woodyevans.com | info culture \\ info literacy \\ info science

Berkeley Digital Life, copyright

August 6th, 2008 Posted in News | No Comments »

Copyright resources from SunSITE:

http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/Copyright/ 

Covers current issues, copyright reference sites, organizations and associations, pertinent articles & research, and legal opinions.

AIIP Code of Ethical Business Practice

July 29th, 2008 Posted in WE.FIND | 1 Comment »

Been thinking about these points, from AIIP.  In totality, they require agreeing info pros to wear many hats.  These skills stretch from local polity stuff (library policies), to broad IP rights.  A good thing.  And great skills to have in your pocket.

__

An Independent Information Professional is an entrepreneur who has demonstrated continuing expertise in the art of finding and organizing information. Each provides information services on a contractual basis to more than one client and serves as an objective intermediary between the client and the information world.

All members of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) agree to and support the objectives of AIIP and accept the following Code of Ethical Business Practice:

  • Uphold the profession’s reputation for honesty, competence, and confidentiality.

  • Give clients the most current and accurate information possible within the budget and time frames provided by the clients.

  • Help clients understand the sources of information used and the degree of reliability which can be expected from those sources.

  • Accept only those projects which are legal and are not detrimental to our profession.

  • Respect client confidentiality.

  • Recognize intellectual property rights.

  • Respect licensing agreements and other contracts. Explain to clients what their obligations might be with regard to intellectual property rights and licensing agreements.

  • Maintain a professional relationship with libraries and comply with all their rules of access.

  • Assume responsibility for employees’ compliance with this code.

site regeneration

July 28th, 2008 Posted in Admin, WE.FIND | No Comments »

Pardon our progress.

Here we’re:

  • rethinking aesthetic
  • rethinking we.find’s relationship to woodyevans.com
  • wondering if wordpress is our best CMS option
  • and figuring out if the biz needs its own domain

Hopefully all will be ironed out soonly.

crypto-mental

January 30th, 2008 Posted in News | 1 Comment »

Matt Blaze on beating Randi with mad info-critical skillz:

“It’s tempting as a cryptographer to suggest that all this could be fixed simply by using a better cryptographic commitment scheme, such as one based on a widely-scrutinized pseudo-random function. But in fact, digital bit commitment really isn’t a good fit here. It won’t help us to find an unambiguous cryptographically strong collision-free one-way function unless we can also explain — even to people who believe they possess magical powers — what that would prove. Remember that the underlying purpose of the JREF challenge is educational, aiming to produce persuasive evidence that refutes (or confirms) supernatural claims. Bit commitment protocols are, as we’ve just seen, hard to get right; good ones depend on subtle interactions of esoteric mathematical functions. It can be very difficult to convince even an expert in the field that a proposed protocol is secure and fair. I’m not aware of any such protocol that’s also easily understandable to a non-specialist. Arcane complexity is a regrettably common feature in modern cryptography.”

(Thanks to A for the link.)

qr code & the man

January 4th, 2008 Posted in Ubicomp | No Comments »

Wow. This has gone from street marketing in Shinjuku to mainstream American semi-desktopism in no time!

Windows Confucius

building ought-two

January 4th, 2008 Posted in Libraries | No Comments »

So what makes for a 2.0 experience in a physical space?

Old values (high-touch) re-emerge. Conversation. Contact. Quality.

2.0 has made the Web more like we want our RL to be… alienated post-industrial folk want friends too. So a 2.0 “place” (like, say, a library) might use social Web tools as a shot of ether into the latent social engine that already exists in the community.

You drive the old folks out for a quilting bee on the 4th Saturday.

Invite the local comics illustrator out for a how-to for the kids.

Establish a Hyde Park style soapbox in the corner of the side lot… you know, there by the azalea bushes and the bus stop.

Programs. Social programs. This ain’t new, folks. Programs for your patrons to do more than listen to a lecture. Programs where people come to participate, have say, and where they have a stake in the outcome of the program and the direction of the community/library.

In building a 2.0 house, we’ve gotta remember why people want 2.0 tools like Facebook. They want to connect and participate.

cse’s

January 3rd, 2008 Posted in Search | No Comments »

bq suggested I look into cse’s some while back — two years ago? Anyways, this last Fall I finally did. The differences between Google’s Custom Search Engines and the crop of Swicki search engines by Eurekster probably deserve a long post (or article) as a topic unto itself, but after evaluating both on my own, I have to say I’m a Google CSE man for now. Some control falls through the cracks in both systems.
Here’s one of my Swickis:

http://archival-swicki.eurekster.com/

Here are my GCSEs:

http://woodyevans.com/?page_id=4

And here’s where you can find an article I did over at bq’s house on Swicki searching (last year): Searcher, Nov/Dec 2006

More on this later.

new year, new semester

January 3rd, 2008 Posted in News | No Comments »

A new crop of students, new things to do this year.  I’ll be working on a literacy outreach project with North Texas public libraries, and working on a book about building the “2.0″ library.  Got plenty of work ahead.

We went home to Mississippi and got to rekindle the embers with all the disparate folks in our families.  Good, that.  Makes me very happy (even though they’ve put in a housing subdivision on Pine Grove Road!).

I’m a bit foggy headed with the dregs of some spooky road cold.  Wife made a good wintry soup, though, with lots of curry — that should help burn the virus out.

woody evans . com is on

January 2nd, 2008 Posted in Admin, WE.FIND | No Comments »

A new iteration.  Please see the link to WE.FIND to the right, top.