Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Developments in Freedom of Information

Last week I ran across two fascinating developments in the world of Freedom of Information. The first involves the Library Connection kerfuffle (what a great word!), and the second involves people you've never heard of protecting you from diry hotel movies. Enjoy!

Library Connection Kerfuffle
Since it first broke in August 2005, I have followed the general story arc of the skirmish between the Connecticut-based Library Connection consortium, the Government, and a National Security Letter demanding that the Library Connection turn over patron records to the FBI. A summary of the case and links to a long list of news stories and court documents can be found here. However, I had not studied the situation in depth until last week, when I saw that the American Civil Liberties Union posted several court documents from Doe [Library Connection} vs. Gonzalez that the government had kept tightly under wraps until this month, when the Supreme Court ordered them to be unsealed. They are beautiful. My two particular favorites are:

1) The infamous National Security Letter, received by Ken Sutton, the Systems and Telecommunications Manager for the Library Connection. After assuring Sutton that the First Amendment doesn't come into play, Special Agent Wolf instructs Sutton that he is prohibited by law from telling anyone about the NSL and must hand deliver all relevant patron records to the FBI himself. To his credit, Special Agent Wolf ends the letter on a slightly warmer note, informing Sutton that "Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated." Isn't that nice (but not nice enough for Library Connection and the ACLU to pay heed).

2) Justice Ginsburg's decision to keep the government's gag order on the Library Connection in place, even though the government itself accidentally revealed the LC's identity. Pay particular attention to the group of paragraphs beginning with the last sentence on page 5 of the ruling:
"Shortly after the court of appeals entered the stay, the parties learned that, through inadvertence, Doe's identity had been publicly available for several days on the District Court's Web site and on PACER, the electronic docket system run by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts [....] The parties also learned that the media had correctly reported Doe's identity on at least one occasion"

Nevertheless, Ginsburg decided to keep the gag order in place, even though "Doe seeks only to confirm its identity as the recipient of a NSL. It does not seek to disclose the contents of the NSL, nor does it seek to disclose the date on which it was received", and even though "Doe -- the only entity in a position to impart a first-hand account of its experience -- remains barred from revealing its identity, while others who obtained knowledge of Doe's identity -- when the cat was inadvertently let out of the bag -- may speak freely on that subject."

While I can understand the stated reasons behind Justice Ginsburg's decision (namely, that the case was currently being heard by another court), it still seems somewhat, well, stupid, as does following rulings also upholding the gag order. Especially since Justice Ginsburg notes on page 4 that when the case was in District Court the presiding judge asked "whether there are in fact other pieces of information that, when combined with Doe's identity, would hinder the investigation. Counsel could not so confirm." This means, essentially, that the Government insisted on the gag order to wield its authority and not because the investigation would be harmed if the Library Connection said "yes, we did in fact receive a national security letter." It is interesting to note that the Government dropped the whole case after the Patriot Act was reauthorized.

People You've Never Heard of Protecting You From Dirty Hotel Movies
Not being a connoisseur of hotel pornography myself, I was blissfully unaware that by allowing guests access to pornographic media (videos, TV channels, etc), the hotel industry is directly contributing to the downfall of American Family Values. According to a story posted on CNN.com ("Conservatives ask FBI to Investigate Hotel Porn"), a coalition of 13 conservative groups recently launched an advertising campaign with two objectives. First, the ads promote CleanHotels.com, a Web directory of porn-free hotels. Okay, no problem there.

Second and far more problematic purpose of the ad campaign is to get the FBI to investigate whether accessible pornography in hotels violates national and local obscenity laws. Wait a minute . . . whether the coalition likes it or not, child-free pornography is protected by that pesky First Amendment. In the CNN story, hotel representatives rightly point out that 1) people have the right to watch pornography, and 2) guests can choose not to watch pornographic media, and can even ask hotels to block access to that media in their rooms. Unless the hotel industry is strapping guests to their beds and forcing them to watch X-rated media, I don't really see the problem, try as the coalition might to alter my views with broad warnings about impending pornographic doom.

The CNN story highlights two of the coalition's main concerns about accessible pornography in hotels. The president of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, argues that when people have access to pornography they become desensitized -- the story doesn't explain just what people are becoming desensitized to, how such a process might occur, or why this is vastly more important for the FBI to investigate than, say, actual child pornography rings.

The coalition's second concern is, to me at least, far more dubious and far more entertaining. CNN's story includes a fascinating assertion by Phil Burress, "a self-described former porn addict who heads the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values." The story explains:
"Though unable to cite specific cases, Burress contended that the availability of in-room porn is making hotels more dangerous.

