I passed the CA bar back in May.  I wanted to do a grand gesture to signify my triumph.  My idea: set my bar prep materials (outlines, testbooks, flash cards) ablaze in a bonfire, preferably at a beach with friends and small amounts of alcohol. However, figuring out the maze of requirements and prohibitions of various beaches in the area has left me confused and with 15 pounds of paper gathering dust and cobwebs. Something needed to be done.

Behold, a small backyard grill!

There was lots of tearing beforehand: I didn’t want to burn the treated covers or the glue binding. I then crumpled the pages and threw them on. What a sight! There’s charcoal underneath all that paper. And as it turns out, the paper made great kindling.

The pages and cards quickly burned down to ashes and the charcoal caught fire and burned off sufficiently so that there was a nice, warm glow from the coals. On went the burger patties. All in all, they were delicious. Burgers fresh from the grill, flavored with law and catharsis. Yum.

Still, I have another 12 lbs. of material to get rid of … so there may indeed be a beach party someday.

Go, Chris! Congratulations!

AALL ACTION ALERT

June 21, 2010

IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED: Call your Senators and urge them to vote NO on Coburn Amendment No. 4331

On Thursday June 17, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) offered a package of amendments to the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010 which, according to him, would pay for implementing all the provisions of the bill. One of the amendments would drastically cut funding for executive branch publishing and printing. In introducing this particular amendment, Coburn stated that it would reduce the costs of government documents by $4.4 billion over 10 years. He went on to say that “Nobody reads these. They are all available online.”

While AALL embraces the move to broader public access to government information through the Internet, we also recognize the reality—that even today, much of the agency information we need is not available online. In addition, recent studies demonstrate that many segments of our citizenry still lack access to computers and/or broadband.

The Coburn amendment reducing executive branch publishing would have a negative impact on the cost effective printing and binding services procured competitively by the Government Printing Office from thousands of small business printers throughout the country. It would also impact the distribution of important print titles through the Federal Depository Library Program.

Sen. Coburn’s amendment could effectively eliminate the publication of almost every print title currently being produced by federal agencies and departments. Among its many ill-conceived mandates is one would tediously require every publishing entity to list at the beginning of each publication distributed to the public: the name of the publishing agency; the total number of copies printed; the collective cost of producing and printing all of the copies; and the name of the publishing entity.

Sen. Coburn simply fails to understand the printing process and the importance of printing and distributing important publications for use by the American public through the FDLP.

Immediate Action Needed:

Time is of the essence because the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010 may be voted on as early as tomorrow. Please call your Senators today through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and urge them to vote NO on Coburn Amendment No. 4331 related to executive branch printing and publishing.

Thank you,

Mary Alice Baish
AALL Director of Government Relations
202-942-4237
mbaish@aall.org

But SLA, like many other institutions, is going through serious challenges – financial shortfalls that are triggering a major organizational restructuring.  In her remarks in the closing session on Wednesday, SLA Executive Director Janice LaChance devoted her address to the challenges facing SLA in the near and long-term. I hadn’t expected to record any of the session, but I decided to try to capture her remarks in whole rather than tweet a summary.

Here are Janice’s remarks in the closing session regarding the state of SLA …

Feel free to pass along to fellow SLA members.

If you’d like to read a summary of the Closing General Session, Jill Hurst-Wahl has several posts about the conference at her blog, Digitization 101. If you see other blog posts that discuss the SLA 2010 closing session, or the general state of the association, please feel free to leave a link via a comment. Thanks!

State of the Revolution: Constant innovation in the local news landscape

While the format adapts and morphs – journalism will endure. The news just keeps coming. The question is: what do communities need to know? How can we get as many people as possible to these stories or provide the best information? How best to connect citizens with this information? Join new media pioneers Ben Ilfield and Geoff Samek, co-founders of Castle Press LLC, whose Sacramento Press together with a small core staff and hundreds of community writers, cover the pulse of Sacramento, California. They will address their vision, their model, the platform they built, how the news is reported, edited, tagged, curated and circulated online – with plans for expansion

As it happens, Sacramento is semi-local to me (a two-hour drive, outside of rush hour), so I was intrigued.  The speakers (Geoff Samek and Ben Ilfeld), moderator (Leigh Montgomery of the Christian Science Monitor) and the audience graciously gave their consent to let me record

Ben Ilfield, co-founder and COO, Sacramento Press / Castle Press LLC
Geoff Samek, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, Sacramento Press / Castle Press
Moderator: Leigh Montgomery, Christian Science Monitor

Ben’s and Geoff’s presentation can be found online here:

And there is also audio from the presentation, including audience response (although the volume may be quite low for some of the non-microphoned speakers). Ben and Geoff talk about the Sacramento Press project.

How viable or scalable the Sacramento Press project is currently or shall be is something I am not qualified to comment upon. However, I think, as a new model for news generation and dissemination, there’s food for thought and room for thoughtful analysis.

