Church Burns Christian Books

And now for something completely different: a North Carolina church has decided to burn Christian books on Hallowe'en. They will also burn music. That's how hardcore Pastor Marc Grizzard is; he feels all versions of the Bible other than the King James are Satanic. Did he warm up with anti-church books? Maybe some Golden Compass? I hear there's a talking polar bear. That's gotta be worse than Rick Warren.

6 Ways We Gave Up Our Internet Privacy

It's actually only four ways if you're a Canadian as far as I know.

More of the same; another article urging readers to have a little common sense about what they post about themselves.

• Google: Always with the Google. Using Google's calendar services and others like it makes it possible for people to know all kinds of information about you and where you're going to be. People used to keep organizers and physical calendars for this sort of thing; yes, Google can store it online where you can get to it from anywhere with an internet connection, but you could also just carry it with you or keep it on your desk and tell people you'll have to check your agenda and get back to them. Astonishing.
• Social Networking: The same thing goes for Facebook and Twitter and using it to constantly update with what you're doing. How much could a stalker find out about your whereabouts from what you post up for the general public? Is there anything out there you wouldn't want your ex-boyfriend to know? Take it down. This isn't even getting into someone finding out a password or two.
  
• RFID Cards and Loyalty Cards: I've never heard of RFID cards before this, but that might be because I just wasn't paying attention and not because I'm Canadian and this article is written by an American. Loyalty cards, maybe. I'm not sure how those are so much worse than using a debt or credit card, save for providing information about what you buy to the specific company you buy it from... don't they already get that, though? Okay, it's still information gathering, it's just old news.
  
• The Patriot Act: Skip. Be assured security went up in Canada, too, but it's nowhere near the US.
  
• GPS: Again with the creepy. Use a map.
• The Kindle: I can see it providing slightly more information than just ordering a book through a website could - the article says it can process how quickly you read a selection, for example - and then it's back to the summer bugaboo of items being removed without warning.

Just read a spy or crime book and take some tips from what the bad guys do in them. Hooray for paranoia!

Savagery and Ravages of Technology

So it's a bit of a cheat on a library tech blog, but it's so darn interesting: For the last hundred years, rightsholders have fretted about everything from the player piano to the VCR to digital TV to Napster. Here are those objections, in Big Content's own words.

We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine.

You know, the VCR.

Nobody likes a change in format. I have to wonder if one day there will be people specializing in transferring data from one format to the next, a rapidly building snowball of content that we strive to hold on to simply because we made it... nevermind the getting paid part.

Book Review: The Bodies Left Behind, Jeffery Deaver

It's a slow news day, at least for things I'm interested in talking about, so I'll trot out a book review, I suppose.

The Bodies Left Behind
Jeffery Deaver

Plot Summary: A deputy in a small town goes to investigate a brief 911 call that got cut off after one word - 'this'. She happens upon a murder scene and is forced to flee the two killers, who are still there. What follows is a long night trekking through the woods with a spoiled-seeming friend of the victims and playing tricks of misdirection and mind games with the pursuers.

Opinions: I liked the trickery involved on both sides. I liked the protagonist, Brynn, and the antagonists are written well with motives of their own. Brynn's husband is a kind of boring secondary character. From what I've read of Deaver, he likes to include at least one big twist of plot in every book, the kind where you don't see it coming but in hindsight it makes sense. The book goes on a little too long for a lack of real payoff action-wise, though there is character growth. One detail is left annoyingly unsolved, but the book is worth a read if you're fond of mysteries and books with cops. I would not be particularly interested in reading another book about Brynn MacKenzie.

The Library of Congress' Digital Collection and a Plea for Steve Guttenberg's Help

Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and the Library of Congress; all three are scanning collections to be stored digitally. The Library of Congress is up to 700 terabytes of data, though only 200 are available on the internet due to copyright. (A terabyte is still a lot, trust me.)

Do people have the same problems with the LIC scanning as they do with Google? Does Project Gutenburg? Has anyone considered the merits of consolidating all three collections under the LIC or Gutenburg?

I'd say collect it under the Library of Congress, but I'd rather it be held by an international entity, as in, one not tied to the United States. Like maybe the United Nations?

Perhaps most pressing: why isn't Steve Guttenberg attached to Project Gutenberg? Is it the extra T? Can you get rid of that, Steven? Only you can fight Google.

Mister Congeniality

Proof people can be cartoon villains.

Constantine "Connie" Xinos is the president of the home-owners' association in a gated community in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook. He dislikes being near poor people (he successfully blocked a permit for a senior's home, stating, "I don't want to live next to poor people. I don't want poor people in my town"). He reportedly worked to elect an Oak Brook village council who would shut down the town library, which he also campaigned against. When local kids showed up at town meetings to ask that their library be left open, he is quoted as saying, "I don't care that you guys miss the librarian, and she was nice, and she helped you find books;" and to the library staff to "stop whining."

More here. Notice the lovely skylight in the library; it looks like a beautiful place. Most libraries I see are windowless caves with yellowy fluorescent lighting. I wish I had this library.

Now would be an excellent time for some random acts of kindness via the web to help this library out. Check out all this free publicity.

The Relationship Between Public Libraries and Google

This paper by Vivienne Waller, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Research of the Swinburne University of Technology, explores the relationship between Google and public libraries. It's pretty interesting and raises some good points:

• Google tends to 'perfect technology first' before 'working out how to make money from it'. This could mean ads. Google already insists it be the only search engine allowed to link to the content of the Google Book Project. Some libraries are balking.
• Search engine bias and the idea of relevance to search queries.
• What happens if Google, perish the thought, goes out of business and the archive is inaccessible?
• The motives of Google's project.

She also discusses infogration, described as 'the integration of aspects of the world in to the medium of information into which targeted ads can then be placed'.

To be successful, infogration requires that we live more of our lives on the Web. Hence, Google has been actively encouraging us to live more of our lives in the “Googleverse”. Google wants us to not only use its search engine to search for information, and to read using Google Books but also to use Google products (a shopping site) to buy things, to plan to buy things using Google Shopping List (a Web–based list of intended purchases), to let friends know what we want for our birthday or Christmas using Google WishList (a public list of what we wish we could buy), to find out what is happening using Google News, to share tagged photos using Google Picasa, and to hang out with friends using Orkut (Google’s version of a social networking site, very popular in Asia and India), or connect with people with similar interests using Google Groups. The list continues and expands with each new Google product. Google encourages us to communicate using Gmail, to plan trips using Google Maps, to bring Google along for the ride with Google Maps integrated into our cars and giving us directions, to virtually visit other places using Google StreetView, to describe ourselves in blogs (using Blogger) and be updated with the blogs we are interested in using FeedBurner. Google suggests that we manage our financial information using Google Finance and that we manage our health using Google Health (a repository for all of our medical records and a way of keeping our doctors up–to–date about our health).

That doesn't sound at all creepy!

I think the most important point to remember is 'libraries need to pay attention to that which is concealed by Google’s search results and by digitised information. What is concealed includes vital aspects of human knowledge and culture and it is part of the task of the public library to preserve these things.'