explodedlibrary.info

out of town for a week

My parents and I will be spending the next week at Bridport, a small sunny beach town on Tasmania's north-east coast. It is a very relaxing place. There's a beautifully long and undeveloped beach that's 30 minutes walk from where we'll be staying. There are also vineyards in the area. We'll probably have lunch at one of those for my Mum's birthday, which is next week. The place where we'll be staying does have a phone line, but it may be a very old setup and impossible to connect to my iBook. We'll see. Even if I can get onto the web, I may prefer to be unplugged for a little time.

moral rights and the grey album

Well this is what happens when I skip checking my aggregator for a day - I miss Grey Tuesday! See synapse's informative post about this. The New York Times also covered this.

Other than missing out an opportunity for changing this blog's colours to grey, I guess that there isn't much that I could have done *sigh* Being on a dial-up connection, it's too painfully slow to download an album, let alone host it.

It seems that today copyright is about two things: money and control. I am not so concerned about the money side of it - within reason. Artists, like anyone else, deserve to fairly compensated for their works. I will be so presumptuous to say that this part of the debate is almost over. Of course there are disagreements about what fair means in this context.

My real difficulty lies in the controlling aspect of copyright law. Like not being able to hear something like the Grey Album just because the suits at EMI don’t like it.

To play devil’s advocate for a moment, there is a reason why a copyright holder should be able control their creations and be compensated when their work is sampled or otherwise incorporated into someone else’s work.

Remember DNA’s remix of Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner? Suzanne Vega deserved to get a cut of DNA’s very successful remix. Really, all DNA did was add some beats, and a few sound effects. If Suzanne Vega hadn’t got any money or attribution for that use of Tom’s Diner, that wouldn’t seem fair.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t have been fair if her record company had arbitrarily forbidden DNA from selling and broadcasting the remix.

photos from my walk to Wellington Falls

I thought that I'd try putting this lot in an album. There are a few photos that I may add later, but these ones should give a basic idea about this walk.

scorched earth comment spam eradication

This has started trickling into this blog. In the hope that it doesn't turn into a flood, I take the following steps:
1. Immediately ban the spammer's IP address from commenting.
2. Delete the comment
3. Close the infected post from all new comments

When I ban IP addresses, I do it very broadly. In this situation, I'd rather overblock.

If you can't leave a comment via the usual means because your IP address is being blocked or I've disabled commenting, you can email it to me and I will add it manually. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I wish could let the spammers know that they achieve absolutely nothing by spamming this blog. I am not going to let down my guard. Bots aren't very good listeners.

I hope that I don't need to develop a plan B.

joining ALIA

Well I’ve decided to join ALIA, the Australian Library and Information Association. This is Australia’s answer to the ALA. I never joined the ALA, but am a member of AALL (American Association of Law Libraries) and was once a member of the SLA (Special Libraries Association).

Why would I spend my limited funds on something like this? The pragmatic reason is that this will help me in my transition from being an American librarian to an Australian one. It’s very strange – although I went to library school in Australia, over 99% of my work experience as a librarian comes from my time in the USA. This is why right now I feel that I am an American librarian rather than Australian – insofar as there are differences in the profession between Australia and the US.

I can put my ALIA membership on my resumé. It may open doors for networking :P and give me a chance to learn some useful information about the profession here.

There is an idealistic reason too. Although professional associations can be ineffectual and usually fail to live up to their potential, I really think that we need them and have to try to make them work. For example, somebody needs to convince the Australian people – and particularly the Senate – that the Australia-US free trade agreement would have a disastrous effect on their rights as information consumers (see Kim Weatherall's post about this). The best A-list blogger could only have a minor role in this debate. There is no substitute for the experience and collective legitimacy which a good professional association could bring to this issue.

I don’t yet know how effective ALIA might be as an organization. Well, even if they roll over on the FTA issue, I can be consoled that at least their website supports RSS :)

a few random things about Tasmania

[30 May 2006 update: sixth paragraph, extra link added and spelling corrected]

I’ve been back almost two weeks now and think it’s time to write a little about Tasmania.

- The sun is so strong here! Tasmania is closer than most places to the hole in the ozone layer that’s over the Antarctic. It’s very easy to get sunburnt here, my nose is still peeling from my sunburns. In the local weather forecasts there is a prediction for expected UV levels. This – and worse – is what’s in store for the rest of the world if we continue doing this sort of damage to the environment.

- Speaking of the environment, for at least the last 30 years there has been a chasm in Tasmanian society between those people who would like to protect Tasmania’s unique environment and those who would prefer to chop it down (the forestry industry), flood it (hydroelectric power) or dig it up and poison it (the mining industry) for very small numbers of jobs and dollars. It’s probably obvious that I tend to be a Greenie (the colloquial, sometimes derogatory expression for supporters of the Green movement in Australia). Just tonight, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 4 Corners programme investigated Tasmania's on-going forestry debate.

