So what happened? A lot.

A few days after I wrote my last post in December, the company I work for (VMware) underwent a massive re-organization. My manager and all my teammates were laid off with no notice. As in escorted directly out of the building. I came home that day to discover that the company my wife works for (Symantec) also laid off her and her entire department. So needless to say, I became acutely aware of my own employment situation.

About one month later, on the morning of February 3rd, I found myself laying on a sidewalk, looking down in disbelief as a rental care driven by a German tourist ran over my left foot. It’s really just one of those things you have to see for yourself.

If you shudder while watching, just think of what it looked like from my angle!

I spent the next few weeks on short-term disability leave, clinging to physical and pharmaceutical crutches while plowing through two MLIS classes: Information Tools and Technologies (LIBR 240), and Web Usability (LIBR 250). Ironically, the time off from work gave me the time I needed to focus more attention on school, and I managed to complete my finals just before the summer rush at work began.

LIBR 240 was not a great class. It might give librarians an edge over other librarians, but the course material is at least two years behind the technology curve and barely touched on LIS tools or technologies. Which is a shame, because the result will be dozens of students who can’t even compare or assess the barrage of IT solutions that will marketed to them upon their entry into the field. One year after signing up for various ALA and SLIS email lists, I am still shocked by the sheer volume of “library automation” software and other software products being actively promoted. Seems like there’s a lot of money to be made off the library sciences–as long as you’re not a librarian.

But I digress. The LIBR 250 Web usability course, while heavy on design and light on research methods, was a great experience that gave me a chance to complete a long-standing study of corporate newsletter usability that I originally conceived as a work project. However, by the end of the course, I also came to realize that usability is not my core interest.

In fact, after a semester of unadulterated Web geekage, I’m ready for some more hardcore library science. So for the upcoming Fall semester, I will study the arcane art of Vocabulary Design (LIBR 247) and work on my people skills in Reference and Information Services (LIBR 210). The fascinating world of indexing and abstracting awaits….

The case marks yet another instance in which the European Union and its member nations have exhibited a more progressive stance on copyright protection, and more aggressive stance against corporate interests, as evidenced by their recent $1.5 billion fine against Microsoft.

Legislative complexity is part of the game when you’re operating internationally, and what might fly here in the Wild West is considered downright uncouth to our more refined European friends. The ruling is ubdoubtedly encouraging to authors, but it might not portend well for libraries that want to make their collections available in electronic format. Many of the items in the Google Books project come from research institutions such as the McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz, which has shipped its entire collection of 1.5 million books to Google for digitization.

Google’s liability in the French case likely stems from the fact that they operate the infrastructure and host all the data on their equipment, libraries may have to think twice about the ramifications of making digitized content available to users through the Web, at least when they are running the infrastructure and hosting the data themselves, as opposed to simply pointing to another Web site with hyperlinks.

And of course, on an ethical level it brings up the principle of respecting intellectual property laws, and the larger question of whether members of a national organization such at the ALA are beholden to respect the intellectual property laws of countries, especially when they differ from the laws in our country.

Welcome to the global economy!

E-readers are all the rage these days. From the Amazon Kindle and its electronic paper display from E Ink Corporation, to the Apple iPhone and Google’s Android operating system for smartphones, society is at a tipping point in the transition from print to digital media consumption. Mobile computing devices are closer than ever to delivering the “pleasant” experience of reading a printed book, and the imminent arrival of network-enabled (Wi-Fi AND 3G) Kindle-type devices may further hasten this metamorphosis.

Soon we will be able to fit an entire library of books in our backpack or even our pockets. Are libraries prepared for this brave new world?

Many libraries are trying to stay relevant with digital lending services for library patrons. Some organizations like the Sunnyvale Public Library are providing cardholders with  free access to e-books from multiple providers. The McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz is not only making its catalogs and collections to the Internet, but also redesigning, reorganizing and expanding its facilities to accomodate “new styles of learning, rapidly evolving ways of accessing and presenting information, a trend toward social gathering, and a shift in how libraries interact with their clientele.” Gone are the dark ages of stacks and slient studying; now are the halcyon days of server racks and conference rooms. Libraries are becoming community information centers. Even the word “library,” which comes from the Latin word for “book,” is rapidly becoming a misnomer.

