Illinois paving the way for library nannying?

A bit of a storm is brewing in Illinois over House Bill 1727. If passed, it would mandate that all public access computers be filtered. This would apply to library staff computers as well.

A letter from the librarians at Orland Park Public Library is doing the rounds, urging resistance from fellow librarians. To quote from the letter: "...even libraries
that already offer filtering or will, in good faith, try to comply with
this law will be subject to lawsuits, fines, and criminal prosecution.
The restrictions set forth on librarians to sign oaths and suffer
criminal prosecution for perjury are disturbing." It goes on, "Giving patrons
the right to sue us for what they perceive to be obscene is
unreasonable."

Disturbing indeed. Even if the librarians try and do the right thing (whatever that is), they can still get nailed because their idea of right may differ from someone else's. And it's the patrons themselves who can do the complaining.

This sounds like one of those laws that's been proposed by the legal profession because they can see fat fees paid for out of the (bottomless) public purse. Their fees would dwarf the proposed $100 daily fine for non-compliance.

Here's another goodie: if someone under 21 wants the filtering switched off, to do research perhaps, they would have to be accompanied by someone over 21. As the letter says, "We ask eighteen-year-olds to vote and serve in Iraq for
their country but won't allow them the freedom to search the Internet." Quite.

What's this got to do with you? Well, where America leads, our legislators often follow. Better to be thinking about the implications now, so that any debate can be properly informed by the people who understand the issues. ie you.

The people people

A short post on John Batelle's blog this morning caught my eye. No, not the sad news about Kurt Vonnegut, but the link to a preview of Spock on TechCrunch.
There's been plenty of coverage of the phenomenon of blind daters Googling their prospective dates, and it's not unusual to search for someone's name before you meet them in a work context. But I'm eager to see if tools like this work outside of the world of Hello magazine. After all, it's pretty easy to get information on well known personalities, and to a certain extent the correct search techniques can light upon much of the information displayed in the screen shots on TechCrunch, although it won't be presented nearly as neatly, or as cleverly. The real test will be finding out information about average joes like you or I. Sure, if you have an unusual name, then it's more likely that your details will stand out. looking at Wink, an earlier engine in a similar vein, which relies on social networking sites such as Bebo, MySpace and LinkedIn, would suggest that a search for a fairly unusual name will find the person you're looking for. Search for a Jones or a Smith and things get a bit more sticky.
On top of that is context and local data; The keeper of the Queen's Parks in Scotland might sound like a jumped-up parkie, but in fact he (or she) is a significant figure.
With $7m in round A financing from two VC firms, I'm sure the team at Spock have faced far tougher questions that this. With a beta launch next week, it won't take long to find out.

Yet another search engine

As search engines go, Exalead is a bit stealthy at the moment, but will be launching in the UK later this summer. The company has been going since about 2000, if you believe this Wikipedia entry. I've been playing around with it, and notwithstanding the limitations (or otherwise) technology behind it, it has a number of features that are quite appealing.
(Actually, before we leave the subject of technology, read up on Quearo, an attempt to index multimedia content that Exalead is involved in).
Anyway, to get back to the main topic; there are two things that are quite interesting about Exalead. Firstly, results are displayed as thumbnails of the pages that are thrown up. This is pretty handy if you are a more visual person, as you can see the overall 'shape' of a page and recognise it quicker than the link text.
Secondly, it's possible to filter out results. Most search engines are very good at getting lots of results, and some of them are good at ordering results according to how relevant they think they are. However, Exalead looks up subcategories and allows you to remove them.
For example, say I want to book a sailing holiday, but I don't want to fly too far and I know pretty much what I want. I type in 'sailing holidays in europe' into Exalead, and the usual suspects are thrown up - lots and lots of results, of which a few look interesting.
Click on the button marked 'More choices' in the box called 'Refine search' on the right hand side of the page, however, and I can start eliminating results I don't want. It would be safe to say that a journalist can't afford a crewed charter, or a luxury charter, and a dinghy would be a little too small, so all of these can be removed. Remember the search engine has already identified these things as subcategories. It's possible for me to search by what I don't want - effectively, the search engine actively helps to narrow the search.
This is all a very complicated way of saying that Exalead has potential. Sure, it wants the user to do most of the work. This won't be convenient to many. But the really important searches - the ones where users are looking for a single, high value item of information - could well be where Exalead is a strong contender. I don't expect this technique to be limited to one search engine for long, of course.

