a collection of updates

[anotheranon]

• FINALLY got to try the much-lauded dark chocolate M&Ms, courtesy C. who sent the Star Wars care package par excellence. They were worth waiting for - plush, sensuous grown up dark chocolate chocolate with candy shell for childlike playfulness. I really do need to find a local vendor who isn't sold out!
  
  
• Went to the library to get a book I had on hold - and that's all I walked out with. I must be getting into serious student vibe, because leaving the library without a stack feels wrong to the point of being almost perverted :P
  
  
• Have almost completed reading my textbook. I consider it a good sign that I was nearly 1/3 through before things started to look really unfamiliar. Should be finished before the CSA symposium.
  
  
• Speaking of which - I leave for the symposium on Wednesday, which means it's never too early to start worrying about forgetting things while packing or getting completely lost between here and Philly. Once I've looked over the map 20 times I'm sure I'll still have enough time to squeeze in stressing about whether I'll forget my toothpaste or not :P
  

Comments

[flummoxicated.livejournal.com]

Another dark chocolate M&Ms addict!

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

leaving the library without a stack feels wrong to the point of being almost perverted :P

Oooooo ... that IS pervy! ;P

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

Ahhh... the feeling *I* always had when leaving the library empty handed was one of extreme disappointment, meaning that they once again had nothing useful. As for the other stuff... well, I was an engineer @ CMU, so what do you expect? ;P

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a library that needed its suggestion box stuffed full of titles for the acquisitions department and its interlibrary loan staff harassed. Nobody should leave disappointed.

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

Yeah... in general I have to agree with you.

In my specific case, I was looking for books that were either, um, of interest to an extremely narrow audience, or things where there was no way I was ever going to let my name be associated with the fact that I had ever touched or even wanted to touch a copy of said book. So I wasn't usually too surprised to be disappointed.

The engineering library fared better. I didn't really expect them to have a copy of that one very special issue of the BSTJ, since supposedly most every library pulled it when they were asked to. But apart from that they were ok. To this day I can still remember the smell of the dust on their copy of Von Neumann's "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior".

Eventually we figured out that we had perms at all of Pitt's libraries too, and there was much rejoicing. What can I say, sometimes size does matter.

Apropos of little, have you seen Read or Die? Especially the first/OVA one. Yomiko brings new meaning to the term bibliomaniac, though you only get to appreciate the full depth of her disease in the sequel.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Professional library staff are never supposed to notice, comment on, remember, disapprove of, nor discuss among themselves anything, "um" or otherwise, that a patron requests or signs out (patron histories are especially sacred and most libraries pressured software companies for a way to delete them after the Patriot Act was passed, so that the government couldn't snoop). The hard part is finding the staff who remember to be professional ***sigh*** (fortunately this province has privacy legislation which helps enforce that attitude). I think enough years have passed to say that, when dealing with the students who would take one aside from the reference desk to whisper that they had been assigned the "pro" side of a debate on legalizing prostitution or needed to research child pornography (or some other subject that they were uncomfortable about asking for ... one of our programs was law enforcement and these were usually kids just out of high school and new to the freedoms of college/adult life), the relief on their faces when I'd cheerfully say "Okay, I'll show you how to find them" rather than give them the obviously expected rant or frown was something I treasured. :-)

I confess that you piqued my curiosity with the "BTSJ" acronym ... the Library of Congress appears to have a complete run of this and its successor titles (and I can't imagine anybody successfully telling an official depository to dispose of anything ***grin) and will usually supply photocopies of periodical articles via interlibrary loan or direct request. Googling the acronym itself turned up a query from somebody with two "special" issues, wondering if they had any value ... query had received a resounding YES!

As for the last, I've seen very little anime, so no, I wasn't even aware of "Read or Die". But I am quite familiar with RL cases of bibliomania, such as Stephen Blumberg, and still have a few clippings from the Library of Congress Information Bulletin about the FBI nailing similar individuals who were feeding off the LC collections. :p

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

> Professional library staff are never supposed to notice, comment on,
> ...
> The hard part is finding the staff who remember to be professional

It's interesting that I never heard word one about librarian ethics until I knew some librarians in person. I don't think any library I've ever used has come out and said up front, here are our policies on record retention. That information is surely available if you ask, but that's a catch-22. The beauty of my method was that there was never any question of what records would be kept.