- It is a very isolated place. After living in the USA for six years, even Mainland Australia seems very remote from anywhere else. Tasmania is a further degree of remoteness from the Mainland (as we call the rest of Australia). We are on the edge of most world maps, sometimes left off the map altogether. Tasmania is not on the way to anywhere except Antarctica.  There is no doubt that Tasmania is on the periphery of the world affairs. Sometimes people here get a complex about this. Some people long for nothing but to leave and live somewhere that’s more in the middle of things – like Melbourne or Sydney. Other people think that Tasmania must become more like the Mainland and the rest of the world. McDonalds didn’t open in Tasmania until 1990 and you wouldn’t believe how ecstatic some people were about this. I’m not talking about the food either, but because it was some form of recognition by the rest of the world (even if it was a nasty soulless multi-national). Then there are a few who just get defensive about the whole thing.

- I have a different view of this. Although I did leave the place, I did so very reluctantly for a reason which had nothing to do with not liking Tasmania or that Minnesota had better job opportunities (even though this is very true). I know now that there is nothing wrong with the periphery or edge as compared with the centre. Sometimes there are different sorts of issues and priorities, for example, the dominance of the environmental debate in Tasmania. But I realize now that the centre needs the edge as much as the edge needs the centre. The edge is just as important as the centre, but in a different kind of way. One example of this is the role of tourism in Tasmania - which I may write more about later.

- Minnesotans, you may be interested to know that Tasmania is the place where Jon Grunseth disappeared to. WCCO Channel 4 did a story about this a few years ago. He’s done very well here in telecommunications and most recently, exporting Tasmania’s lovely cherries back to Minnesota. I just hope that this former conservative Republican and 1990 Gubernatorial candidate doesn’t get involved in politics here! If he does, I for one will make sure that his political viewpoints and indiscretions from Minnesota are not forgotten over here.

hoping that the Australia-US free trade agreement founders in the Australian Senate

I was planning on writing about this, but misseli beat me to it with the following fine summary (below in the Arial font).
The only reason why I'm not totally dismayed by this is not a done deal. It still needs to be ratified by the Australian Senate, which the Federal Government does not control. I'm sure that the Greens and Democrats will oppose most of this and the main opposition party, the Australian Labor Party has indicated it may oppose this as well. It's interesting how the electronic news media has portrayed the deal as being good for Australia, with the exception of the sugar industry. "It could have been a lot worse" is the main sentiment. True, at least the US is not yet forcing us to pay more for medicines, but if people knew more they'd realize that this is a lot worse than it appears.

Australia Joins the Mickey Mouse Club

Australia and the United States signed a Free Trade Agreement agreement on February 9 (Feb. 8, in this hemisphere). A lot of the press (here and abroad) is focused on opposition within Australia's agricultural sector (particularly sugar and dairy farmers) and the proposed benefits to its manufacturing sector.

However, warning bells have sounded regarding changes in copyright/IP laws and their effects on libraries. Like the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Australia's copyright terms have been raised an additional 20 years. It's set to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2005.

From The Age's article:

"The outcome is bad for libraries," said Colette Ormonde, copyright adviser for the Australian Library and Information Association. "It is bad for students. It is bad for researchers. It is bad for all information users."

The terms of the agreement seek to harmonize IP protections in regards to material, including digital formats ... which suggests that DMCA-type legislation is next on the agenda, if not already so.

Thanks for the 411 from /. and the chattylibrarians list-serv. [Confessions of a Mad Librarian]

where do library issues end and personal values begin?

Richard Poynder, "Fiddling while Rome burns?", InformationToday (Jan. 2004).

I drafted most of these comments in January, after reading this article in the printed version of InformationToday. I didn’t post it then mainly because there was no link to the full-text of the article. I thought that maybe in a month, InformationToday would publish the full-text. But they haven’t, even though they’ve put other articles from that issue on the web. I decided to finish this response to it anyway. Most librarians will access to a print copy of InformationToday or can easily get it via Interlibrary Loan.

First, a minor quibble about how this piece was presented. I think that this is more of an opinion piece than an investigative report. Yes, Mr Poynder has research behind his opinions, but the thrust of the article is very opinionated. The premise is that librarians have lost the plot and need to mend their ways. According to Richard Poynder, we need to cease fighting windmills like the USAPATRIOT Act and CIPA, and save our strength for true fight.

Mr Poynder does make some valid points. I agree with one of his major arguments that in practical terms, media consolidation and expanding and oppressive copyright laws are a greater threat to what libraries are about. I also agree that the way that the ALA has handled Cuba has been a complete debacle.

I disagree with the way that Mr Poynder belittles the role of librarians as protectors of intellectual freedom. I disagree with the logic which says that because a few librarians have been hypocritical about this issue, that we have all failed and must give it up.

