In the past two days: a) a second grader has jumped up from seemingly nowhere during a book talk and knocked the book from my hand directly on to a neighboring child's head (sharp book corner down, of course); b) a kindergarten student has flicked off the light mid-lesson, causing me to avoid stepping on 20 other children and/or knocking down endless book shelves while trying to reach the light switch at the other side of a completely pitch black room (that's right, in an interior room with no windows, both doors shut!); c) two fourth grade students have nearly gotten into a fist fight over the results of a game played during my lesson.  I arrive home nearly every evening with a splitting headache.  I don't know how elementary classroom teachers do it.  If I end up in a K-12 library, I'm thinking that secondary level is really the way to go.  Hormones? Snogging in the corner?  Yeah, I can handle that stuff MUCH more effectively.

We’re discussing cybersecurity this week in class.  For me, cybersecurity has to do with much more than worms and spyware.  Perhaps that’s just an indicator that I’m paranoid :).  I am going to digress in this direction to what spyware is designed to do – track your actions on the Internet – and connect this to electronic surveillance.  As a recent Washington, DC area "escapee" this happens to be one of my pet topics, so I’m going to step onto the soapbox here and talk about this subject and its relation to libraries. 

In 2003, the Washington Post broke a story about National Security Letters, Dept of Justice documents that requested specific information on a patron or customer while placing a gag order on the recipient.  In 2003 after the news leak, then-Attorney General Ashcroft stated that no libraries had been tapped for Patriot info.  However, according to this article, as of mid-2003, 444 out of 1500 libraries surveyed had been approached for patron information by a government agency (225 of them refused to provide info).  I'm not sure what the survey methods were, so those numbers may or may not be accurate.  The only publicized case thus far involves a librarian at a non-profit that handles records for 20+ Connecticut public libraries who filed a suit via the ACLU in 2005.  According to an article in the Washington Post, the district judge declared the action unconstitutional last fall, so it will be interesting to see how this ruling plays out. 

The ACLU has documented case progress here, even providing a pdf of the actual national security letter.  PBS show NOW also featured an interview with the librarians involved with the suit.

A link on the Post article noted that the FBI issues tens of thousands of these letters per year, but the source does not categorize by recipient type (phone companies and ISPs, booksellers and libraries, banks, etc).  The ALA has posted extensively on this topic in its intellectual freedom section, and provides guidance for librarians dealing with this contentious issue.  Most state library associations have also adopted policies (NYLA's is here). 

Some library systems (Seattle provides a good example) have developed internal policies.  I know that my library does not have a huge policy, but we follow the New York State law on confidentiality (namely, info requests require a subpoena).  We upgraded to a new system recently, and during training I was pleased to see that it defaults to an option where patron info attached to any circulated item is dumped after check-in.  We offer patrons the option to turn on a “reading history” if they want to keep track of their books, but if they do so a warning pops up noting that if they choose this option, the government may have access to these records without their knowledge.  Hurray for the system developers!

If you're very interested in the issue, I recommend looking at the work of Mary Minnow, a librarian-turned-lawyer who consults for the ALA, runs the librarylaw.com website, and has written extensively on this subject.  This article is one of her efforts and includes many good footnoted sources for further reading.

Rachel Singer Gordon, the mind behind the Liminal Librarian Blog, the NextGen Librarian books & columns, and the LIS Jobs website, has struck up a fascinating discussion on her blog.  She has hit the nail right on the head about what I call a "superiority complex" among MLS-minted librarians in the field:

"It’s one thing to value the MLS. It’s another thing entirely to condescend to non-MLS librarians (yes, I said librarians), paraprofessionals, and other non-degreed library workers, to discount their opinions, and to ignore their contributions to their libraries and to librarianship as a whole. We don’t need to be infighting; we have better things to do."

I straddle this topic as a library student working under the librarian title at my small, rural library.  My boss does not have an MLS, but she is a worthy and dedicated director.  After a I graduate, I by no means expect to suddenly feel like I know more than she does just because I've got a new certificate for my wall.  However, I do value the ideals behind an MLS degree.  Otherwise, I wouldn't be in the program.  I think the MLS offers the hows and whys behind the everyday actions undertaken in a library.  Great, non-degreed librarians may do the right thing, but may be at a loss when trying to connect their actions to the big picture. 

I was astounded when, a few months back, I discovered that I couldn't get class credit for completing a real-life project at my own library because.... dum-de-DUM... my professor did not consider my director a real librarian.  This instructor required all projects to be conducted with the partnership of an MLS-degreed librarian.  This sparks some very mixed feelings for me.  My director is a much better library professional than many of the MLS holders I have dealt with.  Yet, at the same time, I can understand my professor's dilemma here.  A non-MLS librarian may seem like an unknown quantity to a stranger.   An MLS holder, in theory, at least knows about all of the material they should be applying to the profession, even if they're not, in practice, doing so.  Non-MLS holders are self-made; if they're good it's because they have reached beyond their potential.  They just haven't forked out that cash and jumped through that hoop. 

I'm glad that Rachel stirred up so much thinking about this issue.  I encourage you to read her blog entry and the active discussion following it. 

If you have any interest in copyright or fair use issues, I encourage you to take a look at the wiki page resulting from our live and comprehensive discussion on these issues at Library Camp which just occurred.

