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What a first day back. The Progressive Librarian Guild of London has posted a great incendiary post, “The Canadian Library Association’s Failure to Advocate for Librarians and Libraries.” These guys have really been making a stir lately and they were all over the Academic Librarian conference I mentioned in my post earlier today.

The Canadian Library Association (CLA), which represents Canadian libraries and library workers who are members, sees itself as the “advocate” and “public voice” for “Canadian library and information community.”¹ The association has a simple, straightforward² “Code of Ethics” that outline the responsibilities of the CLA and its members. It is necessary for an association, especially one with members from disparate places and backgrounds, to have a clear code of ethics and responsibilities because it shows its members what the association stands for and what its role is. However, it is also necessary and expected that an association will follow through with their code of ethics by acting in according with them and advocating for causes that are in line with their ethics and mission. We should expect that an organization that represents Canadian libraries and library workers also takes these ethical principles and translates them into actions. However, recent issues, such as the cuts to the Toronto Public Library System, the librarian and archivist strike at UWO, and the altering of the mandate of Libraries and Archives Canada, show that the CLA chooses not to advocate and be the voice of the library community, but instead remains silent or attempts to be neutral. Meanwhile, unions such as the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and the Toronto Public Library Workers Union (TPLWU) have advocated strongly for the continued importance of libraries. Because of this, librarians and library workers should put their time and energy into working with their unions, as these are the organizations that take a real stand to protect libraries, the people who work in libraries, and the values that the CLA themselves seem unable or unwilling to defend. Furthermore, a national professional organization should be created so that librarians can better coordinate and advocate on behalf of the profession.

Wow. I’ve been ambivalent about CLA for some time. Have met a number of great librarians there, but only one really good mentor. And the association itself, I don’t think it has really done anything for me personally as a librarian except for holding over-priced conferences.

Below is my quick reply I posted to the PLG blog:

I am one of the many librarians who have gone back and forth in renewing my professional membership with CLA, mainly because I don’t really know what I get for my money.

It is clear that the CLA has not been representing the needs and emphasizing the importance of librarians for some time. A quick look at the advocacy committees—Copyright, Information Policy, Services for Persons with Print Disabilities, and School Libraries—none of these emphasise the importance of librarians. If librarians did not exist and all positions were replaced by non-professionals these issues would continue to exist and could be advocated for by CLA.

CLA does not advocate for librarians. It advocates for libraries. It is clear from the trials at McMaster and now Harvard that libraries feel as if they can run without librarians. I for one have always questioned what I get for my dues to CLA—except for an over-priced over-hyped conference which I have to pay out-of-pocket anyway.

On a closing note about the executive committee, a look at the 2010 Annual Report shows the largest budget item by far is the Executive itself, at $516,214. Member services stands at $54,395. And with the recent restructuring all the benefits we saw at the local level support were cut, with funding on a “project” basis. That is, if we decide your funding is worth it. But, we will give you an electronic space and “a chance to meet in person at the national conference.”

What is stopping Networks from just forming on their own, if we are not going to get funding support. All the tools are in place, and we certainly don’t need anyone to allow us to meet at conferences.

What does the Executive do for that $516,214? Are we sure that our money is being well spent?

UPDATE: Some great comments on this post:

Really what does CLA do for Librarians? Give out awards, that no one pays attention to? Not comment on School, University or Special library issues? Hold a conference no one attends? Charge for a meaningless membership? I would love to be part of a new organization that recognizes professional librarians and the various roles they play in Canada, I want a Canadian ALA, not another Canadian Library Association that does nothing! We need more opportunities like Northern Exposure to Leadership, not a blank calendar of events. There are amazing Canadian Librarians out there and if we could hear more from them it would help us all connect on moving our profession forward, a news reel of copyright on the main page really does nothing for me. Maybe CLA works for those who attend all the Ottawa events? But then it should just be the Ottawa library association.

Well… hello…

Look at all this dust. What are you people doing there in the dark?

Feedburner tells me there are 51 of you left. Some of you are bots in the corner, but that is ok. There has to be a warm body amongst you.

One of my favourite Canadian kids shows was The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. The dusty Librarian who unsuccessfully tried to scare the children with playful nursery rhymes was was of my favourite characters. His books were always dusty.

These posts are dusty.

It is hard to explain why I haven’t been interested in writing about professional librarian and information issues for almost two years. Much of it has to do with a difficult first-job search. A lot of it had to do with coming to this government information professional job which didn’t satisfy me.

And, to be honest, my personal life was a struggle for two of those years, with another year to try to get over it.

Working alone is difficult. I felt like I wasn’t tied to the profession. For a year I thought of doing something else. I took Editorial classes, maybe wanting to work with writing more directly. I didn’t think those classes were a waste of my time, I still do editorial work on the side and I really enjoy it.

What brought be back was attending a one-day symposium “Academic Librarianship – A Crisis or An Opportunity?” (Fillipino Librarian has slides) inspired round the brewhaha happening at the McMaster Libraries. More on that in another post.

Years bring maturity. I love what I do, even if I don’t love where I am doing it. And I guess I have dust to start clearing.

Since others I know have been writing similar posts: a look back, and a look forward.