But beneath the surface of this technocratic utopia, there are tremors that threaten the very foundation of the library as a public institution. On one hand, media industries–from the MPAA and RIAA to newspaper, magazine and book publishers–continue to resist the online digital “revolution” in an attempt to preserve traditional print-based business models. Some companies such as Simon & Schuster have refrained from distributing its e-books to public libraries. Others place tight restrictions on electronic content, forcing libraries to purchase multiple digital copies of an e-book and prohibiting them from lending a single copy of that e-book multiple people at the same time. Which begs the question: what is the value of an e-book to libraries and readers if it must be treated as a print book?

On the other hand, projects such as Google Books are disrupting the entire ecosystem, rousing the ire of authors, media companies and copyright holders while displacing the traditional role of the public library. The privileged position that libraries once enjoyed is withering not only because Google Books exists, but also because it is essentially a for-profit library that is being leveraged as a platform for advertising and market research. Google has the muscle to negotiate favorable terms with AP and the Writer’s Guild, but their attitude is causing companies like Simon & Schuster to tighten their grip on digital content, much to the detriment of public libraries staffed by professionals who adhere to a much higher standard of ethics and respect for intellectual property.

And beyond the content and copyrights, there is the equipment. The server, networking and storage systems needed to house large digital collections is not cheap, and neither are the IT managers who have the expertise required to maintain these systems. Most IT organizations today must spend upwards of 70 percent of their resources just to maintain the status quo. Datacenters can take up easily as much room as book warehouses and consume a tremendous amount of electrical power. Hardware and software incompatibilities create obstacles to the maintenance, migration and sharing of digital collections. And of course, there is the endless cycle of hardware and software upgrades that vendors push out in their quest to maintain high profit margins and continuous revenue growth.

So while libraries are on the cusp of a digital revolution, there are also caveats and consequences to be considered. However, there is a clear opportunity for libraries to re-assert their primacy by using this time of tumultuous change to re-invent themselves as community information centers where people can gather and interact, not only to access information but also create and exchanging new information in person and online. And if the Sunnyvale Public Library and McHenry Library are any indication of what is to come, libraries could actually save us all from the social atomization, abstraction and alienation that often accompanies new forms of media technology.

This is one of those stories that demonstrates the transformative power of libraries and universal access to information.

I don’t know much about Malawi, but my wife tells me it is one of the poorest nations on earth. During his interview with John Stewart, Kamkwamba mentions that his village was suffering from famine and that he had been forced to drop out of school (here’s a picture of his classroom) when he came across a U.S. textbook in a rural library with a picture of a windmill generator.

There were many hilarious moments during the interview, such as when Kamkwamba talks about how other people in the village thought he was crazy for trying to build the windmill and told him he was smoking too much marijuana, or when he discovered Google during a subsequent trip to Russia (“when I Googled ‘windmill’ I found that there were millions of applications. I was like, ‘where was Google all this time?’”). And Kamkwambe’s humor is all the more amazing given the intensity of the struggles that people in Malawi face, and the transformative power that a single book, probably considered outdated by our schools, had on an entire village.

Kamkwambe has written a book about his experience called “The Boy who Harnessed the Wind” and journals his current experiences on Typepad, Facebook and Twitter. One can only hope that his book makes its way to that library in Malawi.

Matt’s criticism is actually very timely, given the recent pressure that the FTC has put on bloggers to clearly disclose their relationships with advertisers. Furthermore, it seems completely preposterous to shut down Google’s online services when their data collection policies are seemingly par for the course. Shutting down Gmail and Google Docs would doubtlessly have a negative impact not only on private citizens and public corporations, but also on government agencies that need some kind of alternative to Microsoft Office.

EPIC FAIL?