"As more and more of these (hardcore) titles become available, we're going to have sexual abuse cases coming out of the hotels," he said. "Hotels are just as dangerous as environments around strip joints and porn stores."

I had assumed that when attempting to bypass the Bill of Rights you might want to provide proof that the Bill of Rights actually needs bypassing. But apparently I stand corrected.

Facts and the First Amendment. Who needs em'.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Patron Stalkers

This weekend, I worked the reference desk at my other library job in Dearborn. Now, contrary to what others may think, we get some pretty interesting characters that come in there. Usually if someone acts wierd or is causing trouble, we don't write it down, but rather take care of it on the spot. Yesterday, however, I learned how important it is to keep a written record of repeat offenders. So, without further ado, let's begin.

A women, we'll call her Alice, has been coming to our library for many years. She took a particular interest in one of our night supervisors and would consistently talk to her. In the beginning, it was a patron-staff relationship that turned into what seemed was friendship. Then, the patron disappeared for months. I did not miss her, because she was one of those people that asked you a question, you'd answer and then she'd launch into an epic tale of her life, none of which interested me.

In any case, Alice made her return a couple of weeks ago. She came into my office one day and blathered on about how the city she was just in was so much better, but that she couldn't afford living there, among countless other boring details. I just let it roll off my back and she eventually left me alone.

This weekend, she returned to pile on more useless details about her life. She came in and tried to trick me by telling me that she was still a student, because she needed a computer with Microsoft Word. She said, "Oh, my social security number must still be in the system." When she said that, I knew she was full of it, because UM-D hasn't used the SS#'s in a very long time. Regardless, I answered her question and she stood up and turned. I thought, fantastic, she's leaving.

She didn't. Instead, she sat down again and said, "Do you know what happened to me at work?" I sighed and looked away to the computer screen, hoping she'd catch the social sign of "I'm not interested" and "Leave me alone." She didn't and continued to tell me how some "black man" just out of now where called her a racist. I said, wow, that's too bad. She continued to tell me that she quit her job because of it. I cocked my eye and told her, "OK." She was confused that I wasn't going into a big bitchfest and asked me what I would do. I looked her in the eye and said, "I wouldn't have given a shit about what he said." She asked for clarification, in disbelief that I didn't care. I said, "What strangers think doesn't mean anything to me. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if their opinion is unwarrented, that's not my problem."

She fumbled around with her words, in complete shock that I didn't care what other people thought and that no, in fact, I wouldn't quit my job for something that petty. She knew that she looked weak in front of me and the kicker was when I said, "Crazy people are everywhere. Try working at Wayne State. You get used to it and you get over it." Rarely during this conversation did I look at her, but I glared right into her eyes at the end of my statement.

Alice didn't know what to do, stood up and blurted, "I'm worth $15 million, I don't need that shit. I'll talk to you later." She stormed out and I was relieved, cause she was getting too comfortable for me and now I made her nice and self-conscious. Hey, if patrons want to ask me personal questions, they need to prepare to get a nice helping of the truth.

Later on, I told the night surpervisor, the one that Alice took a liking to, about my little experience. She told me about how about 3 weeks ago, Alice called the circulation desk and hollered some poor student assistant's ear off, claiming that the night supervisor was "setting off bad vibes." I asked if she had ever reported it to the head of circulation. She said she didn't because it only happened once and she thought nothing of it. I said, "Listen, you have to make sure you get this in writing. If she's calling students and complaining about you, you don't know who else she's calling."

I carried on working. Then I took a break. I talked to another circulation supervisor, on that I always shoot the breeze with. As we were conversating about this crazy Alice character, we heard the voice of a woman behind the door. I opened the door and found the night time supervisor in tears. She was panicking and I could hear why. She had the phone to her ear and I could hear crazy Alice yelling obscenitites at this young lady. Apparently Alice thought that she had looked at her wrong.

We had to file a police report and crazy Alice continued to call and be psychotic on the phone, even while we talked to the officer. She told my buddy, Debbie, that she was worth $51 million (it was only $15 million when I talked to her a half hour before), that she was an important Dearborn resident and that she owned 30% in Ford's stock. Hmmm, so why did she work (and quit) a hotel job and why did she claim it was too expensive to live out west?

The moral of the story is that if there is a patron that is showing signs of obsession or has even the slightest stalking tendencies, you must report it. You don't need to report every wierd thing that goes on at UGL, but certainly make note of events that have patterns. It's for your own protection.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Journeying to the IL Land of Confusion; or "Hey! Why Didn't I Know About This Tutorial?"

Here beginneth my travelogue recounting today's journey to the Information Literacy Land of Confusion.

