken down. – Michael Arrington Meanwhile…
bq.Copies of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” have been arriving early by mail, U.S. publisher Scholastic Corp. said, accusing a distributor of sending them out too soon. The company plans legal action against Levy Home Entertainment, the distributor, and Levy customer DeepDiscount.com, New York-based Scholastic said today in a statement. The copies that went out starting July 17 amounted to one- hundredth of 1 percent of the total to go on sale in the U.S., Scholastic said. The seventh and final edition in the “Harry Potter” series is scheduled for release after midnight on July 21. Scholastic obtained a subpoena on July 16 to identify an Internet user who allegedly leaked the book on the Web. – Gillian Wee I can understand why Scholastic is so upset. I am sure all of this is going to greatly decrease sales.
bq.Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter stories, is printing 12 million copies — the largest first printing of any book in history. – Judith Egerton Or perhaps not.

As I mentioned recently, I have been experimenting quite a lot lately with the whole lifestreaming concept. But there are limits.
bq.God, myBlogLog is creepy. I don’t exactly want people to know what I’m reading.. I don’t share google reader links either. – Eric Rice I tried Wakoopa for a while, but decided to unstall it because I felt like it wasn’t particularly useful. I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to try cluztr. But this one…
bq.You walk into work at 9, leave at 5, and for the life of you can’t figure out what you spent all day doing. SnapLogger to the rescue. Install this little application on your PC and it will take a screenshot at specified intervals throughout the day, which you can play back as a movie. Installing this application will either make you more productive or just more self conscious and nervous. – Brad Linder That takes things just a little too far.

Remember all the discussions years ago about Earth’s Largest Library?
bq.What if there was a library which held every book? Not every book on sale, or every important book, or even every book in English, but simply every book–a key part of our planet’s cultural legacy. First, the library must be on the Internet. No physical space could be as big or as universally accessible as a public web site. The site would be like Wikipedia–a public resource that anyone in any country could access and that others could rework into different formats. Second, it must be grandly comprehensive. It would take catalog entries from every library and publisher and random Internet user who is willing to donate them. It would link to places where each book could be bought, borrowed, or downloaded. It would collect reviews and references and discussions and every other piece of data about the book it could get its hands on. But most importantly, such a library must be fully open. Not simply “free to the people,” as the grand banner across the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh proclaims, but a product of the people: letting them create and curate its catalog, contribute to its content, participate in its governance, and have full, free access to its data. In an era where library data and Internet databases are being run by money-seeking companies behind closed doors, it’s more important than ever to be open. So let us do just that: let us build the Open Library. – Open Library This could be something to pay close attention to.