Seriously, I think I could start dedicating a day to an Ask MetaFilter Question o' the Day. (I did ask a category for MetaFilter recently so that's part way there already!)
100% is a good mark if you're taking an accounting class, not so good when it reflects how wrong you were with your budget predictions.
I wrote about this when our Saskatchewan Party government was out by 95% with their potash reveue projections late last year. But man, it takes a special kind of stupid to be so wrong with your projections that you end up being *over* 100% wrong and actually end up having to pay back a couple hundred million dollars you were paid in advance against resource royalties.
If anybody out there reading this really thinks it doesn't matter who you vote for (or even if you vote) and that all politicians are the same, I hope you realise that's not nearly the case. I try not to get into politics with family very often but an elderly relative raised the subject a few months back. She was pumping up Brad Wall and running down the NDP so I pointed out what was at the time 95% error in the Sask Party's potash projections. She countered with this interesting bit of logic: “at least Brad Wall's a good speaker.” I was like “well, then let's get him a TV show because he really really sucks at being a Premier!”
But that kinda sums up the battle the NDP has for itself going into the next election – you've got the Sask Party with a leader who's (perceived to be) young, telegenic, a big football fan with a GW Bush-like capacity to make people think they'd just like to have a beer with him/that he's just a regular guy/he's a good speaker who's out there pounding the pavement to promote Saskatchewan.
Hopefully people will take off the blinders and think just a wee little bit about how screw-ups like this one do so much damage to our province and our people. Hmm, maybe time to give that aunt a follow-up call!
AskMetaFilter frowns on ChatFilter questions but they tend to be the most interesting to me. Here's one on “What do you notice?” which has all kinds of answers from “when people are polite” to “clouds” to “typos” (or is that typo's? )
Four systems are live already (Saskatoon Public Library, Palliser which is based in Moose Jaw, Southeast which is based in Weyburn and Regina Public Library) which together, represent over 50% of the province's population. The other systems will join by this fall creating a common user experience anywhere from Conquest to Climax. (Sorry – I had to. Can you believe that I used that actual line in some promotional copy once? It's true! )
It's not quite the same “Where were you when?” moment that winning a gold medal in hockey is. But for many of the province's librarians, trustees and others involved in the process, it's the closest thing we'll have in the library world. Pretty amazing stuff!
Anyhow, for today's Music Monday, I thought I'd re-visit one of the most pleasant surprises from the Opening Ceremonies two weeks ago – a slam poet captures Canada…
I recently bought a gizmo to convert old VHS tapes and other analog signals to a digital format. As I was getting it set-up for the first time, I picked a couple clips I had from around ten years ago – one where I'm featured fairly prominently and one where you get to see my backside!
Here's one from when I worked for the Saskatchewan Publishers Group circa 2000. Two interesting things to note – even back then, I was talking about the information economy and the role of books in it. And the place where we held the launch? The Dunlop Art Gallery at the Regina Public Library! (Oh, and Shea makes a cameo as does one of my best hairdos of all time!)
And here's a clip from a press conference held by the Amnesty International G8 Observer Team during the G8 Summit which was held in Kananaskis Alberta in 2002. My only appearance is a brief shot of me with my back to the camera standing between two women, one in a white shirt and one in a green shirt, around ten seconds in. But the guy who does most of the talking is someone I got to sneak into a protest site with along with a carload of reporters from the Independent Media Center. Good times!
I thought somebody (the CLA Committee on Intellectual Freedom?) released an annual report on book challenges during the past year. I wasn't able to find it but the official site for Freedom to Read does have a list highlighting 100 different books that have been challenged in the past decade.
One entry in particular caught my attention:
Pritchard, Jimmy. The New York City Bartender’s Joke Book. 2004—A library patron complained to the Saskatoon Public Library about this book- length collection of jokes that the author had heard while working in bars. Cause of objection—The complainant said that the jokes were in poor taste and promoted negative attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities. Update—The library’s Challenged Materials Committee later agreed that the book was “racist, sexist, and demeaning to women and citizens of many countries.” The book also failed to meet the library’s collection development standards. The committee withdrew the book from circulation.
