May I also suggest 321 evergreen terrace, 123 fake street, and 668 Lucifer Lane?
Seriously, though, the parent post is spot-on. Don't give personal info to people you don't trust, don't trust "people" who are really corporations, and don't answer/click/buy from targetted ads. I apply this to telephone sales, as well - if I didn't initiate the contact, there will be no sale.
"I suspect that many librarians see the class of librarians as social structure charged with selecting filtering that ideas that will seep into the culture at large"
You've placed the cart directly before the horse. The ethical librarian does not develop a collection to further a personal viewpoint, we develop a collection to meet the needs of the user population. In the specific case of the University library Marx/Franklin example, did the diligent researcher also look at the number of reading assignments given to the users of the library that dealt with either Marx or Franklin? How about the number of books published dealing with each? If there's a Communist Librarian Plot, I have yet to be invited to the meetings.
On the subject of librarians fearing blogs due to the "democratization" of information selection, again, you've missed it a bit. The problem with blogs as a "library-worthy" source of information is that they are mostly at the level of gossip, bluntly. Pick your favorite (later proven false) blog rumor, and try to figure out where it started.
Librarians don't fear democritication of access to information, that's what we're about. Opposing that, though, is the need to allocate limited (and becoming more limited, almost daily) resources to getting the information that the most people will find useful, preserving it, and making it available to the public *in a way that allows easy retrieval*. If you feel like your library isn't doing a right job of it, talk to the librarians to understand what they're trying to do, and then bend your congresscritter's ear about funding.
Slashdot Mirror
You bastard! Get out of my house!
May I also suggest 321 evergreen terrace, 123 fake street, and 668 Lucifer Lane?
Seriously, though, the parent post is spot-on. Don't give personal info to people you don't trust, don't trust "people" who are really corporations, and don't answer/click/buy from targetted ads. I apply this to telephone sales, as well - if I didn't initiate the contact, there will be no sale.
"I suspect that many librarians see the class of librarians as social structure charged with selecting filtering that ideas that will seep into the culture at large"
You've placed the cart directly before the horse. The ethical librarian does not develop a collection to further a personal viewpoint, we develop a collection to meet the needs of the user population. In the specific case of the University library Marx/Franklin example, did the diligent researcher also look at the number of reading assignments given to the users of the library that dealt with either Marx or Franklin? How about the number of books published dealing with each? If there's a Communist Librarian Plot, I have yet to be invited to the meetings.
On the subject of librarians fearing blogs due to the "democratization" of information selection, again, you've missed it a bit. The problem with blogs as a "library-worthy" source of information is that they are mostly at the level of gossip, bluntly. Pick your favorite (later proven false) blog rumor, and try to figure out where it started.
Librarians don't fear democritication of access to information, that's what we're about. Opposing that, though, is the need to allocate limited (and becoming more limited, almost daily) resources to getting the information that the most people will find useful, preserving it, and making it available to the public *in a way that allows easy retrieval*. If you feel like your library isn't doing a right job of it, talk to the librarians to understand what they're trying to do, and then bend your congresscritter's ear about funding.