What I did in 2011:

• Helped my parents pack up for the move from Minnesota to Portland, OR.
• Finally figured out how to write a Django app from scratch.
• Attended PyCon for the first time; presented a poster and met all sorts of cool people.
• Got down to 171 lbs. Immediately gained most of it back, thanks to surgery + laziness + depression. Managed to re-lose about 7 lbs before the end of the year.
• Had surgery to remove a benign (but weird) ovarian cyst. That was a drag.
• Did the badassest 213 (UI design) project ever with Marco, Galen and Alex.
• Wrote a 203 paper that got linked by lots of people. Led to a column in Full Circle Magazine and a talk at Wikimedia.
• Vacationed in Sea Ranch / saw the northern California coast.
• Got my first smartphone. So that’s what this whole mobile nonsense is all about.
• Had an internship at Code for America through Google Summer of Code. Became friends with all sorts of awesome staff, fellows, and interns there. Switched projects partway through. Met Karl Fogel and Carl Malamud.
• “Learned” Ruby on Rails. Decided that it and my brain do not get along, and to stick to Python for now, no matter how much that means not being able to work on lots of cool apps :/
• Did my first 24-hour hackathon.
• Visited Boston and actually enjoyed it for the first time.
• Started weight-lifting more seriously.
• Felt my first earthquake. And my second and third.
• Dyed my hair red with henna for Halloween. Didn’t realize how permanent it was.
• OpenHatch made the legal move towards becoming a non-profit, and I got a seat on its board of directors.
• Houseguest had their stuff stolen, possibly by housemates or their friends. Found a new place to live.
• Turned 25. Had a lovely birthday party. Can now rent cars without paying extra.

Things I will do in 2012:

• Move to my new house in Elmwood.
• Blog more — let’s say at least one (short) post every week. I’d get in on the #acetarium Iron Blogger thing, but I’m on the wrong coast to buy the other participants drinks when I don’t make the deadline…
• Give a talk at PyCon. Heckle people at TiP. Take at least one tutorial, preferably more. Participate in the sprints. Hopefully not make an ass of myself.
• Try out Debian.
• Actually learn bash and various other UNIX sysadminny stuff.
• Work on and finish my final project, and present something impressive in the end.
• Graduate from my master’s program.
• Find a job that I love and that involves at least some coding.
• Read more (non-class-related) books.
• Re-do my personal website and portfolio.
• Be more social / make more, closer friends.
• Go sightseeing/traveling in California — Tahoe, Big Sur, wine country…
• Get back into rock climbing, at least enough that I can do V2s again.
• Keep weightlifting, and figure out all those scary barbell-using lifts. If I lose weight, great; if I just get more badass, awesome.
• Be more deliberate/picky about the projects I tackle. Focus is valuable, and work, school, and volunteering already divide it a lot. I hate half-assing things, so I should be better prepared to say no.
• At the same time, though, preserving time for my own vanity projects is also a goal.
• Tackle more computationally-interesting programming problems, instead of just pure CRUD web apps.
• Do more with JavaScript; learn more JS libraries and frameworks. I might not like JS, but it’s not going away and at least it does cool things.
• Use SASS or Less for at least one project.
• Learn about lambdas, map/reduce, and the other parts of Python I never use. Be less of a n00b.
• Stay as sane and happy as can be managed.

I had saved this image a while ago and came across it again. It’s originally from ilovetypography.

This quote really hit home:

“If you don’t accept the recommendations of your most able and well-trained scientists, if you reject research results that have been endorsed heavily by dispassionate experts, then where do you end up? Once we start rejecting facts for fiction, does it really matter which facts and which fiction?”

From “Obama’s Science Fictions” in the New Yorker blog.

In a stress-induced frenzy a month ago, I was struck by a sudden intense craving for a specific type of comfort food：拌面 (ban mian, literally translates to mixed noodles), a completely underappreciated and little-known street food from Fujian province. Ban mian is a totally generic term, and googling it yields a wide variety of noodle dishes with a dazzling array of toppings. This particular variant, however, is perhaps the most amenable to Americans: it involves peanut butter! When I went home to Ohio for Thanksgiving, I was excited to find that my mom had laid out all the necessary ingredients (like an adult Lunchables) and set out to make real ban mian for the first time in years. Why the hell did I wait so long??

The ban mian of my dreams is poetic in its simplicity. The key is a few obviously delicious ingredients (noodles, sesame oil, soy sauce, peanut butter) served piping hot and topped with chopped scallions for an added kick. The hardest part about making ban mian is using the right type of noodle. Over the years, I’ve tried cooking this with all kinds of pastas out of desperation (rice vermicelli, egg noodles, pad thai noodles…even spaghetti and linguini) and it’s NEVER as amazing as if you just suck it up and pick up some fresh wonton noodles* from Chinatown.

Ingredients

1 pack of wonton noodles (contains 3 nests of noodles)
3 tablespoons of creamy peanut butter
Soy sauce, to taste
Sesame oil, to taste
1 scallion, for garnish

Instructions

Boil some water and drop in one or two clumps of wonton noodles, scattering them as you go. Cook until al dente (I think about 5 minutes, but I didn’t really check!). Make sure to reserve some pasta water!

Meanwhile, mix peanut butter, soy sauce, and sesame oil in a bowl with chopsticks, tasting to obtain a good balance of flavors. When the noodles are done, scoop them up and plop them into the bowl, then ladle a spoonful of pasta water in to make the sauce more runny. Personally, I prefer an almost soup-like sauce to complement the soft, absorbent noodles. Mix thoroughly and garnish with chopped up scallions. Ban mian is traditionally a lunch food, but I’d be willing to bet that it’d be amazing at 4 in the morning after a few too many beers, too.

* I am usually afraid of noodles that need to be refrigerated, because if you leave them in the fridge for too long they get all gummy. According to my parents, though, wonton noodles will survive in the fridge for months at a time and can be frozen as well. No excuses left!

…but it gets harder and harder to convince people of that every time an alum decides that it’s really cute to humblebrag about their Harvard pedigree by defending it in an incoherent way.