I think libraries would only be doing themselves and their patrons a service by making it clear, to everyone who *doesn't* ask, what those policies are. If nothing else it should help chisel the idea of free and anonymous access to libraries back into the collective social consciousness. When ordinary people don't realize how things have been and should be, it's easier to get crap like the patriot act passed. Librarians shouldn't have to fight that battle behind the scenes and mostly alone.

With the BSTJ, I'd be curious to know if the LofC actually posesses the issues in question, though I imagine of all the libraries I'm aware of, that one is by far the least likely to remove something. OTOH since you need id to get *any* book, that route was out of the question anyway.

The story at the time was that Ma Bell asked for all those volumes back, and got most of them. I can readily imagine that theft would have done for most of those remaining, and the few left after that surely went into a locked case somewhere. As best I recall CMU's catalog listed the volume, but it was not physically present. Maybe it was simply theft but at the time paranoia was the order of the day. (Oddly enough it still is, just the topics have shifted somewhat. Hmm.)

It was all moot shortly after, since the information was widely available in the right circles. And post-internet the whole game is totally different.

...

Ok, that Blumberg guy sounds scary. I don't think Yomiko quite resorted to theft, though she does own a LOT of books! She does some work for the British Library, and in the sequel, lives in a library. In the show all the used bookstore owners in jinbo-cho know her by name. It's a great show, IMHO. My only complaint would be the English dub of Yomiko herself. I say switch to Japanese+subtitles. Other than that it's awesome.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Usually, when signing on for one's first public library card, one is given a pamphlet/sheet of paper/something or other with a list of the rules and obligations for both sides of future transactions (it's done this way because the customers are usually in a hurry and tend to tune out verbal explanations (and forget them even if they DO listen). This information usually ends up in the trash, unread, and, since most people get their first library card as children, by the time they're old enough to care about their privacy, they've forgotten that such information is available (and if they move to another community and get the info when they register with the library, they're more likely to bin it than read it ... there is always a nice selection of untouched about-the-library pamphlets on display in any library I've ever gone into ). However, all the people who've ever gone into a library and asked the staff to tell them the title of the green book they signed out two years ago know ALL about it. :p Used to be, too, that the majority of libraries offered regular orientations, where this information was also shared ... sadly, due to budget reductions and the resultant staff shortages, these orientations are a thing of the past. When I was working in a college library, we still had regular library orientation tours, both class by class and scheduled open drop-in style, where we explained policies as well as what resources were available and how to access them ... I've gathered from library message boards that we were unusual in continuing that practice (and were under pressure from our own administration to discontinue it, since they suffered from the delusion that all students arrived well-versed in research skills ... with the massive layoffs a couple of years ago, myself included, it's sadly probable that there are no more library orientations at LCC).

The Patriot Act gave the library software makers a fun challenge ... transactions couldn't just be wiped out of the systems because they are needed to justify budgets (by proving library use) and for collection development and weeding purposes (boosting the topics of interest and removing stuff nobody ever touches to make room for new books). Today all the major software (Dynix, Sirsi, Voyager, Innopac, etc.) erases the patron connection as soon as an item is returned, while retaining the data needed for statistics and use.

Re the Library of Congress's BSTJ holdings ... they have two records in their system: one for the print edition and one for a microfilm edition. I looked at the MaRC for both records and there's nothing in the code or the human-readable text to indicate that their holdings are incomplete (according to the 005 field, the last update/transaction for either record was in March of 2003 ... looks as if somebody on staff did some upgrading to the records themselves, since they have current formatting rather than the older style I would have expected); however, as you pointed out, it IS possible that their print issues may have sticky-finger-caused gaps (conducting inventories is another important old library habit that has fallen by the wayside due to budget constraints). Microfilm tends to be better protected, so I would guess that the complete print run is available in that form. It would actually be illegal for the Library of Congress to return the issues, even at Bell's request; it is a depository by law, not by mere inclination, and is obliged to hold a copy of every item published in the United States (American publishers are required by law to deposit one copy of everything that has a print run of over 100 there). Theft or vandalism would have been Bell's only recourse. Note: it's also likely to exist at the National Library of Canada, and possibly the British Library, National Library of Australia, or the National Library of New Zealand, plus any other number of European or Asian national depository libraries ... they all do a lot of trading if they get multiple copies of something.

