Confluence: Unemployment, Underprepared Workforce

Looking at Sabrina Pacifici's BePacific.com today, I was struck by the confluence of several stories:
1.

Broad Unemployment Across the U.S.
New York Times interactive graphic: Broad Unemployment Across the U.S. - "Under a broader definition of joblessness, some states have rates higher than 20 percent. This rate includes part-time workers who want to work full time, as well some people who want to work but have not looked for a job in the last four weeks."

2.

The Ill-Prepared U.S. Workforce: Exploring the Challenges of Employer-Provided Workforce Readiness Training
"During the second quarter of 2008, The American Society for Training and Development, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management surveyed 217 employers to examine corporate practices on training newly hired graduates at three educational levels: high school, two year college, and four-year college. The findings indicate that employers are struggling to correct for an ill-prepared workforce. While almost half of the companies surveyed provide readiness or remedial training programs for new hires, the majority report less than strong results. The low scores may be linked to the fact that the programs offered often do not match employers’ greatest needs. Employers are also unable to report how much they are spending on these programs, which makes it impossible to assess their impact on the bottom line." [Stuart Basefsky]

This actually is confirmed by local corporate groups that have pushed for higher education standards (this was before the No Child Left Behind effort). In the Boston area about eight or ten years ago, there were groups of educators and business leaders who were meeting about the problem of employers who were having to retrain their employees who did not know how to read or make change. I do not know how real or how wide-spread the problem was, and did not hear about it being a problem for employers of 4-year college grads or even 2 year associate degree holders. This was focusing on high school graduates. But to continue with Be Pacific:3.

FTC Testifies About Crackdown on Scams Tied to the Economic Downturn
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission testified before the U.S. Senate today on the agency’s campaign to crack down on scammers who are trying to take advantage of the economic downturn to push a variety of scams, such as phony job-placement and debt-reduction services, get-rich-quick schemes, and bogus government grants...In response to the rise in financial distress scams, on July 1, 2009, the Commission announced “Operation Short Change,” a joint initiative with 14 states, the Department of Justice, and other agencies that included more than 120 law enforcement actions."
Hearing - The Economy and Fraud: Protecting Consumers During Downward Economic Times - Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance: "The reality is that with the economic challenges we face, families are more vulnerable than ever to financial scams, predatory marketing practices, and economic fraud. We all see the news every day about more layoffs, plant closings, soaring prices and more cutbacks in West Virginia and across the nation. No one deserves the potential ruin these schemes threaten. We have a responsibility to uncover them and provide consumers with the tools they need to avoid becoming victims of fraud and abuse.”

So, this is the dark cycle. Underprepared workforce. Unemployment. And the unemployed seek to support themselves through preying on others and their past employers. Ugh. Keep in mind, though, that this is looking at overall trends, as opposed to micro-focus on specific job areas, like either legal jobs or library jobs. Though the joblessness ripples through the economy... It does not immediately impact your sector.

If you follow the link to read the depressing Underprepared Workforce Findings report, you will discover some actual, helpful comments. Apparently, the interviewed companies wanted employees with more critical thinking skills. Here is a detailed list from North Central Regional Laboratory of Learning Point Associates (a K-12 consultant group) of Macro and Micro skills to be taught in critical thinking skills. It's a very interesting list from a law school point of view, actually. There are 35 items, ranging in 3 major groups, under

Affective strategies (fairmindedness, independence, intellectual courage and perseverance, self-confidence in reason, for example);

Cognitive Strategies - Macro Skills (refining generalizations while avoiding oversimplification, developing analogies, transferring insights to new situations, reading/listening critically, Socratic dialog, for example;

Cognitive Strategies - Micro Skills (thinking precisely about thinking, using critical vocabulary, distinguishing relevant from irrelevant facts, evaluating evidence and alleged facts, recognizing contradictions, for example.

There are lots more items; it's worth a long look. The other important point for young job seekers is that the employers are seeing young, inexperienced workers coming into the workforce competing against older workers who are not retiring. Workplace readiness training could possibly assist such young employees by filing the gap in their preparation. While many programs are un-even in their results, some have had some success.

