Please, Take a Moment to Write an E-mail

(I drafted an email for you, available here. Add or remove content as you see fit. Send it to Rep. Dwight Evans, devans@hacd.net, Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations by May 26, 2009.)

The House Committee on Appropriations is currently holding public hearings in Harrisburg, and they want written testimony from taxpayers. In addition to writing to Rep. Evans, please contact your other state representatives. If you don't know who else to contact, look here for that information, and if you feel there's more you should say, visit CLP's advocacy page for information and talking points.

Libraries have never been busier. During this recession demand for library services across the Commonwealth are continually rising as more people search for jobs, families tighten their budgets, and retirees grapple with shrinking savings. We need libraries, and in this particular instance, libraries need us.

Send an e-mail, please. Right now. I did.

Thank you!

(Much of this text was adapted from CLP's "First Floor - New and Featured." Copy at will, both this post and my previous post. I don't mind, and I'm sure CLP doesn't mind.)

Pennsylvania libraries need our help!

The PA Senate is talking about cutting library budgets drastically. Really, really drastically. You can find more information (including extra talking points!) here. If you live in PA, you can find your Senators' names and e-mail addresses here.

To get you started--because I know I hate composing letters from scratch--here's the e-mail I sent. Please, I know this isn't the best-worded piece of literature ever, so reword it at will. But do take a couple of minutes and send something, because these cuts will completely cripple Pennsylvania's public libraries, if they're allowed to stand.

Dear Senator ----,

First, I want to thank you for your service to the state and for all of your past support to public libraries. I would also like to ask that you please continue to provide the funding levels needed to keep Pennsylvania's libraries running--a decrease in funds means a decrease in services, and our state simply cannot afford that right now. Libraries are busier than ever, continuing to provide services to long-time patrons, while also serving an increasing number of people, many of whom need help finding jobs. Here is an article from the Tribune-Review, describing this phenomenon: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_612876.html.

Not only is an investment in libraries a direct service to the citizens of the state, but it also tends to bring money into the state that would otherwise not be here. In better economic times, it was shown that every dollar invested by state and local governments in public libraries results in a higher return on investment--in the case of South Carolina, it was $2.86 (see http://www.libsci.sc.edu/SCEIS/final%20report%2026%20january.pdf, page 5). Nowadays, that ROI must be even higher, as more people utilize library services to find employment. A piece of that ROI is from federal funding; you should be aware that Pennsylvania will lose nearly $1 million in federal money if the cuts currently under consideration are allowed to stand.

Please, support Pennsylvania's public libraries by maintaining their FY 2008-2009 funding levels.

Thank you.

A little essay I cooked up

I've been pretty bad about posting my class essays up here, for a number of reasons. One of the big ones is that they are so specific to the questions, and I make kind of lazy references to books that I don't expect everyone on my blogroll to have read. (Let's be honest--I haven't read all of them. Four books in a week? Really? With a full course schedule and a part-time job? Hah, right.)

In this case, I just use articles, most of which are worth your time to check out, and for good measure [and because I refer directly to it], I am going to post the question, as well. It's still a little cramped, I think, because I had to get it in under 275 words (it's 271). Anyway, enjoy. And comment. And let's discuss. (And sorry for a second post in a day!) And, yes, you could argue that I ignored half the question, but I am actually pretty comfortable with that; knowing my professor, I suspect most of the question was a red herring.

Question:
In the United States, copyright law promotes the public good and protects the exclusive limited rights of copyright holders, in that order. If the copyright law fails to protect the rights of copyright holders adequately, how is the public good affected? Would it be better or worse if the United States adopted the standard for copyright protection in the rest of the industrialized world, whereby the primary purpose of such statutes is to protect the rights and interests of copyright holders?

Answer:
I believe the change referred to in the last sentence is already occurring--and has been for twenty years. Copyright law was written to prevent corporations from reproducing works without permission--something they had the tools to do--in the interest of encouraging innovation by making it profitable. However, the advent of consumer technologies that could make copies, then the Internet, has effectively put the same tools into the hands of individuals, making copyright law into a seriously flawed and poorly patched joke (Lessig). In 1982 Jack Valenti, a lobbyist for the film industry, compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler in front of Congress (Frel and michael). Clearly, this comparison is overblown; in fact, the film industry saw gains from this technology; it makes over $25 billion per year from videotapes and DVDs now (Frel).

