All in all, a nice alternative engine. I much prefer it to similar engines like Clusty, KartOO and Grokker.

I think this is great… but.

But like all copyright mechanisms, CC licences are only a means to an end, and that end is to restrict the rights of the consumer and purchaser. Some CC licenses are unarguably vastly better than most commercial licenses. But CC is not public domain.

Every time I see a government or a library getting “into” CC, I have to ask: as opposed to what?

If the alternative is Public Domain, then moving to CC is a giant leap backwards. If you are going to spend money promoting a rights mechanism, and preserving works released under that mechanism, and putting your weight and support behind that mechanism, then let that mechanism be the Public Domain, not some “watered-down Copyright that is still undeniably Copyright”.

I can’t speak as a government or library, but I can say why I myself post my work under creative commons and not public domain.

I have been trained as an artist. In school, I heard a LOT about not giving yourself away, about protecting your copyright, your “brand,” even about legal ramifications both of using others work and others using your work. I remember that the whole thing seemed weird. There was no way then, at least not that I knew, to release my work under a license that said “please use this, please share it” and allowed me to find other artists whose work was remixable. Artists have a tenuous relationship with copyright. Those that make art by remixing know, or at least should know, the copyright law as it applies to derivative works and fair use. Most artists, rather then spend a lot of time wrestling with legal definitions, will either use public domain source material, or try to use nothing at all (which can be stifling for many people.)

In general, if you release something into the public domain, that means anyone can do anything they want with it. There are limitations of course, but you wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on if you released something in the public domain and then someone else put it in a gallery show without attribution. Of course, there is nothing to stop someone from putting a CC:By work in an art show either, but if they are following the terms of the license, at least you’ll have your name attached. It may not seem like a big deal – after all, you aren’t making money off your work either way, right? But in the art world, as most other circles, name recognition is *really* important. So if you give enough away under CC:By that people know your name, that’s social capital.

In an ideal world, Creative Commons wouldn’t be necessary- people would be polite and cite their sources. CC is a way of reminding people that yes, you can use this, but don’t pretend you made it, ok? Attribute back.

What creative commons license you use will depend on your purpose: I attribute almost everything CC:By because the important thing to me right now is name recognition. I’m building my brand, so to speak. Even if I was selling artwork, though, I’d probably stick with the CC:By SA license, because I don’t mind people making money off the work, as long as they help the cause by releasing their work into the commons as well. The brilliance of CC:By SA is that it is self perpetuating- you are free to use my content, but you have to let other people use your content. I personally don’t believe in, and will never use the Noncommercial version of the license, because it stifles other’s ability to make money as an artist (if they so choose) and is too incompatible with the other licenses. I don’t begrudge others decision to put that restriction on their content, however, I try not to use noncommercial licenses in case I want to sell something based on another work* later on. (* I added “based on another work” to try to clarify what I was saying re: Mark’s comment below. My full reply to his comment is in the comments)

As a creator, I don’t believe it is wrong to assert some rights over my work. I believe in intellectual property- I just think that as a society, we need to be able to build upon things or we will stagnate. The only problem I see with creative commons as it is is the time span- my work goes into the public domain following the same schedule as copyright law which would be 70 years after I die – that is, unless I go back and manually change the licenses of older content. Ideally, I could set a limit of my CC license, after which point it passes into the public domain. I think 10 years is reasonable. As it is now, I’ll just have to do a reevaluation of old work and release it into public domain where appropriate.

The reason I think 10 years is a reasonable term is that artists don’t live by resting on our laurels. We don’t make one really great painting or book and go “well, guess I can retire now!” – We create, we keep creating, and we keep changing. What I made 10 years ago doesn’t matter near as much as what I will create tomorrow. I think 10 years is a reasonable term for me to monetize what I can. That may be just me. I think terms up to 30ish years or until death (whichever comes first) are reasonable- but not this 70 years after death stuff.

Things are busy around here- which is great – but it also means I’m having a hard time fitting everything in. I have more blog post ideas than I know what to do with, but I’m having trouble bringing things into a cohesive form.

This semester has been a little weird for me. My first semester of library school, I tool Library Administration- and since I knew nothing about libraries, I soaked everything up like a sponge and most of my blogging had to do with what I was learning in class. Now, though, I have different interests, and not all of them match up with my classes. My attention is more fragmented than ever- because I want to read all about what I’m learning in class, but I also want to read more about other topics, and there’s not enough time to do everything.