Successful companies provide workforce readiness training within an overall company culture committed to training and to employees thoroughly screened for their job readiness. They design strategic partnerships with local colleges and focus on integrating workforce readiness training with both job-specific skills and career development training. Finally, companies that report success in their training programs were constantly re-evaluating them to align their content with current and future company needs.
Improving Workforce Readiness— What Business Can Do
These steps are not the only ones business can take. If business wants a better prepared workforce, it needs to:
• Communicate to the public at large that new workers must come prepared with both basic and applied skills.
• Participate with educators on developing workforce readiness skills through mentoring, internships, and other learning opportunities.
• Adopt better internal tracking of training costs and quality to document the cost of poorly prepared new workforce entrants.
• Encourage focused spending of corporate philanthropic funds on workforce readiness.
• Use its corporate voice to focus public policy discussion on the need to link k-12 education, technical schools and college education with workforce readiness skills so that our education and workforce systems prepare young people to complete post secondary education and make successful transitions to career path employment.

Libraries, for instance, need to implement internships, and track the results of the processes to improve their training methods. We need to work with our nearby library schools to assist in training our future employees. While I don't imagine I have the oomph to move philanthropic dollars into training librarians and lawyers for workforce readiness, I certainly can join wider organizations' efforts.

And, Heeeere's the Bar Exam!

Well, it's too late already for the helpful hints of yesteryear about prepping early for the bar, and pacing yourself and all that crap. Ooops. I mean, helpful information.

It's either here, or looming on the horizon. Check here, at the National Conference of Bar Examiners for your favorite state bar exam date to see if OOPS! you missed it.

So, what's left to tell you?

Don't stress out!

Don't Panic! Oh, let me say it nicer: don't panic, dear.

I've been writing about the bar exam for some years, and patting hands for far longer. I took the bar in 1981 (geez, has it been that long?!), and the trauma still seems fresh. Here is my cynical point of view from a 2006 post here at OOTJ:

While the California bar is notoriously difficult, it is clear that bar examiners nationwide have been raising the bar. Meanwhile law schools play the blame game -- "Oh, gee, we shouldn't be taking students with LSATs below XX! The students with lower scores just cannot compete."

"We should be tougher in our grading; our bar passage rates look bad, and it's not fair to take the students' money when they have no hope of passing the bar after paying us all that tuition."


"Our students need to practice more on
(a) writing; it builds analytical skills and is essential to essay writing and bar passage (and oh yeah, as well as being a good lawyer);

(b) multiple choice exams; our students need to practice these for the multi-state portion of the exam (not that it affects lawyering, but what the heck);

(c) skills; more and more bar exams are including a skills portion where the hapless students have to draft a memo or contract or do some other lawyerly activity under fire."

Actually all those things are true; they will help students pass the bar exam, as will adding courses that give at-risk students academic support. You can also give some bar preparation during law school, just as long as the law school experience does not turn into a bar prep course itself.

However, all this hand-wringing over bar-passage rates really gets to me. Can we keep in mind that the bar exams, while sold as a remedy and preventative for poor lawyering, is largely a guild? Its main purpose is preventing too many lawyers from entering the field and diluting the market value of the degree. I hate to be so crass about it, but that is essentially what this is about. The bar examiners set a percentage that they will allow to pass. You are above or below that cut. Boom. That's it for that exam period. Does that have anything at all to do with quality of lawyering, skill in representing clients or ethics? It has some, but not as much as we would like to think. And in the law schools, we would like to think it's all the students' fault; they are already carrying all the burden on this one, folks! Let's at least be honest with ourselves about what is going on.

I don't want to bum you out if you are facing the bar. But be honest with yourself. You are either above or below the cut off line. The exam is not really measuring your quality as a barrister. So don't beat yourself up over the exam. Drill on the exam prep materials regularly. Take the preparation seriously so that you are in the percentage that is above the X% that the bar examiners, in their wisdom, decide is the cut-off this year. So you don't have to live through this again.