I'm in day two of library camp today.  The format is different today -- we're in more of conference mode than unconference.  The two speakers both covered collection development topics; the first speaker covered the theoretical side of things while the afternoon speaker focused on the practical, nuts-and-bolts elements of actual weeding and acquisition practices.  Also, preferences for breakout sessions are more pronounced -- this morning, two session choices had only 1-2 attendees, while everyone else migrated to the other two "hot topics."  It seems that I don't have my finger on the pulse of what's hot in libraries today -- the sessions I was most interested in were the empty ones! 

Although I certainly learned a lot from the speakers today, I really loved the discussion and conversation sparked within the unconference sessions yesterday. 

P.S. The Holiday Inn's food was EXCELLENT.

I had a blast working today at CNY Library Camp.  The event, the first of its kind in the Syracuse area, is known as an "unconference."  Why the "un," you ask?  Well, the format differs from a conference format in that  we aren't inviting a bunch of people in to hear a speaker and sit through a bunch of Powerpoint presentations or workshop activities. Instead, the organizers SurveyMonkeyed a bunch of interested librarians to see what they would like to come together and discuss with their peers across the many fields of librarianship.  Other library unconferences have been held several times in many parts of the globe, from Ann Arbor to Australia (here's a list of 'em).  This whole concept is fantastic for one simple reason I have experienced personally at just about every conference I've attended -- the fact that the networking and discussions during the break were really the best parts of attending, despite the fact that the presentation was often given by a prominent person in the field. 

For this unconference, we discussed the future of libraries.  Everyone who came in got a schedule of rooms slated for discussion sessions on given topics.  These topics were based on attendee interest, as indicated on that survey data.  Amazingly enough, every session drew a crowd -- there were no empty rooms for anything.  We hosts (that is, a bunch of Syracuse iSchool students) broke the ice with a few leading questions, and then (mostly) sat back to hear what these great practitioners in the field had to say about topics from Library 2.0 to leadership and security policies to next-gen cataloging.  I hosted one session, on untapped opportunities, and played scribe for two others -- Leadership: Keeping up, and Public 2.0.  It was amazing to hear how much everyone had to say, and the attendees loved the event.  Of course, different sessions had varying success -- in some, the group had to be kicked out of the room to nip discussion in the bud when time was up, while other sessions had a few uncomfortable silences that made we hosts cringe.  As a whole, though, the event was a smashing success.  I learned so much about everything discussed, from all sorts of different perspectives -- school library system directors, reference librarians, college professors, public librarians, medical librarians, the works.  People drove several hours to attend, and there were probably just under 100 people there.  My only complaint was, as a host/scribe, my topic choices were selected based on staffing needs.  However, the wiki provides a nice summary of what was discussed in every session I could not attend myself. 

Tomorrow, we're holding a more traditional conference session.  Two speakers (one of which was in a few of my sessions today) will get an hour a piece to talk about collection development, and the rest of the day will be for networking and more unconference-style breakout sessions that will cover collection development issues.   

There are plenty of ideas for using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in schools.  Let's look at a few from the blogosphere.

Andy Carvin discusses having students read, fact-check, dissect, and edit a Wikipedia article.  “Get enough classrooms doing this, you kill several birds with one stone: Wikipedia's information gets better, students help give back to the Net by improving the accuracy of an important online resource, and teachers have a way to make lemons into lemonade, turning Wikipedia from a questionable information source to a powerful tool for information literacy.”  Three points go to Andy for this vision.  I'm a fan.

Peter Leppik experimented with posting not-so-true entries on Wikipedia, and seeing if these entries were taken down.   I think this is a truly valuable idea to take into schools.  If kids and teens post bogus info themselves, and don’t see it taken down within the week, that’s a fantastically valuable lesson that will really hit home. 

Younger students can use Wikipedia to support curriculum activities in a new and exciting way.  For instance, Monica Edinger had her fourth graders use their newly-learned editing skills to improve a shabby entry on children’s classic Charlotte’s Web.  Edinger’s project is fantastic because she combined so much here.  Not only did she gain students’ interest by using technology, she tied in literature appreciation and writing skills.  These kids had to read the book and demonstrate their understanding of the story to effectively post a summary of the book to the world.  They practiced using editing marks and picking out where an existing text needed to be edited because of poor word choice, grammar, or syntax. 

If none of these ideas strike your fancy, there are many wikis on using wikis in the classroom. Here are two: http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Wiki_in_a_K-12_classroom and http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/Examples+of+educational+wikis

Happy March!

I'm rebelling.  I'm not going to post about Wikipedia yet, although I have heaps to say about that.  First, I'm going to offer a nifty list o' links about various library nonsense. 

• Awesome tools for your library website.
• Meredith Farkas on why libraries should -- or should not -- love and/or enter Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites.
• Why you should fall on your knees and worship a librarian.  This link isn't really useful, but it's really funny. 
• A nifty marketing tool: how much do you think your library is worth?
• Links to learn about wikis.
• Pathfinder on evaluating web content.
• How to make your library website usable.  Make sure to click "home" to see his other entries on designing library websites -- they're chock full o' good stuff.
• Yay!
• Of COURSE librarians need their own comic strip.  C'mon, office cubicle dwellers have one, right?  Even science guys like to have a laugh at our expense...
• Librarians in the movies!
• My favorite high school library website
• My favorite elementary school library website
• Ever wonder about the history of public libraries?
• Fun bogus websites -- use 'em to laugh, or use 'em to teach the kids about why they shouldn't believe everything they read...

....there's no Virginia Woolf, but every single James Patterson novel can be found in hardcover, paperback, and/or audiobook.