This was a great trip, not only because of the awesome crowd at my session, but also because I got to see several friends (including Evan Struble, who helped organize the event, and David Lee King who was delivering the keynote speech).  Big thanks are due to Jamie Mason of Rocky River Public Library for helping make it possible for me to be there.

As a side bonus, I got to hang out with my friend Darrin who I’ve known for ten years, and finally got to meet in person — that’s the power of the internet, people!

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

• the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
• the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
• the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
• the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.

I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.

Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.

I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.

I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks. I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users’ rights.

These rights are yours. Now it is your turn to take a stand. To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others. Blog it, Tweet it (#ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

I was also lucky enough to present at the Your Library, Your Community conference hosted by OCLC.  I really enjoyed listening to the keynote speaker Elisabeth Doucett talk about keeping an eye on trends, as well as the telecast of author Marilyn Johnson giving librarians a great pep talk and a lot of hope for the future! They’ve got pictures up from the event, and I’m told that video may be following shortly.  Until then, you can check out my slides:

First up was “A View from the Trenches: Using GIL-FIND in Instruction, Reference and Marketing,” where I co-presented alongside Lori Critz, Rebecca Drummond and Claudia Shorr, fellow members on the GIL-OPAC committee.  We talked about using GIL-Find, Georgia’s instance of the VuFind open source catalog interface.  We had a great crowd and some excellent questions from the audience.

Next was a great panel presentation on starting up a texting/SMS reference service.  It was a loose, conversational panel presentation with Casey Long, Sarah Steiner, James Stephens, Jeff Gallant and myself.  Again, we had a wonderful group of folks in the audience and some interesting dialogue–it’s always interesting to see what other folks are doing!

Last, I got to take part in the closing keynote!  We got off to a late start (partly my fault for getting my laptops confused!), but Tim Daniels and Buffy Hamilton did a great job.  We all talked about the future directions and possibilities that lay before libraries, and it was very heartening to see that all three of us came to the same general conclusions (we didn’t even share notes, I swear!).

It was a great conference! I got to hang out with old friends and make some news ones. Thanks again, everyone, for making a great COMO!

I did a concise talk on The Social Library, looking at the social nature of information and the library itself, as well as some of the tools and technologies available to stay in touch with library users. Amanda Goodman was kind enough to make her notes available online (PDF), so if you want to skip straight to the links I talked about, check her notes out!

Then I had the pleasure of listening to Charlie Bennett and Ameet Doshi present Library on the Radio, a presentation all about their radio show Lost in the Stacks that plays every Friday on WREK from noon to 1pm.  What I loved about their presentation was that they emphasized connecting to the folks around you to make amazing things happen.  If you aren’t already listening to Lost in the Stacks, check it out!  It’s badass!

All in all, it was an amazing pleasure to be a part of the Wednesday Webinar series.  Big thanks to Buffy, Sarah, and Pat for making it happen.  And thanks to everyone for showing up, and I hope you walked away with some new information!

I’m settling nicely into Atlanta, and enjoying all the exciting work in my new job as the Web Services Librarian at GSU.  We’re hard at work on a new website, so keep your eyes open for the groovy new features we’ll be rolling out in the next few weeks.

In the mean time, here are some speaking gigs I’ve got lined up for this month:

• Wednesday Webinars – The Social Library (Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 10:00am).  This is a free webinar series offered by the Georgia Public Library Service, so feel free to sign up.  I’ll be talking about some of the latest trends in social computing and how you can leverage those trends in libraries.
• Atlanta Emerging Librarians – Say What You Mean: Professional Communication Skills for Librarians (Saturday, July 24th, 2010, 3:00-5:00pm, Dunwoody Library, Dunwoody, GA). I’ll be doing an overview of interpersonal communication skills as they apply to librarians, including: basic communication skills, direct vs. indirect communication, conflict management, and professional relationship maintenance.

I’m really looking forward to doing both presentations, and to taking part in the post-talk dialogue with librarians (always my favorite part!).  So sign up, show up, and let’s have a conversation!

I’ll still be sad to leave Valdosta, though, since this is my home town & Odum Library is where I “grew up” as a librarian (if I can even call myself a grownup!).

The future looks both adventurous and challenging for libraries, and I’m eagerly anticipating the next chapter in our story together! Wish me luck!!!

Unfortunately, it looks like ProQuest will not be changing this indexing error
because no content is actually missing. Here is the response from the ProQuest
Content Department:
==
This is a known issue. The method used to load some of the older content resulted in
some records loading to duplicate page collections. The manufacturing system does
not allow for documents to be moved from one collection to another. It would involve
a manual process of deleting and re-creating the records. Since no content is
missing no resources were ever allocated to clean up these issues.
==?

So basically, ProQuest is telling me that even though the data is completely useless since it is unfindable, that this isn’t a problem, because at least it’s there.

This makes me angry on a variety of levels.  Let’s go down the list, shall we?

1. My user’s problem with locating content that they are paying for with their tuition isn’t important in the eyes of ProQuest.  After all, they’ve already got their money, so what should they care?
2. Information quality control is of little to no concern for ProQuest.  They need to allocate their resources elsewhere.
3. I should never bother reporting problems to ProQuest ever again, since they obviously don’t care about end users being able to use their products.

I’m sure I’ll hear from ProQuest on this one issue (hello power of social media!), and I’m sure they’ll resolve it in short order.  But that still won’t solve the larger problem of quality control or addressing errors in the system.

Working with technology, there have been plenty of times where I’ve had to manually update records and web pages.  It’s dull, tedious work, yes.  But I do it — as do all of us who work in information control.  We do it because we know that somewhere down the line, someone is going to need this stuff.  And the moment that an error is brought to our attention, we work on fixing it, because as information professionals we provide the best information resources possible.  Because that’s our job.

The rest of my trip will be spent visiting with my sister, to see her all beautifully preggers before she delivers my new niece in late May!

I’m very proud to be a part of this series, as it aims to provide librarians with a ground-up approach to a variety of topics.  It brings together big names in the library technology field (which I’m positively blushing to see my name included alongside!), and provides material both for beginning library workers all the way through experienced practitioners:

So order a copy for your library (or yourself!), listen to the companion podcasts and add your notes to the companion wiki!  I’m looking forward to interacting with readers on the wiki and right here on my blog!  So go check it out!