Library school is heavily based in group projects. You might hear that this is what “real life” is like. I think that transferring dynamics and principles of group work from an academic context to a professional one is stretching it somewhat, but nevertheless, you do pick up some practical skills.

Continue reading for some practical advice:

Group Project Advice:

1) Keep groups small. Sometimes you won’t get to choose but if you have a choice, less is easier to coordinate.

2) Be upfront about your strengths. If someone identifies a strength that could be useful for a project, the onus is on them to then follow through with that strength.

3) Be upfront about your weaknesses. You should know your work habits by now and you should already recognize areas you need improvement in (or should be trying to). Don’t let your team know too late that you can be late delivering work (and could use some deadline reminders), or that you get email fatigue easily (and FB message is a much better way to reach you) etc. It’s not like you are going to be able to hide your shortcomings anyways. It’s much better for everyone to know the score right off the bat and it shows at least that you are self aware and not in denial.

4) Be shrewd about being a team leader. One classmate once commented to me that in library school when you show even the slightest initiative, everyone else scales back. It’s been my experience that when you take a step forward, everyone steps forward with you, but now I’ve been in situations where everyone retreats! Remember, our profession tends to attract people who want to help in the background. This is a warning: don’t expect others to meet you in terms of your degree of motivation and effort. And be realisitic: if everyone just wants to “get it over with” and you don’t think you can motivate others, set your expectations accordingly and do the best you can.

5) Make a schedule with lots of buffer time. Set your due dates well in advance to accomodate life. Most people in library school are not fresh grads. Most have worked for some time and many are part time. People have jobs, kids, and they’re dealing with things you have no idea about i.e. life. Schedule around life and living, not the other way around!

6) Agree on a main channel of communication. Consensus on this is critical. Don’t bend over backwards just because one person doesn’t want to register for GoogleDocs. The best projects I worked on stuck with one main area to coordinate work (e.g. a wiki, GoogleDocs etc.) and supplemented that with phone and email.

Common Challenges:

The idea below is not to criticize others, but to recognize in yourself, elements in your manner of working in group projects that might be problematic.

1) The AWOL member. They have an inflexible schedule and can’t make it to any meetings. They don’t respond to emails and you have no idea if they’re being read. Their cell phone is their pager.

2) The Flakey member/The Dropout member. They appear to take on a lot of responsibilities but they ultimately flake out without warning or they decide halfway through to drop the course. Suddenly you have a pile of tasks to redistribute and less than 24 hours to get your project together.

3) The Micromanaging member. They’re a perfectionist and expect you to be one too. They redo team members’ contributions and they’d do it all themselves if they could get away with it. You need to gain their approval to move forward with even minor details.

4) The How-Did-You-Get-Into-Library-School-?! member. They cannot summarize a paper. They never cite their sources. Their wiki skills = epic fail. They simply don’t meet the basic academic requirements for doing your project.

5) The Stress-Bunny member. They’re not coping well with their obligations, and are constantly high strung. Just speaking to them makes you feel more anxious and jittery. Talking about their stress just worsens their emotional state.

6) The Leech member. They let you do all the work and try to massage the project report to take more credit than what they have contributed. Their work is poor due to lack of effort rather than ability. They know the other members care too much about the project grade and will pick up the slack.

Anyways, there is no blanket solution for these commonalities that I’ve witnessed over and over again. All I can say is to try your best to understand where the other person is coming from, and consider factors like length of project, grade weighting, likelihood of constructive dialogue/conflict resolution etc. and base your actions on your situational context. Know when to cut your losses.

Also, try not to think of someone as merely a “problem” needs to be managed/placated/minimized; it is insulting for any adult. Nobody’s perfect and being professional doesn’t come easily to everyone. You don’t have to get to know someone well to treat them with genuine compassion and empathy. If you can’t find that within yourself, it’s time to stop and reflect. You might be too stressed to muster an empathetic perspective, or you might reacting too quickly.

I have to admit, all my information related ideas are being funneled directly into papers, leaving me with little material to post! I thought Irsquo;d restart with a shift towards more pragmatic postshellip;

On my end, Irsquo;ve been quite busy, already gearing up for the next semester. Irsquo;ll be the new student liason for CASLIS next year, am exploring strengthening student ties with APRA, and am happy to say that Irsquo;ve reconnected with TIG, as a consultant again, but this time regarding donor/gift development. On a side note about prospect research, the amount of publicly available information about donors is really incredible. Is there a word for the issues arising from aggregating personally identifiable public data? If not, there really should be. We still frequently call this a ldquo;privacyrdquo; issue, which is a total misnomer.