I wonder if Mr Poynder would have written anything different had he wrote his article after the "almanac scare". He uses John Ashcroft's and the FBI's words that the FBI has no interest in tracking the reading habits of ordinary Americans. Then we learn that something as innocent and neutral as an almanac is viewed with suspicion by law enforcement.

My strongest criticism of his article is when he mentions that the word "library" does not appear once in the USAPATRIOT Act. This comes right out of the FBI's talking points. It doesn't matter if libraries, or booksellers or whatever is actually specified in the language of the Act. The wording is broad enough that it will apply to libraries and a lot of other organizations. Maybe the drafters of the legislation preferred the broad language so libraries could be the concealed target, allowing apologists like Poynder to play down its effect on libraries. Maybe the drafters wanted to be able to use the USAPATRIOT Act against anyone with any personal information that might be useful. Neither explanation is reassuring.

Mr Poynder says that librarians have been politicized to the extent that they are unable to differentiate between library issues and civil rights issues. I agree that not every library issue is a civil rights issue, and not every civil rights issue is a library issue. As a reference law librarian, I often had to help people who were fighting "on the wrong side" of a civil rights issue. I appreciate that sometimes professional ethics as a librarian will diverge from my own personal values. But Mr Poynder seems to be suggesting that there should be a dichotomy between the two.

I certainly don’t agree with the way that this article seems to deride librarians for conveniently and hypocritically latching onto the cause of intellectual freedom. This an insult to those of us who do view librarianship as more than just a comparatively low-paid job with low-prestige, but almost as a calling.

I view the current threats to libraries and open access to information as two-fold in nature. The threat of media consolidation and expanded copyright is like a physical threat. If we lose this fight, it will become more and more difficult to do our jobs and our patrons will eventually go elsewhere - if they can afford to. The USAPATRIOT Act is a different kind of threat. If we lose the fight for intellectual freedom, libraries will continue to function but they will have been corrupted. I say that we can't afford to lose either struggle.

photos from today's walk on Mt Wellington

I've added a few more photos of Tasmania into the photo album.

Now I'm dabbling with adding photos to a regular blog entry.

The start of today's walk was just a 5 minute drive away from where I'm living - which in turn is only 10 minutes away from the Hobart city centre. But the drive was a little tense, as it was my first time driving since I'd returned to Australia. Fortunately I didn't have mishaps - I was focused on this mantra, "stay left, stay left..."

I parked my car on Strickland Ave, and walked up the fire trail until I reached the turn off to Betts Vale. This was quite a climb and my legs, accustomed to Minnesota's flatness, found it quite hard going. I paused at O'Gradys Falls for a while, then took the track through the Betts Vale rainforest until I reached the Lenah Valley track via the Shoobridge track.

Then I remembered my camera and took this photo of the view of Hobart (or at least some of it).

The sun came out and I took a few more photos and I walked along the (thankfully) quite level track.

I ended up at Junction Cabin, which is at a cross-roads of a number of the mountain tracks. Its waterhole was still there, complete with ferns and tadpoles.

Then I turned around. I took the Lower Sawmill track down the Mountain which took me past Strickland Falls which were flowing heavily for late summer. Unfortunately my photo of the falls didn't turn out and then my camera's batteries ran out.

the buttery slipperiness of accents

My accent is most confused. It was never one of those broad Steve Irwin or Paul Hogan accents to begin with. Now after living in Minnesota for six years, I realize that to most Americans I sound only slightly Australian (or English), and to most Australians I sound slightly American. This is what people tell me, because I don’t really know how I sound.

All of this has happened despite my best efforts at keeping my accent. Of course, I’ve had the notion that I sound perfectly normal, have always sounded normal and that my accent has never changed. After all, it’s only other people who really have an accent.

It’s this sort of thing which makes accents such a slippery thing to work with. But I’ve worked out one way of keeping a loose handle on it. Australian accents, and especially some of the speech patterns and expressions, still sound different to me. American accents sound normal and unremarkable. This will change – and in a few weeks, it will be the American accents which sound different and the Australian accent which is normal. When this happens, maybe I’ll start getting my Australian accent back.

Until then, I am in the strange situation of appearing like an outsider in my hometown. It’s very interesting and isn’t all bad to see how the other half lives.

I know that readjusting to Tasmania won’t be as difficult as my first few months in Minnesota. There was one time when I needed some to buy some butter for a meal my girlfriend was working on. I hoped that I could buy it from Walgreens, the drug store which was only a couple of blocks away from my apartment. Before walking over, I decided to call them up and check that they sold butter.

“Do you sell butter?” I asked.
“Excuse me?” Was the shop assistant’s response. “Bath Salts? Yes we sell those.”
“No, I was asking about butter. Do you sell butter?”
“What’s that?”
We went back in forth like this for an interminable time. He had no idea what I was saying, although to be fair to him, he probably thought I was saying something like butt-uh.
Getting desperate, I said, “No, butter. You know, the stuff you put on bread It comes from cows.”
“Oh, you mean budderr! Yes, we sell that.”