Take this Washington Post article by Alexandra Petri on Occupy Harvard, for example, which is getting a lot of sharelove by Harvard folks, and especially by some of the 46 (!) mutual friends we have on Facebook, so I clicked on it. This article is so fucking asinine and badly written, I don’t even.

It’s true that Harvard is no longer AS elitist as it once was. Its wonderful financial aid opportunities have resulted in a much more diverse student body, but that does not allow THE (TAX-EXEMPT) INSTITUTION of Harvard (the first corporation in the United States!) to be relieved of all social duty to its neighbors, staff, and aforementioned students.

Say what you will about the methods and the constituency of the protests, but their claims are very legitimate. Pay the janitors a living wage like they’ve been demanding for ten years. Stop investing in awful companies that are wrecking the world. Stop teaching our undergrads that neoliberal economics is the end all be all. While we’re at it, maybe we could also do a better job of being respectful while colonizingexpanding our campus, next time that comes up?

I became particularly aggravated when the writer started talking about the Econ 10 walk-out. She writes that the students protesting the narrowness of the economics curriculum are in the wrong because: “surely the events since 2008 have been a vivid and painful reminder of how dangerous it is to entrust the world economy to people without a firm grasp on economics.”

HEY, GUESS WHAT. Those people without a firm grasp on economics that fucked up the world economy? A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF THOSE PEOPLE sat quietly through Econ 10 or its analog at another top college, and then graduated with good grades in the department! Talk about intro to irony!

My favorite part is: “The tents aren’t there because of any definite grievance. Sure, the movement lists several. It is always possible to generate a definite grievance no matter where you turn up. Harvard, for instance, does not pay its janitors enough, or at least this is what I hear from the protests. “

How the fuck did homegirl pass Expos with writing that could have come out of a Rick Perry speech?? And she’s a HUMOR writer? I guess this was funny, in that it didn’t make any fucking sense.

I graduated from Harvard College, I stand in solidarity with the 99%, and I am so fucking embarrassed by this dumb shit. I don’t normally think long-winded rants are productive, but in this case I think we need to show people that not all Harvard grads are clueless. Other Harvard grads who are still capable of reasonable thinking and competent writing, I encourage you to throw your voice into the mix as well!

The Department of Health and Human Services recently published a proposal to update the federal regulations that govern research on human subjects. It’s a very interesting proposal with a lot of potential changes on the table, and has received more than 1,000 comments (rare for this sort of thing). Yesterday, I submitted comments on the proposal. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a personal matter just as the comments were due, so they’re less detailed and less polished than I would have liked. The comments are below: (Update: my comments are now available on Regulations.gov as well.)

I welcome the opportunity to comment on the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) on human subjects research protections. Modernizing federal regulations to better protect human subjects could advance science and bolster public trust in the research system, strengthening the economy and improving health while upholding human rights.

I submit these comments in my personal capacity, representing solely my own opinion. However, my background may inform the reading of these comments. I have participated in research as a human subject, including survey research as well as greater-than-minimal risk research. Professionally, I research government transparency, including topics such as scientific integrity, focusing on the role of information in improving lives and increasing democratic accountability. Previously, my work focused on public access to scientific information. In addition, I am a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Studies at Florida State University, studying information seeking and use.

In my opinion, several of the information management reforms proposed in the ANPRM could enhance the protection of human subjects and increase public trust in the research system. These changes could benefit the research system by aiding in the recruitment of human subjects. In addition, HHS should consider other reforms not specifically proposed in the ANPRM.

I recommend that HHS consider amending the federal rules on human subjects protection to:

1. Respect and enhance scientific openness;
2. Empower research participants and their communities;
3. Minimize and mitigate information risks; and
4. Collect the data necessary for system oversight.

1. Human subjects research protections should respect and enhance scientific openness

Openness is a fundamental characteristic of science, and human subjects research protections should respect and enhance scientific openness. I applaud HHS’ consideration of increasing the reuse of existing data and biospecimens (see Question 23). HHS should seek ways to expand appropriate sharing of data and biospecimens, while mitigating information risks to such sharing (see #3).

Openness can strengthen human subjects protections in other ways as well. Articles 20 and 21 of the Helsinki Declaration prohibits the repetition of a study where the outcome is already known, to avoid exposing human subjects to unnecessary risk. As a result, prompt and widespread communication of results is necessary to ensure human subjects are protected, along with sharing and reuse of data and biospecimens. To avoid unnecessarily exposing human subjects to the risks of research, HHS should ensure that the results of human subjects research are rapidly and effectively disseminated to the research community, such as under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy.

2. Human subjects research protections should empower research participants and their communities

Although human subjects protection is the responsibility of the research and oversight community rather than of the subject, federal regulations should empower subjects to protect themselves to the greatest extent possible. HHS’ consideration of mechanisms to improve informed consent is particularly important in this regard (see Questions 35-53). HHS may also wish to consider readability and comprehension testing to improve consent forms. HHS should also ensure that subjects and potential subjects are informed of potential risks through public access to the proposed database of adverse events reporting (see Question 69).

With regard to the extension of federal regulations to some non-Federally funded research (Question 71), without prejudice to the resolution of the overall question, it is important that subjects and potential subjects be informed of the protections applicable to the context. HHS should require studies to inform subjects whether or not the federal human subjects research protections apply to the study, with a brief description of said protections and a reference to an easy-to-understand website with additional information.