Irsquo;m also excited to be going to the CLA conference this year. My advice to new students regarding conference grants is to apply, apply, apply. Your chances of receiving funding are excellent. Also, if you are nervous about going alone or networking alone, just think that many people in attendance are friendly, helpful librarians! I really canrsquo;t imagine a nicer crowd to network with. Irsquo;ve found that people in the library field are usually supportive of new professionals and are generous in nature - so you can dispel any preconceptions about conferences being an exhausting schmooze-fest and get excited about meeting people who want to share their work and expertise with you. So keep your eyes on your inbox and apply already!

1. My classmates and I had roughly a month to put together an online system for aboriginal archival photos. The ldquo;betardquo; site is available @ student2.fis1311.ischool.utoronto.ca. Itrsquo;s linked up to Flickr so that users can help ID persons and places etc. but Archon is in place to allow an archivist or staff member of an aboriginal organization to filter through redundancies, spelling errors and the dross that can make user generated content problematic for information search.

Archon is open source, and itrsquo;s pretty easy to use once itrsquo;s been installed. It works very well with photos, although I had other classmates who experienced difficulty with trying to upload audio content. Irsquo;ve been discussing this system with the head librarian at the special Spadina branch at the TPL, and wersquo;ll see if any northern aboriginal organizations I get in touch with might find this a useful solution. Go F/OSS!

2. Have been slowly working towards a fundraiser for the SHSS library w/the Child amp; Youth Advocacy group at my faculty. The first thing I want to buy the students is the Twilight series! And Halo books. On a side note, I finally learned how to play Halo and have no idea what kind of appeal a Halo BOOK would have, but it was honestly the only thing I could convince the younger male students @ SHSS to read.

3. Irsquo;m working on a paper that I hope to eventually submit to our facultyrsquo;s open source journal. For some reason, my profs have always assumed that I was going to pursue the academic track, speaking as if academia was some kind of inevitability to me, as natural as aging. But despite my theoretical bent, my goals have always been advocacy, community outreach, etc. Working with organizations like TakingITGlobal, the Inuvik Youth Centre, etc. Theory has really informed that type of practical work for me. Obviously not directly, but certainly from an ideological/philosophical perspective, the influence of which is very profound.

FI hosted a public lecture today, ldquo;Knowledge at the End of the Information Agerdquo; with David Weinberger, who I was familiar with through The Cluetrain Manifesto but never realized was a U of T alum. Weinberger is a playful speaker, and as a self-described optimist, has some very warm and fuzzy things to say about the net. I canrsquo;t say I take the same tone, but I nevertheless found his observations about changes in how we conceive of knowledge, compelling.

Weinberger began by describing the internet as ldquo;weird,rdquo; but emphasized that for such a new medium, it is strikingly ldquo;familiarrdquo; in that wersquo;ve all picked up on its usage - as broadcasters as well as consumers (not necessarily in the capitalist sense) - pretty quickly. Why? Because internet knowledge, unlike traditional print knowledge, is becoming more human. Internet knowledge is messy, fluid, fallible and complex. Itrsquo;s not a topical text shoved into an exclusive categorization by a removed authority figure; it derives its meaning from social context, the online ldquo;conversation.rdquo;

This is why I think itrsquo;s helpful to consider the internet as a curious medium with both literate and oral properties.* And although you need the ability to read and write to use the internet, many of its www texts, if not the majority (?), are not really textual. Internet information demonstrates the communal and localized aspects of an oral society (but at the same time, it definitely lacks certain key features of oral society).

The internet is not the first modern medium to be neither distinctly literate or oral (it does have afterall, many unique features that are neither textual nor oral) but itrsquo;s the first one that is so participatory. As such, tensions between the values and expectations of the literate and the oral have exploded as both paradigms struggle to impose very different power/knowledge structures onto internet information. The internet wonrsquo;t acquiesce to state power and the paradigm of literate knowledge in the way that film, radio and tv have.

But the thing is, the internet is really neither oral or literate, and not even a mix of both. Which is perhaps why these struggles, which have profound impacts on our laws, our culture, and our knowledge, always feel to me like theyrsquo;re trying to catch up to something else. (Although if I had to pick a medium the internet is most like, Irsquo;d choose comic books, and Irsquo;m not at all surprized at the resurgence of the comic book in mainstream culture, especially in youth.)

