Rob sent me a heads up that he heard on NPR this morning that "the state legislature here has decided to save the state library for at least another year." I searched the Access Washington, the Seattle Times, and KUOW, but I can't find any confirmation of this. Can anyone verify this information? This would be great news indeed! Thanks, Rob!

The Internet Amenity

"Within 10 or 15 years’ time, practically every computer and every handheld device will be online all the time.

What many people don’t realize, however, is that this visionary network is increasingly up and running today. And it doesn’t even require any new technology, business models or significant investment. Indeed, if there is a single difference between the Broadband2Wireless mission and the reality of this new ubiquitous network, it’s that the real wireless Internet doesn’t cost $50 a month—it’s free. All that’s required, really, is openness....

Ultimately, IP tone becomes valuable not when it is just in your hotel room but when you can count on it being everywhere. I have it in my house for guests. My friends have it in their offices. This is the friendly future that I see starting to shape up: instead of seeing Internet connectivity as a profit center, my guess is that businesses, universities and government facilities are going to provide IP tone to visitors for the same reason that they offer free local telephone service, water and the use of rest rooms—it makes the environment warmer, friendlier and more productive.

Do your part: set up an open network today." [at Technology Review, via Tomalak's Realm]

You know who would loooooove to set up wireless networks for anyone to come in and use? Yep... public libraries. Most can't, though.

1. The limited technology budget is better spent on computers, printers, and maintenance;
2. When there is a tech person on staff, they don't have the time or resources to set one up and maintain it;
3. A lot of public libraries don't even have a tech person on staff.

It's kind of sad, actually, because PLs are already community centers. Check out The Wireless Librarian's list of Libraries with Wireless and you'll see that only 7 of the 88 listed are public libraries. It's not a definitive list, but it's indicative of the current situation. We'd need a similar e-rate-like initiative for wireless to change this, but the Bush administration would rather cut this type of funding.

BTW, if anyone reading this is attending the Click Here First: Make Your Library Site the Stickiest Spot in Town session at PLA next week, and you notice that they are distributing handouts that won't be available on the web, can you please pick me up a set and I'll reimburse you for postage?  Thanks!

Report Cites Possible Religious Bias in School Web Filters

"The report, titled 'Filtering Software: The Religious Connection,' examines eight companies' relationships with conservative Christian organizations. According to the report, three companies with a significant school presence--N2H2 Inc. of Seattle, Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., and 8e6 Technologies Inc. of Orange, Calif.--also market their products to conservative religious internet service providers (ISPs), while the other five companies have expressed conservative religious philosophies.

Of these latter five, four have begun targeting the school market in response to the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires schools to install a "technology protection measure" to help shield students from online material that is harmful to minors.

Based on these connections--and on the companies' own descriptions of the categories their products are designed to block--the university's report surmises that conservative biases might exist in the way these companies categorize web sites when putting together their 'block' lists. It further implies that at least one company, N2H2, has sought to downplay its connection to the religious right....

The report notes that such bias, if it does exist, would be impossible to prove, because the companies it examines won’t reveal their lists of web sites blocked within each category. But its theories could generate momentum for the establishment of an independent auditor to better inform schools of the companies’ filtering methods." [at eSchool News, via Privacy Digest]

Here's the full report, which is available in HTML or PDF. I hope they do create an independent auditor and that they work with libraries, too, because libraries that receive federal funds (such as e-rate money) are also subject to the CIPA filtering mandate.

I didn't know there was a Public Library Computer Trainers mailing list - most excellent! And it's run by Steve Garwood, no less. [via WEB4LIB]

BESS vs Image Search Engines: An anticensorware investigation by Seth Finkelstein

"This report investigates how N2H2's censorware treats several image search engines. N2H2/BESS turns out to blacklist popular general image searching sites as "Pornography". The cached images held by such sites are probably the cause. This is discussed as a deep dilemma of censorware, where general search facilities may be considered as tainted if they contain any cached forbidden material." [via Dave Farber's Interesting People list]

One more reason filters don't work the way legislators think they do.

What do you call a librarian these days? It sounds like the intro to a bad joke, but apparently there are a gazillion answers. Link off the Job Title Generator. [via SIGIA-L]

Darn! (In honor of Schoolhouse Rock.) Salon's article He Knows What You've Been Checking Out is on the premium side, and I don't subscribe so I can't read it. One of the cool things about being a librarian is you have access to all kinds of different databases so you can find almost any article, except that Salon isn't indexed in any database that I know of. If you subscribe to Salon, please let me know what you think of the article. For the rest of us, here's an excerpt from the free intro:

"But even though the government was able to get what it wanted from those libraries under existing laws, intelligence agencies argued they needed more sweeping powers. The result was the passage last October of the USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA), an acronym for the unwieldy "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act." USAPA, of course, deals with much more than libraries -- it amends more than 15 statutes, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Cable Act, and the Federal Wiretap Statute. The new law gave the government unprecedented authority to conduct secret searches, monitor e-mail and Internet usage, share information between intelligence agencies and seize personal information with only nominal judicial oversight.

And the new USAPA powers will also reach into libraries and bookstores, if investigators believe that records of what someone is reading and researching are relevant to an anti-terror investigation. Already librarians say they've received requests for records under USAPA, but they are prohibited from making such demands public; they can't reveal who made the requests and what they asked for, or keep track of such requests in any way. "