j’s scratchpad

The Consumerist.com blog has a posting called “7 ways your public library can help you during a bad economy”:

1. You can get pretty much any book at the library: A book habit can be expensive. Even second hand books can add up if you read a lot. Even the smallest library can access inter-library loan, Worldcat, OCLC and other library loan services to get you even the most obscure and out of print material.
2. Yes, we have movies: Many libraries charge a nominal (1-2 dollar) fee for renting recent or “popular” titles. It’s something of a controversy in the profession, one side arguing all library services should be free, the other saying “We’re not a video store!”. I tend to fall on the side of free for all. In any case, the fee is often far less than what you’d pay for a rental at a chain video store, and the fees to to cover costs of processing and growing the video collection. If you’re looking for a rare film, perhaps older or on an obscure format (Betamax tapes are out there still) libraries can save you a ton compared to buying it on Ebay.
3. Kids Activities: Any library worth it’s salt offers a summer reading program for kids. Often with prizes, programs and events all summer long. Libraries also offer storytimes, arts and crafts, computer classes, movie nights and reading clubs for kids of all ages.
4. Save Money and maybe your life!: Libraries offer seminars in home buying, estate planning and even purchasing electronics and other big-ticket items. Libraries also offer free blood pressure screenings, programs about weight loss and exercise.
5. Make new friends: Library book clubs and book discussion groups are great ways to meet people. Some libraries even offer “mingling” events for single patrons.
6. Find a new job!: I can’t tell you how many times local employers have come in asking to post job listings or drop off materials about open positions. Many libraries offer resume writing workshops, computer training and even job fairs. College and University library job fairs are often open to the public.
7. Libraries listen to consumers!: We like to call them patrons, but we really do listen. Do you want a storytime for kids after 5pm? Ask for it! Want more books about home finance or budgeting? Just ask! Libraries often go to great pains to suss out what the community wants, letting us know directly is great. The complaint or suggestion of a patron carries a lot of weight with library directors and boards, so you are being heard.

You should read the comments at the end of the posting:

http://consumerist.com/5027723/7-ways-your-public-library-can-help-you-during-a-bad-economy

Posted by Rich

WCVB-TV Channel 5 in Boston reported on June 23 that 30 million defective tire valve stems are on old and new cars:

“BOSTON — A small 50 cent part for your car could have a critical safety defect.

Team 5 Investigates reported Monday there could be more than 30 million of these parts on the road right now.

Last November, Robert Monk, 31, died when his SUV flipped. Investigators blamed rapid air loss in the right rear tire. His family has filed a lawsuit.

“There was a crack in the valve stem on his tire that led to a loss in air pressure,” said Richard Newsome, an attorney for Monk’s estate. “And when that happened, his tires failed because of the loss in air pressure. He lost control.”

A valve stem is an inexpensive rubber part taken off the shelf and inserted into a tire so you can pump in the air. But a crack in the rubber could allow air to escape, causing the tire to deflate or rupture. You could then have a flat or a crash.

After the crash, the distributor, Dill Air Controls Products, warned service centers — but not drivers — about the problem of certain cracked valve stems coming from a factory in China. Another company using that same factory issued a recall for six million cracked valves.

But that number is insignificant compared to the 30 million potentially defective valves that Dill warns could be out there — on any make, any model.

Initially, the problem was thought to involve only replacement tires. But Team 5 Investigates discovered it may threaten some cars bought new.

Sean Kane, a tire safety expert, examined the valve stems on our 2007 Ford Explorer. He found cracks on three of the four valve stems.”

The station has tips on how to look for defective stems:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/investigative/16688483/detail.html

The Consumer Reports blog has a similar report:

http://blogs.consumerreports.org/safety/2008/06/tire-valve-stem.html

When you get a chance, have your mechanic or tire place inspect the valve stems on your car.

Posted by Rich

Aimee Mann will be performing at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston on Saturday, July 26 at 8 pm. Tickets, I believe, are still available. I have been a fan since her Till Tuesday days. Her concerts are very good if you can get chance to go to one.

I still think she got robbed from winning an Oscar a couple of years ago!

Posted by Rich

Today’s buzz in the Web 2.0 world is about TechCrunch’s latest report on Google’s efforts to buy Digg, a very popular site where people can share and vote on content, much like Babbledog, the site on which I work. The article in C|Net made me think of some of the conversations we’ve had about media convergence because people express concern about what is happening as larger companies, like Google and Yahoo, are buying independent sites where folks have been posting content and building communities. What happens when a few major companies own everything? “Digg commenter Hiji writes, ‘This is the beginning of the end. In a few years all the major blogs and social-media sites will be owned by large corporations, putting us right back where we started.’” One of the values some people find in blogs and Web 2.0 sites is that many are owned by independent companies or run by individuals—a break from media conglomerates that frequently seem to repeat the same content as many other news organizations instead of bringing us new perspectives and items.

Much like the situation with LiveJournal’s sale to SUP, many people wonder what the impact of Digg’s potential sale might have on its community. Will Google or any other buyer try to radically change community policies and behavior? Will they respect the established community and pretty much leave things as they are? As Harrison Hoffman speculates in the C|Net article, is Google primarily trying to acquire Digg for its community? How will an influx from Google’s users alter Digg?

While negotiations with Digg have been going on, Google did make its next big purchase: the Roman Catholic Church. (Yes, that’s supposed to be a joke, but the discussion about Google potentially buying Digg is not.)

more on Babbledog

Imagine you are a public librarian. Police come to you to ask to see the library’s computers because a missing girl might have used one. Per your library’s policy, you ask them for a warrant. They don’t have one. What would you do? Aid the police in their investigation in case they can quickly find the girl or protect the privacy of all of the library’s patrons and uphold library policy by demanding the police get a warrant?