*n.b. By ldquo;literaterdquo; I donrsquo;t mean just being able to read, and ldquo;oralrdquo; isnrsquo;t just conversations. I mean all the structures and values that literacy or orality functioned within. Suggested readings: Harold Innisrsquo; The Bias of Communication and Michael Clanchyrsquo;s From Memory to Written Record.

Some older people will marvel at how ldquo;Gen Yrdquo; people prefer to learn about current events from Stephen Colbert and why a video like The Great Schlep can speak more immediately to them than say, the BBC news or local political debates. I suppose they didnrsquo;t grow up in an age where you are told to distrust everything everyone tells you, but to buy all their products and services anyways. Wersquo;ve come a long way from the No Logo days. Being anti-evil-corporation didnrsquo;t seem to get us anywhere except more appropriated. (From the Capitalism amp; Hegemony handbook, ldquo;If you canrsquo;t beat em, brand em.rdquo;) It seems the only way to be heard in a consumerist society is to be a customer, and then yoursquo;re always right!*

Is it so surprising then, that Canadian youth donrsquo;t take traditional sources of authority or traditional institutions ldquo;seriouslyrdquo;? And if everything is such a joke, and everything is for sale, why not turn to information sources that are completely farcical to begin with? And while other mediums can produce materials that reflect this ethos (check out The Totally Untrue History Ofhellip;), what better place to mock The Author and The Truth or even The Facts than the internet?

(from Bob Staake)

The continentalists wrote about the death of the author, but perhaps not quite like this. Globalized generations are running out of spaces to believe in; God has been dead for ages, and the nation state is faltering. What has previous generations left for mainstream culture? Wersquo;ll take what we can get. I can always count on my next online distraction and retail therapy. In lolcats and branding we consume. Therersquo;s no post after postmodern and therersquo;s nothing to take seriously anymore. Yoursquo;ll never be trustworthy but you can at least be funny.

* And people wonder why Gen Y is so uppity in the workplacehellip; This is the generation that was told to buy their career through rising tuition fees. Of course theyrsquo;re so entitled; the education system has made them customers instead of scholars.

Who Owns Ideas is a great introductory documentary about the history of copyright and current controversies in copyright. I wished however, that it had gone more into depth about downloading music and movies. I was reading a blog post of someone who attended a techy conference and was very offended by a young panelist who stated that youth feel no guilt over illegally downloading music. (As a side comment to me, someone mentioned that it is at least better than adults who pay money for bootlegged DVDs in Chinatown but thatrsquo;s really a whole different issue.) I think this documentary nails it on the head. Theft implies ownership; and who really owns ideas? Who owns culture? If it is truly ldquo;insanerdquo; as Graham Henderson, CRIA prez says, to take music and not pay for it, one wonders about the type of ldquo;sanityrdquo; that has allowed corporations to privatize things like rain water, living creatures and dna, life saving vaccines and medicines, so on and so forth. In the age of late capitalism, experiences, ideas and brands and of course, intellectual property as it is now called, are all fair game, just as things like non-state aboriginal lands were fair game in the age of colonialism.

In any case, illegally downloading music is not as neatly equivalent to shoplifting or crimes like car theft, as it is so often compared to. The act of say, downloading an entire album off a torrent, is very different from a fangirl making a ldquo;mixtaperdquo; mp3 soundtrack of different artists for a movie she loves (complete with a Photoshopped virtual CD cover/back) and then posting it onto an lj community of like minded fans (for examples of what I am referring to, look up lj communities for any recent popular film). The motivations, results and contexts are entirely different. Rhetoric about file sharing lumps this wide spectrum of behaviour into one crime, which is highly problematic.

In the interim since Irsquo;ve posted, Irsquo;ve met and surpassed the 21 Challenge fundraising goal, got the school library staffed for next year, organized two really awesome programs (youth-elder exchange, academic skills workshops), sorted through a MASSIVE book donation from Yellowknife (23 boxes worth!) and made some huge orders from educational publishers. So June is going to be a month of slowing down, no more staying late late late at work, and weekends are now strictly for myself. Except now Irsquo;m blogging about work. Ha. The funny thing is, Irsquo;ve spent all this time in the library but looking back, Irsquo;ve hardly done any traditional library work. Itrsquo;s been mainly presentations, proposal writing, PR, lobbying, and managing a gazillion little tasks. Would have died without my links and notes on pbwiki.