BUT, if, for whatever reason, you don't make the cut-off this test. Do NOT call yourself bad things. This is a simple, mechanical process that is about nothing but protecting the business interests of those already in the bar association. It does not make a judgement about you as a potential lawyer, or you as a law student. Do not link your sense of self worth to your passage of the bar exam. It says nothing about you as a person, as a potential lawyer or as a law student.

Manage your thoughts and attitudes. When you start to think "I must..." or "I have to ...," stop right there. Examine the thought for some underlying irrational thought. If you "must" or "have to" do something, what will happen if you don't? Probably NOTHING at all! How you talk to yourself about goals has a powerful effect and can interfere with your progress and drain your energy. Watch those "must" statements!

Manage your time. It's too late for a lot of things, but you can still manage your time to schedule studying. Don't skip or skimp on it. But also allow time to exercise and laugh a little every day... I believe that some folks miss passing the bar just from being wound too tightly. Try to schedule some exercise, some laugh time and lots of studying into every day.

When the exam is over, don't agonize about it. It's over, and worrying about it won't do you any good. Drop it and have a good time. You've done enough agonizing already.

Job Search Tips from a Recruiter - Boston Globe

The Boston Globe today offers a nice set of 8 tips for online job hunting here. It's a helpful little list, with sound advice including being careful with your e-mail address (don't use hotmama@yahoo.com!), scanning your social network sites BEFORE putting your resume out (remove all those wonderful pictures of you partying with friends), but also some that maybe won't have occurred to folks, like naming your online resume folder carefully (don't name it draft or with an older date!). Also, apply to older postings, which may not have been filled. Take a look at the article if you are in the job market!

Here are some earlier OOTJ posts on job hunting both for law grads and for librarians:

When the Going Gets Tough (mostly law students, but some tips for librarians, too)

Negotiating a Tough Job Market (law students)

Interview Tips (librarians)

Job Search Tips for Law Librarians

More on Job Tips (librarians)

Why Do Librarians Eat Their Young? It's metaphoric -- I swear!

And finally, only loosely connected -- I hope!

Help for Stress & Depression AND

Send your brain on a spa day!

I illustrate this post with an early photograph of Otto Lilienthal (1848 - 1896), a German pioneer of flight. I think it is a poignant image of what it feels like trying to launch your career, and I hope you enjoy the post & the illustration. If you would like to know more about the intrepid Lilienthal, see here, www.flyingmachines.org/lilthl.html.

Google vs. Microsoft?

I ALWAYS read Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe, so today's column about the new tangle between Google and Microsoft, "Heavyweights Trading Punches in Digital Faceoff," caught my eye.

The two most powerful companies in digital technology are openly invading each other’s most lucrative markets: the office productivity software and computer operating systems Microsoft makes, and Internet search, which Google dominates.

Last week, Google declared an end to “beta,’’ or test status, for its online office software, Google Apps, as part of a new effort to sell the service to corporate users. Then the company said it’s building Chrome OS, a full-fledged operating system for personal computers that will compete with Microsoft Windows. It’s due next year.

Office software and operating systems happen to be Microsoft’s two core businesses, generating most of its $60 billion in revenue and $22 billion in profit in 2008. (snip)

Meanwhile, Microsoft has stepped up its efforts in Internet search. In June, Microsoft unveiled Bing, an upgrade of its Live Search service that has won strong reviews from analysts and consumers.

According to Hitwise, an Internet company that tracks website visits, Bing’s popularity grew steadily through June, even after the first buzz of publicity for the site began to fade. Still, Bing attracted just over 5 percent of US Internet searches, compared to Google’s 74 percent.

Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of consultant website Searchengineland.com in Newport Beach, Calif., said Microsoft is on the right track with Bing, despite Google’s immense lead. “I think it’s important that Microsoft has been challenging them,’’ he said. “They see that there’s a lot of money to be made there, and they feel they should get a slice of it.’’

