Howard, Jennifer; For Libraries, MOOCs Bring Uncertainty and Opportunity, The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 25, 2013). Here’s a quote….

“Ms. O’Brien had one piece of basic advice for librarians wondering what to make of MOOC mania: Take a MOOC or two to see what they’re really like. “You can’t be a valued adviser if you don’t understand what it takes to do one of these courses,” she told the audience.”

Image by BrianCSmith CC Some rights reserved

Some that might be of particular interest to librarians…

• Metadata: organizing and discovering information – starts September 2013 (8 weeks)
• Hyperlinked Library MOOC – starts September 2013
• Surviving disruptive technologies – started 3 days ago, but looks like you an still sign up. 2-4 hours per week for 7 weeks
• Introduction to data science – May 2013 (8 weeks)
• Globalizing Higher Education and Research for the ‘Knowledge Economy” – Jan 2014 (8 weeks)
• Apps for Librarians & Educators ($125)
• Accessibility features of iOS for the iPad and iPhone
• How to write a thesis ($12)
• Responsible Computing – sounds interesting to see how they ‘develop foundational computing and information literacy’ for college freshmen
• The Economics of Information: Strategy, Structure and Pricing
• Digital Learning Transition

But you could choose one on any topic you like:

• How to listen to orchestras
• Introduction to guitar
• Message of the image
• Polite Puppy Dog Training Classes

Have you enrolled in a MOOC? What was it like? Have you asked your employer to fund a MOOC for professional development? How did that go?

Now there is one for anyone interested in the library world. Library 2.012 Worldwide Virtual Conference October 3 – 5, 2012. It is a free conference held online, in multiple time zones, over 2 calendar days (three if you take all the time zones into account.

It looks to be a much larger affair than VIDM with several strands of presentations being planned. The School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at San José State University (http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/) is the founding conference sponsor. Opportunities for commercial sponsorship, and conference partner organisations are available.

The call for presentation proposals is open.

Sarah Stewart taking part in last year’s VIDM.

Image : Virtual International Day of the Midwife 2011 by Sarah M Stewart. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

SOPA and a similar proposal PIPA aim to address piracy in part by allowing for sanctions against a foreign site that breaks US copyright law.  This might include getting US servers to block access to the domain name; or getting US search engines to remove it from their results; or stopping it from receiving money from US advertisers.

Don’t Break the Internet (Lemley, Levine and Post) outlines from a legal point of view why this would be a Bad Thing for the internet as a whole; Foreign Libraries Will Be Infringing Sites Under SOPA (Eric Hellman) gives a specific example of just how bad it would be.  Because Project Gutenberg Australia, and many many other sites, could be classified as a “US-directed” site (defined by SOPA hilariously loosely as a site that doesn’t actively prevent someone in the US from accessing it) and includes content that, while in the public domain in Australia, is still under copyright in the USA.

What can we do about it, outside the US? We don’t have a representative to contact, at least not about these laws – there have been, and will be more, bad IP laws in our own countries to protest against.  But we can talk to the publishers supporting SOPA (pdf, 92kB), or even the publishers supporting the proposed Research Works Act (unrelated to SOPA or PIPA, but it would outlaw open access mandates and thus bolster publishers’ monopoly over scholarly publications) and the publisher making campaign contributions to the politicians who introduced the RWA.

Theoretically we could stop buying from these publishers.  In practice – yeah, well, we’ve got customers so we probably can’t, but we can withdraw any free labour we give them by way of writing or peer reviewing papers or editing journals for them. In other words, strike.  (That link’s blacked out against SOPA, but come back to it in 24 hours, it’s well worth it.) There are plenty of Open Access library science journals we can be supporting instead.

Much as we would like to be there, we can still get the latest on what’s coming out of the conference through the Conference Blog. Alternatively, the conference is also being well covered by the likes of David Lee King and Librarian in Black, or one of the officially listed conference bloggers.

If you want to see the presentations, you can download them, but have to login. (User name/Password: il2011/il2011)

Don’t forget that Internet Librarian International in London is coming up, on 27th and 28th October, where more great content will be shared.

And once you have been suitably inspired, ALIA Biennial is seeking abstracts for the conference in Sydney in 2012.

Two key things to note is the limit of 26 checkouts of titles and tightening up on geographical use – who libraries are issuing cards to. There are around 25 Australian library services listed on the Overdrive site.

I won’t go into other details as others have written about this already. You can read:

• HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations – LibraryJournal.com
• Let’s Play Rent-a-Book – David Lee King
• Publishing Industry Forces OverDrive and Other Library eBook Vendors to Take a Giant Step Back – Bobbi L. Newman

To follow the Twitter conversation on this checkout #hcod on Twitter or Twapperkeeper archive

Responses ranged from the visceral to the satirical.

For some it was the proverbial straw provoking them to feelings of anger and disgust.

Others wanting to express their frustration and look for some light-hearted responses started tweeting satirical book titles using the tag #hcodtitles.