Because the goal of human subjects research is ultimately to improve health, it is important that human subjects research protections leverage opportunities to do so, both for the subjects specifically and for their communities. Access to information is a key method for doing so. For instance, results should be returned to research participants whenever possible, including publications describing overall results of the study (see Question 18). Public access to research results (see #1) and to trial information (see #4) also would advance this aim.

3. Human subjects research protections should minimize and mitigate information risks

The adequate protection of research participants’ privacy is critical to the functioning of the research system and an important factor in the successful recruitment of human subjects. To prevent the damage that data breaches could wreak on the research system, human subjects research protections should ensure proper data security, such as by establishing mandatory standards for data security as proposed in the ANPRM. In addition, promptly notifying individuals of data breaches, as proposed in the ANPRM, is important to mitigate the impact of any security failures.

However, while it may be necessary to reexamine the role of institutional review boards (IRBs) in ensuring data security, HHS should be hesitant to eliminate such a role altogether. Through their approval and oversight, IRBs are the institutional guarantors of human subjects protection, and HHS should be cautious to remove vital aspects of that protection from the boards’ purview. HHS should carefully consider the most effective role of IRBs in ensuring data security: for instance, whether inspector certification of compliance and retrospective IRB audits would ensure protection.

4. Human subjects research protections should collect the data necessary for system oversight

The ANPRM correctly identifies the need for effective data collection and information management in conducting oversight of human subjects research protections. However, HHS should consider expanding required reporting where necessary, in addition to streamlining existing reporting requirements.

For instance, with regard to Question 70 re: ClinicalTrials.gov, the recent report of International Research Panel of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues identifies needed improvements to trial registration and reporting, including increased reporting and public access to information.

In another example where increased reporting and transparency could strengthen oversight, Menikoff in 2010 proposed that investigators should disclose their consent forms. Such disclosure, the author argued, would ultimately improve the quality of consent forms, in addition to allowing potential subjects to more easily locate appropriate trials.

Sincerely,

Gavin Baker

I’m pleased to announce that tonight, Florida State University’s faculty senate unanimously adopted a resolution supporting open access. (I’ve been a M.S. student in the School of Library & Information Studies since 2010; unfortunately, I didn’t know about this effort until tonight.)

The resolution itself would have been cutting-edge five years ago. The text is weak compared to policies at leading institutions: it “endorses the storage and preservation of scholarly publications in Florida State University’s open access institutional repository”, directs the libraries to “develop policies and procedures”, and calls for an annual report. Unfortunately, that’s as far as it goes. Based on the plain text of the resolution, there’s no mandatory deposit, the key element of successful open access policies. As a result, we can expect compliance to be weak. However, as Micah Vandegrift, Scholarly Communications Project Manager at FSU, notes, it’s a first step. Hopefully this resolution will spark a dialog, creating greater awareness and understanding, leading to the adoption of a mandatory policy in the near future. Meanwhile, kudos to the FSU faculty and those who worked to develop this policy.

Of course, I would be remiss not to add that my alma mater, the University of Florida, also has taken some positive steps in the open access arena lately (see: this, this, this).

Sigh.

Three weeks ago, I went to a UC Berkeley career fair and dropped off a copy of my resume with a certain startup. I’d put a lot of effort into selling myself with this particular resume, and trying to stand out from the crowd (most of the attendees were undergraduate CS majors–most probably with better technical chops, but little to no real-world experience, sense of design, or communication skills). While I was at the fair, I had a nice chat with the startup guy there about the company and web development and Python and I figured I had a pretty good shot.

Payoff! The next day, I received this email (a few bits redacted):

Hi Karen,

Our engineers really enjoyed meeting you at the career fair yesterday! (Also, I have to say that I love the graphics on your resume, and the “But wait! There’s more!” :))

You definitely stood out from the crowd as one of the most talented engineering students and we think that you would be a fantastic contribution to the future of (Startup).

I would like to schedule you for a 45-minute Skype interview with an engineer next week. What is your availability Monday, 9/26 through Friday, 9/30 from 10:00am – 5:00pm PST? What is your Skype user name?

I will forward your availability to our recruiting coordinators, (John) and (Jessie), as soon as I hear back from you and you will hear from one of then them shortly after confirming the date & time for the interivew.

If you have any questions regarding the interview process or (Startup) work life, please feel free to contact me at (Jane)@(Startup).com.

I look forward to following up with you ASAP after your Skype interview next week!

Thanks & have a great interview!

(Jane Smith)
(Startup) Technical Recruiter

“One of the most talented engineering students”. What. I suspected that they were just mistaking pretty-and-organized for competency, but even so, my ego was fit to burst. Huzzah! Maybe I could get a job I’d actually enjoy, with a cool company, that could pay me enough money to pay back my student loans! I was super excited.

But then I actually had the Skype interview. Despite the fact that I was applying to do front-end web development work, my interview was with a backend engineer. And instead of talking about the web projects I’d worked on in the past, or anything relevant or interesting, I got grilled with the so-standard-it’s-frickin’-trite Computer Science questionnaire.

Things I was asked about that have little or nothing to do with being an actual web developer:

• Red-black trees.
• Multithreaded processing in CPUs.
• Different types of sort functions. (I was like “I sort of remember learning about that stuff seven years ago, but I program in Python. I just use the sort() method and assume Python knows what it’s doing.”)
• Lots of Big O questions.
• The difference between a linked list and an array.
• SQL queries. (Well, that could be relevant, but I’ve always used Django or another ORM so I don’t really know any raw database stuff.)