I’m also realizing that my attention is becoming more and more fragmented- I find it hard to sit down and just do homework at home because of all the distractions. I can think of two ways to solve this- either work at work (that is, either come in early or stay late and do homework at the library) or create a dedicated study space at home. May have to go with the library for the short term since I can’t think of anywhere to put a study place at home.

New Blog 

I have also found I’ve missed being able to blog about anything and everything that is on my mind. Here is not the place for that- I want to keep this space for library issues. So my solution is to start a new blog. You can find me over at os-agnostic.com, where I will ramble on about non library related tech stuff, talk about my art, and just generally be off topic. Feel free to subscribe, or just stop in and check up on me. OS Agnostic is probably more of interest to techno-geeks and my friends and family than the library crowd. :)

When I started library school a yearish ago, I knew no one in the library world. I had never heard of Stephen Abram or Walt Crawford, let along Meredith Farkas or Karen Schneider. I had only started working in a library a few months before, and despite the fact that my first job was as a page in a library, my knowledge about libraries was limited.

I found that I really liked my first library class (Library Administration) and it spurred a lot of thoughts in my existing blog. As time went on, my blog became more and more about library stuff. At the same time, I sought out other library blogs and subscribed to them. At one point I was subscribing to hundreds of library blogs- I have cut back since then. Reading blogs did several things- it gave me glimpses into the different types of careers I might have, it clued me into what librarians were talking and thinking about now (something reading the professional literature just didn’t do) and also let me experience what a conference was about before I went. By selectively delving into the archives of some of the more long running blogs, I was able to gain an appreciation of where the profession has been in the last few years.

After reading blogs and writing for a while, I started commenting. I tried to keep up with my comments- looking for responses so I could respond back if needed, but I found the whole process unwieldy. Now, there’s a Firefox plug in called “cocomment” that watches my comments for me. I also started to examine my other web presences. I had a MySpace profile, which, luckily, had no embarrassing pictures or anything- I cleaned it up a bit so it looked presentable for potential employers and colleagues to find. I started actively seeking out librarians on social networks – looking through friends of friends for names I recognized, mostly. I did the same on Flickr, signed up for a Facebook account, etc. I joined the Ning network “Library 2.0” and was active there for a while. I created a library student Ning network, and though it is pretty dormant now I met a lot of great people through it and continue to find new blogs to read when new people sign up.

Somewhere along the way I redesigned my site and migrated to WordPress from Movable Type. I created a second site at karin.dalziel.org to serve as my C.V. I tried for a professional looking design. I started treating everything online as part of my professional identity- this may not always be important, but I believe it makes a difference, especially in the year or two before job hunting. That said, I tried not to totally stifle myself, either- much of my life is online, after all, and I don’t want to completely cut that off. Another big change was to start using my real name for nearly everything – commenting, site logons, etc. I still have a few places where I use an alternate logon, but there aren’t many. I check my name in several search engines to make sure my site comes up first, and that the results are indicative of what I want people to see.

A bit before I attended my first ALA conference in Washington D.C., I joined Twitter and started friending library people (later I extended friending to local people, educators, and computer geeks.) When I went to the conference, I brought my PDA- while I wasn’t always connected, I had internet often enough that I could see what people were doing on Twitter. I found it very useful, and would definitely recommend it.

Now I am in the maintenance phase of my online life- I take a look at new applications occasionally, but mostly stick with what I have. My MySpace and Facebook use has dropped off, but I’m active in blogging on my website, Flickr, del.icio.us and Twitter, among other places. I carefully tag photos to make them more findable, and CC license my work so it can be re-used with credit.

A few specific examples of what online networking has done for me:

I created an “Open Access for Librarians” presentation for a class. I was very happy with the slides and the talk. This was the first thing I put on my “Publications, Presentations and Projects” part of my professional website. I quoted Dorothea Salo’s blog, Caveat Lector in my presentation, so I sent a quick email with a link to the presentation on my own site so she would know. (At the time, I considered this more of a professional courtesy than anything- I’d like to know if I was being quoted.) Dorothea linked to my presentation (and complemented my on my website!!) and it was also picked up by Peter Suber and American Libraries Direct, an email that goes out to American Library Association members. It was also featured on the home page to my own library’s website.

More recently, I gave a brown bag talk on Zotero, a open source citation management program I have been using for over a year. I worked hard to create some amusing, attractive slides. I added the talk to my website (as I always do) and told people about it in Twitter and on my blog. I also responded to a request for slogans on the Zotero forum, pointing to the research LOLcats I made for the presentation on Flickr. I got a nice email thanking me, and got a free Zotero Tshirt and stickers. I was also recommended to do another presentation on Zotero.

