Articles Posted in August, 2006

Measure 37 Third-Party Rights: A KATU story reports that: “A judge has ruled that property owners granted waivers from land-use rules under Measure 37 must take further steps to establish their development rights before they can sell them.” The opinion is by Crook County Circuit Court Presiding Judge Neilson. The opinion is not yet on their web site.

THE Library Catalog for the World: Any day now, Worldcat will make its online catalog available to anyone with an Internet connection. This is OCLC’s pride and joy (they do other things worthy of accolade too). The bittersweet side of this is that OCLC’s founder, Frederick Kilgour, just died this week at age 92.

For biblio-wonks: This Worldcat news is bigger and better than you might even imagine, as librarians the world over know. One of the biggest drawbacks to conventional Internet search engines is that they allow for very limited and very crude field searching, but then they are search engines, not databases. (Now if only they could direct my search results into a database that could be manipulated … well, never mind.) For example, try limiting your Google search by date (no, not the Saturday night kind). It’s impossible to get the desired results, which is frustrating for those of us used to searching databases that allow for complex field searching, e.g. most library catalogs and full-service databases such as Dialog, Lexis, and Westlaw.

Internet Privacy and Reference Questions: With the deepest and sincerest apologies to Jane Austen: It is a truth universally acknowledged that anything you write on the Internet is as likely as not to be declared a public record or discoverable in a legal action, by a judge, state or federal attorney general, law enforcement agency, advocacy group, or an attorney. Any electronic medium disclaimer statement should reflect that fact. No matter which state or federal public records laws apply, this basic and universal truth is unassailable.

When I answer email reference questions, I use this public records disclaimer in addition to the usual one about the librarians and the unauthorized practice of law, They both make people really nervous, as they should, but not knowing is worse.

Disclaimers:

Podcasting as a Business Strategy: Go easy on the move to podcasting as a means to talk to other people in a professional milieu (you can podcast all you like in your personal life). One reason I don’t like a podcast instead of a transcript (rather than giving me a choice of either) is that most people are not very good at public speaking and it’s very painful to have to listen instead of being able to read a transcript. At best, many public speakers talk too slowly, which will lose an audience faster than a dull PowerPoint presenter in a cold, dark, cavernous, hotel conference room. At worst, well, we all know how bad public speakers can be. Even wonderfully talented, incredibly smart people um can a, um, be like, a, um, um, disaster when, ah, um, speaking ah, a, um, like, um, publicly. You get my um drift. So, please, like, a, um, PLEASE, don’t skip those transcripts and go directly to podcast. I, um, ah, like really, like wow, won’t listen to you and won’t get to hear your words of wisdom. Or, at least give Toastmasters a try first.