I briefly reported on the ACLU Report Reader's Block: Internet Censorship in Rhode Island Public Libraries Ed: broken link removed 2011. Now I've read it more closely and have a bit more to say about it. Today I'll just comment on Section V of the report, Filter Settings.
American Libraries Online Ed: broken link removed 2011 alerts us to the newly released "Readers Block: Internet Censorship in Rhode Island Public Libraries Ed: broken link removed 2011," a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
I haven't read the 21 page report yet but the AL Online piece states that the report finds "some libraries block material beyond the minimum needed for CIPA compliance"....SURPRISE!
In his March 14, 2005 Alertbox article Lower-Literacy Users, Jakob Nielsen reports that the reading behaviors of lower-literacy users is different from higher-literacy users and offers up some suggestions for website designers.
I received an email from a library student, Jennifer Meharg, in the U.K. who found that libraries in her part of the world were not filtering according to their Internet Use Policy. She suggested her findings suggested my "half-empty" analysis was probably closer to the truth (see Filter Effectiveness - Who Cares?).
I've made some improvements to the libraryfiltering.org page that I hope you'll check out. It ain't perfect by any means but I hope you'll find it more useful.
The most important change is that you can now select the filters you want to compare AND the filter features you want to compare, then display it all in one view.
In the December, 2004 issue of Information Technology and Libraries Ed: broken link removed 2011, Holly Yu and Margo Young report that web searching is changing our user's expectation of how the OPAC works. Specifically, they report that users typically type two terms in the search box, have an average of two queries per session, don't use complex query syntax and don't want to view more than ten documents in a result list.
From RFID in Libraries, Laura Smart writes:
The California Senate has had the first reading of bill SB 682, the identity Information Protection Act of 2005.
The legislation would make it a misdemeanor to include a ?contactless integrated circuit or other device that can broadcast personal information? on any government issued ID card.
The bill Ed: broken link removed 2011 contains this excerpt:
Well, here's a new one for me: podcasting. According to Wikipedia, podcasting is when you make a radio program available for downloading to portable devices such as iPods. Get it? iPod + webcast = podcast.