Apparent Overblocking by CyberPatrol

"Today, while visiting a large company, I tried to visit some of the websites on this site's link-list. I found that three of them were blocked due to 'possibly inappropriate content.'

The three blocked sites were Eszter Hargittai's blog, Arnold Kling's 'The Bottom Line', and Donna Wentworth's 'CopyFight'. (The whole Corante site, which hosts several blogs besides Bottom Line and Copyfight, appeared to be blocked.)

My hosts told me that their company uses CyberPatrol to filter their web access. So apparently CyberPatrol erroneously blocks more than 10% of the blogs I read." [Freedom To Tinker]

This is interesting since some libraries are using filtering programs on their public internet access computers, including CyberPatrol. We know that pr0n, sex, health, Google, The Internet Archive, and political and advocacy groups are being blocked in those libraries, denying their patrons (often the younger ones) access to those sites, but it hadn't occurred to me that blogs were being screened out, too. It makes sense when you consider the all-over-the-place content in blogs, but it's still a disturbing thought.

Why on earth would the Corante sites be blocked?

You Blog, We Blog: A Guide to How Teacher-Librarians Can Use Weblogs to Build Communication and Research Skills

"A number of educators have already embraced blogging and are active bloggers. Here are some links to a few on the Internet: Blogging from the Barrio: A Tech Sensei’s Blog from Chicago’s Barrio of Pilsen, K-12blogWrite, and Schoolblogs. Some schools are using the blogs as an electronic alternate to school newsletters for parents and area residents while others are internal communication tools aimed at teachers and administrators.

But blogs could be so much more. How about incorporating blogs in a lesson plan on using search engines, on using news aggregators, or evaluating online resources? Or in a journalism class on detecting bias? Or in a computer class on how to document code? Here is an example of how one class used a blog to communicate what they learned about Tudor Exploration in their social studies class: Tudor Exploration. Schoolblogs has many other examples as well. If as a librarian you helped students find resources for a history blog like the Tudor Exploration one mentioned above, the blog could turn into an online history fair....

Let’s take an example. Say you are working with the school’s science department on an ecology project, like the study of a local river. Students could create a blog to track their daily/weekly observations of the river in question after explaining their hypothesis in their first blog post. They may also use a news aggregator, like that included in Userland’s Radio, to track local news item that are relevant to their project (possibly online newspaper stories on dumping of wastes into the river) and post those to their blog. They may also post to their blog links to other sites on the Internet that reference the river’s history, impact on the community, etc. These web links could come from the local historical society’s web site to a doctoral dissertation a graduate student in environmental science did on river ecologies. The students would not only learn about river ecologies as part of their science unit, but also develop information literacy skills for the 21st century." [Teacher Librarian]

And if you're a librarian in SLS, we'll host your blog for you using Movable Type (or possibly Manila). That offer is open to al of our libraries, including the schools.

Congratulations to Teri for getting this article published!

Library Terms that Users Understand

"The purpose of this site is to help library web developers decide how to label key resources and services in such a way that most users can understand them well enough to make productive choices. It serves as a clearinghouse of usability test data evaluating terminology used on library web sites, listing terms that tests show are effective or ineffective labels. It presents alternatives by documenting terms that are actually used by libraries. It also suggests 'best practices' for reducing cognitive barriers caused by terminology.

Basically I'm launching this site in the hope that by pooling data on what terms work best, libraries can move beyond rhetoric and do a better job of labeling resources for our users. As such, it's intended as a participatory effort. You're invited to contribute:

• data from usability studies on the effectiveness of various library terms (especially data on terms that users *do* understand!)
• details of testing techniques that work well to elicit this kind of information.
• references to useful resources that I haven't cited."

This is a valuable collection that John Kupersmith has put together. I'd love to see this grow to include testing and evaluation of more library sites. Maybe I can get a grant at some point to do some usability testing within SLS and add our results to the site.

"Hi. I am pissed off at the PATRIOT Act today and the culture of fear that is pervading this country lately, as well as the complicity and lies that librarians are expected to add to it. Screw that. I have created Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library. Use them in good health." [librarian.net]

Surviving Information Overload

"The online version of an article I wrote for Law Practice Management is now available. It discusses products, services, and strategies for obtaining and dealing with mounds of current information." [TVC Alert]

This is a good article for those feeling the strain of trying to keep up, but one resource in particular caught my eye. I hadn't seen Ultrabar before, and it's the start I've what I want to create for SWAN.

Ultrabar lets you customize a browser toolbar with your own search engines and then make it available for anyone else to download. By following their instructions, I was able to create a toolbar that searches SWAN by keyword, title, ISBN, author, or subject, in addition to Google, Daypop, and Teoma. (To use the Ultrabar service, you have to keep a search for their domain lookup site, but it sits at the bottom of the list unobtrusively.) SWAN libraries can create their own toolbars that scope to their holdings by simply adding their scope codes into the URL. It was pretty easy to set up the searches, so I'm sure it will work well with other vendor catalogs, too.

The best part of this is that you can create your own toolbar for free! I was even able to add a library icon to mine. Of course, the down side is that the toolbar only works in Internet Explorer on Windows 98 and higher machines, and I can't add options such as Jon's Librarylookup Bookmarklet or Art's Bookmarklet Helper, but it's still a handy start.

If you'd like to try it out for yourself and see how it works, especially SWAN libraries (!), you can download and install it. Of course, the next question is how do I build one of these myself so I can add in the bookmarklets?

As was recently pointed out to me because I hadn't realized it myself, I'm celebrating my tenth anniversary as a degreed librarian. This is definitely a "good thing," but it does mean that I've been away from library school for just under a third of my life. When I was in library school, we had to walk uphill to get to class, both ways, and it snowed every day and we liked it.

Seriously, though, when I was in library school, we barely had email, let alone the web. Therefore, I am ill-equipped to suggest library schools that have strong technology programs. So to help future-librarian-Amanda, I'd appreciate it if you'd share any thoughts you have on the subject as a comment to this post, especially if you're a fairly recent MLS graduate.

Thanks!