Mark Kraft: "I wanted to point out http://www.livejournal.com/~libraries to you. It's the most active LiveJournal community for librarians, and is quite frequently posted to."

Thanks to Mark for this one, as I was not familiar with it.

"Compare this estimate of personal storage space to this page of examples of what can be stored.  

Note:  we are currently at year zero on the storage estimate.  A standard Dell machine now sold has 120 Gb of personal storage or 0.120 Tb of storage.  We will pass the ability to store all the printed materials of the Library of Congress in 2008.  If we had copyright term reform, we could see a world where people carry around the Library of Congress -- legally -- on their laptop." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

And it would be cataloged, too!

Hamilton Librarian Loses Job After Choosing Heads in Coin Toss

"For no particular reason, Usha Rangachari picked tails. And with that five letter word, the Hamilton Public Library employee got to keep her job. The library held a coin toss Tuesday to determine whether Rangachari or another employee would get bumped into a more junior position." [via Library Stuff]

I'm going to have to dig out my grade school yearbook because I think I went to school with someone named Usha Rangachari!

Abe Lincoln and the Internet Pirates by Michael Eisner

"Abraham Lincoln would have loved the internet. But he would have hated the internet pirates who commandeer its high-speed circuits to steal....

But he undoubtedly would have disdained those who go to sites with names such as Gnutella, Madster, BearShare, Limewire, Swaptor, Morpheus or Rapigator to pilfer the intellectual property of others." [FT.com]

Commentary from John Robb:

"Michael Eisner quotes Lincoln as a defender of intellectual property rights.  He is probably right about that.  However, he would have choked on the idea that term of protection for copyrights would last 95 years or more!  That's more than the life expectancy of 99% of humanity or nearly 4 generations of Americans!  This is the equivalent of saying that a copyright's protection lasts until "hell freezes over."  Certainly this isn't what the framers had in mind when they enshrined the protection of intellectual property for a "limited time" in the constitution.  There isn't a reading of the constitution that could conclude otherwise." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

My favorite quote from Eisner's editorial:

"These disturbing trends can be reversed. New technologies can be developed by computer companies to make it harder for the hackers to hack. New business models can be devised by entertainment companies to support the consumer's clear desire to access and own content in new and exciting ways. And legislation can be enacted to establish clearly that, just as people pay for fruit at their local fruit stand, they must pay for music or films or books or poems or software on their local hard drive. Most important, what is needed is a common conviction that theft of all things is wrong."

Note the way he dances around without ever guaranteeing the transfer of existing fair use rights to the digital world. His "new business models" statement refers only to access and ownership in "new and exciting ways," - not a replication of existing ways. I'm sure to Eisner de-fanged PCs that are really just WebTVs is indeed "new and exciting." However, I sure don't see it that way.

We've seen a very clearly delineated path that the entertainment industry would like to see the tech industry follow in order to guarantee their precious intellectual property rights for 100 years or more. I have yet to see something similar from the entertainment industry detailing the path they will take to ensure a consumer's fair use rights. Funny how they keep side-stepping that little scenario, isn't it?

Another question: if they agree that someday a work could fall out of copyright (100+ years), how would your locked-down machines know its rights had changed? Another little loophole for which I don't see anyone making accommodation. I guess if we don't think of it now, then copyright laws really will last forever!

And it's not like I would expect it in this type of opinion fluff, but still no recognition from the entertainment industry of the role libraries play in society. Their digital road map for the future should include how they plan to accommodate existing circulation rights for libraries, too.

"Carrie has posted a list from NYPL of Books to Remember from 2001 . Apparently, this is one of the NYPL programs that will get cut if the huge budget cut stands. If you live in New York, please write a letter to the mayor and city council. You can email them, but a letter is more effective and Carrie has provided a sample to save you time.

The head lemur inspired me to share my library story." [meryl's notes]

I would have added Emergence by Steven Johnson, but it's still an interesting list. Once upon a time, I would have already read most of them, too.

"The backlog of undelivered and irradiated mail has not only changed lobbying in Washington, it has cost the Library of Congress (LC) significant revenues in copyright registration fees.

According to the Library of Congress Gazette, the weekly staff newspaper, copyright revenue dropped by $2.5 million during the first four months of the fiscal year, October 1–January 31. Thus LC has asked for an additional $7.5 million to cover not only those losses but anticipated losses from a reduced flow of mail for at least four or five months." [Library Journal]

The Copyright Office should just claim this loss in revenue is due to Napster and ask Congress to step in with reparations.

It's only 8:45 a.m. and I'm already having a mind-bomb morning thanks to David Davies. Here's why:

First, he provides a DIY web service for picture galleries that I can install on my site. I've got some pictures from the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix that I want to post, but I don't have the time to make the thumbnails. At some point, I'll probably try David's web service.

Second, he provides a DIY web service for filtering Radio RSS feeds by keyword. This really sparks my imagination for how I could better aggregate news for SLS staff internally. It's another way I could filter on a more granular level than the whole channel, especially if I can get other library entites to buy into my vision of sharing information via RSS.

How much data is there in a byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte or yottabyte?

"Whenever we discuss quantities of data, we tend to do it in the abstract. We speak of a kilobyte, or a megabyte or a gigabyte without really knowing what it represents." [James S. Huggins' Refrigerator Door, via Dane Carlson's Weblog]

Very cool link! Note that about the last measure of collected human knowledge used is "2 Petabytes: All U. S. academic research libraries."