Thinking About Privacy

One of the feeds I subscribe to on bloglines is The Shifted Librarian. It printed a very interesting panel about privacy rights and the idea of library records being tracked. The participants make no attempt to hide their feelings about how easily personal information can be accessed and how much it scares them.

One participant drew parallels with information gathering today and the movie Minority Report. One of the lesser threads throughout the movie is that information gathering was being used to tailor advertisements to a specific person through information gathering. On the surface, it seems harmless and could be quite convenient. Imagine watching TV and only seeing commercials about products or movies that interest you. However, as the authors point out, there is quite a dark undercurrent to this concept.

On a broader spectrum, so many conclusions can be drawn about a person if their personal tastes are easily accessed. If a person subscribes to car magazines and loves to watch the Speed Channel, then one could draw the conclusion that this person is a "motorhead" along with any or all negative stereotypes that could go along with that Yet, this person could also be an ardent environmental engineer with hopes of creating new concepts for clean energy vehicles.

Now that there is the possibility of tracking library records as well, this could lead to many problems and incorrect conclusions about people. I can only imagine the conclusions people would make about me if they consulted my library records over the years. As a student, there were several different topics I researched for my different undergraduate courses. And I freely admit that I was less than reliable when it came to turning my books back in on time. Because of my unreliability at turning books back in, any prospective employer could draw the conclusion that I personally am not reliable for anything and probably could not be trusted to meet deadlines. This could even go one step further and start to affect people's credit scores. What's to stop lenders from treating overdue library books the same way they treat late bill payments?
Perhaps I am being a little paranoid, but this is definitely some food for thought. I personally would rather not have my library records and other personal interests tracked and live with commercials that are not geared towards me than have my personal life exposed to whoever wants to read it.

Thinking About The Libarian's Internet Index

Ah... The Librarian's Internet Index. The place where you can get information on seemingly any subject under the sun. I'm not sure where you can find a biography about George Carlin, a guide to summer air travel, and a county profile on the Philippines other than The LII's This Week section. This has to be one of the most useful tools for a reference librarian.

Oddly enough, it isn't updated as often as I would have expected. Perhaps it is because of the holiday weekend that LII hasn't been updated since June 28, but it made my observation of it pretty boring. Of course, that didn't stop me from searching through the site to find information about whatever piqued my curiosity.

I was particularly fond of the article "Friends for Faraway Places," a compilation of different authors' recommendations for which books to take while traveling in different cities. As someone who is very interested in movies, Hollywood, and its history, I found the recommendations by William Boyd for reading while in Los Angeles particularly interesting and would be quite happy to read them even if I don't get a chance to visit LA. I also have a friend who is very interested in Japanese history and will be traveling to Japan this fall. So, I emailed a list of David Mitchell's recommendations for Japan for her to either read before leaving or take with her while she's there. Funny how the LII turned into yet another tool for Readers Advisory work.

Thinking About Contemporary Literature

Have you ever heard of the website About Contemporary Literature? It's a section of About.com that relates to , you guessed it, contemporary literature. For the bookworms out there, this is a pretty fun place to spend a few hours (or days as the case may be for this blogger). I came across this site by subscribing to the feed through bloglines.com, but for everyone else, it can be found at http://contemporarylit.about.com. There are several book reviews and blogs by Mark Flanagan along with blogrolls to other blogs that will introduce readers to new authors, discuss new books coming out, and personal experiences with reading.

But enough advertising for About Contemporary Literature. I've mainly been thinking about a series of book reviews I read about the Harry Potter book series. I use the term book review loosely as it is more like an analysis of each book. Instead of simply stating a general outline of the plot and the reviewers personal opinion on the quality of text, the reviewer goes further. All of the reviews discussed the overall themes of the books and how they are parallels and allegories for our own world. There are several other book reviews on this site that follow along the same lines of intellectual analysis.

While at first glance, this site wouldn't seem to be of much help to librarians, but I believe that it actually could be quite helpful. For starters, how many times a day are reference librarians asked to recommend a good book? This website is one more tool that they can use to identify types of books that can appeal to certain readers and creating reader's advisory lists. The analysis of each book draws different parallels between books and the real world which can lead to book choices that might not otherwise be considered for some readers. Going back to the Harry Potter reviews, some people might write them off as mere fantasy books or kiddie literature. However, the reviews would lead one to realize that someone interested in social reform would find these books to be incredible allegories.

It's interesting how a website that I found as a great way to amuse myself can also be a handy tool for the local reference librarian.