But for once, I found that the last word really belongs to somebody else. While Hiawatha Bray does a nice job of looking at the two companies trading business punches, his analysis really doesn't go much of anywhere. And that's a bit unusual, actually. The New York Times contributor who wrote the excellent column here, Robert Cringely, takes a longer view.

This is all heady stuff and good for lots of press, but in the end none of this is likely to make a real difference for either company or, indeed, for consumers. It’s just noise — a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check.

Microsoft makes most of its money from two products, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Nearly everything else it makes loses money, sometimes deliberately. Google makes most of its money from selling Internet ads next to search results. Nearly everything else it does loses money, too.

Neither company really cares because both make so much from their core products that it simply doesn’t matter. But companies, like people, strive and dream and in this case both dream, at least sometimes, of destroying the other. Only they can’t — or won’t — do it in the end, because it is against the interests of either company to do so.
The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Google’s real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success. Chrome products are given away, so they bring in no revenue for Google, and they don’t even provide a better search or advertising experience for their users, the company admits. So why does Google even bother?

To keep Microsoft on its toes.

What Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has to fear more than anything else is that he’ll awake one day to learn that the Google search engine suddenly doesn’t work on any Windows computers: something happened overnight and what worked yesterday doesn’t work today. It would have to be an act of deliberate sabotage on Microsoft’s part and blatantly illegal, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Microsoft would claim ignorance and innocence and take days, weeks or months to reverse the effect, during which time Google would have lost billions.

So Google Chrome and Chrome OS and Android are all intended to keep Microsoft on the defensive and less likely to push its own Big Red Button.

This makes even more sense given the recent advent of Microsoft’s Bing search technology, which performs precisely the same competitive control function against Google. Bing hasn’t a hope of toppling Google as the premier search engine and Microsoft knows it. To date, Bing’s success has actually been at the expense of Google’s competitors, not Google itself.

But thanks to Microsoft’s deep pockets and fierce screwball reputation, Bing has already accomplished its main purpose: reminding Google executives who they’re messing with.

It’s not as if these companies are gearing up to produce automobiles. The engineering teams for any of these products are, at most, 20 to 30 people — immaterial for Microsoft, which has 90,000 or so employees, and Google, which has 20,000. Nor are all of Google’s products even guaranteed to ship, being as they are in that semi-solid technical state called beta test and subject to cancellation on a whim.

Yes, Google would love to get a toehold in the netbook and smart-phone markets, especially at Microsoft’s expense. The Chrome OS and Android are both ideal for pushing Google’s net-centric view of computing. But the company worries far more about protecting its current cash cow — search — and says as much when it is unwilling to claim that Android and the Chrome OS will be better for Web-based applications than the platforms they are intended to supplant, which is nominally Windows. (snip)

Some company with a new idea and no legacy products to defend will eventually arise to clean Microsoft’s clock. Or maybe Microsoft’s market will simply disappear as PC’s are subsumed into cars and mobile phones, possibly leaving Windows behind in the process. Whatever happens, it won’t be Google’s doing because Google is too busy defending its own turf to seriously encroach on Microsoft’s.

And don’t forget Apple, which with the iPod and iPhone has shown an ability to revolutionize markets other companies saw as mature. Microsoft and Google have yet to do something like that.

I wish they would. I wish these companies had more guts, that either would make a true bet-the-company investment in changing the world, but they won’t. Google engineers are allowed to spend 20 percent of their time on new ideas — yet of those thousands of ideas, the company can really invest in only a dozen per year, leading to dissatisfaction and defections as the best nerds leave to pursue their dreams.

Maybe they’ll leave for the startup that finally topples Microsoft ... or Google. But until then these companies will posture, spend a little money on research and development, and keep each other in check, while reporters and publications pretend that it matters.

The decoration is from the Boston Globe article.