Although this is from six years ago, seeing that a library in my home province would remove a book from their collection really bugs me. Why? Well, here's a dirty little secret – the book loving, BA – English librarian you see before you didn't always read Hemingway and Faulkner (who am I kidding? I still don't – just for a few years there as an undergrad so I'd look smart in coffee shops!)
Like many teenaged boys, there was a time in my young life when a lot of my pleasure reading consisted of things that weren't very literary in nature – the latest Calvin & Hobbes cartoon collection. Rock star biographies. And yes, occasionally, I would take out a book that would be the 1985 equivalent of “The New York Bartender's Joke Book”.
But you know what? That's part of the reason I would go to the library even at a time when it wasn't “cool”. I don't remember saying this exactly but if a friend called me a nerd for going to the library, I could show them the joke book. “Really? You got that? At the library? Lemme see that!”
After all, isn't this one of the single biggest hand-wringers in public libraries today? “How do we get teenaged boys to come to the library?” Offensive joke books aren't the full answer. But they're part of it if you're truly committed to serving *all* of your users – which most public libraries claim to be. Even though I read such a “harmful” book in my formative years, I'm glad no one at Regina Public Library or Indian Head Public Library had to decide whether this book was appropriate for me or not and that decision was mine to make alone. I
like to think that I don't have negative attitudes towards women or
minorities because I read books like this, just like I don't want to start a war because I read “Rambo: First Blood”. (I will cop to having bad taste on occasion – that's nothing to do with my reading choices though!)
The other reason this bugs me is that it hits a lot closer to home than it did, even a few years ago. Under the new province-wide SILS consortium, every library system has worked very hard to come up with a common set of policies. Each system
still retains the right to develop its own internal policies in regards
to things like collection development, intellectual freedom and so on so the common policies are mostly in regards to how items circulate, fine tables, patron registration and things like that.
So if it doesn't directly affect me at RPL or in my day-to-day work, why get so worked up? Well, for one thing, there's always a danger that this could be the start of the proverbial slippery slope. The next time a book gets challenged in Saskatoon, it'll be harder for someone there to say “no”. And it might be harder in Regina too – especially if we're partners in SILS. “My sister, Alice Tinhat Jones, got a joke book with the 'n' word in it removed from Saskatoon Public Library. I'd like this one removed as well.” Uhm, madame, that's “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “I don't care. You're partners with SPL aren't you?”)
To be frank, I also don't like that this decision has both tinges of both imposed morality AND political correctness – both extremes of the censorship spectrum. As I point out in one of my all-time favourite posts, “What Freedom To Read Is *Not*“:
6.
Freedom to Read is not a “left” or a “right” issue (I think people
often believe that only people holding the opposite opinion of their
own want to ban books.) Challenges come from both ends of the
political spectrum and are just as likely to come on grounds of
political correctness from someone on the left as on they are on
morality grounds from someone on the right.
It's not book related but nothing says Freedom of Expression like the newest buzz site of the Internet, ChatRoulette. The site is exactly what it says – you hit the site and you see a chat window for yourself and one for a random person somewhere in the world. As soon as you get bored (which is usually fairly quickly – basically as soon as you see the other person's face…or they see yours), you click a button and see someone else. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
(I did it just now and got hung up on about five times in a row, had a brief chat with two guys who were watching the Canada-Russia game and saw one set of fingers making hand puppets. Contrary to my previous experience with web cams way back in the late 1990's – and frankly what I was expecting here – every second person wasn't trying to show me their penis which was nice. Perhaps if I was female?)
So it's not all people freely exposingexpressing themselves as you might expect – there's humour, love and even puppets! Oh, and you might see the occasional vagina as well.
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