In Lorenzen's latest posting, he discusses an article about Kutztown University's information literacy online tutorial and discusses the tutorial at Central Michigan University. Both the KU tutorial and the CMU tutorial are based on Western Michigan University's open source SearchPath tutorial program.

Curious, I went to CMU's tutorial and went through the first several modules (at least, until I got bored). I then read Flatley and Jefferson's article on KU's experience with the tutorial, which basically concluded that students thought the tutorial was very informative and useful, but also very long and dry.

"Wow!" I thought. "This is a good idea. We should have one of these tutorials on our Web site!"

Which is when, after a little bit of digging, I discovered that we actually do have a tutorial on our Web site. And not just "a" tutorial, but "the" SearchPath tutorial.

So why didn't I know this tutorial?

Could it be because freshman are shown this tutorial at orientation or UGE 1000, but transfer / graduate students are not? Possibly (but, I'll have to look into this point more thoroughly).

Could it be because the link to our tutorial is well hidden within the depths of the library's Web site? Oh yeah.

To get to the tutorial, from the home page one must go to the library services page and follow several links. Alternately, one can click "For Students" link (which is cleverly hidden below the picture on the right-hand side of the page), and then the "getting started tutorial" link. To me, this seems a little excessive.

If I, who spends a lot of time on the library's Web site, somehow missed our online tutorial, I suspect many others are missing the tutorial as well.

This is a shame, because while KU's surveyed students found the tutorial a little long and boring, they also reported that they better understood the difference between types of resources and how to best search for information in these resources.

While many of the patrons who come to the desk don't seem all that interested in learning the finer points of searching the catalog and databases, a few do and I would have directed them to the tutorial had I known it existed.

Thus, I would suggest that the tutorial needs to be more prominent. On the library's Home page. With the text "How to Find Stuff in the Library." In big red letters. Possibly with arrows pointing to it. And an audio clip of applause when you mouse over the link.

Since the tutorial is a set of six modules, I also think it would be a good idea to advertise the modules on relevant pages on the Web site. For example, the library could put a link to Module #4, "Finding Articles," on the Articles and Databases page. Or even better, the library could put a link to the module smack dab next to the "Finding Articles and Databases" text on the library's home page.

The library has placed a link to the library tutorial page on the library catalog's search page (at the bottom), but the text reads "Need more help? Try Searchpath." I would argue that the text should be more specific, such as "How to find stuff in the library catalog," and that it should directly link to that module.

Why do I think the library should go to the trouble of posting these extra links to the IL tutorial? First, it's not obvious from the start that there even is a tutorial. Second, even if they knew there was a tutorial, people are basically lazy (myself included) and may not go to the trouble of searching through the library's site to find it.

Well, them's my two cents. Here endeth my travelogue of today's journey into the Information Literacy Land of Confusion.

****Extra Special Bonus Observation****
When I ran Blogger's SpellCheck feature, why did it want to replace "beginneth" with "paginate"? And if SpellCheck has a problem with "beginneth", shouldn't it also, by association, have a problem with "endeth"?

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Information Literacy and Rats

The other library I work for is sending me to a BI workshop next week, and for homework
we've been asked to locate useful articles and resources on library instruction.
In doing so, I ran across a library-instruction.blogspot.com , an IL blog out of
the UK. Among other useful information and news items on the blog, Shiela Webber
summarizes research about rats' food-related information-seeking behavior:

"Basically, rats recognise that they need information about where to get food. They come across smells of novel kinds of food in various ways. However, they have identified that a good way of evaluating whether this is information they should use or not is by whether they encounter the smell on the breath of another rat that's just eaten the food (the idea being that if Rat B has eaten the food and Rat B is still breathing, the new food must be OK). Rat A then jogs away to the new food, accesses it and synthesises it."
http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/2006/08/il-of-rats.html

I'm posting this for two reasons. First and foremost, I find this extraordinarily amusing. Second, I can indeed see the parallels in the information-seeking behaviors of rats and library patrons. Not that I'm calling our patrons rats. Certainly not. However, patrons share share their library experiences with each other. When students or other potential patrons need information, I suspect that they consult their peers first to find out which resources are the best, fastest, most friendly, etc. If they find out that their friends have had a positive experience at the library, they are more likely to search for information at the library themselves (I've heard students tell their friends "Ask them, they're helpful"). If the patron's friends have had negative experiences in the library, the friends will likely tell that patron to find the information somewhere else (much like Rat A checking to see if Rat B is alive before eating something new). This information-seeking habit of patrons certainly isn't ground-breaking news, I like the analogy (and I think I could extend it to patrons attempting to navigate the UGL maze . . . hmmm. . . )