Academic Women Suffer When They Have More Than 2 Children

The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 10, 2009, has a poignant article in the Workplace section, B16-19 (in print) titled, "Is Having More than 2 Children an Unspoken Taboo?" by Robin Wilson. Interviewing women in many different academic fields (but not librarians), Wilson finds

...a very small number of academic women with three, four, or more children. In academe, where having even one child can slow down success, trying to manage multiple kids can be a career-stopper.

Women with many children are seen by their peers and supervisors as less than serious about their work in a profession that often expects nothing short of complete devotion. Even administrators who consider themselves supportive of female professors with children may question the wisdom of those with more than one or two. (snip)

Managing both a career and several children can be a challenge for any professional woman. In academe the prospect seems particularly perilous. True, an academic career can be flexible -- at least after tenure. But the dozen or so arduous years spent earning an PH.D. and building a career makes academe one of the less friendly professions for women with children, say researchers who study the issue. (snip)

In a 2006-7 study of 8.400 graduate students on nine University of California campuses, only 29 percent of the women and 46 percent of the men said they considered research universities to be family-friendly places for tenure-tack professors to work.

Meanwhile, a national study of about 5,000 professors in chemistry and English, completed by researchers at Pennsylvania State University in 2002, found that female professors had an average of only .66 kids each. The average American woman by comparison, has about two children.

Yet another study, conducted by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the university of Utah, found that academic women were 27 percent less likely than doctors and 17 percent less likely than lawyers to have babies. It also found that male professors fathered fewer children than their male counterparts in those other professions. (snip)

Academic women, meanwhile, are well aware of the harm that having children can do to their professional lives. In the national study of English and chemistry professors, 26 percent of women — double the proportion of men — said they had fewer children than they would have liked in order to achieve academic success. "The cultural line in academe is that one child is acceptable, maybe two, but three are not," says Marc Goulden, a Berkeley researcher who has completed several studies on academic women and children.

Julianna Baggott knows full well that the third child is often considered the third rail of academe. That's why, when she is asked how it feels to be a professor with five children, she has one word: "subversive." Ms. Baggott's husband stays home to watch the kids, but that hasn't made her feel any more comfortable about her large brood. She displays no photos of her children in her office in Florida State University's English department, and she never tells colleagues that she can't make a meeting because of the children, who range in age from 14 to 2. "I just say, 'I'm sorry, I have a conflict,'" she says.

"Academia assumes that a woman, once she has kids, is not going to be able to maintain her career at the same level," says Ms. Baggott, an associate professor. She just earned tenure and has written 14 books, including six for children. "I'm a workaholic," she says during a cellphone interview between stops on a West Coast tour for one of her latest books, The Prince of Fenway Park (HarperCollins, 2009).

Some women say it is academe's focus on the mind, not the body, that makes being a pregnant professor — or one with kids — so unusual and unwelcome.

"In academia, the mind/body split is operative," says Nicole Cooley, an associate professor of English at the City University of New York's Queens College and a contributor to Mama Ph.D.: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008). "Academia's grounding in the clerical tradition means that a lot of your identity is your intellectual work, and you don't sully yourself with domestic arrangements and bodily things."

Andrea O'Reilly directs the Association for Research on Mothering at York University, in Canada, where she is an associate professor of women's studies. The idea that mind and body don't mix in academe is more than theoretical, says Ms. O'Reilly, who has interviewed 60 academic women with children. "Academia is a very competitive environment. You're supposed to be this cutthroat go-getter, and your work is your life. You're not supposed to be encumbered."

Women with several children say colleagues and supervisors alike are not shy about sharing their scorn over the women's über-fertility. Two years ago, when April Hill, an associate professor of biology at the University of Richmond, had her third child at age 38, one administrator remarked, "Aren't you a bit old for that?"

Elisabeth R. Gruner, an associate professor of English at Richmond who contributed an essay to Mama Ph.D., says: "There is a distaste that you'd want to spend a lot of time with little kids — an idea that you may not be very smart."

