Police backed on photo ban of APEC fence, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 2007
Tourists forced to delete fence photos, The Australian, 2 September 2007
flickr search on the APEC fence
Fortress Sydney, Digital Photo Gallery of Ted Szukalski
John Howard Readies Fortress Sydney, Stuff-Em-Up the hill backwards
© 2007 Bruce Phelan
Dysfunctional information behaviors and dealing with the millenials:
Dave Pollard at How to Save the World had a post on dysfunctional information behaviors. It includes a large list of dysfunctional behaviors ...(Via The Gypsy Librarian.)
Thanks Angel for drawing this to my attention. I'm posting it here too for future reference too. I wonder if blogs have a role in curing some of this dysfunction?
The Lethal Librarian wrote this post back in March referring to the Occupational Outlook for Librarians written by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. I missed it at the time, but because it's relevant to the librarian shortage debate, I've decided to repost some of it.
It’s also interesting to note the language they [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics] use - they say in the March 2005 version of the page, “However, job opportunities are expected to be very good because a large number of librarians are expected to retire in the coming decade, creating many job openings.” In the version I saw today, it says “More than 3 in 5 librarians are aged 45 or older and will become eligible for retirement in the next 10 years, which will result in many job openings.” The difference is between “eligible to retire” versus “expected to retire” speaks to me, despite their identical claims about many job openings.
I understand the role of SMS messages in fanning the flames of the riot and reprisals in Sydney, but I wonder, isn't this going too far?
Jane, from Coogee, was surprised to find three police on her bus asking to inspect mobile phones. Each took a phone at random and scrolled through messages for five or ten minutes. Everyone obeyed. "The people were perfectly friendly about it," she said. "I thought it was a bit weird and a breach of privacy. But I didn't say anything. Nobody did."
[Australians are an obedient people - but for how long?, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 December 2005]
I find this sort of thing fascinating. It's also nice to see librarians being praised in unlikely places.
Unexpected places to encounter Warcraft geekery: "I was doing some research in the Boston Public Library about management ethics, which at first doesn't sound like it's related to World of Warcraft. I found this book that looked interesting about how librarians were expected to relate to those 'scary' questions from people who want geek-related reading, such as sci-fi or fantasy. In the book was a 'quiz' that was meant to prove to the unsuspecting librarians that they knew more about geek-related subjects than they thought.
One of the questions was,
Harry Potter is a student at...
a. Harvard University (where he is studying for an MBA)
b. Hogwart's [sic] School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (where he is studying to be a wizard)
c. The Jedi Academy (where he is studying under Luke Skywalker)
d. Lordaeron University (where he is studying warcraft)
The random Warcraft reference just about killed me in the middle of the BPL. I may be the only person since the original author to have read that book and gotten that reference. Kudos to the author of 'Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader's Advisory' for being a Warcraft geek!"
I don't usually repost other blog's posts verbatim, but it seemed appropriate for this one. It was nice to try a different venue, play in the trivia night (yeah, we should have won, but our 2nd place was pretty respectable for a first effort, and gives us something to look forward to for next time) and meet some more Sydney bloggers.
You know those people last night? How you politely asked the name of their blog and promptly forgot it? Fear not.
Disambiguation Blog -- Glen
Papertrap -- Mark
Spleenie's Rant -- Spleenie
James O'Brien -- James
Exploded Library -- Morgan
The Other Andrew -- Andrew [who has just posted pics of this on his blog]
For Battle! -- harry, Coz (Cozalcotal), Rob (Anti Ob), Amanda
Flop Eared Mule -- Amanda(Via Sydney Blog Meetup.)
Of course, it would be some consolation if the Kazaa decision might speed things along with the Australian iTunes Music Store, but I think that is extremely wishful thinking.
Apple Australia yesterday refused to comment on a launch date for its iTunes music store, which would allow the legion of Australians who own iPods to legally purchase songs, rather than rip, burn and swap.
[Kristy Needham, Music industry banks on opening of online store, Sydney Morning Herald (7 September 2005)]
Gormangate and Croningate: Prominent individuals in the library academia and professional associations write columns criticizing bloggers and are themselves flooded with criticism. A few responses were supportive, some were nuanced responses, others expressed strong disagreement on the issues (how I view my own responses). There was also a large number of mostly anonymous personal attacks.
Los Alamos Bloggers: An anonymous employee-run blog airs employees’ frustration about the management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In what would have been an organization’s nightmare, much dirty laundry was aired which was noticed in Washington DC and may have precipitated the departure of its unpopular director.
The Dog Shit Girl: A young Korean woman flouts manners and norms by refusing to clean up after her dog on a train. She is photographed, the photo is uploaded onto the internet, where she is identified and humiliated. She thought that she had been an anonymous face in the crowd, but once her identity had been discovered she was vulnerable to what was arguably disproportionate punishment at the hands of a cyber posse. There's one thing about this incident which I'd really like to know - were most of the people involved in bringing gae-ttong-nyue to justice, were they using their own names, pseudonyms or were they anonymous?
An anonymous author (“Ivan Tribble is the pseudonym of a humanities professor at a small liberal-arts college in the Midwest.”) writes an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, stating that having a named blog is often viewed as a negative by university search panels. “The content of the blog may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum.”
This article - Heather Smith, Don't count out law librarians, American Lawyer (July 14, 2005) - provides some good examples of librarians meeting the challenges (and opportunities) presented by our current times. Here's one brief quote:
Schnader Harrison partner Donaldson says she's heard no negative feedback from clients when presenting them with bills for librarians' work. "They've been pleased with what [librarians have] been able to ferret out," she says. And since LexisNexis and Westlaw searches are billed as separate line items, cost-conscious clients have begun demanding that lawyers improve their efficiency by using librarians who are more skilled searchers.
Thanks to Library Stuff for the link.
I've tried to stay out of some of the debates which librarians have been having about Wikipedia. But this post by Karen G. Schneider is an excellent statement about why even tech-savvy librarians have concerns about Wikipedia. I don't share all of Karen's opinions about Wikipedia, but after feeling somewhat on the defensive about the value of blogging for the past week or so, it is nice to be able to point to some good posts and say, "this is why blogging is relevant and deserves its place amongst the other communications media."
What really caught my attention was that Karen's discussion also touched on the librarians as gatekeepers issue. This has also been in the back of my mind lately. I wanted to explore this issue in my previous post, but decided that this would be opening a huge can of worms which would distract attention from the main point of that post.
I don't feel up to studying this issue (or the Wikipedia issue) more deeply tonight. I just wanted to make a note of Karen's contribution for when/if I do return to this in the future.
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