On the other hand, EPIC is not an advertiser paying Hoofnagle to write for them, nor are they an industry lobby group wining and dining politicians. Quite the opposite, in fact. EPIC is a world-class privacy advocate group and they have done some excellent surveys on privacy and human rights around the world, which I once used as a resource for creating an interactive map of data privacy and protection laws around the world. They’ve also done a bit of work on issues like data retention that are near and dear to Google’s heart. One of the things I learned from reading these surveys is that data protection and privacy laws in the United States are lagging far behind those of the EU, Asian tiger economies, and even emerging economies in South America. For example, in the U.S. I do not have a guaranteed legal right to demand that you Google folks tell me a) what personal information you have on me b) how you are using that information, and c) who you are sharing that information with. Nor do I have the legal right to see that information or demand that you correct any of that data if it is inaccurate. Your privacy policy informs Google users about some of these ABCs, but its no substitution for legal protection against abuse of my personally identifiable information.

I would prefer that Hoofnagle lobby the government to enact stronger data privacy and protection laws that regulate the information that Google collect through their services. After all, Google is playing by the rules, and it is really pathetic that our government has to do things like set up so-called Safe Harbor Principles just so that our banks can continue to do business with EU countries. Google seems to have a reasonable, albeit naive, stance towards personal privacy and I think there is an opportunity for them to engage and work with Hoofnagle on these public policy issues. After all, proper control of data privacy and protection serve to facilitate, rather than hinder, the free flow of information by creating an atmosphere of trust and integrity.

There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute

The basic problem I personally have with Google (and Facebook, and and and) is that the company is setting a bad precedent in terms of what corporations are allowed to do with my information, and in terms of the rights I retain to said information. Google may use its powers only for Good, but I’m quite certain they are aware of all the naughty things that data brokers and identity thieves do with our information. And for every one Google there are countless organizations and individuals acting in bad faith who are already exploiting the lack of data protection and privacy laws to their advantage. And it’s not just about the data that Google collects for marketing and advertising purposes; I have a ton of personal information stored on their servers just by merit of using those services. What if that information is lost, leaked, stolen, etc.? If it weren’t for state laws such as California’s SB-1386, Google wouldn’t even have to mention the data security breach and I might not find out until someone commits identity theft.

Bottom line: Hoofnagle, in my humble opinion, is aiming his gun at the wrong target, and I don’t see how Gmail is inherently any more dangerous than any other webmail service. Frankly, he should be a LOT more worried about companies like AT&T, and the government would be overreaching its authority by shutting down Google Docs or Gmail based on these arguments. On the other hand, maybe Hoofnagle does have a point, and a lot of other privacy advocates have warned that cloud computing and online services are a trap. I’ve already commented on the conundrum of participation and property rights in the age of electronic information–when my information becomes Google’s data and I have less control over my identity, my media, etc. than Google does, something is seriously wrong with our society and the legal frameworks that are supposed to personal privacy. I mean, what if Google claimed rights to my car simply because I parked in their lot, and possibly even after that?

But to be fair, we as citizens are also to blame for our complacency. It’s personally shocking that Americans have such distrust of the government knowing things about them and yet allow amoral corporations to gain access to all the intimate details of our lives. I strongly feel that my personal information, more than any idea I might come up with, should be treated as intellectual property. MY intellectual property.

The goal of the assignment was threefold: gauge awareness of library activities, explain the process of discovering said activities, and make recommendations for improvement.

I was actually quite shocked to discover that Sunnyvale has only one library. I grew up in Berkeley, CA, which has about six locations including a tool lending library (anyone need to borrow a chainsaw?), even though the city’s population is roughly equal that that of Sunnyvale. But I digress.

Finding the library’s Web site via Google was not a problem, but what I found was rather disappointing. The first thing that caught my attention was the domain; while the library does have it’s own domain (www.sunnyvalelibrary.org), the URL redirects to a page within the City of Sunnyvale Web site (sunnyvale.ca.gov/departments/library/, which itself is just a subdomain of the State of California Web site). This is a peculiar decision in terms of information architecture, and from a marketing perspective, it certainly does not help the library establish its own presence and identity.

The Web site itself is very, um, old-school. There are multiple navigational units–two horizontal units at the top, and vertical units on the left and right–and the home page is basically a link farm that makes it difficult to discern what might be the main topic of interest for patrons. In addition, some of the content seems out of context–for example, the top  spotlight (“search for jobs”) sends visitors off to several third-party sites without mentioning any resources that the library might have to offer. At the end of the day, the library’s Web site just doesn’t seem like a great place to stay up to date on the various activities taking place at the library–it is simply not a great marketing and outreach tool. And I suspect some of the librarians at SPL are well aware of this, because they’ve launched a barrage of other online information services that are far more effective.