One of the questions seriously started with “In a language such as C++ or Java, how would you…?”. If you read my resume, or know anything about me, you know I don’t *do* Java. (Well, I did some Java when I took a couple CS courses in college, and hated it, and notably chose not to major in the subject. But that was seven years ago.) I do *Python*. (And HTML/CSS/JS/RoR/BBQ.) Which I mentioned, and then answered the question Pythonically.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t answer the questions. It happens to be the case that I *have* taken a couple traditional CS courses, so most of them I could at least fudge by on what I remembered from seven years ago and from INFO 206 last year. But answer or no, none of it had anything to do with the actual, real web apps I’ve coded and contributed to over the last two years, and yet it was the standard by which I was judged.

I emailed back the startup today to ask what my status was. Five minutes later I got a rejection email. In that phone interview, I went from “A fantastic contribution to the future of (Startup)” to useless reject in forty minutes flat. Because I don’t remember hardly anything about bubble sort or merge sort and frankly don’t give a rat’s ass.

So now I don’t even know whether or not to bother applying for other web developer jobs. I’ve seen this perfunctory pop quiz on CS canon before–I got another version of it when I interviewed with Google and another (stealth) startup last year. It’s likely that *anywhere* I apply, I’m going to be subject to that test, and more importantly, companies will judge my ability to do the job based on it. Not on, say, my documented open source software contributions or web app projects for class or PyCon speaking or experience teaching Python and web programming to newcomers. That would be silly.

Maybe I should just discount all my technical experience and re-enter the job market as some “UX/interaction designer” / “web designer” / “product manager” weenie. Then it’d be easier for companies to classify me. (And also pay me ~$20k less to do nearly the same damn job.)

I am a *programmer*. I am not a fucking computer scientist. It’s utterly disheartening how many Bay Area tech companies can’t tell the difference.

If you believe that there’s a shortage of programmers and other technical workers right now, consider to what degree your recruiting process assumes that the “best” applicants fit the stereotype of a dorky computer science major who’s been coding since he was 10 and solves Rubik’s Cubes for fun and thinks that job ads calling for “rockstars” and “ninjas” aren’t utterly puerile and inane. (And let’s not even get into how age, race, gender, and culture stereotypes feed into this.)

During my 2010 summer internship at the Free Software Foundation I was able to bring lots of new ideas to the table, get involved with campaigns and publicity, and take on leadership roles like organizing the Massachusetts LibrePlanet Team.

One project of mine was to find a Credit Union for the FSF to partner with in order to bring eligibility to their membership base. Why? Banks have too much power. They've destroyed economies. Credit unions are basically banks (they offer all the same services and often more), but they are structured democratically and don't have to potential to do the kind of damage big banks do. Credit unions are not-for-profit, member-owned cooperatives rather than profit-driven corporations. Members elect a volunteer (unpaid) board of directors, and profits don't go to shareholders but instead go into lower rates on loans, higher rates on savings, and better services. If you're still letting big banks hold your money, see what credit unions you're eligible to join!


Finally, over one year after my internship, I've finally finished my project. If you are a card-carrying member of the FSF, you are now eligible to join Digital Federal Credit Union. Some neat benefits include being able to deposit checks online, and DCU is one of the very few credit unions that has that allow you to cash checks via your Android or iPhone using an app (disclaimer: zero-cost proprietary software). For more information check out the announcement and join DCU today!

A brief opinion on the Mackie/Hipple settlement, by a law student standing on the shoulders of giants.

The facts, as best I know, go something like this: about 32 years ago, Seattle artist Jack Mackie used public funds to create the “Dance Steps on Broadway” sculptures. These bronze footsteps in the concrete taught pedestrians how to do dances like the Rhumba and Foxtrot on the sidewalks lining Broadway in Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Mackie showed his litigious side in 1996 when he stopped the Seattle Symphony Orchestra from using an image of his sculpture in a promotional mailer. ) In 1997, Seattle photographer Mike Hipple took a photograph of someone’s feet on Mackie’s sculpture and put it on a stock photograph website for sale. Mackie sent a cease and desist, which Hipple complied with and subsequently destroyed all copies of the contentious photo. However, this action was not enough for Mackie because last year he decided to sue Hipple for copyright infringement over the photograph. http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=mike+hipple&edition=techdirt Hipple decided to settle rather than fork over the time and money necessary to defend a claim of copyright infringement.

 

It was unfortunate that Hipple felt compelled to settle. (http://capitolhillseattle.com/2011/06/29/broadway-dance-steps-lawsuit-settled-not-worth-continuing-to-fight)However, it is understandable as Hipple would have been at the mercy of the courts, and thus faced a chance of being sued for the statutory damages. Under the copyright statute 17 USC § 504,(http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000504—-000-.html) statutory damages for copyright infringement can range anywhere from $750 to $150,000. I am not aware of Hipple’s personal financial situation, but the chance of having to owe $150,000 is a hard pill to swallow for any artist. (http://hipple-ldf.blogspot.com/2011/06/settlement_29.html)

 

The unfortunate part is that Hipple stood a fairly strong chance to gain some revolutionary ground in copyright law. Had this claim escalated to litigation, a holding that Hipple’s photograph was transformative would have been groundbreaking. To have the statutory damages cause an artist to shy away from defending the progression of his art directly infringes on the main constitutional policy of copyright law to “promote the progress of …useful arts.” US Constitution, Article I, §8.

