Williams Returns to UNC

"Roy Williams returned home to North Carolina, hoping to win the national championship that eluded him for 15 seasons at Kansas." [CNN]

Libraries Move to Protect Privacy

"New signs posted at the Skokie Public Library warn visitors that federal agents may secretly check library records to determine what books they have checked out or what Internet sites they have visited.

'We want our patrons to be aware we could be forced to turn these items over,' said library director Carolyn Anthony, explaining why the warning signs appeared last week at checkout counters and computer stations.

Similar signs have appeared recently at the Schaumburg Township District Library, although officials there have also taken another step: deleting daily the names of patrons who use the Internet so there are no computer logs that could be searched by investigators.

Across the Chicago area and around the country, public libraries are taking steps to protect their patrons' privacy in light of federal anti-terrorism legislation passed shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11....

Schaumburg library officials recently altered their computer system so it automatically deletes the names of patrons who use library computers to access the Internet. Previously, such data was sometimes kept for a month or more.

A Department of Justice spokesman said actions by libraries to warn patrons or to regularly discard certain records are legal and don't violate the Patriot Act. But such steps are 'an unfortunate waste of their time,' Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said.

The Patriot Act is used only to gain information about terrorists or foreign spies, so libraries don't need to take steps to protect their patrons' privacy, Corallo insisted." [Chicago Sun-Times]

I'm sure that makes Intel engineer Mike Hawash, American citizen, and current government detainee with no rights believes Mark Corallo's protestations hook, line, and sinker. I know I feel much better....

RSS in the Classroom

"Ryan raises some really interesting ideas about the uses of RSS and trackback and how they might work in the classroom. The ultimate here from a teaching standpoint would obviously be an aggregated page of student work that was somehow sortable by either student or assignment or, preferably, both. Even more, it would be great to be able to comment back to student sites via the aggregator (which I think is something that Radio can do but not Manila(?)).

Even more, however, is the use of the aggregator by students to follow each other's work. I alluded to this before when I was thinking about putting my students into smaller working groups, a plan I'm going to implement this week. The desired effect is to get students to learn from the process of others by tuning in more closely, and to give feedback in the collaborative group style. Not that they can't just click through to the three or four sites in their group, but I'd like them to see how easy this new concept of information gathering is. I see them subscribed to the class homepage, 3/4 feeds of their workgroup, the NY Times and BBC newsfeeds, and a couple of feeds of sites that correspond to their beats. First stop every day will be the aggregator...." [weblogged News]

It's great to see the light bulbs going on all over the place, especially in the sphere of education. Wouldn't it be great if blogging and RSS became one piece of an evolving foundation (predicated on libraries) that teaches kids true information literacy?

CSS Column Layout Builder -- a very cool wizard for those of us that are falling behind on the CSS curve. [via Daypop Top 40]

"One year ago I wrote a technological ramble about Google, directories and OPML. It's still the way of the future, imho. There's no single root of the Web, so why should directories (like Yahoo, DMOZ, Looksmart) have single roots? And therein lies the problem with directories, and why we're not effectively cataloging the knowledge of our species on the Internet.

A case in point. Last week I pointed to a great directory of RSS aggregators. What an excellent directory. So why not also have it available in a format where it can be included in other directories? I should be able to delegate to the author and include it in the directory I keep for RSS. Why should I have to reinvent the wheel? Would he want me to? I'm burning to get this idea broadly implemented. When we do, the Web will grow by another order of magnitude....

By the way, one of the reasons I'm networking with librarians at Harvard is that I am driven to build this new knowledge base. They have a lot of libraries at Harvard. It's a big source of pride for the university. See, there is a method to my madness. ;-> " [Scripting News]

"Welcome to SpywareInfo, your central location for everything you need to know to protect your privacy on the internet. If you need information on how to protect your privacy, remove an annoying piece of adware, restore a hijacked browser, or want to know whether that free software you just downloaded might have an adware module hidden inside, you've come to the right place." [Privacy Digest]

Utah eDG Meeting on RSS News Feeds

"Ray Matthews from the Utah State Library Division will lead a discussion and show 'n' tell on RSS issues and implementations for State Government. Kerry Huntington, Steve Stalter, and others from the ITS development team will demo a wizard-driven RSS turnkey system under development that agencies will be able to use for creating, finding, and consuming news feeds. All interested Utah state and local government agencies are welcome to attend this open meeting. If you cannot come, please see the eDG Meeting site for information on how to participate in the live Web Cast or view the Powerpoint presentation. The meeting will take place in State Office Building Rm. B110." [RSS in Government]

Ray alluded to the turnkey system the Utah State Library has been developing, but we didn't have much of a chance to discuss it. I can't wait to hear more about this!

In other RSS news, Michael Fagan has put together an Explanation of RSS, How You Can Use It, and Finding RSS Feeds. Very informative with lots of resources listed.

"This page is about using RSS, from a non-technical standpoint..... Before you go any further, realize this: RSS is really simple. Just because it is an acronym doesn’t mean that it’s complicated. Don’t get scared away, there’s really nothing to it.....

For anyone that reads a half dozen or more pages that have RSS feeds, an aggregator is a necessity. RSS aggregators are set up to periodically check for new items in the feeds you are subscibed to, often an hour or half hour. In other words, the news comes to you, rather than you having to go to the news. This saves a tremendous ammount of time. Or conversely, you can read many more feeds in the same ammont of time. Many people read several hundred feeds. That just wouldn’t be feasable without an RSS aggregator. Additionally, you avoid all the non-new information on a web page, including the ads, menus, etc."