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

I too often run into the length limit on comments. I guess LJ isn't meant for the long drawn out stuff as much.

It is very interesting to hear all about how it used to be and/or is now and/or is supposed to be. I never really learned this level of detail from the couple of librarians I've known. (Usually we were too busy making out. What can I say, I have a thing for women who like books. Alas I didn't meet any of them til well after college. I wouldn't have passed up a bit of kinky stack action...)

Like you suggest, it's been SO long since I got a library card I couldn't possibly remeber what info came with it. My last public library card I got as a kid, and at school your student id was it, there was no separate card or paperwork. The only one I'm really old enough to remember was my NLM (National Library of Medicine) card. The paperwork had mainly to do with copyright law, how to get reprints, which holdings were in the reading room vs. the stacks, and how I wouldn't be getting a stack pass any time soon, so don't bother asking, TYVM. There may very well have been something related to privacy in there, but I can't honestly claim to be sure either way.

The software challenge sounds like the de-identification problems in a lot of fields, especially demographic-based research. It also should not have been *too* hard for them, as EU data protection law has long required nearly all systems there to operate that way. Basically anything that collects personally identifiable information has to delete it as soon as it is no longer needed. Obviously systems still need to keep usage info for other reasons, but just not attached to *who*. Also you're allowed to inspect and challenge whatever info is retained on you. Once again the US is fucking things up: the US demands for PNR info for flights landing in the US violates DP laws, in part because the US is not subject to them, and transferring such data to a place where those laws don't apply is also illegal. The "no weaseling around this law" clause. In practice the regime doesn't seem to hold up too well under that kind of pressure. The economic leverage is too great.

Still, as long as they got it done, that's what counts!

I can only imagine a bunch of half-stoned phone phreaks trying to figure out how to read stolen microfilm... "Dude, you gotta go back and boost the special viewer gadget too!" "Ok man but first gimme those Doritos. All this theft has given me the munchies."

The irony is, the key information easily can be photocopied in a couple pages, and if you're truly hardcore, a paragraph of notes is all you truly need. Heh, some of us memorized it years ago by accident.

The Read or Die OVA (3 episodes/~90min) really is cool. It's very different. I know I posted a review of it somewhere, some time... I'll see if I can find it.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

It is very interesting to hear all about how it used to be and/or is now and/or is supposed to be.

Yeah, I'm a little fountain of historical information :p ... comes from working in libraries for a zillion years (and having fun poking around in my own occupational history). Interestingly, the privacy of patrons was NOT something that was ever taught in my library technician program ... it's something that is part of my personal belief system and just happens to be shared by a lot of other people in the business.

The software challenge sounds like the de-identification problems in a lot of fields, especially demographic-based research. It also should not have been *too* hard for them, as EU data protection law has long required nearly all systems there to operate that way.

Nah, wasn't too hard for the companies to actually CHANGE the software ... it happened quite quickly once the demand was there. Probably the hardest part was wrapping their brains around the concept ... although programmers do the fiddly bits, library software is basically designed by librarians/library technicians and we ARE the ultimate information packrats ... parting with ANY of it HURTS, even if it's never used ***grin***. I'm in Canada and therefore not subject to the Patriot Act, but the changes fit VERY nicely with Alberta's Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, which requires that all non-essential personal information be purged from government systems (and the majority of libraries are public or academic, which makes 'em government).

***giggling at the phone phreaks image ... they'd likely end up boosting a microfiche reader, since those tend to be commoner, lighter and easier to carry ... can just see 'em trying to figure out how a microfilm reel fits between the two glass plates***

I'll be interested in seeing the review should you come across it.

Part Two, since LJ got cranky about the length of my reply

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

LOL at Yomiko living in the library ... when I was in college, the staff of University of Western Ontario's massive Weldon Library discovered sleeping bag/Coleman stove evidence that somebody was living in the stacks ... turned out to be a student who'd been tossed out of the university residence. Now that I'm aware of the series, I will take a look at it if I come across it ... thanks for the recommendation! :-)

P.S. Blumberg isn't the scariest bibliomaniac by a long shot ... he's just the most famous ***grin***