 

In his dissent written for Sony Corp of America v. Universal City Studios, Justice Blackmun stated that “the goal of copyright, is generally furthered by the creation of transformative works.” Hipple’s photograph has transformed Mackie’s sculpture in such a way that does not infringe on the sculpture’s copyright. Hipple’s photograph is a prime example of fair use:

 

The first factor of fair use requires analysis of the purpose and character of the use. Hipple had placed his photograph on a commercial, stock photograph website, the purpose of his use would be considered commercial by the courts. This factor would weigh in favor of Mackie; however, In Folsom v. Marsh, Justice Story stated that the character of the use should consider the transformation of the art. If one considers the transformative character in the first factor then this factor should actually weigh in favor of Hipple. Hipple’s photograph takes the original sculpture, puts feet on it to show its functional use, and photographs it; thus remixing and totally transforming the sculpture. Hipple’s remix of the sculpture creates a whole new expression in the photograph and that new expression should be protected. In a culture that builds off of itself, where no art is truly original, it is important for artists (like Mackie) to recognize and appreciate when other artists uses their art in a transformative way. If anyone should appreciate the transformative aspect of art building on itself it should be Mackie, as I am certain he was not the artist who created the Foxtrot or the Rhumba. Furthermore, the practice of drawing tutorial footsteps originated in dance studios long before Mackie took the idea to the streets.

 

When looking at the second factor of fair use, the nature of the copyrighted work, courts  evaluate the value of the materials used and how close that value is to the core of intended copyright protection. The closer the work is to the core values, the more difficult it is to establish fair use. The intent of copyright protection is to foster creative and original creation.  Mackie’s Dance Steps are not exactly novel, as mentioned previously, Mackie’s sculpture is remixed art.  Thus why does his reworking of previous art deserve stifling protection to hinder another artist from doing the same thing?

 

Further, the court in Campell v Acuff Rose states that the second factor is of less (or even no) importance when assessed in the context of certain transformative uses. Hipple’s photograph is merely taking Mackie’s transformative sculpture, of tutorial dance steps, a step further; thus any “creativity” Mackie had in placing the Dance Steps in concrete should be irrelevant in a fair use analysis. Like the parody protected in Campell, it was necessary for Hipple’s photograph to use Mackie’s sculpture; the feet needed the Dance Steps. By placing the feet in the photograph with the Dance Steps, Hipple transformed a three dimensional sculpture into a two dimensional photograph catching a pair of feet putting the sculpture to the functional use of original dance tutorials. Hipple’s photograph essentially catches the dance steps serving a practical purpose, to teach pedestrians how to do the dances sculpted. Due to this practical use, the Dance Steps on Broadway should receive a very low level of copyright protection, in any. Hipple’s photograph can also be compared to a criticism of Mackie’s sculpture, alluding to its natural predecessor.

 

The third factor of fair use requires the court to analyze the amount and substantiality of the portion of the copyrighted work taken and whether that amount was reasonable in relation to the purpose of the copying. Mackie filed one registration for the several Dance Steps on Broadway sculptures with the United State Copyright Office. (http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=2&ti=1,2&SC=Author&SA=Mackie%2C%20Jack%2C%201946%2D&PID=DrhimXv0qR34QHdIdM7aY3B6hGFO&SEQ=20110801120756&SID=3) (What I believe to be) the infringing photograph uses merely a blurred out portion of one of these sculptures.(http://seattlest.com/2011/07/09/a_quiet_seattle_lawsuit_settlement.php

*All images were added under fair use.  This is a noncomercial, educational post.

For my birthday, I am permanently deleting (not decativating, so I won't be able to restore) my Facebook account. The day after this event, I will export all of my data and my account will be gone! 

If you want to keep in touch, here's how you can: 

Email: [your email here]

Phone/text: [your number here]

IM (Jabber/Google Talk): [your Jabber ID here]

[other]: [your other contact here]

Why I am leaving: 

• Facebook is bad for the world - 
  They've plainly declared war on privacy, they lock users in, and they're trying to take over every aspect of our online lives (and dumb it down).
  http://gizmodo.com/5530178​/top-ten-reasons-you-shoul​d-quit-facebook
• Facebook is homogeneous and unilateral - 
  What we use to communicate shapes us. As more and more stuff goes on Facebook, the more everything we do online has to conform to Facebook's platform. It's not adding to our online presence; it's sucking it up. 
• Facebook is annoying - 
  The groups, the apps, the "likes", the marketing and advertising, the constant stream of immutable noise.

Will i ever come back?

My requirements for an acceptable social networking tool are simple. It must be free software (also known as "open source"), and should be federated (think about email: you don't need a Gmail account to send mail to a Gmail account, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail users can email each other, etc). Since Facebook will likely never meet those simple requirements, I will likely never come back. 

If you want to leave too:

Read about how to delete your account, get the word out, and export your information here:
http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2011/07/delete-your-facebook-for-your-birthday.html

• https://chrome.google.com/​webstore/detail/ficlccidpk​aiepnnboobcmafnnfoomga Chromium and Google Chrome extension that will copy all of your friends contact info and allow you to import them into Gmail.
• https://www.facebook.com/d​ownload/ Go to "Download Your Information" towards the bottom of your Facebook account settings. 
• http://facebookexport.com/ Get even more info. 
• http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/12/how-to-mass-export-all-of-your-facebook-friends-private-email-addresses/ Create a temporary Yahoo mail account that will allow you to import Facebook contacts. 

I'm in Santiago, Chile. My partner and I have a travel blog, where most of the stories from this adventure will probably wind up.

Fear of Software made it into Startup Chile. That means we'll be moving to Santiago in July and won't be back until 2012.

We have too much to figure out, actually. 6 months no longer seems like a large block of time. We have to become either self-sustaining or externally funded by the end of that, which I've learned in the past year is highly non-trivial.

