Month: May 2008

Librarians and Privacy

Whew! I finally made it to the last post for MLA’s Web 2.0 course. It really has been a learning experience to actually play with some of the tools I’d heard about but not really used. This post is a little different in that I’ll be commenting on several posts about privacy–a topic that is especially appropriate given the news in Wired and the Washington Post about the FBI’s attempt to gain user information from the Internet Archive using a National Security Letter. The librarian blog posts about privacy are actually older posts but very much related. Jessamyn West’s blog librarian.net discusses the subject in several posts. One discusses the organization StopBadware and how it keeps Internet users informed about the badware out there that could compromise users’ privacy. I personally found out about this organization through a Google search that marked the site I was looking for as risky in some way. It was a legitimate site but must have been compromised in some way. It’s pretty scary to think that people or organizations can trace my web travels without me having any idea what’s happening. She also mentions security risks with RFID tags that are improperly deployed. Librarians really have to think through any privacy issues that could come up BEFORE introducing RFID or any new technology in the library. I agree with her that libraries should consider privacy and security as essential components of designing technology for library services.

The Annoyed Librarian makes the case that the right to publish anonymously is protected by the First Amendment. Having this provision allows the people to voice dissent without fear of retaliation. I gather from the post that Annoyed Librarian has caught a lot of flack for using a pseudonym. While I don’t agree with everything that Annoyed Librarian posts, I don’t have a problem with the pseudonym and the decision not to reveal his/her real name. And I respect the right to voice one’s opinions even if I happen to disagree.

Mashups

Today I found the most wonderful mashup through a quick search on Programmable Web. I found it by browsing the reference category. I suppose the word, FREE, caught my eye. The site is called Librarian Chick; and it’s site where you can search for free audiobooks, eBooks, and educational resources using the Google Ajax Search. I was very excited to find out about this resource, which has an incredible number of links to web sites that I’d never even heard of. I could have used this when I was subbing at my local public library branch yesterday. Someone came in looking for an audiobook of Midsummer’s Night Dream, but it was checked out. I did a search on Librarian Chick’s site and found various versions of this play for FREE! I even saw some medical library resources while I was browsing. This a a wonderful way to use this technology. And I like the fact that it seems pretty easy to be able to create a mashup. On another note, I think it’s great that people are creating mashups of PubMed/MEDLINE data. These mashups are a good way that the users themselves can get in on the action to create a tool that brings them the information they want in the way they want it.

Podcasting and YouTube

This past week I played around with podcasting and YouTube. It was really fun picking out podcasts to listen to. I subscribed to a few. I can easily see health sciences students listening to podcasted lectures or tutorials. The University of Virginia’s History of Medicine podcasts are a wonderful way to introduce listeners to the historical/cultural aspects of health and medicine. I liked the very short helpful podcasts created by the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Library as they’re good for quick reference.

YouTube was interesting to explore; but I’m not so sure if I would choose this medium over others for delivering library information or instructional-type content. I found a tutorial demonstrating searching in the Cochrane database but I found the video quality not as clear as I would like, which got worse when I enlarged the video to full screen. But I did see an old National Library of Medicine video that actually looked pretty good. And that video introduced me to a source that I’d never heard of–public.resource.org. It’s an Internet archive of government-created videos (e.g. training, history, etc.). Check it out.