Irsquo;ve also been doing all kinds of awesome non-information studies related things and to be honest, a lot of the issues I used to think about down south arenrsquo;t relevant here, so my mind really has not been analyzing and crunching through topics related to this blog. Itrsquo;s difficult to keep up with the technology and news here where no one has a clue what web 2.0 is, identity management is still about word of mouth reputation, and everyone turns to the radio or gossip vine first for news. Itrsquo;s been a gradual, protracted unplugging from the net and a culling of what information I want to keep intaking and what qualifies as a time suck to permanently cut out. After 5 months of detox, Irsquo;m ready to return to my old cyborg state.

The campaign has been coming along with some fits and starts. It seems that the branding really hasnrsquo;t taken hold here, and remarkably, news of the campaign seems spread much faster through certain channels in Yellowknife! One really needs to be literal here. Hardly anyone in town refers to the 21 Challenge, it is always referred to directly, as the library project. The 21 tags are seen as ldquo;cuterdquo; and have momentarily raise peoplersquo;s curiousity, but havenrsquo;t had the impact Irsquo;d hoped for.

Another difficulty is that my experience is based in methods of communication/promotion that are bound to the internet and most older people here do not read blogs and are not on any social network. While Irsquo;ve spoken on the CBC a few times now, had articles featured in local and territorial wide newspapers, submitted blurbs to local newsletters etc, the bulk of information remains online which is not the best way to reach the community. It seems to me that ties forged through face to face contact, community projects and individuals, are really what works, slow as these methods are.

On another note, Irsquo;ve learned something really important from the challenges of working on this project. Down south, it seems to me that it is common place to complain about the minutae of onersquo;s work on a frequent and regular basis when things are difficult. Irsquo;ve come to realize that at least for myself, this manner of complaining is a sign of luxury; if I have the time and energy to bitch, then the problems I face in my work really arenrsquo;t worth bitching about.

No one local complains about the cold here because it is truly so harsh, that if everyone voiced their discomfort, nothing would ever get done. Even the ldquo;expatsrdquo; learn quickly to brush off the extremity of the weather. Itrsquo;s pretty much the same way about working to change negative trends here. Up north, the frustrations and obstacles can be so extreme or insurmountable at times, it would be foolish to begin adopting a negative attitude. I find myself now thinking “it is what it is” instead of a complaint. Instead of laying blame on other people or groups, which I find comprises a great deal of work related complaining, I remind myself to suck it up, look for solutions, and keep trying to hit my marks. And I donrsquo;t even think about the real possibility of total failure; donrsquo;t have the energy for it to spare. Sometimes I find myself sliding back into old habits, but Irsquo;ve found the need for efficiency eventually demands a halt to the slippage.

Since fundraising has not been going well, I decided to take a completely different approach than what I had been doing before. There are a lot of programs here that require funding so my challenge has been how to put this issue on the map. Irsquo;ve racked my brain and have turned to the southern way to get people to become invested and pay attention: branding and aggressive urban marketing techniques. This means taking the logic of consumer culture (which I actually loathe; one of the reasons I enjoy being in the north is relief from advertising) and applying it to a fundraising campaign. No wait, our exciting guerrilla fundraising campaign! Complete with easy to remember name, objectives, and catchy tagline: campaign site (And please donrsquo;t laugh at the logo. I did it in such a hurry!)

Itrsquo;s just so southern. People do not really do branding here. There are no ads save those on television (radio is CBC and locally broadcast), and that is pretty much the extent of exposure to branding. Itrsquo;s like postmodernism has completely ignored this town and itrsquo;s all WYSIWYG. Which means that instead of having a population that is well trained in ignoring extraneous information, where every product, cause or statement needs to outwit and outdo a thousand others, I am looking at a situation where there is zero competition for attention and very little feel for connecting a product or service with an abstracted narrative or image. I feel a little guilty framing this cause in such blatantly commercialized ldquo;languagerdquo; but at the same time, I think Irsquo;ll probably be the only person who sees it this way because the values of consumer culture are more or less absent here. Does this make my job easy or will the branding be too ldquo;southernrdquo; to connect with locals? Certainly, Irsquo;m finding that showing up in person to discuss proposals, and getting people to trust you to speak at meetings and such is primary. Wersquo;ll have to see.

Next week, when the students return to school, I am hoping to implement a marketing strategy quite common in the city, the likes of which this town has never seen. I want everyone to be talking about it! Will update you all on how it works or doesnrsquo;t work.

