Do We Need a New Internet?

The author of this article, John Markoff, begs the question that is the title of my blog this week, as he points to various Internet disasters waiting to happen.  I especially liked one quote Markoff included from an intelligence analyst who said, “If you’re looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships streaming toward us on the horizon.” 

One of Markoff’s main arguments is that 1) if we develop a new internet, then 2) privacy on the Internet as we know it will need to become a thing of the past.  He describes the new Internet as something akin to a gated community, and where you would want to avoid the “bad neighborhood of cyberspace” at all costs.  Like a gated community, you would need identification to enter, such as a social security number.  Markoff admits that there is a hole in this argument, which is that identity thieves can steal this information and enter your gated community.

In my lecture this week, I mentioned very briefly how biometrics are being used in the identification of foreign nationals.  This seems to me to be the logical alternative to using something like a social security number or password for identification.  If we are truly waiting for the “digital Pearl Harbor,” how much privacy are you willing to give up to enter the “cyberspace gated community?”

Georgia State Copyright Case and Why You Should Care

I’m posting about a different story to make up for the fact that so many of us were outraged by the WSJ article last week and wrote about it.  Here’s one for you, academic librarians!

Does anyone remember the days when, as an undergraduate, you had to purchase spiral-bound course packets from a commercial copying center? I do – it was expensive! Aren’t you glad we have e-reserves and Oncourse to make it so that you don’t have to go buy course packets? Well, there is case against Georgia State University that questions if offering free e-reserves is exactly legal by copyright law.  All the money publishers used to make has evaporated with increased use of online resources, and oh, how they’ve noticed. 

Is YA literature "too dark?"

Some of you may be tired of me going on about young adult literature, but I think this recent news piece needs to be put forth, for both analysis and to give you a “heads up” as to what librarians may be facing in terms of challenges in the near future.

Essentially, this story, written by a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, has “reported” on a story of a woman walking into Barnes and Noble and not being able to find anything for her teen because all of the books were too dark.  The contributor then continues to bash contemporary YA fiction and says that teens don’t really read YA fiction anyway. 

I admit that there is a lot of contemporary YA literature that is dark but is dark necessarily bad? I’m also very disturbed by the lack of actual reporting in this case.  I think the author talked to two people and neither were actual teens.  The other thing that bothers me is that this woman had this experience in Barnes and Noble; if she had visited a library to even ask what they might recommend for her child based on his/her interests, I’m sure she would have walked away a much happier customer.  

I noticed that Salon also picked up this story this week, so it has started a dialogue about how dark is too dark.  What do you think?

Manga obscenity case

As you may or may not remember from my introduction, my research interest involves  teens and graphic novels.  This week’s blog is about manga, and graphic novels and manga often get cast in the same boat, so I’ll differentiate between the two here.  I’m sure you’ve all seen an example of a graphic novel; essentially, a thick comic book.   Manga is very similar, except is adheres to Japanese cultural distinctions of being read from left to right, back cover to front.  Manga, like the graphic novel, is a format for fiction genres and non-fiction.  Manga also has a very, very rich tradition in Japan.  In Japan, EVERYONE reads manga; old people, young people, women, men, girls, boys.  Manga are to Japanese like magazines are to Americans.    Now that you know what manga is, consider this case...

As a side note, Amazon.com has recently made manga that portrays male homosexual relationships unavailable for Kindle download on their site but they do allow other manga to be downloaded.

Knowing what I know about the history of comics in the U.S. and the popularity of manga today, I think this is an especially touchy subject, particularly for libraries.  What do you think? If these manga were in the library, what would you do as the librarian?

Book labeling: helpful practice or act of censorship?

As a former school library media specialist, I’ve always been completely adverse to any type of book labeling programs such as Accelerated Reader or the Lexile Framework. If you aren’t familiar with these concepts, simply put, they are programs that label books as being at a certain reading level. Schools buy-in to a program like AR or Lexile and buy the book labels that come with them. Kids are tested and read only the books that are at their “level.” Libraries and schools often only purchase books that have been given an AR or Lexile number so kids know what books they can read. Schools also buy tests that AR and Lexile sell. They sell tests about each book, so that kids can take them and prove they’ve read the books. Excuse me if my writing seems stilted…I’m trying to write in an objective manner and I’m finding it to be difficult…. ;-)


Anyway, I ran into an article that described the British Columbia Teacher Librarian Association’s stance on what they call “book leveling” and it turns out that they agree with me; book leveling is messed up! This short article cites the reasons that book leveling is “messed up” but these savvy folks take this notion one step further and also suggest this practice is a form of censorship. What do you think? Do you agree with them?

Week of May 18

With the recent news about Google and Apple coming under fire about privacy concerns, I’m guessing many of you will choose to blog about that this week – I’m intrigued to read to what you have to say! 

To put a potentially slightly different spin on this conversation, I thought I’d offer this bit about “Color,” which is a smartphone app that is acts as a location-based photo –sharing service.  Essentially, if you have this app on your phone, and someone else has this app on their phone, and you’re within 150 feet of each other, you can see what pictures each other is taking as you’re each taking them.  

Additionally, if you take photos using Color, the photos become the property of Color and the company stores them on their servers.

Here is a link the article on CNN that describes the app:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/23/color.photo.app/index.html?hpt=Sbin

CNN quoted the developers as saying, “"If you don't feel comfortable having that [the pictures] public, then don't use our application.”  

I can definitely see how it would be creepy to be taking pictures and not know who around you is watching, but aren’t people setting themselves up for this if they use this app?

Alternately, the developers don’t come out and say, “Hey person buying this app (who could be anyone with a computer and an iTunes gift card); this could lead to some creepy circumstances, so you might want to use this with care.” Is this another one of those times in which the library needs to step up and, not use Color as a specific example per se, but try to inform the public about privacy issues? Do patrons care? Is this outside our general purview? What do you think?

Week of May 11

Let me start this first blog posting by acknowledging that I will be presenting issues from time-to-time that we will not have discussed in class.  I do this mostly because I had to create a point in which I stopped adding topics to our syllabus because I knew you would become overloaded, so you have the option of further exploring these issues here.  

Our first topic is tagging.  For those of you who don’t know what tagging is, it is an option you can choose to do with most (what I would call) social network software in which you can essentially give something a subject, as you would in cataloging.  I could tag this blog for instance, maybe with the tags of “tagging,” “intellectual freedom,” or “libraries.”  One tags for the same reason one uses subject headings in cataloging – so one can find information easier.  You can type in the tag for the information you are looking for and, voila! Lots of blog postings about “intellectual freedom!”

Many public libraries are allowing their patrons to add tags to items in their library collections in order for other patrons to more easily find items of interest.  There was a news story written last year about a library in Illinois that was encountering patrons who were adding “hate speech” tags to materials written by Ann Coulter.  One patron felt this was inappropriate and that the library was taking a political stance by allowing the tags to stay on the catalog.  The library stated that their policy was to take down tags that were racial slurs or contained explicit material.  

To read the full story, please use the URL below.  This comes from the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom which is produced by the Office for Intellectual Freedom which is a great source!

https://members.ala.org/nif/v59n2/dateline.html  (Please scroll down to the heading “Mount Prospect, Illinois)

What do you think? What would you do as the librarian?