Can it work for you?

I don’t necessarily think the online social networking approach will work for everyone, but for me, it has been amazing. I can’t afford to go to that many conferences (at this point, I pay out of my pocket for them) but online I can take part in conversations I wouldn’t otherwise be able to. It’s not a replacement for traditional, face to face networking, publishing, and conferences, but it is a great supplement. Another huge advantage for me is that I am a little shy when meeting people for the first time, but if it is someone I know from online, I at least have a way to start up a conversation.

Tomorrow I’ll post some do’s and do not’s for professional social networking.

I added a step 4 to go with step three, so that I could use use a Creative Commons licensed photo. The previous directions just pulled from Flickr’s “interesting” page, of which very few are CC licensed.

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
3. Use the random word generator to generate a word.
4. Use the word to search FlickrStorm (creative commons licensed photos) and the third picture will be your album cover. Or just choose any image.
5. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

Article Title: The World Famous Pontani Sisters
Random Quotation: The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. – Bertrand Russell
Random word: Tread
Image: Tired Cone by Travis Gray

Software & Hardware: Wacom Bamboo Tablet, ArtRage 2 (Through Wine), Gimp, Inkscape, Ubuntu 7.10

If you wanna do it, consider yourself tagged. Be sure to let me know in comments!

I was reading reviews on the book “Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss” and found this comment:

“Fuhrman does cite many scientific journal articles, but most people will not be able to access those articles to see if they truly support his statements.”

On one hand, I feel like the reviewer is naive to expect all researchers to use publicly available data, and on the other hand, I can totally see where he/she is coming from. Not many local libraries carry the expensive databases needed to verify the research, and not everyone has access to a university library. Isn’t it reasonable for people to expect that they can check to make sure an author is doing the research? Isn’t it great that people are even interested in critically analyzing works?

Will we see the tides turn, when information locked behind a pay wall is not cited by popular writers because it lacks credibility with the general population? Would this be a good or bad thing?

Photo of the “Pay Wall” here: http://flickr.com/photos/cgc/1200935/

OLPC’s for Lincoln Schools

The Cooper Foundation, a local grant giving institution, has given a grant to buy XO laptops in Lincoln Schools.

“President Art Thompson said the final grant approved for the year was $8,000 to the One Laptop Per Child Foundation for 40 laptops. Under their Give One Get One Program, 20 of the laptops will be sent to a developing nation and 20 more to Lincoln.

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s mission is to stimulate initiatives designed to enhance and sustain the effectiveness of laptops as learning tools for children living in lesser-developed countries. The laptops coming to Lincoln will serve that same goal for children here.

The Cooper Foundation is working with the Foundation for the Lincoln Public Schools to develop plans to distribute the laptops.”

From “Cooper Foundation grants more than $1 million in 2007” in the Lincoln Journal Star.

I’ve heard tell of people in other locations whose schools have not even heard to the OLPC program, so the fact that LPS has taken the initiative to pilot the program is great.

Blogging Police Chief

As Michael Stephens recently pointed out, Lincoln’s police chief, Tom Casady, has his own blog. He’s a great blogger, and amazingly frank. A great example of engagement is this post, where one of the people he wrote about responded in the comments. Oh, and you can also learn the chief’s stand on zombie attacks.

It’s like geocaching for people without a GPS

Lincoln has a new initiative called “Lincoln Safari” where you use a map to go visit some out of the way places in Lincoln, take a rubbing of the signpost, and for some locations you’ll get a trinket. From the website:

“Lincoln Safari will get families and other groups of people off the couch and into unstructured corners and hidden places within Lincoln thus encouraging a sense of exploration and discovery. It will provide opportunities throughout the year to experience the natural environments in the Lincoln community.”

People can get the kits at any local library. Sounds fun! And, it’s free. I’m going to go pick up my kit today.

First, I am so very happy with the purchase. It is, indeed, a machine for children. It’s small, it’s fun, and, most importantly, the programs encourage creativity over productivity. This is the single biggest advantage of the OLPC. There are a limited number of programs, to be sure, but the programs play together very well, and make me want to make things just for fun.

One of my favorite features of the OLPC is the built in camera and photo/video taking software. You can turn the computer into a photo booth contraption, which is quite fun (and something I know I would have LOVED as a kid.) The camera is not very high quality (the recordings are no better than most cell phone cameras, the photos are 640×480.) but it looks pretty good on the XO screen, which, for most kids, is all that’s important.