Thatrsquo;s been one of my mottos these past few weeks. Irsquo;ve been busy trying to speak with organizations in town about the school library and Irsquo;m hoping that my efforts here will help convince the powers that be that the school needs a librarian. Irsquo;m finding one of the best ways to do this is to whip out the academic research that links the quality of school libraries to student achievement, and to do whatever you can do to dispell the myth that librarians are these fussy old shushing women sorting dusty books. You need to inject different terms into the mix like ldquo;media/information specialistrdquo; or ldquo;critical/central information resourcerdquo; or ldquo;information literacyrdquo;. Itrsquo;s remarkably easy to advocate for school libraries. We live in an information age and students need to learn how to utilize the internet beyond social networking. Plus, we are talking about youth. And donrsquo;t these organizations want to help the children?

Irsquo;ve also found that because the community here is small, itrsquo;s very easy to be able to reach the higher tiers of power that are usually inaccessible in the south. I run into CEOs and CFOs in the grocery stores, my roommate is the comptroller for the educational council, I take language lessons with the VP of the Gwichrsquo;in Tribal Council, and so on. Just last week, I have tried to convince the educational council board members, the NWT premier, and the board members of the GTC to support our school library. Itrsquo;s wild. I had assumed I would be a librarian assistant so I only brought one formal business outfit up with me and I need to ask people to send me clothes because therersquo;s nowhere in town to buy them. Did I also mention that meetings with these aboriginal organizations are kind of awesome? Only here will you sit in a totally modern board room discussing policy and budgeting resources with elders and be treated to a mini-feast of caribou soup, bannock, cranberry muffins etc. afterwards.

Anyways, Irsquo;m going to be compiling a resource for people in similar situations with links to studies and articles to aid librarians in their advocacy efforts, funding programs, tips for fundraising in the north etc. although this probably wonrsquo;t get done until late April after Irsquo;ve run my mega mega fundraising campaign (marketing/fundraising in the north post to follow).

This past week, I have been trying to raise the profile of our library project via the Amazon wishlist and things have picked up momentum a lot faster than I anticipated. CBC North was interested in the story, so you might hear me speaking about the project on The Trailbreaker news and an interview with the principal and myself will be aired on the Northwind program tomorrow @ noon. I havenrsquo;t even finished editing the projectrsquo;s press release yet!

Funding itself is diffcult, and I spend a fair amount of time running down a lot of dead ends, exhausting avenues. However, on the donations front, things have been wonderful. The ICRC and GTC donated a great deal of cultural materials and have been a great aid in helping me develop a special aboriginal collection for our students. A few weeks ago, we also received a large shipment of Japanese cultural materials from the JFT, and occasional meetings with the librarians in the Inuvik Centennial Public Library have yielded a fair crop of YA fiction and general interest items. Other organizations like the NWT Literacy Council and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation have offered donations of materials.

It was however, Daron @ Squatterz Books amp; Curiousities in Yellowknife that really got the ball rolling there. In addition to spreading our cause online and helping connect me with other leads, Daron has organized a book drive in the area as well as a little benefit concert for us on the weekend!

Quyanainni and Mahsirsquo; choo lt;3

I’ve finally wrapped up a 2 week run of “student interest sessions” up north to gather a snapshot of the media usage of students in the school and to get some student feedback on what types of materials they would like to have in the library, possible changes to the decor etc. I interviewed 5 classes from grades 7-12. Although this was by no means scientific, the sessions helped me to gauge the state of media usage in this town’s youth. Some interesting observations:

• no one knew basic web 2.0 terms like rss or tagging


• the younger students didn’t even know the term “blog” despite the fact that they are all on bebo (Blog Early, Blog Often)


• almost all students had a television in their bedrooms; more students had bedroom TVs than students who had internet connections in their homes


• while the grade 11s and 12s students used the internet for a variety of purposes (social networking, research for school or general reference, news, webcomics, gaming etc.), the younger students used the internet almost exclusively as a social networking tool

It’s this last point that really struck me, almost disturbs me. I suppose it’s because the internet for my generation was about a certain kind of information, more reference based. Except for chat, modes of communication like discussion boards and newsgroups were primarily about sharing a more subject oriented, literate type of information (as opposed more speaker oriented, oral information. See earlier post). Even email (at least, when I first started using it), was a more literate form of communicating. It still is, when you compare it to IM, SNS “walls”, twitter posts etc.

