Saturday, July 05, 2003

Librarians want to take filtering into their own hands "Officials of the American Library Assocation will call a meeting with the makers of Internet filtering software next month to voice concern over a federal law that requires libraries and schools to use Internet filters or risk losing federal money." [via New York Times; read the rest of the story - may require registration] For more information from the ALA, see their announcement. 6:56:53 PM    comment [] University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Libraries Develop Policies to Protect the Privacy rights of Patrons "The impact of the USA Patriot Act is evident at the Cofrin Library at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, where the staff has undertaken new policies to protect the privacy rights of patrons. The library has implemented a more systematic and swift protocol for the destruction of patron records. It will no longer keep a record of past reading requests. Once a transaction is completed, the patron’s request is purged, according to Leanne Hansen, assistant director of the Cofrin Library at UWGB." [read the rest of the story from the Green Bay Press Gazzette] 11:56:33 AM    comment [] Anniversary of Freedom of Information Act. (This should have been included in a previous post I made) Anniversary of Freedom of Information Act. "George Washington University's National Security Archive, the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, today released its annual Freedom of Information Act birthday posting, 37 years to the day after President Johnson grudgingly signed the U.S. FOIA into law on July 4, 1966. The Archive reported that documents released under federal, state and local freedom of information acts sparked more than 6,000 news stories in 2002 and the first half of 2003 (according to the Archive's searches of on-line databases), including revelations of major public interest such as the use of electronic highway toll data in criminal, administrative and civil probes, the failure of government agencies to prosecute water pollution violations, the misuse of federal student aid, defective military airplanes, and the loss of explosives, mines, mortars and firearms from U.S. stockpiles. The report features an itemized list of 20 significant news stories from the last 18 months that cited documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act." [via beSpacific] 9:46:18 AM    comment [] A User Driven Help Tips Distribution System Jacek Artymiak talks about a "Napster-like distribution system, an Amazon.com--like rating system, XML, and micropayments" and wonders if this could be the future of computer books. "Today's eBook efforts are missing the point. They make reading books harder, not easier. A book that cannot be read once the batteries run out or when you forget your password is pretty useless to me. Technology ought to make our lives easier, after all." [via Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Network Weblogs] 9:40:44 AM    comment [] Blogging for the Masses  AOL be Blogging " Jeff Jarvis : 'Yesterday, I was one of a privileged council of blogging elders -- Meg Hourihan, Nick Denton, Anil Dash, Clay Shirky -- invited to see AOL's new blogging tools, which will be released later this year. They've done a good job.' You'll be able to blog from IM Every weblog will have a RSS/XML feed The want to feeds to be indexed by Technorati " [ Micah's Weblog ] I think this is huge becau... [via The Shifted Librarian] 9:31:27 AM    comment [] Government Information Awareness   Information and the US Government: My subversive little self really loves this! [via LISNews.com] In other government information news, I heard Peter Kornbluh speaking on Alternative Radio (via my local public radio station KOPB) the other day. His topic was his forthcoming book, The Pinochet File and how the National Security Archive had finally been able to get a number of documents released (censored, of course) regarding the US Government's involvement in the overthrow of then elected President Allende and subsequent support of General Pinochet (not that I was overly surprised to learn about this). What I found so fascinating is that then President Nixon and Henry Kissinger recorded almost every word they ever spoke and had to know that eventually, some of that material would be released to the public. It was amazing to hear Kornbluh quote Kissinger from his memoirs and then quote directly from transcribed phone calls and hear the outright lies that Kissinger wrote in his memoirs. I'm not sure why but I've been interested in Latin American politics for a number of years and nothing I learn about our government's involvement down there surprises me. Still, I can only take it in small doses and I tend to focus on Guatemala more than other Latin American countries. Despite that, I might just have to pick up a copy of this one.   9:04:18 AM    comment []

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