Sunnyvale Library Kids

The library does, however, maintain a separate “microsite” for children that is more thoughtfully constructed with the target audience in mind:

http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/librarykids/

The navigation on this microsite is effectively and creatively organized, and the home page is well targeted for children and young adults.

Facebook

Better still is the Sunnyvale Library page on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/sunnyvalelibrary

The library staff has made good use of Facebook as a social marketing tool for engaging the library community. Facebook users can become “fans” of the library, and upon my first visit, I noticed that several of my friends are already fans. Shame on me for lagging!

When Facebook users become fans of the library, they receive updates from the library on their Facebook “wall” (the library appears to post updates at least once a week) on topics ranging from special library hours to tips on finding foreign films. The library also posts events, such as workshops on retirement planning, that Facebook users can RSVP to attend.

Twitter

The library also makes excellent use of Twitter to engage patrons online:

http://twitter.com/sunnyvalelib

In general, the library’s Twitter content is separate and distinct from the content on Facebook. Most of the recent “tweets” support the summer youth reading programs at the library with reading suggestions and updates on reading contests, and many of the posts contain shortcut hyperlinks to search result pages within the library’s online catalog, which can save time and familiarize younger patrons with the catalog system.

Blogs

In addition, the library staff maintains not one but (at least) three blogs:

· http://sunnyvalelibrary.blogspot.com/ – Sunnyvale Library of the Future project

· http://sunnyvalelibrarytoday.blogspot.com/ - Sunnyvale Library Today

· http://passitonsv.wordpress.com/ – Similar to the Facebook and Twitter content

The first two blogs appear to be written by the library’s director, while the WordPress blog (and probably the Facebook and Twitter pages, as well) appears to be written by reference desk staff.

Library Podcasts

Last but not least, there is librarypodcasts.org, a blog of audio and video recordings from speakers and performers (e.g., a Tibetan dance group performance or a poetry reading by Nils Peterson). The podcasts are also available for free through the Apple iTunes Store, which provides a convenient way for patrons to subscribe have podcasts downloaded to their iPod and iPhone devices as they are published.

Suggestions from the Peanut Gallery

Where to begin? There are a great many things that SPL could do to improve its online marketing and outreach efforts. The first step would be to establish a separate, unique domain. Another would be to consolidate their blogging infrastructure. A third suggestion would be for library to amplify the promotion of its social networking activities on the SPL Web site–adding feeds via the Facebook and Twitter APIs, or even just organizing the links to Facebook, Twitter, and their blogs together in a little box, similar to the “Obama Everywhere” section of the Organizing for America Web site.

But the most useful piece of advice I can offer is for SPL to start thinking strategically and holistically about their online presence. It’s not enough just to jump on the social networking bandwagon; organizations must orchestrate their online activities in order achieve a real return on their investment. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but anything less is, to one degree or another, a waste of time and energy.

But since I was being graded on my response, I had to give it the old graduate school try.

I noticed that the ALA Banned Books Week is coming up at the end of September, and in the spirit of the event, I decided to propose a collection of books and other media that are banned in other countries. The objective is simple: To uphold the principle of intellectual freedom by giving immigrants and foreign visitors an opportunity to access information they would not be able to in their native countries. The collection would contain four types of media:

• books (fiction and non-fiction)
• audio recordings (music, speeches, and so on)
• video recordings (movies, events, even cell phone video clips if available)
• computer and video games (for both PCs and video game consoles)

The collection could be broad in scope and variety, but all included media must be in the original language of the country in which it is banned.