Saranna R. Thornton, who heads the economics department at Hampden-Sydney College, was at a picnic with faculty and staff members nine years ago when she shared the good news that she was expecting her fourth child. A senior administrator looked at her and asked, "Don't you know what causes that?" Ms. Thornton even got quizzical looks from close friends and colleagues, who asked her why she was having another child. (The short answer, for Ms. Thornton and several other women who spoke to The Chronicle: They simply really enjoy children, sometimes much to their own surprise.)

Georgia Frank, an associate professor of religion at Colgate University, says she senses an attitude from some in academe that anyone who has more than two children has surpassed an invisible quota. "There is something greedy about going for just one more," says Ms. Frank, whose own children are 15, 12, and 7.

There is a lot more to this article, including some fascinating pointers on how the successful women have made it work. On the other hand there is one heartbreaking story of a young woman who had to throw her career away on the verge of tenure when she accidentally became pregnant with her sixth child -- she knew she could not balance that and manage the career as well. The women interviewed often acknowledge the stress of balancing work and home, as well as the joys of their children. One woman, who chairs the English department while nurturing her three children, aged 10 - 17, does not want to give her young women students the misimpression that, "You can do this, no problem." She suffers from three autoimmune diseases, and has had marital problems at times. She is quoted in the article: "I don't want to send the message to young women that there aren't costs and there aren't risks." But I think they also want to convey hope, along with their warnings. It's a very poignant article, and one that should make women angry.

Time to put our money where our mouth is!

Lt. Dan Choi, was dismissed from the Army...

"After 10 years of service to our country - including leading combat patrols, rebuilding schools and translating Arabic in Iraq for 15 months - the Federal Recognition Board issued its recommendation on Tuesday that I be discharged from the Army for 'moral and professional dereliction' under the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy," he wrote.

According to a Washington Post story dated July 2, 2009, while Dan is conducting an online petition gathering signatures for President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to ask them for reinstatement and abolishment of the "Dont Ask - Don't Tell" policy that was adopted under President Bill Clinton,

groups such as the Center for Military Readiness say assertions that the policy hurts national security are bogus, and more than 1,100 retired flag and general officers for the military have lobbied Mr. Obama and Congress to stop any attempts at allowing gays to serve openly.

On Monday, Mr. Obama addressed 300 gays and lesbians at the White House, saying he understands their frustration with the lag in fulfilling gay rights campaign promises.

Evan Low, the Campbell, Calif., vice mayor, was in attendance Monday. He said he had been worried Mr. Obama was "backpedaling" on his promises, but welcomed Mr. Gates' remarks on "don't ask, don't tell."

{snip) The Pentagon signaled it was aiming for a temporary fix to"don't ask, don't tell" before President Obama fulfills his promise to repeal the policy, as an Arabic translator was dismissed from the Army Wednesday for being openly gay.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department earned praise from gay rights groups for avoiding the pursuit of a transgender discrimination case.

Lt. Dan Choi, an Arabic translator who has been the public face for advocates who want to see "don't ask, don't tell" overturned, was recommended to be discharged Wednesday under the policy banning gays fromserving openly in the military. It must be approved by the Army before it is final.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters this week the Pentagon is looking for a "more humane way to apply the law until the law gets changed."

Also Wednesday, the Justice Department did not appeal a ruling upholding a transgender discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress.

Diane Schroer, an Army Special Forces veteran of 25 years, had been awarded the maximum allowed compensation by a D.C. district court after suing for discrimination because the Library of Congress had rescinded a job offerafter she revealed she would be undergoing a sex-change operation. An official had told her she wasn't a "good fit" after learning about the pending surgery.

Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the solicitor general decided not to appeal the district court's ruling based on the facts and legal arguments.

If you want to sign Dan Choi's petition, GO HERE.