I admit to having experienced the “state of perpetual distractedness” more than once, and I also know the fearsome power of an Internet timesuck [my Exhibit A: TV Tropes - Abandon all hope and a couple of hours, all ye who enter here, and be careful about sampling the nightmare fuel].  But are Carr’s points accurate? Fair? Reasonable? Are they even something we can act on? I hope to read more to find out.

In preparation for SLA Annual, Doug Newcomb, SLA Chief Policy Officer, asks in a blog post regarding Carr’s argument, “That has to make you wonder: Is less-than-perfect information a liability? Can you hold a party liable for the use, or misuse, of reasonably good information?” The post points to Carr’s editorial in the Washington Post that starts with the following:

Just before dawn on the morning of Jan. 19, 2009, a Los Angeles woman named Lauren Rosenberg was hit by a car while crossing a four-lane highway in Park City, Utah. Last month, more than a year after the accident, she filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that the route for her walk had been suggested by Google Maps. She’s asking for more than $100,000 in damages, in part to cover the hefty medical bills she says she incurred.

Should Google be held liable for negligence based on “bad” or “less perfect” information? As a general principle, publishers of books, magazines, etc., which include dubious, even bad information, such as which mushrooms are not poisonous, aren’t liable (assuming it’s not defamatory, or the publisher had a duty that was breached and led directly to the injury of the plaintiff). As for maps … it’s a bit stickier:

Aeronautical charts are highly technical tools. They are graphic depictions of technical, mechanical data.

Courts tend to distinguish between one-on-one communication, where if an information-giver acts negligently or fraudulently, there is liability. For material published for wider audiences … not so much (I’m sure there COULD be exceptions, but this is the general rule).  Looking at professionals as well – doctors and lawyers are routinely sued for giving bad information to their clients, or at least often enough that the term malpractice can apply to such situations. Librarians and teachers, however, tend not to be held to the same standard, even when giving very direct, personalized and critical information to a single patron or student.  At least, I don’t know of any cases where a library system or librarian has been sued because they gave out wrong information … if you do, let me know.

Going back to the query of whether Google is likely to be found liable — the people who’ve left comments at some sites reporting on this story, such as Search Engine Land and the ABA Journal,  seem to think this case is not just laughable, but also frivolous and ridiculous.  Carr’s larger question, of whether the Internet and technology is changing us not only socially and economically, but also intellectually and biologically, is not likely to be resolved fully before Ms. Rosenberg’s situation, but there seems to be some food for thought in the discussion, even if you strenuously disagree.

Personally, despite years of appreciation for MapQuest and Google Maps, I think I’m still quite handy with a paper map … then again, I’ve never used a GPS system. Curiouser and curiouser.

From UCLA’s Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog:

Informational Update on a Possible UC Systemwide Boycott of the Nature Publishing Group

UC Libraries are confronting an impending crisis in providing access to journals from the Nature Publishing Group (NPG). NPG has insisted on increasing the price of our license for Nature and its affiliated journals by 400 percent beginning in 2011, which would raise our cost for their 67 journals by well over $1 million dollars per year.

While Nature and other NPG publications are among the most prestigious of academic journals, such a price increase is of unprecedented magnitude. NPG has made their ultimatum with full knowledge that our libraries are under economic distress—a fact widely publicized in an Open Letter to Licensed Content Providers and distributed by the California Digital Library (CDL) in May 2009. In fact, CDL has worked successfully with many other publishers and content providers over the past year to address the University’s current economic challenges in a spirit of mutual problem solving, with positive results including lowering our overall costs for electronic journals by $1 million dollars per year.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed is covering this …

I’ve been sworn in as an attorney in the state of California.

It feels a bit unreal …

Mary Minow has been nominated by President Barack Obama to the National Museum and Library Services Board (NMLSB). Minow, an attorney, consultant and a former librarian and library trustee, specializes in copyright, privacy and free speech. The nomination requires Senate confirmation.

The NMLSB is an advisory body that includes the director and deputy directors of IMLS and twenty presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed members of the general public who have demonstrated expertise in, or commitment to, library or museum services. Informed by its collectively vast experience and knowledge, the NMLSB advises the IMLS director on general policy and practices, and on selections for the National Medals for Museum and Library Service.

“I congratulate Mary on her nomination to the IMLS Board by President Obama,” said Kim Bui-Burton, CLA President and Director of the Monterey Public Library. “Mary Minow is an outstanding advocate and information resource for libraries in California, throughout the country and the world. She has contributed her wonderfully ‘dangerous mix of thoughts and information’ to the CLA community for many years now, and we are all the better for her thinking and support.”

Among her many accomplishments are currently serving as Chair of the CLA Intellectual Freedom Committee, teaching digital copyright at San Jose State School of Library Science and at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science, editing the Stanford Copyright & Fair Use site, and serving as past President of the California Association of Library Trustees and Commissioners.

Minow was the first recipient of the California Library Association’s Zoia Horn Intellectual Freedom Award, given in 2004 and she coauthor with Tomas Lipinski of The Library’s Legal Answer Book (ALA Editions: 2003).

Choose Privacy Week Video from 20K Films on Vimeo.