Many of us in New England have had Brooke Bennett and her family in our thoughts because of the tragedy surrounding her disappearance and death a few weeks ago. It turns out that police detectives visited the Kimball Public Library in Randolph, Vermont, the day after she disappeared to try to trace Brooke’s actions online. They did not have a warrant. The library staff insisted the investigators get one. As a compromise, the librarians shut the computers down to preserve whatever clues they might hold. When the police got the warrant almost eight hours later, the librarians released the computers into their custody.

Some people believe the librarians acted appropriately, while others think their reluctance might have had negative consequences for the investigation. Many news organizations are reporting different aspects of the situation, including the Rutland Herald. It doesn’t say specifically what the detectives found on the computers and whether it helped their investigation. How much of a difference did an eight hour delay make? With all the incidents of libraries requiring warrants for authorities to access patron records, why doesn’t it seem like police get warrants before asking for library records? (Maybe those stories just never make the news.)

Addendum 7/24: A lot of people like to point at librarians as the source of delays in these kinds of processes because of the “extra” 8 hours it took law enforcement to get a warrant to get access to the computers. If anything needs to change in situations like this one, perhaps it’s the time it takes to get a warrant. I don’t know what’s involved in that and the news articles I read didn’t explain. I know enough to know it’s often not like it is in television shows and movies where the authorities can get warrants in a few minutes without really proving their need for one.

One of my friends described it as the kind of situation where someone mentions something about a bomb going off in about an hour and he knows the location, but he’s not going to share that information. Is it appropriate to torture him or otherwise violate his rights in order to potentially save people from the explosion?

Today, the Project for Excellence in Journalism released a study about changing newsrooms that found that shrinking staffs are hurting the quality of newspapers. It also discusses several other industry trends, increasing online news, and challenges to the traditional newspaper revenue model.

“It has fewer pages than three years ago, the paper stock is thinner, and the stories are shorter. There is less foreign and national news, less space devoted to science, the arts, features and a range of specialized subjects. Business coverage is either packaged in an increasingly thin stand-alone section or collapsed into another part of the paper. The crossword puzzle has shrunk, the TV listings and stock tables may have disappeared, but coverage of some local issues has strengthened and investigative reporting remains highly valued.

The newsroom staff producing the paper is also smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web. The staff also is under greater pressure, has less institutional memory, less knowledge of the community, of how to gather news and the history of individual beats. There are fewer editors to catch mistakes.”

The research indicates more people are reading the news, despite subscriptions numbers not being as strong as they once were years ago.

Many of us are going through these changes first hand and wondering what the role of the news librarian will and should be. For some of us, it’s not a question of how to keep up with the change, but how to facilitate it in a way tha preserves our role within the news organization and keeps us valuable contributors to the industry. What do we need to do to prove our value, both within our organizations and throughout the profession?

Many news organizations are carrying stories about the study, as are many blogs.

Hey all you Web app developers out there: Babbledog is sponsoring another WebNOB meeting at Jillian’s in Manchester, NH, from 6-8 pm on Wednesday, July 16. RSVP and more details

(I can’t believe my extreme lack of inspiration to blog sucked that one out of my head. We planned it weeks ago and and I meant to mention it here earlier.)

I would like to wish j and her family, the other Scratchpad contributors, and the Scratchpad readers a safe and happy 4th!

You should try to take out the movie 1776 from your local public library, if you get a chance. It’s a musical loosely based during the
Declaration of Independence period in Philadelphia.

Cheers

Posted by Rich

At the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference in New York a few years back, a fellow, who if I recall correctly worked for a news organization in Dallas at the time, who is very tall and African-American graced us with his presence. He says he gets lots of weird looks when he tells people his profession because not only are very tall and male librarians rare, but African-American librarians are few and far between. And he is blessed with all three traits.

Amy Disch emailed me a segment of National Public Radio’s Bryant Park Project that deals with the scarcity of black, male librarians via an interview with Julius Jefferson of the Library of Congress. He is attending the American Library Association conference and will be discussing the issue there.

Some of you will appreciate how they draw out the importance of librarians as culture keepers and how minorities can play a very important role in that, the discussion about what it takes to be a librarian (master’s degree, usually), and why there are so few African-Americans in the profession. One bit I didn’t catch in the story is whether the numbers apply to all librarians or just librarians who are likely to be or are members of the ALA. Does the same hold true for special librarianship?

I couldn’t quickly find the name of the interviewer, but it sounds a little like Tavis Smiley. *flashes back to radio days*

Thanks for sharing, Amy!

Addendum 7/3: Apparently, the fellow mentioned above left quite a positive impression on a few of our colleagues because I’ve gotten several emails from people confirming his identity. Thanks for the reminders. Maybe I should have spelled out that I was intentionally not naming him because I don’t generally name people on this weblog without their consent unless they’re named in a source to which I’m linking or have done something very publicly to which I’m referring, like Stephen Abram giving a speech at a conference. It’s good to know I’m not the only one who remembers him and has noticed his absence at subsequent SLAs.

LD, if you’re out there somewhere, feel free to self-identify and give us an update.

When people don’t seek proper safety for storms because they’re busy trying to record on their personal gadgets, I have to wonder if our love of gadgets has gone too far. *kisses phone that only makes phone calls*

(I’m not refering to the storm chaser who made the film. Storm chasing is fun and amazing, especially when it’s done by trained people who share their materials with us later. I’m refering to the people mentioned in the article who stood by the glass window filming instead of going to safer positions inside the gas station. Let someone else film it and post it on the Internet. You can watch it later because you sought shelter so you’d survive.)

Another item from Babbledog