It’s as if nothing exists outside bebo or youtube for the younger students. While I have seen students this age at the local youth center use different sites, I have never seen them use the internet for reference or more literate forms of information. In a town where resources for youth are so impoverished and the environment so extreme and isolated, the internet becomes that much more important as a way for youth to do research and to learn about the outside world. With the North becoming a new site of social, political and economic interest (opening trade routes, mining, climate change etc.) it seems to me that youth here cannot afford to maintain an insular attitude if they are going to be able to protect their land and help direct its development. Yet, the internet seems to be becoming less and less of a resource when it should be being utilized more and more…

Information literacy is something I take great interest in and it wasnrsquo;t until I came up north that I began to think of this type of literacy as having many tiers. For one thing, it never even occured to me that before one can become ldquo;information literaterdquo; one must be literate to begin with. Up north, poor reading comprehension is a major challenge for schools. This is due to a number of factors, of which common northern social problems and a high incidence of FAS/FAE play no small part. I came here imagining that I would be teaching students ldquo;the basicsrdquo;: skills like evaluating information from websites and researching beyond Googlersquo;s first page. Now that Irsquo;m here, I find need to take a completely different approach: build basic reading skills with hi/lo materials, designing the library with new audio-visual stations, working with the studentsrsquo; innate interest in the north and trying to foster greater engagement with their own cultural heritages and languages.

I never really considered how important things like culture, values etc. are to the digital divide. Some factors that are essential in examining the digital divide that I never considered before:

• cultural values supporting education and use of technology (not a priority in the north it seems to me)


• cultural values supporting civic engagement etc.


• basic literacy


• no-low censorship, laws protecting freedom of information


• laws and policies protecting user privacy


• well maintained public library infrastructure


• specialized hardware (e.g. aboriginal keyboards, aids for users with perceptual disabilities)


• access to conferences, barcamps, media based communities, etc.

Irsquo;m writing from Fort McPherson, a small town (roughly 400 people) populated mostly by Gwichrsquo;in people. Irsquo;m making a very long day trip (7:00 am - 2:00 am) to obtain Gwichrsquo;in language materials for the school library. Irsquo;ve learned that the best way to get things done here is to do as much legwork yourself as possible, and to meet with people face to face. I spend a lot of time trying to hunt people down and showing up in random organizations since most people donrsquo;t seem to care about keeping appointments on time and donrsquo;t mind dropping everything to talk to you if you just pop up out of nowhere.

I just had a very long chat with a local Gwichrsquo;in community member and learned that the  Gwichrsquo;in word for internet translates to machine that knows everything. Which is kind of awesome. (I should learn the Inuvialuktun word for internet too as they just got their vocab updated.)

In other news, the school library has been cleared out, and I am now in the process of building a mega acquisitions list, scoping out library software and barcoding systems, looking for audiovisual materials for special needs students, researching aboriginal keyboards, planning out which budgets can be used for which materials, conducting interest groups with the students etc. etc. The list goes on and on (and on) and I am basically trying to be in a thousand places at the same time. But right now, Irsquo;m just taking a break in Fort McPhersonrsquo;s school, my clothing still smelling like the smoky cabin where I had bannock and tea with a couple Gwichrsquo;in residents.

For people who love books, weeding is a difficult task to do, but an essential one for an attractive and useful collection. And for most people, saving books is heavily associated with preserving knowledge and you donrsquo;t want to throw knowledge away. But knowledge and information are different things. Most books at the primary and secondary school level only contain information, facts. Such things become proven inaccurate. Or they are no longer relevant ideologically (e.g. an overtly sexist text from the 50s) or in terms of topic (e.g. espionage books arenrsquo;t all the rage now that the Cold War is over). Or maybe the content is still useful, but its form is curled up from water damage, covered in graffiti and therersquo;s a dried up piece of gum stuck to it. Yes, I came across more of those than I care to say.

Luckily, at the library Irsquo;m working at, I donrsquo;t have to justify my aggressive weeding. In fact, everyonersquo;s pleased to see that I havenrsquo;t dawdled around with this project, and some students have become involved by helping me sort the discarded materials into decade piles (so we know exactly how old everything is). That made my weeding job much easier plus it was entertaining to see trends in typography, graphic design, illustration and topics over the years.

Some sections were a snap to clear because I discarded almost everything: Harlequin romances, encyclopedia sets, general reference books, anything related to computers etc. Other sections had me practically paralyzed: biography, history, literature, YA fiction. Irsquo;m holding a biography of Louis Riel and debating furiously for 7 seconds. Pros: accurate information, Canadian topic, concerns Native Americans, key historical figure, good condition, relevant to student curriculum. Cons: bland cover, no pictures inside, small print, difficult/boring language, doubtful students will read, replaceable with an awesome graphic novel. For the past 2 weeks, my entire day has been filled with these mini-debates. I have gone through countless sandwich baggies to protect my hands from the dust. Last night, I dreamt I was opening books to find their publication dates. Itrsquo;s hard work but itrsquo;s also a lot of fun to be able to do collection management (link is a great librarian resource btw) at such an intensive level. I have never known any library as thoroughly and completely as this one.