I sort of took a nosedive of life this past year. Hardly even tried to date, let my room degrade from moderately messy to unbearably sloppy, failed NaNoWriMo, never finished the stories I still had leftover from 2 years ago, forgot to update my resume...

And it worked, at least a little bit. I had good reasons for employing this strategy, in that many of the lifestyle upgrades I seek would have been far more difficult under the feeling of being pulled backwards into a life I'd hoped to avoid. So I decided to make my career a priority and try to escape from both no-income and low-income (and even reasonable-high-income) dependency. The next 6 months will be crucial in deciding how successful this plan is.

In the mean time, however, need to pull up and get my balance back. Oh, and bask in the glory of a victory. Not a total victory by a long shot, but victory nonetheless.

Alice Wants Public Domain Images

Alice is an educator who needs an image of a poodle for a lecture slide. Alice wants to share her work (say, under Creative Commons Attribution), so she needs to make sure that she has permission to share all of the pieces she is borrowing.

Alice searches Google for “public domain image poodle,” but doesn’t quite get what she wants. She digs further and discovers that public domain images are scattered across the web:

• There are the common repositories, like archive.org, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, and Openclipart.
• Then there are the hundreds of repositories maintained independently by libraries, universities, federal government agencies, and even hobbyists–some but not all of them are listed on the CC wiki.
• Finally, there are the the broader search engines, like google image search and yahoo image search, which let you search across a bunch of these for openly licensed images, but often miss things for various reasons (perhaps the licensing information was not articulated in a way that the search engine could pick up).

Alice is confused and overwhelmed.

Suddenly, finding an image of a poodle is a huge can of worms for Alice.

Crucially, what we usually call “openness” isn’t going to help Alice here—the images are already “open” because they are available online under a permissive license. Yet they’re not really discoverable.

In fact, “open” misses several features that Alice should really expect from her image search (hi-res files, standard formats, etc).

Parker is trying to Help Alice

For the past year I’ve been working in this problem space, starting with a project last winter to scrape out and mirror all of the images in the CDC’s Public Health Image Library. This summer, I drafted the Usable Data Criteria 1.0, which enumerates all of the things that Alice wants in her public domain image search, beyond just openness.

This Spring, with generous funding from Digital Studies at Dartmouth College, I’m continuing work on making federally owned, public domain images (listing of databases here) more usable, with a focus on discoverability.

My approach is two-pronged:
Crowdsourced Metadata Tags to Improve Search
I’m working with the Metadata Games Project, which is making it easy for the crowd to add metadata tags to images by playing games. My focus will be on making it easy to add an image set to metadata games and to dynamically retrieve the metadata tags in a machine-readable format. This way, Bob the librarian, who has an image set, can use metadata games to dynamically retrieve tags for his images that improve over time (and he can give his patrons an easy and fun way to help with tagging). Better tags means a better search experience for Alice.

Downloading and Cross-Posting Public Domain Images from Federal Agency Archives
Using web scraping techniques, I’m downloading images and their metadata from various federal agency image archives and making them more accessible to Alice in a number of ways:

• providing additional tags from Metadata Games
• cross-posting the images to other image archives
• most importantly, providing one meta-index, updated nightly, with a machine-readable interface

The machine-readable meta-index will make all of the images in the federal image archives in my system easy to add to any larger search engine or dataset.

The code that I’m writing for image archive scraping will be generalized into a python library that’ll be available under the GPL.

Help me help Alice

What do I do next?

In terms of these federal agency images, what is the best way to put them where Alice will see them? Is it to cross-post to archive.org and wikimedia commons? Is it to create Yet Another Public Domain Image Search that makes them all accessible through one search engine? Is it to simply host mirror copies with semantic metadata articulating that the images are in the public domain, so that e.g., Google Image Search can correctly index them? Do we really just need One Usable Image Search to Rule Them All?

I need some advice from people who know a thing or two about image search, library and archival science, etc. I’m also looking for good journal articles about image search and image tagging. And if you’re interested in helping write or review code (such as html parsers for individual image archives), that would rule too.

Drop me a line: parker@madebyparker.com

I’m living and working on this project in Boston this spring.

Heavily edited 4/13/12. Thanks, Asheesh, for your feedback!

Recently, I was on a bus going somewhere I wasn’t super excited to be going. I tried telling myself stuff like “it won’t be that bad,” “I won’t be there long,” etc.

Then I said to myself “Parker, you should just have fun.” Somehow this really worked. I think I even smiled a little bit to myself.

Some people are just always fun to hang out with. Seeing a bad movie with friends can be a great time. And if you’re in a good mood and just decide to have fun, you can have a great time watching a bad movie all by yourself.

So this is my new year’s resolution: be more purposeful about having fun.
I’ll do stuff like this:
Smile more. Smile Bigger.
Listen to music really loud.
Start every new activity energetically. Enter social interactions with high energy. And a smile.

Fun isn’t a scarce resource–we’re literally swimming in fun right now. Our cup overfloweth with fun. We been had fun.
So there really isn’t much reason for me to ever not be having fun. Please remind me to have fun if I appear to have forgotten.

Cows near Amenia, NY.

Jonathan Lethem on the banks of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY

<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Qn0e0ugSGac&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;"/><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Qn0e0ugSGac&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425"></embed></object>

No (on air) guests. Trying out a bunch of diff tracks just to see what works. Lots of brazen trainwrecks. Some happy accidents. Sweaty studio. No fan. Rippin irish breakfast tea at 2am.

