j's scratchpad

The New England Technical Services Librarians, a section of the New England Library Association, is hold their annual spring conference called The Many Hats of Technical Services on Friday, April 12, 2013 at the College of the Holy Cross, Hogan Campus Center, Worcester, MA.

Keynote speakers will be Susan Gibbons, University Librarian, Yale University and Jessamyn West, Library Technologist & Community Manager, Metafilter.com and her library blog,  http://www.librarian.net/

Nicole Engard, Vice President of Education, ByWater Solutions and her library blog, What I Learned Today  http://www.web2learning.net) will be holding a morning session called The Accidental Systems Librarian: Using our Librarian Competencies in Managing Systems.

Registration

Currently Unemployed / Library School Student – $25.00
NETSL/NELA Personal Member – $50.00
Non-Members – $80.00

Registration ends on Friday, March 29, 2013. There are no walk-in registrations.

For more info:
 http://netsl.wordpress.com/netslconferen…

Posted by Rich

Even though RSVPs are closed, I thought I would mention the presentation folks from the National Records and Archives Administration (NARA) are giving at MIT’s Center for Civic Media Thursday (2/21) from 12-1:30 pm.

Our speakers will provide a brief introduction to the kinds of records that the National Archives maintains, a discussion of some of the new ways that we are seeking to make the content in those records available and more useable, and how we are looking beyond traditional researchers in the process.

Greetings

My library network, NOBLE, is looking for a full-time System Support Specialist. The deadline for applying is Thursday, Feb 7, 2013. Knowledge of Linux operating systems is required,

Institution: NOBLE, North Of Boston Library Exchange
Job: Systems Support Specialist
Duties/Description: Systems Support Specialist needed to participate in
operation of servers, networks and software for the North Of
Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) in Danvers. Operate and
update servers, troubleshoot issues, file bug reports,
working with NOBLE staff, staff of other networks, system
vendors and the open source community.

NOBLE is an automated library network and technology partner
for 28 public and academic libraries operating an open
source Evergreen library management system as well as
providing web hosting, email, a telecommunications network,
downloadable ebooks and audiobooks, and digital repository
service.
Qualifications: Knowledge of Linux operating systems required. Familiarity
with perl, PHP; relational databases (e.g., MySQL,
PostgreSQL), web (e.g., HTTP, HTML, XML, CSS,), Javascript
and programming concepts desirable. Knowledge and
experience with software development, including version
control, documentation, and sound security practices,
computer applications in a library setting, web servers, and
Apache experience with HTML5, WordPress, Evergreen a plus.

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Computer or Information
Science or a related field and 1-3 years of increasingly
responsible related experience optimal. Ability to work
independently and with initiative as needed, and the ability
to work collaboratively.
Salary: $52,100 with benefits
Closing Date: February 7, 2013
Send: Applications accepted until position is filled. To
ensure consideration, applications should be
submitted by February 7, 2013 to
 gagnon at noblenet.org, attn. Systems Support search.

Posted by Rich

Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society is offering a 12-week online copyright course to 500 selected students. Applications are available now through January 3.

We’re excited to announce that Berkman Faculty Director Terry Fisher will be teaching a version of his Copyright course on the edX platform in the spring, beginning Jan. 28: https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/HLS1x/2013_Spring/about.

Unlike other “MOOCs” (massive open online courses), Copyright will be offered to a relatively small cohort of 500 students, who will be admitted via an application process and supported by a small army of Harvard Law School Teaching Fellows. The Teaching Fellows will lead weekly, real-time discussions for course sections.

The application process is open now through Jan 3. We’re looking forward to diverse and international participation, and would very much appreciate if you could help spread the word to your communities:

Tweet: https://twitter.com/berkmancenter/status/281801653223559168

edX Copyright course page: https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/HLS1x/2013_Spring/about

edX Copyright application page: https://hub.law.harvard.edu/copyrightx/courses/1?course_tracker_id=1

If the world doesn’t end soon, that is.