Nevertheless, the same logic continues to stream out from their lobbyists, leading most recently to the PRO-IP Act, which "relaxes the standards under which extended prison terms of up to ten years can be given to repeat felony copyright infringers" (Ehmke). Just for comparison, the minimum prison term for rape in Pennsylvania is 4 years (McGill); yes, one could serve more time for copying a CD than for brutally attacking another person. I fail to see how this is "in the public interest."

I'm out of words but have much more to say. So, I would like to point you to an article by Cory Doctorow, which claims that what is at stake in the fight against draconian IP laws is nothing less than our culture itself: http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/11/cory-doctorow-why-i-copyfight.html. Please give it a read. He's right.

Works cited:

Ehmke, A. "Pro-IP Act Signed into Law." Haynes and Boone's News Room. Posted October 15, 2008. Available online: http://www.haynesboone.com/pro-ip-act-signed-into-law-10-15-2008/ Accessed November 20, 2008.

Frel, J. "The Revolution Will Be Downloaded." AlterNet. Posted April 20, 2005. Available online: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21817/. Accessed Nov 20, 2008.

Lessig, Lawrence. Speech: "The Internet at the Crossroads." The Politics of Code - Shaping the Future of the Next Internet, Oxford Internet Institute, 2003.

McGill, A. "Cluck sentenced to four years in prison." The Daily Collegian Online. Posted August 23, 2007. Available online: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2007/08/23/cluck_sentenced_to_four_years.aspx Accessed November 20, 2008.

michael. "Valenti's "Boston Strangler" Testimony." Slashdot. Posted on Fri May 31, 2002 03:12 PM. Available online: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/31/1622232.

West, J. "little pieces of things that might interest you." librarian.net. Posted November 20, 2008. Available online: http://www.librarian.net/stax/2561/little-pieces-of-things-that-might-interest-you/

A quote I ran into while I was looking for best practices on citing Slashdot (which is something I do tend to avoid): "... citing slashdot on patent issues is like citing Soviet propaganda to find out about the US Constitution." --FallLine, , posted to Slashdot on Monday January 15 2007.

Oh noes!

I've discovered a real problem, folks: most of the people I really want to work with--whose books, ideas, blogs, and podcasts have most influenced my thinking over this semester and who I think have the greatest chance of effecting real change in technology policies and practices (if anybody would just listen to them)--are pretty much all lawyers. (Why are lawyers the ones writing all of these books? Why isn't it librarians? I think this is something worth discussing and would love to hear from some library-related folk why they think we're falling so short on this stuff!)

I just don't know that they want an engineer-turned-librarian following them around all the time, no matter how smart or devoted to their various causes I might be, since they all work in law-related organizations--with quite a lot of overlap between them, if you look at the whole timeline. I also don't think I've got the wherewithal to go to school for three more years, at $100k+ a year, to then end up working with them and the EFF and never paying off my loans. It took some soul-searching to go from engineering to library science and to take on the loans I have. Also, I am really kind of pondering a PhD in LIS, instead, though the question of "now or later?" is still very up in the air--and very dependent on who has the coolest/best/most socially relevant projects for me to work on next year.

(A post to come soon: I identify people within the library field who are also working on interesting and relevant things, of similar importance, in a very different way. I've got a couple, already.)

Stopping the OCLC Power Grab

I found out about this by way of librarian.net and want to pass it along to anyone who might be interested.

By way of explanation: OCLC, the not-for-profit that provides library services around the world, has gone too far. Originally, it was a library collaborative -- one library could catalog a book, upload it to OCLC, and then other libraries could save time by reusing the catalog information. But as the price of such technology has fallen, its prices have risen. It charges membership fees, record retrieval fees, user support fees, and fees for all sorts of additional services. But now it wants to set the terms of use for every library record ever retrieved through OCLC, so that it can maintain its monopoly in the field. In a very real sense, they're trying to steal our libraries. We have to make them stop -- please join me in signing the petition "Stop the OCLC powergrab!" You can do so right now at http://watchdog.net/c/stop-oclc

For more information, see this wiki page: OCLC Policy Change.

Hope

I know we're all just about ready to stop talking about the election (for various reasons), but history was made in more than one way last night, and I'm glad to know that for every African American child who now knows that the highest office in the US could one day be his (the post that's linked there is beautiful), there is also a little girl who is that much closer to serving as a Senator or Representative. That's right, a the new US Senate and House of Representatives will both have record-breaking numbers of women serving (link goes to PDF report).

It's a good day to be an American.

I like it. (That's the real one, not Tina Fey.)

