Library Stuff

This is pretty important.  The FTC has just issued a report entitled , "Implementing the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act: A Federal Trade Commission Report to Congress".  From the press release:

"The report also states that “there is concern that younger children are migrating to more general audience websites, such as social networking sites, that are not intended for their use but nonetheless attract their presence. . . . [T]here is potential for age falsification on general audience websites, as well as liability under COPPA, should these sites obtain actual knowledge that they are collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children online.” The report also notes that these trends highlight the need for supplemental solutions, such as age verification technologies, that can provide additional security measures for children online. The report goes on to say that the challenges for both the FTC, as well as parents and others, will likely increase as the means by which children access the Internet increasingly move from stand-alone computers to mobile devices."

Read the entire report [PDF] (via)

I was wondering how LI libraries were dealing with "The Word".  Newsday has some thoughts from LI librarians:

"On Long Island, librarians at public libraries have stocked "Lucky," according to youth services directors for the Nassau and Suffolk library systems. But school libraries are another story. Some local school librarians may not be ordering it, and some experts call this censorship.

Another Suffolk school librarian, who didn’t want her name used, says she probably won’t order it: "We’re very careful about Newbery books, because we’re in a K-6 building" and the Newbery winner is often for older children."

Jill Stover brings up a good point regarding the sharing feature on Google Reader:

"I’m glad to do this because I often read so much that I want to discuss with all of you but I can’t always find the time. This way, at least you know I’m thinking about it!"

The Reader makes it so easy to share (seriously – just hit "Shift-S" and it’s done) that the more share, the more we learn.  Basic community practices apply.  Lots of LS readers have shared their URLs, but I’m sure that there is more out there.  Send yours in. 

There’s lots of neat tools that we can use to play with our shared items.  This is very meta and I’m loving it.  I have a good feeling about all of this

Oh, this is so very cool.

"OpenCongress brings together, for the first time in one place, all the best data on what’s really happening in Congress:

• Official Congressional information from Thomas, made available by GovTrack.us: bills, votes, committee reports, and more.
• News articles about bills and Members of Congress from Google News.
• Blog posts about bills and Members of Congress from Google Blog Search and Technorati.
• Campaign contribution information for every Member of Congress from the website of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.org.
• Congress Gossip Blog: a blog written by the site editors of OpenCongress that highlights useful news and blog reporting from around the web. The blog also solicits tips, either anonymous or attributed, from political insiders, citizen journalists, and the public in order to build public knowledge about Congress.

….

Each page on OpenCongress provides access to the full official details of a bill: the text of the bill itself, its status in Congress, its voting results. At the same time, each page allows you to see the "big picture" behind a bill: recent news analyses of it, what its buzz is on blogs, what industries gave campaign contributions to its sponsors. News coverage and blog commentary are vital to understanding the Congressional process and help to translate the highly technical language of bills into something more intelligible. Future versions of OpenCongress will introduce more new features in this regard, as well as more ways to collaboratively analyze legislation and engage with Congress.

OpenCongress allows anyone to easily track a bill, a Member of Congress, or an issue area, and to conveniently follow developments in any of those areas by subscribing to its RSS feed. We aim to close the information lag and bring people closer to the Congressional process. Every bill on OpenCongress is also organized by a common issue area, as assigned by the government agency the Congressional Research Service, so you can find bills of interest just by browsing an issue area that matters to you. Along the way, OpenCongress lets you know which bills are the hottest: the most viewed, the most written about in the news, the most buzzed-about on blogs."

Wowza!  I’m sending this to my clients.  Law librarians, show this off in your office.  I might have more to say about this once I play around with it a bit.  I’m not thrilled that they are only using Google News (Y! and Topix make for a great addition to Google) Also, it looks like the site is having major "502 Bad Gateway" issues right now.  Still, I’m in love with the concept.  Fingers crossed that this improves.  (via)

Great piece by Jakob Nielsen:

"Today’s search engine market leader might be gone in 20 years, and the search page layouts that currently dominate all search engines will almost certainly change. So, we shouldn’t teach the kids Google hacks.

That said, the general search concept will only become more important in the future, as we get ever-more information that will be ubiquitously accessible. Strategies for how to formulate good queries, how and when to use query reformulation or other search refinements, how to use scoped search, how to judge search result relevancy, and how to combine multiple search engines of different types will remain important, even as the specifics of how to implement such strategies change."

Lots of other invocations, including Information Overload (ack!!) and Information Credibility.

Do take a look.  I want to give it a standing ovation, but I’m on the train and, well, that would look silly. (via)