Like these…

@marinakastan RT @wawoodworth: Sense & Limited Useability #hcodtitles
Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:52:23 +0000 – tweet id 41359899837472768 – #12
tweet details

@LundeenLiterary ROFL!!! @michaelkpate One Thousand and One Nights Minus Nine Hundred and Seventy Five #hcodtitles
Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:29:37 +0000 – tweet id 41354172305510400 – #27
tweet details

@PMMcG My last #hcodtitles –> You don’t get to 26 friends without making a few enemies
Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:53:38 +0000 – tweet id 41360215890862081 – #11
tweet details

If you are handy with the digital imaging, you might like to enter the LOLbrarians competition inspired by this news. Check out LOLibrarians: a Photoshop Contest at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Image by rochelle, et. al, reproduced under a creative commons licence.

We Love Libraries

“We are amazed by the accomplishments of the organizations currently delivering electronic content – companies like Apple (iTunes), Netflix, Hulu and Amazon – and believe a core question guiding our work must be: “If they can do this so well, why aren’t libraries offering similar electronic content services?” We seek the answers to this question, and plan to help solve the problem for and with libraries.” — http://libraryrenewal.org/about/

Research and online events are promised. Check it out.

The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) produces the IFLA World Report a biennial series that reports on the state of countries of the world relating to freedom of information, freedom of expression and other related issues.

So I checked out the 2010 report on Australia, fully expecting that I would know everything that was there.  Not so. The report was quite interesting and reported on numbers of libraries – broken down by type, libraries and the Internet – including filtering used and national policy towards it, legal issues, open access, social issues, ethics and more.

You can view individual or multiple country reports, using the Google Map to access them, either in full or customised form. You can also access the Analysis and Conclusions of the World Report 2010 and comment on the whole report.

Well worth a view and an interesting insight into libraries and information worldwide.

Dave Pattern, who did a superb job of organising the event, talked about making library data work harder. 20% of keyword searches fail, so you need to guide students through the catalogue. Providing suggestions based on data becomes more powerful over time, as the data builds up. It is also possible to build good recommendation systems, using the data you already collect but don’t exploit. Reading lists and personal suggestions can also be valuable.

Interaction Brendan Dawes gave a fascinating talk about some of the small ideas he’s built and turned into larger projects. He emphasised importance of design, of simplicity and stripping away unimportant information. He showed a few examples of his work, including projects where people have been asked to create their own interface, sketching, and innovative ways to show connections between information.

Iman Moradi talked about gaming and a topic I’m very interested in, data visualisation. He was backdropped by one of the best slidedecks I have seen. There was a lot of deck envy in the room! There is real potential for involving design students in helping libraries to bring our data to life.

A Yahoo Pipes cookalong was disrupted by technology issues, but it was still good to get stuck into it again. It really is a useful tool and can be scaffolded from basic feeds to complex inputs in a fairly gentle way.

Informal discussions around a series of topics were presented runaround style, from information literacy to mobile devices and the Semantic Web, which these days is really more a discussion about Linked Data. Lightning talks followed, Owen Stephens discussed the history of interactive fiction, and discussed whether it could be a tool for information literacy. Joss Winn and Paul Stanthorp discussed a concept for using WordPress, Scriblio and Triplify to extract catalogue data and present it in new and interesting ways.

Prizes were on offer for suggesting ideas, and a team prize. It was really valuable to be able to spend an hour or so working with other librarians on building a mashup. Often learning can be so abstract, especially if you are trying to learn on your own, and I learnt more about Regex in an hour today than I have in trying to read about it previously.

This was really a great event – I came away enthused, looking forward to trying out new things, and having met some fantastic people. Onwards to the next Mash Oop, crisps and all!

First was the Web of secrecy article on the Unleashed by Mark Pesce:

It began with a blacklist. The Australian Communications and Media Authority has one – URLs pointing to web sites and web pages deemed too offensive for Australian eyes.

Fair enough: as the Government regulator they have the statutory authority to block content which wouldn’t receive a classification in Australia. But here’s the thing – no one except ACMA knows what URLs are on the blacklist. In other words, not only are the URLs censored, but the list of censored URLs is itself censored.

Welcome to the rabbit hole.

Next was the recent Blocking the Net episode of SBS Insight.

The Federal Government wants to block the internet, filtering out extreme material hosted offshore like child pornography and extreme violence. Under the proposal a Government-approved black list would be given to internet service providers, who’d then be forced to block the offending sites. The idea is to make the internet more family-friendly and protect kids. Sounds pretty straightforward – well, not quite. Recently leaked black lists show some oddly irrelevant sites caught up in the existing system. And will mandatory blocking of the net work?

Lastly was the more recent Western internet censorship: The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? editorial on the Wikileaks website. The same Wikileaks website that posted the laked list of banned websites.

Over the last two years, Wikileaks has exposed detailed secret government censorship lists or plans for over eight countries, including Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and Germany.

Although Wikileaks’ main site has been censored by the Chinese Public Security Bureau since early 2007, last week saw the site placed onto a secret list of sites “forbidden” by the Australian Media and Communications Authority, or ACMA.

The pro-censorship governments exposed by Wikileaks can be divided into three broad categories:

1. Countries with a mandatory censorship system in place: Thailand, the UAE, and Lebanon (films).
2. Countries proposing a mandatory censorship system: Australia and Germany.
3. Countries in which the internet censorship system is an unregulated agreement between several large ISPs and the police: Norway, Denmark and Finland.

Australia and Germany are the only liberal democracies proposing a mandatory internet censorship regime.

Each view presents the issues in a slightly different light and shows just how complex the issue really is.