LibraryTechtonics

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted a bit to their blog last week about the Nonprofit Innovation Alliance:

Reason #85,0027 That Business-Method Patents Suck

[EFF: Deep Links 24 mar '05]
A newly minted organization called the Nonprofit Innovation Alliance (NIA) has clever plan for keeping business-method patents out of the nonprofit arena. It’s rounding up all the leading technology and consulting companies that help nonprofits use the Internet, then forging an alliance in which every member agrees to cross-license any current and future business-method patents on a royalty-free basis.

Remember how Jessamyn said to learn the term DRM? This organization is a good example of why it’s important to understand digital rights management, and how it will affect libraries.

So why should libraries be worried about business-method patents?

Leading Charities Take Stand Against Business Method Patents, Join Fight To Promote Technology Access For Nonprofits
[Nonprofit Innovation Alliance 21 mar '05]
The NIA consists of leading technology and consulting companies that provide products, services and/or consulting to help nonprofits optimize their use of the Internet for fundraising, advocacy, event management and other mission-critical activities. Alliance members agree to cross-license any current and future business method patents on a royalty-free basis for the benefit of their nonprofit customers.

Viewed by many to be a scourge in the for-profit world, business method patents would be even more so for the nonprofit sector. Instead of protecting a real technology invention, these patents typically cover a process of doing business on the Internet. Such patents, prone to abuse, could result in nonprofits spending much more out of every dollar raised on license fees to use the Internet for fundraising, communicating with constituents, advocating for public policies and managing events such as walks, runs and galas. Alternatively, to avoid the impact of royalty payments to business method patent holders or the threat of being sued, nonprofits may choose sub-optimal technology solutions.

This sounds like something that major library organizations (there are so many, ALA, SLA, ASIS&T, etc.) should be involved in, since libraries are suffering financially, and if libraries are going to stay ahead of the curve to better serve patrons, libraries will need access to technology. This is also a good reason for libraries to get involved with open source technologies supported by established and vigilant developer communities.

I seem to be on a bender of extra-special collections lately.

Talk about mixed media: watching TLC last night, I saw a show called “Tattoo!: Beauty, Art and Pain”, which was surprisingly educational as just a one hour show. A tattoo archive was featured on the show, but I didn’t catch the name of the person from the archive, and the TLC site doesn’t really have any useful information about the show, so I did a little digging and found this:

Tattoo Archive
“Located in Berkeley, California and founded in 1980 by C. W. Eldridge, the Tattoo Archive is a working shop which does custom tattooing. The Archive also includes a mail-order business selling tattoo collectibles from around the world.

The mission of the Tattoo Archive is to promote the history of tattooing through research and education. A wealth of information is available, just for the asking, to the casual visitor and academic alike.”

It sounds like the right place, and it’s got all sorts of neat links (including a link to one of my favorite exhibits of all time at the American Museum of Natural History, where I purchased a nifty mug that is both tattooed and pierced) and an archive of history articles organized glossary-style. Unfortunately the site search doesn’t work, but it’s still a good base of resources on tattoo.

They’ve got plans to develop a research and education center to house their collection and make it available to the general public. I wonder if they’ll need a “classically”-trained librarian and/or archivist…

The layoffs in Newton were getting a lot of play on AM news radio this morning, particularly the elementary school cuts, since the final vote on the budget is tonight. It’s shocking, and sad, to listen to the librarians on the radio talking about how shocking and sad the whole situation is.

Information about the budget can be found on the Newton Public Schools home page.

It’s a sweet listing of plugins that would be especially handy for librarians, bloggers, and blog readers.

Essential Firefox extensions
[Lifehacker 22 mar '05]

I would love to use SpellBound, which spell checks any text in an web form, from what I can tell it requires the Thunderbird (the Mozilla mail client) dictionaries, which means that I need Thunderbird installed, even though I don’t need it. There seems to be a way to hack it to use other dictionaries, but I haven’t been able to get it to work.

Bloggers have rights too
[c|net News.com c/o Boing Boing 25 mar '05]

From BB:

Xeni Jardin: BB pal Brad King points us to this op-ed on freedom of speech and blogs by Congressman John Conyers, and says,

I thought this was interesting, particularly since the courts seem to have forgotten about that whole First Amendment, freedom of the press thing. After all, our boy Thomas “these are the times that try men’s souls” Paine wasn’t a journalist. He was an old fashioned blogger — leaflets and pamphlet style.

Conyers (D-Mich) is the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee.