Tuesday, April 15, 2003

ranting about the language and symbols of war & peace It's too bad that Radio doesn't offer a feature similar to LiveJournal's "LJ-cut". I'm improvising an equivalent by posting this potentially inflammatory posting as a story. 12:53:44 AM

	Thursday, March 13, 2003

tough choices for the Minneapolis Public Library This morning by chance I listened to a discussion on Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning show about the funding crisis in Minnesota public libraries. This finding crisis was precipitated by the State Auditor arbitrarily classifying libraries as "non-essential services" and recommending that the Governor cut the state funding for these services. It's possible to hear this discussion with the RealOne player (scroll down to March 13, hour one). It was a very interesting discussion and it was gratifying to see how strong support which libraries are getting in the community - it's a shame that this support is falling on deaf ears at the State Capitol. These problems couldn't have come at a worse time for the Minneapolis Public Library, which is in process of building a new central library building. Its old premises have just been demolished and it is currently renting a temporary (& inadequate) space until its new building is ready. Because of this funding crisis, there is the possibility that the size of the new building will be scaled back or its construction delayed. It is ironic that one of the reasons why the old library building was inadequate and did not age well was because of similar funding short-cuts which were taken when it was built - according to Kit Hadley, the new director of the Minneapolis Public Library, who was the guest speaker on today's Midmorning show. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has provided good coverage of this issue. Here's a brief chronology - *The Minneapolis Public Library faces a $25 million shortfall in its operating budget over the next 10 years *Columnist Doug Grow: "No one, Minneapolis leaders say, could have predicted that Minnesota would elect a governor who would smile kindly, then slash such programs as Local Government Aid. LGA money has accounted for 43 percent of the library's operating budget, according to Laura Waterman Wittstock, chairwoman of the Library Board." *Q & A with Kit Hadley: "Think about the library's role in democracy. Every country has a police infrastructure, but not everyone has free information." *Editorial: "the downtown [library] project was once conceived as part of a four-block development, which then was reduced to two, then to a single block, then without a planetarium -- and now even the bare bones may not survive." *The Minneapolis Public Library's finance committee rejected Kit Hadley's plan to close four branches. The library's funding shortfall will addressed by across-the-board cuts. 7:20:33 PM

	Friday, February 14, 2003

article in Searcher about the digitial divide in legal research Slashdot has reported (& discussed in typical Slashdot style) an article in Searcher magazine by Melissa Bar called "Democracy in the Dark: Public Access Restrictions from Westlaw and LexisNexis." It is a very interesting and well-written article that highlights the important issue of public access to the law. In my biased opinion, this article has one major flaw, which is that it seems to totally ignore the role of law libraries - particularly academic law libraries and court libraries. I can only speak for the academic law library where I work. Although we mainly exist to serve our students, faculty and alumni, we never turn anyone from the public away who needs help with legal research. We are trained to help people find what they want or need without crossing over into the area of unauthorized practice of law. At the risk of blowing the profession's own horn too much, I say that the the assistance of a good law librarian - who is armed with a standard collection of printed materials and the resources available on the "free web", including the Legal Information Institute, West's FindLaw and LexisOne - will usually do a much better job for the pro se patron than free access to LexisNexis or Westlaw. The printed sources aren't all bad. They are very strong with the older materials, which Ms. Barr uses as an example, and they make it more difficult to fall into the full-text infoglut trap - where the few pearls are hidden in a tonne of garbage. Law libraries should do a better job of communicating all this to public libraries. I know that some of the professional associations, including the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries are already doing some work in this area. None of this is to say that I don't have my issues with LexisNexis or Westlaw - or think that they're perfect, altruistic companies. But now there are more free electronic alternatives (or cheap ones, like VersusLaw) available for legal research. They don't have the all the fancy bells & whistles of Westlaw or Lexis, but they still offer the public access to primary legal materials that would have seemed unthinkable 15 years ago. 1:00:26 AM

	Wednesday, February 12, 2003

following up: arbitary & political distinctions between essential & non-essential services By pure chance today, I stumbled over the website of the League of Minnesota Cities. I was interested to see that they had quite a scathing response to the State Auditor's report that recommended that state government aid to Minnesota cities be severely cut. Here are some gems from the LMC's response: The state auditor is generally charged with auditing local government finances. This report goes far beyond the traditional role of the auditor and ventures into the policy arena. ... [my thoughts exactly!] The report's distinction between essential and non-essential spending is arbitrary and ignores the fact that cities across the state are facing very different circumstances. [my emphasis] The auditor's report is built on several false premises - ... Services such as airports and transit and libraries, because they are provided by counties or regional governments in some areas of the state, are not essential services anywhere. Yes, the State of Minnesota is in deficit, like many other states. It's one thing to give libraries a "fair share" of the pain that must go around. It's quite another to give libraries an extra helping of the pain because political leaders are pursuing an extremist agenda to keep taxes low for the rich and punish all the others who actually like some of the things which government can do. Minnesota may become a cultural & educational & environmental wasteland - but hey, at least we'll have low taxes and nice roads to drive our gas guzzling SUVs on! 10:32:37 PM

are libraries essential services or not? big assumptions in a footnote Yesterday I awoke to hear the news that Minnesota's State Auditor, Pat Awada, is proposing to cut state aid to local government. Apparently, the level of state aid must be too high, because too many cities are using it to fund "non-essential services" like parks and libraries. I was intrigued to view the complete version of Awada's report, to read how they devised this essential/non-essential categorization. This turned out to be difficult to find - in half of a footnote on the first page of the executive summary: The OSA grouped three current city services: general government, public safety and streets and highways together to form essential current services. All other current services are called non-essential current services for the purposes of this study. (emphasis not added) That was it. I'm not suggesting that the essential services listed aren't really essential. It is interesting to see the leaps in logic here. First, that all government services are either essential or non-essential. Second, that it is not reasonable to fund non-essential services. In my view, to say that governments are only about roads and police is the same as saying that the only things people need in life are food and water (& grudgingly, shelter, because it gets kind of nippy in Minnesota winters). Of course, people do need food, water and shelter, or they will quickly perish. But that is only the beginning of people's needs - what about the human needs for companionship, purpose etc? Once the most basic needs have been satisfied, do the secondary & tertiary needs come to the fore. In the same way, roads and police are the basic services of government, and after them come the secondary services (like parks & libraries etc) which give meaning to society. I would have mentioned education earlier, except that this report by Awada only concerns funding to cities, not school boards (they'll have their turn, I'm sure). By the way, there is no state library system in Minnesota. The local government public libraries are the only ones that we have. By lumping them into non-essential local government services, is Awada saying that there is no place for public libraries anywhere in Minnesota? The assumptions in this footnote raise some important questions. I was curious to see if it was standard practice for governments to consider libraries as "non-essential services" in this supposed information age. I was not able to find very much. Probably because these are decided by what is not said rather than by what is said - for example, Pat Awada's report makes no mention of libraries, but this doesn't reduce its potential negative effects on libraries. I found two interesting things: a newsletter from a Wisconsin library system encouraging people to let their leaders know in very concrete terms what reductions in library funding will mean. The other one is a pdf version of this paper: Proctor, Usherwood and Sobczyk, What happens when a public library service closes down?, Library Management 18, no. 1 (1997): 59 12:42:24 AM