“Teach a Patron to Fish: A Guide to Libraries is designed to optimize the library experience for people of all ages and backgrounds…”

Please check out my work in progress at: http://libraries4patrons.wordpress.com/

I am perplexed whenever I read about parents protesting these types of library materials. It begs the question: Shouldn’t they want their teenage children to have access to timely, accurate information about human sexuality? Restricting information will NOT make high school students abstinent. It will, however, increase their likelihood of making unsafe choices.

Putting political views aside, the very purpose of libraries is to provide the informational materials that their patrons want and need. That is the heart of the “freedom to read” philosophy that guides librarians and information professionals. Providing judgment-free access to the world of knowledge is a principle that we take very seriously.

Cheers to the Ames Public Library for maintaining the publication Sex, Etc. in the teen section!

See: http://www.amestrib.com/articles/2009/11/20/ames_tribune/news/doc4b05f6d68a99e797160561.txt

Dr. A.H. Rinnoy Kan, Chairman of the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands, gave an interesting speech on the Role of civil society in supporting trust in political decision making at a conference on ‘Democracy and Trust’ that is worth a read. How good is trust? Measuring trust and its role for the progress of societies is also an interesting paper recently published by the OECD. Today, citizens want to feel like their opinion matters and they want access to information, which can help them make better decisions. How do CSOs respond to this? Well their role is extremely important, though often underestimated when examining the politics and economics of trust. Trust in the ability of CSOs to deliver can lead more citizens to lend their support by volunteering or/and giving, which may have the knock on effect of contributing to the development of social cohesion and social capital.

Social and economic information is becoming increasingly easy for the public to access and understand and Google seems to be leading the way in this regard. Google is utilising data from the World Bank to display graphs for queries on 17 World Development Indicators through the use of the World Bank’s public API. Have a look at the World Bank Data Visualiser and find out more about what they have been up to! Google has already acquired Gapminder’s Trendalyser software in 2007, which is being used to provide a deeper understanding of development through data visualization. Organizations like the OECD have been using it to bring statistics to life (for example with Factbook Explorer) and the IMF is using such technology to inform the public about the world economic outlook.  However, CSO information also has tremendous potential for helping us better understand socioeconomic progress and it can also be used to help CSOs understand their internal structure for improved efficiency.  Believe it or not, this concept of information visualization in the nonprofit sector is not new.  As far back as 1971, the Union of International Associations (UIA), an international nonprofit based in Belgium, produced a 16mm film, which illustrated the work they did in the field of information visualisation  (worth fast forwarding 4 minutes ahead to see how the data is being visualised – unfortunately there is no dialogue only music!). Today, with modern and easily accessible ICT resources at hand, civil society organisations can now better analyse information about themselves to improve the way they work and serve the public better.

Is the institutional role of CSOs in the aid effectiveness agenda truly recognised? Should donors and government provide a more enabling environment for CSOs to improve their efficiency? Shouldn’t CSOs be viewed as more than simply an avenue for the delivery of services? These are some of the questions addressed in the paper entitled “The  Missing Piece of the Puzzle: The institutional importance of CSOs in the development effectiveness agenda” as it seeks to explain why such information must be included in any analysis of development effectiveness.

Yesterday, I received an email from a Managing Director of a company professing to be a “firm specializing in recruiting and competitive intelligence research”. An interesting combination, I thought. They claimed that their goal was “to empower organization’s decision making processes through the use of high quality, targeted competitive intelligence”. The use of competitive intelligence amongst large multinationals (like the one I used to work for) was nothing new, so my interest began to fade. The email went on to state that this firm had “compiled individual contact information including name, title, department and direct phone and e-mail addresses for employees of [certain organizations] and that this exercise had facilitated a very detailed divisional and departmental structure and analysis of [these organizations]”. The organization, about which information was being offered up for sale, was a large multi-national and household name in almost every country in the World. Okay, now I was alert, curious about where this email was heading. I read on. The firm’s MD proudly declared in his email, that this data could play a significant role in helping international firms understand the inner workings and structure of one of the world’s most respected and innovative companies. And then came the pitch: They were looking to partner with someone who is well connected in specific markets that could help them market the so-called “valuable data”. Ugh! How could someone go around selling details of the senior management of a global icon to their competitors? It was a bit too quirky for me to digest – perhaps I get queasy too easy!

A quick visit to this firm’s website and I was even more astonished when I read their offer to buy contact lists off people – yes, they want your rolodex! And they were offering to pay handsomely for it too! The justification for this entire business model (a pretty simple one at that I must confess) is that the firm was offering corporate customers (through its business partners) direct access to senior management in organizations by-passing the gatekeepers in these organizations. Alright, let’s take a moment to pause here. This firm is offering to buy my rolodex to offer it to other companies so that the purchasing company can have direct access to the contacts in my rolodex?

Isn’t there anything called ethics anymore? I mean, where does someone get off compiling information about an organization’s employees, and then selling it to another company? Doing this through public information sources, namely professional bodies or licensing organizations is subject to information filtering, registration and identity verification, and therefore is probably plausible. But the thought that there are organizations out there, offering to buy your list of contacts and their details and then market compiled datasheets to interested parties, sounds creepy to me. Is it just too much, this data mining thing that has caught marketing forces by storm and spiraled out of control?

Why did I get this email then? Perhaps it’s because my consultancy business is related to assisting organizations, some of whom are multinationals, NGOs and Government Departments, the “rolodex traders” were interested in gaining access to my network. Just then, another thought struck me: Hey, could this actually be some smart aleck fraudster trying to gain access to my list of contacts – for free??!! Perhaps these bozos are not interested in me marketing data that they bought, but were more keen on getting their hands on my own network. Geez, there’s sucker born every day huh? I mean, what if the recession blues had tempted me, or I had felt a wee bit rebellious and as a plain ol’ risk taker had the “Oh what the heck” attitude….I guess I would have then been yet another statistic on a security bulletin. Perhaps those contacts in that security bulletin are also up for sale in a dark alley somewhere! Meanwhile, my rolodex is under lock and key hopefully secure from the tentacles of the Rolodex Raiders!

Boy, the B.C. Government sure could have used this when they were hiring Jim Taylor back in 2000. The government of British Columbia offers a free online database service in which you can input a person’s name and find out whether they have been to court in B.C., or whether they have any criminal records or convictions. It provides court dates and the results after completion.

You can do a traffic/criminal search here, but be forewarned, a new message has popped up due to word of mouth getting around. It reads:

Due to the increased volume of usage, we are currently monitoring the service and may need to suspend it if volumes continue to exceed capacity. Note that this service is temporarily being offered for free; however, service fees will be introduced in the near future.

The certitude of “will be” means you’d better get cracking on this now, rather than later.

I learned about this from an article in the Province by Ethan Baron, who says that the government only considered user fees after he wrote an earlier article that generated a lot of interest to the government site. As Mr.Baron writes, if the searches wind up costing $6 per, as they do already if you go to the civil search section, it could get mighty costly trying to match cases and individuals.

There’s also a rather disturbing trend among governmental branches these days to make accessing information more difficult. User fees create a less transparent, less open government, a fact lamented by former Federal Information Commissioner Robert Marleau. Having quick and easy access to do a criminal background check online is a very valuable service to British Columbians to be sure; which is why it should remain free.