To derive more specific demographics about my target audience, I visited the Department of Homeland Security website and downloaded the 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, which provides an annual breakdown of immigrants by country. Here are the top five countries for 2008 in terms of immigrant volume:

• Mexico: 188,015
• China: 75,410
• India: 59,728
• Philippines: 52,391
• Cuba: 48,057

For simplicity, I limited the collection to these five countries, and then compared the relative volume of immigrants from each country to determine the mix of media from each country to include in the collection. For example, 44% of the total pool of immigrants from these five countries came from Mexico; thus, 44% of the collection would be comprised of banned Spanish-language media from Mexico. The pie chart below illustrates the composition of the collection as a whole:

This is admittedly a simplistic methodology; if I were building a real collection, I would probably want the collection to reflect the nationalities of my member base or the local/regional community. It might also be worthwhile to research the volume of non-immigrant foreigners (e.g., students) who are using the library (I grew up in Berkeley where the main branch of the library was used heavily by U.C. Berkeley students, many of whom were foreigners).

Then of course there is the issue of sourcing media for the collection. Aside from availability, there is the unanswered question of censorship policies in the included countries. I know that many books are banned in China, India and Cuba, but what about Mexico? Lastly, I would consider including a list of challenged and banned media in the United States to provide perspective and to encourage library users to go out and find such material.

Enter the Long Tail

As I was thinking about my response to this discussion, there was one thing that kept creeping into my brain: The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. For those not familiar with this concept, it began as a Wired article but has grown into a book (and blog) and is regarded by many as a specialized theory about “niche markets” and frequency distributions. It’s also a direct challenge to the Pareto Principle (commonly known as the 80/20 rule).

Long Tail theory is best explained by example: Borders and Barnes & Noble only carry a very limited collection of books because 80 percent of their sales come from 20 percent of the books in their stores (bestsellers). That’s Pareto Principle. But AMAZON makes a very large percentage of their book sales from items that are not available at Borders or Barnes & Noble–that’s Long Tail. Same goes for the iTunes Music Store vs. Walmart (which until iTunes came around was the biggest music retailer in the country); Apple makes a lot of money off of music you can’t find at Walmart. Here’s a power bar graph (a modified version of a graphic I lifted from Wikipedia–sorry) that provides a simplistic illustration of Pareto vs. Long Tail:

So what is my point? I think The Long Tail could be used as a methodology for identifying niche audiences and collections! Taking my theoretical collection as an example, Pareto Principle would dictate that I build a collection for the Chinese immigrant community because they are the largest pool of immigrants from Asia (75,410 in 2008). But if I followed The Long Tail, I might notice that 74,115 immigrants were listed as “Asia Other” and build a niche collection of banned materials from one or several of these “other” countries.

The obvious caveat here is that the Long Tail is a model best applied on the Web, where scarcity gives way to abundance. But I believe focusing on the other 80% is EXACTLY what diversity is all about, and that it would be worthwhile for librarians to experiment by applying The Long Tail to library collections. Unexpected discoveries may ensue….

But don’t take my word for it; just call AT&T and ask them questions like, “How do you use my personal information? Who else have you disclosed this information to?” Let me know how they respond.

The right to access information, like so many others outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has not enjoyed universal adoption among UN member states. For example, while Americans are free to express most information, we are not necessarily free to seek out or obtain it. We do not, for example, have access to the FBI Investigative Data Warehouse, which “contains hundreds of millions of records and has been characterized as an ‘Uber-Google’“, even though this information is supposedly covered under the Freedom of Information Act. Nor do we necessarily have access to our personal information records that are used or stored by business organizations such as a “data brokers” or telecommunications companies.

“Marcia Bates” is a name I’ve seen many times in my LIBR 202 course. Her paper on “berrypicking” techniques for online search interfaces is a particular favorite of mine in no small part because of the remarkable analogy she draws. But I imagine a at least a few of her fellow library science students got a little tired of hearing the name “Marcia” all the time.

As the title suggests, Bates’ primary focus in this paper is on the design of online search interfaces for what she calls “the evolving search” in which “the query itself (as well as the search terms used) is continually shifting, in part or whole.” For Bates, this model is “much closer to the real behavior of information searchers than the traditional model of information retrieval.” In fact, Bates seeks to “challenge the [traditional] model as a whole” because she believes that “it represents some searches, but not all, perhaps not even the majority, and that with respect to those it does represent, if frequently does so inadequately. Her opinion seems to be that the “classic” model of information retrieval is a “productive” but antiquated ideal that should be modernized and mechanized to support the “real behavior of information searchers,” and she argues that “typical search queries are not static, but rather evolve.”