I know I havenrsquo;t updated in awhile, but I am posting bearing major news. As some of you may know, Irsquo;ve moved to a very remote community, north of 60. Irsquo;m working part time for their local youth center as well as volunteering full time in a public school. On my third day at the school, I was put in charge of a major project to completely overhaul the school library. I have to assess their entire collection, discard the outdated materials (Irsquo;m anticipating anywhere from 85%-95% of the collection will need to be thrown away or donated), order new acquisitions, implement a new, digitized cataloguing system and hopefully, if there is time, plan a literacy program.

It seems rather unbelievable, but the school is very understaffed and the library has been basically unused for 6 years. There is no librarian, so I am the most skilled in library and information systems there even though I havenrsquo;t graduated with an MIS yet. Everything is behind a decade. Irsquo;ll also be helping a few teachers learn how to use Dreamweaver and to do basic css coding. Currently, I am trying to convince them that making a site with frames is not the best idea. Remember frames? And card catalogues? Sometimes living in this town is like being in a time warp. Today, stopping by the corner store, I wanted to buy a can of chickpeas until I realized that while I knew the brand, I didnrsquo;t recognize its packaging design which had a serious 1990s vibe to ithellip;

But I digress. Irsquo;m very excited right now because I have an insane amount of work to do. If therersquo;s anything that motivates me, itrsquo;s planning a major project, identifying its core values/goals, breaking it down into tasks, setting deadlines, making budgets, delegating responsibilities and getting people to work. In my experience, the more organized you are when you lead, the more you do what you say yoursquo;ll do when you say yoursquo;ll do it, the more likely people will do what you ask. I feel lucky because the principal has been very supportive. In addition, the local head librarian at the public library has already been very generous with her time in advising me.

The students here desperately need to have a school library, not just to do research and study, but they need a reliable resource to gain literacy skills, academic skills, language skills (both Gwichin and Inuvialuit are ldquo;endangeredrdquo;), life management skills (there are a lot of serious social problems up here) etc. And itrsquo;s sad, but some of them need access to a safe and stable environment so they can just stay away from home. (There is the youth center, but some students say that ldquo;itrsquo;s where the bad kids gordquo; so they donrsquo;t use it. I donrsquo;t know about ldquo;badrdquo;, but it cannot be denied that there is a very high prevelance rate here for kids with special needs or those from challenging backgrounds etc.)

Right now, Irsquo;ve just started and am feeling inspired so I hope I donrsquo;t start to burn out under the workload. The thing is, itrsquo;s difficult not to feel motivated and passionate about work here when you see how acute the need is. Itrsquo;s sort of sad when the students ask me why I would work for the school when Irsquo;m not getting paid. They canrsquo;t seem to accept the idea that someone would want to help them without financial compensation, canrsquo;t seem to understand that some people really care about them and their welfare. Down south, youth can have such a strong, if not disproportionate sense of entitlement; here, itrsquo;s the opposite and the youth donrsquo;t seem to think they deserve much.

The TPL is having an online public survey to help them redesign their website. (via BlogTO)

ldquo;hellip; wersquo;ve confused security with control, and instead of building systems for real security, wersquo;re building systems of control. Think of ID checks everywhere, the no-fly list, warrantless eavesdropping, broad surveillance, data mining, and all the systems to check up on scuba divers, private pilots, peace activists and other groups of people. These give us negligible security, but put a whole lot of control in the governmentrsquo;s hands. Computing is heading in the same direction, although this time it is industry that wants control over its users. Theyrsquo;re going to sell it to us as a security system mdash; they may even have convinced themselves it will improve security mdash; but itrsquo;s fundamentally a control system. And in the long run, itrsquo;s going to hurt security.rdquo;

full quote @ Schneier on Security [link via Compiler]

I donrsquo;t know if theyrsquo;re even bothering to put forth that ruse. In todayrsquo;s panopticon, we arenrsquo;t just internalizing state surveillance, wersquo;re digitizing it.