READ: [PLAYLIST]
LISTEN: [STREAM]

My apologies to everyone who is following me on Livejournal! I re-imported my entire Livejournal archive into my blog but I accidentally left my LJ cross-posting plugin turned on, so it got into an infinite loop where I would import a post, and then it would get cross-posted, and then imported again… This meant that duplicates of my old posts dominated everyone’s friends pages. I went back using Xjournal and manually deleted all of the duplicate posts from Livejournal, so everything should be back to normal.

The good news is that all of the old LJ comments have been imported with threading this time, thanks to the new Livejournal importer in the unstable “trunk” version of Wordpress Huge thanks to Beau for writing the importer, it worked perfectly.

Originally published at Skyfaller.net. Please leave any comments there.

I'm moving my blog from LiveJournal to my new personal website at Skyfaller.net, following in the steps of Nick. The rumors about LiveJournal being in danger of shutting down certainly triggered this move, but it's something I've wanted to do for a while, to have more control over my own data.

I would like my loyal LJ readers to follow me to my new site, and to achieve that I'd like to make sure that my new blog has all of the features of LiveJournal that my readers find important. Why do you use LiveJournal? What makes it a good experience for you? What features of LiveJournal do you think are useful, and distinguish it from other blogging sites? I have already added a number of features to my blog that LiveJournal has:

• Threaded commenting - This is included by default in Wordpress 2.7 but not all Wordpress themes have been updated to use it yet. You also have to turn it on in Settings->Discussion->Other Comment Settings->Enable threaded (nested) comments, it isn't on by default.


• Reply notifications by e-mail - Below the comment field is a checkbox labeled "Notify me of followup comments via e-mail". If you check that box, you'll get an e-mail when someone replies to your comment (if you've filled out the e-mail field). I'm using the Subscribe to Comments plugin.


• Not having to enter identifying info every time - I've enabled OpenID using this plugin, so all you have to do is enter in your LiveJournal URL in the website field and it will accept your comment. No need to fill in your name and e-mail each time.

What else should I do? Please let me know in the comments.

Originally published at Skyfaller.net. Please leave any comments there.

The domain 'findandreplace.org' is somehow still available for purchase --

It's a shame that Obama's delicious victory is alloyed by the bitter taste of not one, not two, but three propositions and amendments across the country to ban gay marriage. Whose fucked up idea was it to legislate the definition of a word? I am so pissed about this. Also, California's humane animal treatment proposition is silly. Guess I should have voted in California instead of Texas... our local propositions were boring.

One victory at a time, I guess. Obama, show us how it's done.

Hi everyone!

GO VOTE.

Thank you.

Although I continue to blog at Blurring Borders, I've also been doing some guest posts at Techdirt. If you don't already read Techdirt, I'd recommend subscribing.

Some recent posts:

• Should the Next President Use a Computer?
• Is There Any Good Reason to Pull the $1,000 iPhone App?
• Eight $1,000 App Buyers Later, and Apple Pulls It
• Is Privacy That Cuil?
• Newest Industry to Be Crowdsourced? Internet Censorship.
• GPS Data Used to Disprove Radar Gun in Speeding Trial
  

As you can tell, Copyrightings hasn't been receiving much attention recently. Instead, I've migrated to Blurring Borders which allows me to discuss a broader range of topics (though I still touch on Internet law). Head on over to check it out!

Whoa! I showed up on the Grooveshark blog --

-- and I was further informed that, in May, I was a featured image on Wikinews!

What a wild Web we weave :)

I feel like blogging more, lately.

I enjoy writing now and then, and would like a venue to do so -- one where I'll feel comfortable pointing people to, and hopefully one that can attract some readership, so I can have feedback.

I set up a WordPress install at gavinbaker.com over a year ago. I've never updated it from the SG campaign site. That's going to change, and relatively soon.

I don't want to break links to the existing URLs, and a part of me thinks I might even want an archive of that content, some day. But I also don't want to have to maintain an inactive WordPress install definitely: at best, it's an annoyance to maintain; at worst, it's a security risk and an invitation to spammers. So I'll be stripping WordPress out and leaving static copies of the pages in place.

I'll install a new instance of WordPress and get things set up the way I like it. Eventually, I'll start using it. Hopefully, I'll use it somewhat regularly -- posting at least a few times a month -- because I know that updates attract readers, and readers leave feedback.

I'll also stop posting here, both to encourage readers to move to gavinbaker.com and join the discussion there, and because I'm done with LiveJournal. I still have some fondness for LJ, but I want something more professional. (If I want the benefits of pseudonymity, I'll use a different account which is not attached to my public persona.) I imagine I have a few friends who would read posts here but wouldn't use RSS or check my site, and I'd be happy to import my RSS from gavinbaker.com, but IIRC you need a paid account or something to do that. (If anyone would like to volunteer to set up a feed account on LJ, please let me know.)

I'll probably continue to use LJ for reading others' blogs, commenting, and communities.

I'll also be making some other changes at gavinbaker.com (out with the old and in with the new), including switching my domain registrar (see ya, GoDaddy).

In addition, my email address will be changing within the next three months (most likely to something @gavinbaker.com). I'll also be going through a twelve-step program for Facebook (step 1: admit you have a problem), so if that's how you normally communicate with me, it's time to dust off the email client. (Yes Virginia, email does have other interfaces besides the Web.) I'll also be, let's say, cleaning up my accounts on random sites I briefly used (I'm looking at you, Friendster).

No, I will be getting a LinkedIn account.

I don't like Web services that won't let me do what I want with my data and that won't let me run the service myself (i.e. they don't give me the code). These proprietary walled gardens are not what I want the Web to be like. (And even if they have narrow windows through which they allow you to pass some data, they're still walls.) I want to start living Web 3.0; and those social networking sites are just a time suck, anyway.