Further Musings

I feel like I was unnecessarily harsh in my post yesterday. Looking at it, there's nothing I consider untrue or really feel a need to change, but the whole thing kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I think what bothers me is that I came off sounding as though I'm unhappy, and, on the whole, I'm really not. Yes, I think there are some serious problems with Pitt's program--problems that may lead to a drop in our rank, honestly--but, you know, I'm still there, and I plan to finish my degree. I'm looking forward to next semester's classes, which I've mostly chosen, even though the official schedule isn't up yet. (An unofficial schedule is available to anyone who bothers Googling for it.) The student groups--something I haven't discussed, thus far, but ought to--are great; SLAPSG is a little late getting off the ground, but there's a lot of interest on the part of the student body, and I know the [super active and awesome] local chapter will help us out. SCALA is fabulous: we're planning on putting together a Book Kart Drill Team (it's spelled with a "K," yes) for ALA Annual 2009--I'm heading that up, because I'm involved in ALA already and because I'm Treasurer--a Technology Petting Zoo for students who want to learn about and play with various kinds of technology, and a t-shirt sale. And there's a new student group, centered around community outreach, called SISCO (which bothers me every time I hear it, because I think about network hardware, but there you go). These are excellent and all make me very happy.

As for my internship at CMU's Engineering and Science Library, I am really enjoying it and learning a lot. Every time I get really confident about my reference skills, someone comes along with a hard chemistry or math question (why is it never electrical engineering? or even computer science?), which reminds me what a beginner I really am. But that's really not a bad thing; it just means I am constantly learning. I'm signed up to help give a talk on RSS and Google Reader, in the near future, which I find pretty exciting (and terrifying), and I will be helping at least one of my coworkers redesign her portion of the library web site. I am super excited about these projects. Slightly less exciting--but certainly useful to the library and still a learning opportunity--is a set of ongoing projects, going through a large collection of materials science books donated by a retiring professor and a smaller, but much older, collection of books that belonged to Roberts' (of Roberts Hall) mentor. A large portion of my time goes, of course, to "other projects as assigned"; earlier this week, I went through some tech reports, to determine whether or not each one was redundant or new to the collection, and last week I picked up some journals from a professor. That kind of thing. I'm hoping for some collection development (spendin' money!) and more instruction experience, before too long.

So, you know, things are actually pretty good.

On a more personal note, I've finally gotten together the bravery and momentum to go out and volunteer for a cause that I think is important (in all that free time I don't have). That makes me feel pretty good about myself, even if it means I go to bed earlier than I otherwise might on some Friday nights.

And, as I predicted, my schedule is changing: I'll be working Saturday afternoons, starting in a few weeks, because the other Information Assistant, who used to do the Saturday shift, got a job. (Yay for enjobination!) I'll have to drop an hour, somewhere in the week (personally, I'm hoping to start at 11am instead of 10am on either Tuesday or Friday morning ;)), to stay on the right side of CMU's rules, but it will be a good experience; back-up is a phone call away, instead of a short walk away, on weekends. Self reliance and all that!

Also, I have a purple iPod Nano. I love it. It holds all of my music, a bunch of podcasts, and a couple of TV shows. I've already used it to listen to supplemental class material that I otherwise wouldn't. (Because I have very little self control when faced with a computer monitor, I have a very limited amount of time I can spend paying attention/not reading random stuff on the Internet, if I'm at my computer--limited by how many photos I have to sort, actually--and the Panopto-only lectures are going to soak that up; no time for the supplemental material on top of it! But with an iPod, I can listen while I wait for the bus, while I walk out to get tasty Indian food for lunch, etc.) It will make the 5 hour trip to Detroit and back, in early November, into usable time, which will decrease my guilt at going (instead of doing homework). This is a win.

Troubling times - Internet anonymity at risk

Any readers who follow New Basement Tapes will have already seen this, or at least the headline. I think it's important to spread this information far and wide, though, so I hope people will forgive me for the repeat: A UN agency is drafting a "trackback" standard, to remove anonymity from Internet communications. This seems, to me, like a pretty big deal, particularly in places where saying the wrong thing about the government on the Internet can mean jail time or worse.

Already, we know some portion of our Internet activities are watched, something many people suspected for a long time but couldn't be sure of until recently. But at least getting to who was sending any given packet was tricky--and made trickier by certain software.

The right to private communication is implicit in the First Amendment and explicit in the ITU's constitution (they are an agency of the UN); for an agency of the UN to be creating such a standard--and, as the linked article points out, to do so with the help of the NSA and the Chinese government, is unethical and hypocritical. The "technical" arguments in favor of this standard are extremely weak, and I find them unconvincing.