Via a Washington Monthly blog post, RKO told me a college close to my heart, Newberry College, now offers a social media major. According to the press release: “Offered through the Department of Arts and Communications, the Social Media major will be an original interdisciplinary program that would capitalize on the strengths of existing courses in Graphic Design, Communications, Business Administration, Psychology and Statistics. Four innovative courses, created specifically for the Social Media major are also included in the curriculum.” The Washington Monthly wonders what kind of value such a major would have. Would students be better off earning allied degrees, such as design or marketing, then honing social media skills on the side (which so many of us do anyway)? I guess we’ll find out once graduates from the new program get jobs.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that because of my ties to the college involved.

Need some travel ideas? How about visiting some haunted libraries?

This international list features exciting destinations like Mexico, England, Ireland, Australia, and South Africa.

The list of US hauntings inspires a tour of the Midwest and Southwest with a few wanderings to other regions.

Some of the ghosts are librarians, library users, and former land owners.

Tonight, 11/8, from 5:30 – 7 pm, the New England Chapter of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (NEASIST) discusses an upcoming case where someone made academic journal articles available to the public, US v. Swartz.

Location:
Champions Sports Bar, Marriott Hotel
Kendall Square plaza (next to the Red Line)
50 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142

Aaron Swartz has been charged with felonies for accessing JSTOR via the MIT network, getting many articles, <strike?and making them publicly accessible elsewhere (correction in the addendum). Tonight’s conversation focuses on many aspects of his actions and the consequences.

I thought I had posted about this situation before, but apparently not. The NEASIST blog post points to some articles for background.

Disclosure: I know Aaron.

Addenda: 11/08/2012 I am mistaken about what Aaron did with the articles. All he had done with them was download them.

The meeting was not a presentation or summary and discussion as many of us hoped it would be. We made small talk waiting for someone to start the meeting. When it became apparent that wasn’t what was happening, some of us talked about US v. Swartz. Since many of us had come to learn about the situation and its present status, we weren’t really prepared to have any indepth discussion about it. The folks I chatted with came up with far more questions than insightful perspectives.

01/13/13: It is with great sadness that I share the news of Aaron’s death. I will miss him and his brilliant mind.

Kevin Poulsen of Wired Magazine summarizes some of Aaron’s accomplishments: “When he was 14 years old, Aaron helped develop the RSS standard; he went on to found Infogami, which became part of Reddit. But more than anything Aaron was a coder with a conscience: a tireless and talented hacker who poured his energy into issues like network neutrality, copyright reform and information freedom. Among countless causes, he worked with Larry Lessig at the launch of the Creative Commons, architected the Internet Archive’s free public catalog of books, OpenLibrary.org, and in 2010 founded Demand Progress, a non-profit group that helped drive successful grassroots opposition to SOPA last year.” He also reports that MIT is investigating their “… involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. [MIT's president] asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took.”

Just the other day, I was telling someone about blog group’s quest to attend campaign events for the Democratic presidential nominee candidates back in 2003 and how I should have been thinking about doing a little bit of that this fall while I don’t have a full-time job taking dibs on my weekdays. Today, one of my friends sent me a link to register for a ticket to a major Democratic rally featuring President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton in Concord, NH on Sunday, November 4. Tickets to New Hampshire events with Mitt Romney are available for Portsmouth on Saturday, November 3, and Manchester on Monday, November 5.

Libertarian Gary Johnson will be elsewhere in the country. Green Party’s Jill Stein will be in Tennessee until the debate with other candidates in Washington, DC, Sunday night (11/4). From their campaign sites, I could not figure out what Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party are doing until the Washington, DC debate.

But I did figure out where some web designers could possibly get jobs … I’m going to rest my sore eyes away from the computer now.

As if hunting for a job is not tricky enough, social media users now have to ponder what they want to post with what a potential employer might think about the content. Onlineclasses.org has an amusing flowchart giving pointers about when to post what online while looking for work and statistics about recruiters’ and hiring managers’ online research practices. Seventy-nine percent of hirers look at a candidate’s online presence. Seventy percent have rejected a candidate because of something they saw online.

It must be fall because it is once again time for the Boston Book Festival. Most events cost nothing and happen close to or in Copley Square. As well as authors talking about books and writing, there will be writing workshops, exhibits, flash fiction, and poetry.