When you take a picture, it’s automatically logged in the “journal” – the combo file system and system activity log. The journal is a hard concept to wrap your head around at first. Instead of saving files to a hard drive in a particular folder, everything is saved chronologically. You then have the option to go in and tag the photos to organize them, add a description, etc. You files are searchable through the journal interface, so finding something is a matter of either remembering a keyword, when it was done, etc. Since everything is logged, parents can easily check on what a kid has been doing.

I didn’t like the journal system of saving files at first. It’s just so different from the way I am used to dealing with files on a computer- but really, it’s much like the way I save, say, blog posts or Flickr photos. Now that I have used the system a big more, I like it a lot. The file system is built into the computer, so when I go to upload a picture to Flickr, I’m presented with the journal interface to find the file, not the place where the file actually is on the computer. Incidentally, uploading to Flickr takes a very long time – mostly because it takes forever for the journal/finder/exploreish interface to come up. I’m hoping someone will hack the system to either add a quick Flickr upload feature or make it possible to upload to Flickr straight from the record (photobooth) program.

There is a terminal program, so one can still navigate to files (via command line) and copy them elsewhere. I have not delved into command line much- I know how to bring up the terminal through the applications, and how to switch the computer to text only , but then I’m asked for an admin name and password, which I don’t have. I’m wondering if I missed the login name and password somewhere?

The other thing I really like about the interface is how sharing between applications is built in. You can take a picture and send it to another program, or use the journal to open up a documents from one application in another application. I think the collaborative features across the mesh network will be a lot of fun. I can’t wait to try out the collaborative features with other OLPC owners (right now, I know of my mom and my co-worker. If there are others, let me know!)

A few other random observations and thoughts:

The touchpad works pretty well- better than a lot of laptops I have had, actually. I don’t know what’s up with the two areas to the right and left of the touchpad, though. I read that they were supposed to be a stylus sensitive area, but there’s no stylus, and nothing I have works on it.

Although the touchpad is good, in some programs it is a little laggy, most noticeably in the drawing program. this makes it near impossible to draw anything, which is a shame. I’m sort of hoping that either a future generation will have a touch screen (it seems a natural fit) or that they come out with a drawing device. I see tremendous creative possibility here, but it’s a little stilted right now.

The python program Pippy looks like a lot of fun, but isn’t really all that useful for learning python without another source- unless I’m missing something. It would be great if they could get a combo textbook/programming environment like Hackety Hack on the OLPC. I think Pippy will be a very nice place for me to teach myself programming, though.

The word processing program underlines misspelled words, but I can’t find a way to replace the word with the correct one. This may be a feature, though. For me, having spellcheck always available as a kid probably would have made me an even worse speller than I already am.

The keyboard is tiny. I can actually type fairly quick on it – but I have small hands and I can’t type that fast anyway. You can hook up a USB keyboard and it works just fine. Hooking up a mouse works too. I really like the springy feel of the keys.

The black and white feature is OK. It really is beautiful and clear, but the contrast just isn’t that good. I think the device has tremendous potential as an e-book reader, though. I hope that the screen technology gets even better (though I am quite pleased with it as is.)

Networking is a little spotty. The machine will always pick up the unsecured networks around us, but I have only been able to pick up our in house (secured) network once. The other times it just hasn’t shown up. When I did connect via our network, the web experience was pretty zippy.

But.

I still think there’s good reason to criticize, and I don’t think it’s necessary to spend $400 for the right to criticize when Amazon makes it very plain what you can’t do. (OK, not very plain, you have to find the right links, but it is on their website.)

In other news, Abram bought an OLPC! Yay! I hope all the librarians who bought one bring them to ALA so we can dork out and connect on the mesh network. :)

Design

Once upon a time, design wasn’t important for electronic devices. Makers were much more concerned with what the device did. The Kindle reminds me of this era- functionality first, design second. Which is fine, but if that’s the case, be honest. Jeff Bezos said on an interview on NPR “this device is beautiful” … “this device is gorgeous” but immediately after he says “if you look at the device, it has long buttons that go up and down the length of the device on both the right hand side and the left hand side. And that’s because people like to shift their hand posture when they read it avoids fatigue.” Bezos confuses design and functionality. A device can be perfectly functional and usable without being beautiful, but the current trend is to make beautiful AND usable objects. (I should mention, I do like the lovely design on the back.)