For me, the connection between berrypicking and evolutionary search evokes a vivid mental image of how much has changed since the days of hunting and gathering societies, and how dependent we’ve become on the search engines and electronic information for our daily sustenance.This notion of an “evolving search” immediately reminded me of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The theory that Bates put forth also reminded me of the philosopher Karl Popper and his evolutionary theory of knowledge, and I thought it might be interesting to critique berrypicking as “evolutionary theory” of information retrieval.

Popper put forth a theory of knowledge that was “coterminus” to Darwin’s theory of evolution, a state of ever-changing nature in which problem-solving was tantamount to survival. Popper believed that knowledge is “an adaptation to a partly unknown environment” that is the result of “anticipatory trials and of unavoidable errors, and of error elimination”. Popper’s conclusion from this is that “knowledge has often the character of expectation” that that “expectations…are uncertain.”

Here we see a major distinction in the way Bates and Popper approach the subject of evolution. While Bates appears to approach information retrieval as an additive, inductive process in which searchers successfully accumulate data bit by bit, Popper views the acquisition of knowledge as a deductive process of trial and error.

Returning to the analogy of berrypicking and the evolving search, Popper might point out that picking berries, like seeking information, is a process of adaptation based on trial (reaching for berry) and error (pricking finger on thorn). Popper might also have argued that search interfaces should be designed to accommodate this problem-solving process by facilitating error elimination. And indeed, we see this type of deductive approach at work through methods such as disambiguation.

Information retrieval is never painless or easy

This is not necessarily a refutation of Bates or her observation that information retrieval is myopically obsessed with subject description. The point here is that there may be an opportunity to take a deductive, rather than inductive, approach to Bates’ theory of berrypicking in hopes of better understanding what triggers change in the evolving search and why information seekers switch between various strategies and information sources over the course of a macro-search query.

Perhaps Disney chose to recast the role as a librarian simply to save time in character development, but their decision plays into the stereotype (not necessarily a negative one) that librarianship is a “noble” profession that is easier to associate with a protagonist character, at least for moviegoers. In the novel, however, Bradbury’s treatment of Halloway as a janitor adds a level of depth and complexity that enhances the character tension and underscores the major themes of the book as a whole. Halloway does not begin the novel as a hero, but he certainly develops into a heroic character over the course of the novel as he casts aside self-loathing and regret in favor of life-affirming self-acceptance, saving himself and his son in the process. Halloway’s job as a janitor in a library is significant in that it conveys ironic juxtaposition, but it also serves as a metaphorical mechanism for depicting his disconnection from the world, and from his son. Halloway’s job also provides a vehicle for revealing his intellectual curiosity, as is made evident during his philosophical perspective on “white hat” and “black hat” books in Chapter 2.

The library itself in this novel is both a place of exploration and wonderment, and a secluded sanctuary. Through the eyes of Halloway’s son, Will, Bradbury describes the library with a sense of unbridled imagination that makes it seem as magical and fantastical as the dark carnival that comes to town. “Out in the world, not much happened,” Bradbury writes. “But here in…a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, [and] always did.” To Will, the library is a “factory of spices from far countries” that provides a gateway to worlds far beyond the borders of his small town. To his father, Charles, the library provides a refuge from himself—his past mistakes, his advancing age, and his son—and as the janitor he haunts the library through late hours, almost as a ghost.

Throughout the course of the novel, however, the library takes on many forms. It is a place of almost occult-like renewal and illumination for Halloway uncovers the mystery of Dark and Cooger and fixes the “heart of his apprehension” (“by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”). It is also a sanctuary for his son Will, and Will’s best friend Jim, as they evade Mr. Dark, and a mystical battleground in which Halloway confronts Mr. Dark and the Dust Witch.

In reading this novel, I came away with a feeling that the library played a formative role in Bradbury’s youth, and cast my mind back to the sense of wonderment I felt as a child when I spent countless hours traipsing up and down the L-shaped halls of my local library (the Claremont branch of the Berkeley Public Library). “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is also a brilliant exploration of the library as a psycho-sociological artifact that marks the intersection between reality and imagination.