I recently attended a lecture by Dr. Ronald Leenes from the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology amp; Society: Google/Doubleclick vs The People. While the support for data mining and behavioural targeting is ostensibly to analyze a pool of anonymous data to create better content for the user, the reality isnrsquo;t so simple. It is true that the data collected is not immediately related to onersquo;s civic identity (e.g. clickstream data, IP address, browser/OS etc.), but having all that data aggregated at the very least, narrows down your total anonymity into smaller anonymity subsets and in some cases, could ldquo;outrdquo; you.

But that was not Leenesrsquo; main concern. He was suggesting that the focus on whether data collected is sensitive or not obscures the larger issue of how the industry is managing and analyzing data, and for what purposes (something they are very opaque about). Are these technologies facilitating user discrimination more than improving content? However, as this lecture leaned more on the technical side, these implications were never really explored.

What I find strange is the fact that while the internet might not know about you, it really knows your behaviour well. In fact, it probably knows how you act, your online stream of unconscious, far better than you know your self.

The Canadian government is passing a new restrictive copyright law that in the words of Cory Doctorowrsquo;s BoingBoing post, ldquo;promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world. It will contain an ldquo;anti-circumventionrdquo; clause that prohibits breaking the locks off your music and movies in order to move them to new devices or watch them after the company that made them goes out of business mdash; and it will follow the USrsquo;s disastrous lead with the DMCA in that there will be no exceptions to the ban on circumvention, not even for parody, fair dealing, time shifting, or other legal uses.rdquo;

You can get involved by:

• commenting w/questions for Industry Minister Jim Prentice on the CBC blog Prentice has declined to address the CBC questions.


• checking out Michael Geistrsquo;s 30 Days of DRM call to action list which includes actions like getting librarians involved and addresses of politicians to write to with your concerns. Geist also offers his analysis in the 30 Days series, which is worth a read.

I recently attended a lecture by Prof Andrew Clement through IPSI addressing how our current legal/policy frameworks handling personal information are no longer adequate. Using the example of the no fly list used by the US and Canada, Clement presented a number of case studies in which public, not private information, now readily available, searchable and aggregated online, was used to restrict citizensrsquo; entry into the US because of the ldquo;security threatsrdquo; they posed. Notable academic examples include a professor who criticized the Bush admin and another for dropping LSD in the 60s (he published a paper about his findings that came up on Google).

Instead of clinging to an older paradigm of privacy, Clement argues that citizens need to be protected with better models that can address current challenges in managing personal data brought about by new technology. Instead of focusing on privacy, he proposes the idea of identity integrity, which is characterized by a focus on the rights of citizens and a presumption of anonymous entitlement and of innocence. It also calls for policy to be more transparent, or at least for a proper appeals process to be in place e.g. addressing the difficult process of appealing onersquo;s inclusion on a no fly list.

In addition to identity integrity, there is the notion of identity management which people already instinctively do, with varying levels of competency. Identity management is definitely something Irsquo;d like to see included in the educational curriculum. Itrsquo;s also something I believe corporations and online vendors need to become more responsible for instead of constantly placing the onus on users to track their personal data. Especially young users.

Too often I have heard the argument that a free online service should be compensated by a userrsquo;s content that has been voluntarily uploaded. Personally, I find it fairly ridiculous to expect - letrsquo;s pick on Facebook for example - your average 13 year old to actually read through the FB TOS, which is written in an inaccessible legal language and is excessively long for an online text. And, if youth users want to continue to understand how their personal data is shared, they are also expected to read the TOS of each 3rd party application they add? And are their parents supposed to read them too?

Users donrsquo;t want privacy so much as they want control over their online personal data. Would it be so difficult for online apps to be more transparent about how they are using it? More importantly, shouldnrsquo;t they?

I learned how to do cataloging today using the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center). It reminded me of this film clip that I came across on The Polyglot Spot.

Maybe itrsquo;s naive, but I donrsquo;t see why both systems of organization canrsquo;t coexist for library catalogs. Imagine if users could tag materials in their university catalogs. In addition to searching for items in a standardized, hierarchal manner, you could also search laterally, rhizomatically. Imagine doing research on your topic where the material would have tags to help you trace its place in numerous discourses (e.g. tags like contra-Bazin, early third wave feminism, postwar Japan, May 68, queer, libertarian), local university courses (e.g. Prof X recommends, good for PSY100), student opinion (e.g. boring, concise, weak methodology, outdated, heavy) etc. Currently, articles on HeinOnline allow users to make digital comments on articles; this would be similar, but with the additional power of organization and navigation.

It reminds me a little of wordpressrsquo; post about the difference between categories and tags. Lorelle weighs in with a more detailed explanation and related links.