The beauty (and, yes, horror) of the Internet is its truly democratic nature. It is the one place where every person can express his or her opinion anonymously--without fearing reprisal from his or her government. That right is worth preserving. So I will be following the development of this story and posting updates here. I imagine there will be a petition coming out soon (if not, I suppose I'll have to write one), as well.

Know thyself. And choose your career accordingly.

As I slide another set of books by Phil McGraw and Laura Schlessinger over the demagnetizer for yet another patron in search of guidance, I can't help but grit my teeth. There's nothing of value in those books, nothing that will make this person happy. I believe these so-called "experts" are ruining America, just as they've each personally ruined multiple families in their own social spheres, and part of me--let's call it my conscience--really wants to take these books away and send my patron back to the stacks, to find something better, and then to remove these books from our collection.

But of course I don't do that; it would be wrong. If a person wants to read bad advice, it is their right to do so, and it is my job to provide them with the means. If they want to check out trashy romance novels, inaccurate histories, poorly-written local newspapers, right-wing propaganda, left-wing propaganda, movie novelizations, Scientology DVDs, or anything else I have the power to provide, it is my job to provide it. My patrons are guardians of their own intellects, and that is a right I wouldn't dream of begrudging them; certainly, I would not want that right taken from me. To be honest, as horrible as I, personally, find some of it to be, at the end of the day, I am proud and happy to provide these things. I know I am serving the greater good, even when I dispense materials I find objectionable. I know my opinion, however deeply researched, however well founded, or however strongly felt, is not more important than my patrons' right to information.

Let's pretend, though, just for a second, that I didn't believe as strongly as I do in intellectual freedom. Let's say I believed that some materials really shouldn't be circulated, and as such, I refused to provide them to patrons who asked for them. How long, precisely, do you think I would last as a library employee? Or, more to the point, how long should I last?

It's not a useful question: of course, if I felt that way, I wouldn't have taken a library job; everyone knows that giving out all manner of materials is a part of the job description of a librarian, so I would have known it wasn't the job for me. Even if I were, as a layperson, to fail to fully grasp what my job might entail, one can assume that library school, or the first month of a job in a library, would sufficiently acquaint me with the field, and with the various ethical standards thereof, that I'd quickly become aware of the "down sides," if you will, of my job description. If I learned that my own moral/ethical stance was incompatible with my chosen profession, I would choose a more appropriate profession. Any reasonable person would.

So why is the Bush Administration advocating allowing people in one particular field, whose consciences may sometimes run counter to their job requirements, to shirk their duties? Are we to assume that someone could finish pharmacy school and not realize that pharmacists are expected to provide contraceptives, along with any number of other medications? That an ER staff member might go through training and yet, at some point, be surprised at being expected to provide pregnancy prevention medication to a rape victim? That medical insurance providers may not realize they are expected to provide insurance for, you know, any medical issue, including prevention of pregnancy? How could this have escaped these people's notice until now?

As the WSJ does a fine job of pointing out, the proposed policy is simply about making access to contraceptives more difficult--a goal I don't begin to understand--not about protecting workers' rights. Just as I know I must sometimes grit my teeth and give out materials I find objectionable to patrons who want access to them, so too do medical workers--even those who hate contraceptives--realize that they have a duty to provide the care their patients need them to provide.

In the library I give out many useful materials that I know others disagree with; similarly, in a pharmacy or a hospital or even an insurance company, one is able to help people by providing treatments that, yes, others might object to--blood transfusions, vaccines, insulin grown in pigs--because people who disagreed with those treatments were not allowed to make that call for the rest of society, no matter how strongly they felt it was wrong. We have a right to take care of our bodies and our health as we see fit, just as we have a right to read what we see fit. Refusing a whole class of service, or service to a whole class of people--patrons or patients--means one can no longer claim to serve the greater good; it means they are trying to impose their will on others and, in so doing, failing to live up to the standards of their field.

If someone's conscience can't handle giving out one particular type of treatment--if they don't believe in helping people with all of the tools at their disposal--they need to get out of the medical industry. If they haven't the courage to get out of their profession, but still cannot live up to its standards, I find it hard to be sympathetic when their employer performs their own duty--protecting clients, patients, or patrons--by removing the wrongdoer.

I'll add, further, that any law--or "rules change" or whatever--that protects wrongdoers at the expense of society is wrong. Plain and simple. I have signed MoveOn.org and Planned Parenthood's joint petition to Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt, and I hope you will do the same. (Links go to both copies of the petition. I signed PP's.)