The ad copy on the Amazon Kindle page is more practical – it does not mention design, instead focusing on features and usability. Compare this to the description of the iPod, which mentions “good looks” “Beautifully redesigned” and “sleek all-metal enclosure.”

Looks are not everything- but don’t pretend to be something you’re not.

Audience

The video on the Kindle page shows a young, 20 something that alternately looks like a business man and student. (He also looks smug to me, but maybe I’m imagining things.) For the on the go young professional who loves to read for leisure and has money to burn, this may very well be the thing.

But, when Michele Norris asks Bezos about the Kindle and its possible effect on late teens’ reading habits (which I admit is a loaded question) Bezos says “it makes reading easier for people so Kindle is going to be one of those things that causes people to read more and especially that demographic that you’re talking about [late teens] there will be a certain amount of glamor associated with this way of reading.”

There seems to be confusion about who the audience is. A co-worker played the NPR interview with Jeff Bezos to his undergrad class, and the agreement was that no, this is not going to be a new, glamorous way of reading. I doubt late teens are that different from college students, and I doubt they would want a $400 e-reader instead of, or even in addition to, a laptop. If you’ve read much about kids and their laptops (or cellphones, for that matter), you know that most of them already have a device for reading. (And, you can find a decent laptop that will do much more than read e-books for $400.)

I don’t know if anyone has considered that teens don’t read novels because they’re freaking BUSY. Have you seen the schedule of a teenager lately? Most work, go to class, participate in clubs, hang out with friends, volunteer (especially if required by school) and spend a lot of time creating and sharing content. Who has time to sit around and read a novel? I digress though.

I think the main audience for the Kindle will be middle to older aged mid to upper class suburbanites. The audience will have enough money to not be particularly bothered that they’ll be buying books that can only be read on one device – they’ll be more concerned with convenience. Again, not a bad thing, but why try to be young and hip when you’re not?

DRM

Of course, the Kindle takes a new, giant step… backwards when it comes to DRM. Wanna transfer your Kindle books to your computer so you can read them? Too bad. (at least, not yet) What if you lose your Kindle? Well, Amazon will back up your books for you, so that’s good, but you can’t see them again until you buy a new device. Wanna sell off that book you already read? No way. Want to print out a hard copy of a passage to share with your poor, deprived, Kindleless friends? Silly you. You don’t own the book you bought, you just licensed it. So, unless you’re willing to lend out the whole $400 device, no sharing. Makes me winder if the high price is to discourage people from doing just that. Want to get your PDF documents on the kindle? You can mail them to yourself for $.10 apiece, and it will be converted into the proprietary format. So you can’t, say, annotate a word document and then transfer it back to your computer. You MIGHT be able to forward it onto a friend, provided he or she has a Kindle, too.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m not a big fan of this DRM’d all to hell policy. It’s still unclear exactly how strict the DRM is, but that will become clear in the coming weeks. In any case, it sounds icky. Plus, I can’t buy manga for it, so what’s the point, really?

The future of the book

In all this talk about the Kindle, it is inevitable that people will use phrases like “this is the future of reading.” I just don’t think that is the case. This is a device to enable the way we read in the recent past and some still do in the present. Cory Doctrow notes that “You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen,” you just don’t like reading novels there. The nature of the internet changed what we choose to read. Doctrow compares novels to Opera, and notes “Opera survives, but it is a tiny sliver of a much bigger, looser music market.” The sky will not fall if novels cease to be the main literary form. They’ll still be around, and people will make devices to read them, but an increasing number of people will find their entertainment on the unsanitized web, and for that, they’ll need a computer. Hopefully one with a better screen and battery life than we currently have.

Why now?

It seems like these conversations converged for me recently. I bought an OLPC partly because I want to use it as an e-book reader. I know the screen won’t be as nice as e-ink, but I’ll be able to get my reading material from lots of different places, not just Amazon.com.

We just finished our discussion on e-books in my “Intro to Information Technology Class.” Not surprisingly, most of my classmates thought that e-books would be predominantly for educational material, because, of course,  no one wants to curl up with a computer.

Except for me, of course, I wuv my cuddly computer. Or, at least, I will wuv my cuddly computer once I get my OLPC XO machine. If I want, I can curl up on the couch and read on the TV. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading actual paper books- that I’ve checked out from the library. My last move was enough to convince me to stop buying so many books.  I don’t read much in the way of novels these days, but between blogs, web pages, research, emails, and school reading, I probably go through the equivalent of one or two novels a week. Of course, that doesn’t count, now does it?