Battle of the Codemonkeys

I'm entering in the registrations for our summer reading program right now, and if there is a duplicate registration, the most technical database error message possible pops up. Of course my 14 year old volunteer had no idea what a key is, or a "System ArgumentException, or why he should "review the stacktrace" to find an error. Can't it just say "sorry, this person is already in the database"?

What I love is his reponse to all this. After I literally decoded the message, he said: "oh, it's written by code monkeys!"

Yeah, I thought those were cute and cuddly until it came out of his mouth, but what a great insult for a fourteen year old to use!

No Turkey For Lunch

I went to the terrific Pres4Lib un-conference last week and participated in the T is for Training podcast. We get on the topic that turkey makes you sleepy, but I knew I read on Snopes, that this is an urban legend. Ohhh, the lil factual cranky gal strikes again. I can't listen to my voice so I have no idea what I talked about.

Also, I jumped right in on this great idea called Battle Decks. 10 slides, 2 minutes, TOTAL IMPROV PRESENTATION:

Libraries and Kindles

And sometimes I write an e-mail that is so much fun it should just be a blog post.

Question: Are any librarians lobbying for the right to lend Kindles?

My Answer: From what I gather librarians are just trying to get a consistent and clear answer from Amazon as to what their Terms of Service are and if libraries can loan Kindles. Unlike regular copyright law, electronic rights are usually negotiated by contracts (in this case the Terms of Service or TOS) that can have whatever provisions the owner of the material wants, with no fair use or rights under the first-sale doctrine.

Here is a good summary of what people have been told:
http://rochellejustrochelle.typepad.com/copilot/2008/01/loaning-kindle.html

Since TOS are contracts and not copyright law, I see very little use in librarians lobbying anyone in government to change them. Working with the vendors on a product by product basis (as libraries do for databases) is probably the only thing that can be done unless there is a major shift in the way digital materials are handled by libraries/vendors.


Personally I would like to see libraries forming consortiums that refuse to purchase software and databases that are controlled by strict digital rights management software and contracts. When a DRM free e-book reader comes out I think things will be different. I own a mp3 player by Sansa and only purchase DRM free downloads from eMusic, maybe eBooks will be in the same place soon.

PS disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer etc.