Preserving Guatanamo's Records

A dedicated law professor, librarian, and attorney are working together to create the Guatanamo Bay Detention Center archive, which will be a "repository of the records and first-person accounts of hundreds of defense lawyers who have worked on detainee cases." The story is reported in the July 10 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The individuals involved are Mark P. Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law and director of its Center for Policy and Research, which put out an important series of reports on Guatanamo; Michael Nash, director of New York University's Tamiment Library, known for its collections on labor, politics, and public policy; and Jonathan Hafetz, who is a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project and an adjunct professor at Seton Hall. Both Denbeaux and Hafetz have represented Guatanamo detainees. The archive will be housed at Seton Hall and at the Tamiment Library, according to a recent press release. The project is the brain child of Denbeaux, who marched at Selma in 1965 and now regrets the "'million details' that went unrecorded." He wants to make sure the same thing does not happen with Guatanamo. Because all of the detainees will probably not have public trials, "the archive may turn out to be one of the few public sources of information about what really happened at Guatanamo."

As a librarian interested in the preservation of digital information, I was interested to learn that the Guatanamo archive is likely to be "one of the first collections to make its debut under a digital-archiving project called Web-at-Risk: Preserving Our National's Cultural Heritage," which is fully described here. The Chronicle article describes librarians' role in digital preservation projects, and concludes that good institutional partners are a must if a large-scale project like the Guatanamo archive is to be done successfully.

Boston Public Library and Google Books Project

presents

Expanding Access to Books:
Implications of the Google Books Settlement Agreement


We'd like to invite you to the Boston Public Library for an informative panel about Google's efforts to make books more accessible, and explore what the Google Books settlement agreement means for the academic, library, and business communities.

Speakers:
Daniel Clancy, Engineering Director, Google Books
John Palfrey, Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources, Harvard Law School
Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Moderated by Maura Marx, Executive Director, Open Knowledge Commons,

What:
Google Book Search is an ambitious project to digitize the world's books. Six years, many million works, and two U.S. lawsuits later, the project is now set to change dramatically. Google has reached a settlement agreement with authors and publishers that, if approved by the court, will have sweeping implications for writers, readers, scholars, librarians, and the public at large.

Join Boston Public Library and our panel of speakers for an explanation and discussion of the settlement. In addition to engaging with one another to dig deeply into the agreement's impact, the panel will have an open Q&A with attendees.

Where:
Boston Public Library
Rabb Lectcure Hall
700 Boylston Street, Copley Square
Boston, MA 02116

When:
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
6:00 pm

Click here to RSVP. Seating is first come, first served, and not guaranteed so please arrive early!


Michael R. Colford
Regional Administrator
Boston Regional Library System
700 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
617.859.2389 (voice)
617.424.8617 (fax)
mcolford@bpl.org

I don't know how self-serving this will be, but it sounds interesting. John Palfrey has been a good critic of the Project. and, considering the population of Boston, it could be a very combative discussion. We'll see if any tea gets dumped into the harbor this time.

A Ghost Story for Librarians

My husband, also a librarian and a voracious reader, recently introduced me to M.R. James, a Victorian writer known for his elegant ghost stories. His work, in my husband's words, is "not big on fright, but remains treasured for its rich evocation of atmosphere. Even now, in the short story 'The Tractate Middoth,' one feels a chill of recognition with the disappearing book, the musty smell, the difficult patron. ... [L]ibrarians are not uncommon fixtures in stories of the supernatural. Perhaps the most famous literary representative of our profession was Mr. Jonathan Harker, who made the ill-advised career move to organize the library of Count Dracula." I hope you'll enjoy this story as much as I did.

Book Reviews--We Need More of Them

Sanford Levinson has a wonderful article in the May 2009 Texas Law Review, "The Vanishing Book Review in Student-Edited Law Reviews and Potential Responses." What he does not mention in his excellent article is how much a librarian like myself relies upon book reviews for collection development and reference. A good review compares a book to others in the field and points out its strengths and weaknesses. The New York Law Journal's book reviews have helped me develop reference skills. I would like more reviews of practice books, something Levinson does not mention. I don't like relying on publishers' blurbs. Law reviews from the 1950s and 1960s evaluated practice books. Those articles are so valuable. I have used them to help me weed collections. I need reviews on current publications.