LibraryTechtonics

Wednesday night I watched a free screening of the documentary The Yes Men, in which two activists pose as World Trade Organization members, hijacking the identity of the organization in an effort to paint a more brutally honest portrait of who the WTO is and what it really stands for.

It all started when they created the http://www.gatt.org as a political satire parody of the real World Trade Organization site. In comparing the two sites, you’ll note that the differences are in the clever nuances.

The two clever gents in the documentary were able to masquerade as WTO representatives through five separate activism-motivated pranks, all in different parts of the world, because hapless surfers were landing on their site couldn’t tell that it wasn’t the real thing. Barry Coates from the World Development Movement (keepers of quality facts and statistics on globalization), who happens to know many WTO reps but didn’t recognize one of the pranksters as a WTO person, simply accepted the prankster as a genuine article. Coates didn’t really put it all together until the pranksters paid him a visit at his office later on. And it only gets better from there.

No one cross-referenced the incidents, even though there was plenty of TV footage and newspaper press to work with. The pranksters used different made up names at each conference they attended. No one questioned their antics, which were pretty ostensibly crazy. It was hilarious and frightening all at once. And I’m glad they did it.

However, hilarity aside, this is a perfect example of people just believing what they see on the internet, and not having the discerning eye and critical mind they should be when evaluating online information. Not only could a librarian have stopped these guys (go go gadget information literacy!), but they can teach other people how to do it, too, instead of being unquestioning sheep to the top 10 results in any web search. But without those sheep, these radical and necessary pranks, as well as the documentary, could not have been possible.

The GOP is circulating flyers in Arkansas and West Virginia stating that the Bible will be *banned* if Kerry wins the election.

Scans of GOP “Bible to be banned” scare-literature
[c/o BoingBoing 29 sept '04]

Such an appropriate week for this little tidbit to come to light.

I s’pose the Republican National Committee is just trying to get a jab in after a federal court ruled that the gag orders related to USA PATRIOT Act secret warrants (as outlined in Section 505) are unconstitutional, which Jessamyn covers quite concisely.

As I’ve been searching for a job over the past four months, I’ve been finding more and more librarian and information professional temporary and job placement agencies.

I’ve known about, and registered with, Wontawk since before I started at Simmons (I found them when I was researching the masters program). They’re based out of New York, but they also do placements in Boston, and they seem to be branching out to Chicago and other cities. They handle temp, temp-to-perm, and permanent placements.

I found out about InfoCurrent through their postings on the Special Libraries Association Job Index. They have locations in Washington, DC and New York City, but they place librarians, archivists, catalogers, records managers, indexers and more in many parts of the country. Most of the postings they have for the Boston area so far are for experienced business types, but they will keep your resume on file if anything comes up that suits your talents. InfoCurrent offers searchable listings as well as nifty tools such as a Salary Wizard, links to professional associations and continuing education information. They also place temp, temp-to-perm, or direct hire.

A very new player to the field is BiblioTemps, which specifically services central Massachusetts. Run by the Central Massachusetts Regional Library System — very cool and innovative, a library system helping librarians find work, focusing on temp work — BiblioTemps “will provide an essential service to members while developing an alternative source of funds to support ongoing services.” They offer great resources for libraries looking for temps, including a map of their service area and necessary forms, and information for temps, like guidelines, timesheets, and a directory of Massachusetts libraries.

My most recent discovery is Library Associates. Their name recently started popping up in the LISJobs.com listings. Job listings on the site seem to indicate that they have national coverage, and that their coverage of positions is really broad, including “Fortune 500 corporations, law firms, libraries, government agencies, museums, archives and other organizations” for librarians, database managers, catalogers, and more. As a temp, you can register online through a *long*, but comprehensive, form. Off-site services are also available for clients who wish to outsource their projects, so you could be assigned an at-home project.

Quite the crop of librarian placement agencies. LISCareer.com recently posted an excellent article on the merits and downsides of temping as a librarian. If anyone has had any experiences with any of these companies, good or bad, let me know.

Along the lines of the current discussion on bookmarklets and how they can help librarians, here’s a super article on how to extend RSS for library services:

Rich Site Services: Web Feeds for Extended Information and Library Services
[c/o ASIS-L listserv 25 sept '04, published 20 sept '04]

I’m a bit behind in my feeds, so you may have seen this someplace already.

I must say, what I like most about the article is that it functions much like an RSS 101 for librarians, *including* practical applications. Steven Cohen has done an excellent job of highlighting the technology, what it is, and what it does, as well as how it’s being used, mostly on a higher level, where the technically-inclined can follow. This article takes it to a level where non-tech librarians who say, “So what’s your point?” can be shown exactly what a library can do with the technology to make service delivery niftier, and know enough about what they’re looking at to possibly go to their systems librarian and start discussing actual projects. Then they can go back to Steven’s blog for more ideas and really start making some quality innovation trouble.
There are also lots of links and screenshots to examples, which is key. The links show that libraries and library resources really are using RSS, so it’s not some theoretical idea that can wait a little while for implementation anymore. I wish there had been more screenshots, since they’re so helpful to *visualizing* what can sometimes be a difficult concept to describe. It’s a great, more detailed, overview article.

Jon Udell wrote up a post on the Amazon/Google/WorldCat bookmarklet evolution, as well as some nifty points on xISBN feature available through WorldCat, which resolves the problem of a single item having multiple ISBNs due to various formats. Thanx for the screentime! I also received email from Lorcan Dempsey at OCLC about the xISBN stuff, which I need to go over a bit more carefully.

Gary Price over at ResourceShelf had some choice and warranted things to say about the whole OpenWorldCat concept in relation to the bookmarklet. I also want to read that post more carefully and respond more fully in good time, but I must say that, after a quick read, I agree with many of his points. Part of my plan is to build a page for the bookmarklet to explain what it is, how it can be used by librarians and by patrons, pros and cons, so that users of the bookmarklet are fully aware of issues like those brought up by Gary.

Since bookmarklets for a Amazon/Yahoo!/WorldCat lookup may be in the works, and bookmarklets seem to be an emerging web technology for librarians to play with and mold to our very needs, I’m thinking I might start a little portal page of useful bookmarklets for librarians. If you’re a librarian, and you’re using a bookmarklet in your everyday work that helps, let me know…