Watching the publishers

There's a very interesting discussion going on over at Search Engine Watch about Google's latest toy - Pay Per Action. We're certainly going to be following this very closely here at IWR Towers, not least because of what PPA represents. In short, Google - and other providers of search and web advertising platforms - are going to make it easier for advertisers to slice and dice audiences. In plain English, that means that advertisers will pay publishers for very specific actions taken by readers of a web site. For example, an advertiser could specify that a reader would have to click on the advertising banner on a web page, navigate through the advertiser's site and buy something before the publisher is paid. At present, Google PPA is in Beta testing, so we won't know much more for a while, but the discussion over at SEW is very interesting reading.
PPA isn't a new thing per se, but it is worth considering it in the light of  Wired's interview with Eric Schmidt,  in which the Google CEO talks about his company's near-single source of income and its place as an advertising engine.

An Easter project for you?

From August to November last year, the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) ran Learning 2.0, a 23-step online self-discovery programme that encouraged the exploration of web 2.0 tools and new technologies.

It was a terrific success in the sense that, of the 362 library staff who embarked on the programme, 222 saw it through to the end. Furthermore, at least seventeen other libraries have taken up the idea for themselves.

Helene Blowers, PLCMC's Public Services Technology Director, masterminded the activities and has blogged extensively about them. If you need to get up to speed or would like your staff to understand what's going on in the new web world, this could be a terrific starting point.

Read some of the feedback too. It's not all complementary but it will help you understand people's attitudes before you have to deal with them in real life. Some people persevered merely because of the free MP3 player or a slight chance of winning a Toshiba laptop. (Clearly, they didn't put much value on their time.) If you're interested in knowing what's going on in the Web 2.0 world, even if you think it's nonsense, it's better to get involved than to snipe from the sidelines. Who knows, you might find yourself changing your mind.

Here are the things you'll actually work with during the 23 steps: blogging, photo & image manipulation, mashups, RSS & newsreaders, LibraryThing (a booklovers' community), Roll your own search, tagging & folksonomies, web 2.0, library 2.0, wikis, online applications & tools, podcasts, video & downloadable audio and NetLibrary (eBooks). I guess there wasn't time for instant messaging, VoIP and virtual reality.

If you or your staff are strangers to this stuff, it's a great way to get going.

Perhaps Easter is a great time to start? If not, enjoy the break.

Update 6 April: Helene Blowers tells me that technical
restrictions among the staff were the principal reasons for not
including IM, VoIP and virtual reality. Thanks Helene. I should have realised.

IWR is looking green

Environmental issues are top of the agenda, so much so that even the Conservative Party has noticed them from deep within Notting Hill. To some of us, the affect of the environment is blindingly obvious, it is after all, well all around us. But business and politics have, until recently chosen to ignore the environment.

Now though the effects of climate change are beginning to affect businesses. Nothing gets attention more than a cost. Insurance companies must be beginning to wonder about how many Boscastle floods, or rogue typhoons in London and Birmingham their profit margins can absorb.

The good news is reaction is beginning to take place, but its not an easy issue to understand. Within the green agenda are many debates, these range from oil company sponsored "science" which denies many of the evidence based claims about climate change, right through to environmentalists campaigning against wind farms (sounds strange doesn't it) because they can damage bird migration routes.

When issues are too complex there is a danger that businesses will avoid them until it is forced upon them, which is often too late. Information, as we know, is the answer to these difficult issues, the trouble is, what information do you turn to in order to help your organisation go green?  The May issue of IWR tries to help by giving some pointers.

Fast swallow RetrievalWare, but Convera is still standing

Fast Search & Transfer has paid $23 million to acquire Convera RetrievalWare, the government search technology division developed by search rival Convera. In an interesting development, which signals a consolidation of technology, although not the number of vendors, Norway's Fast takes over what many to consider the most significant part of Convera, but Convera remains standing and has licensed a web advertising technology from Fast.

By consuming "selected assets of the Convera Corporation" Fast is aiming at the lucrative government market. John M Lervik, CEO of Fast said the acquisition "will enable us to deepen our relationships in the government sector".

To calm the nerves of information and IT professionals signed up to Convera RetrievalWare Fast promised to provide global support for the application and its users.

At the same time as selling off its family silver, Convera announced that it has licensed Fast Ad Momentum a private label application that enables online publishers to provide contextual (search based) advertising.