Libraries and E-government part 2

To follow-up to yesterday's post about libraries and e-government. The point I'm trying to make is that libraries are being asked to assume a great deal of extra responsibility with no extra funding. Basically what is happening is that many government entities are streamlining their services in an effort to cut costs. One of the ways they do this is by putting information they used to provide in print form into an electronic format. While there is no doubt that this streamlines their workload, the work doesn't just disappear. In fact, the work load has to be picked up by someone else, and in this case it's the public library.

There are other solutions to the problem. One of them would be to just refuse to help and send them back to the government agency. While this would be extremely poor service by the library, it would get the message back to places like DCF that we are not going to pick up their slack.
Another option is to allow the customer internet access - which we already do - and show them which web site they need, then walk away and refuse to offer any additional help. Again this is a customer service problem, but it protects the librarian from a huge responsibility and liability for the patron personal information.
A third option is to arrange for a training session from someone working for a government department. DCF in Florida does have a liaison for most counties and is apparently willing to send people out to conduct training sessions. I feel this creates the problem of our enabling DCF to continue shirking their responsibility by taking over a portion of their job. Again, librarians are not and should not have to be social workers. On the other hand, if DCF is going to kick back to us some of the $30 million they are "saving" each year by not offering services, then perhaps we could make a deal.
The big picture here is that libraries need to find their niche for the 21st century. The only way to do this is by offering needed services for the public and being able to prove that we have value. This will mean having direct statistical evidence that we are providing services - number of applications for food stamps we helped with this month, number of e-government website visits, number of job applications assisted with, etc. If we can bring those kind of numbers to the state legislature via our lobbyists, then perhaps we can start seeing more money to offset the costs associated with being government's safety net.

Libraries and E-government

As governments attempt to streamline their services and cut down on their spending they have once again managed to shift the burden of responsibility for some issues onto other parts of society while patting themselves on the back for allegedly saving money.
A glaring example of this shift is the e-government issue. In an effort to cut down on paperwork and staffing, many governmental departments have shifted to an electronic application format. This sounds good on the surface because it means less paperwork, fewer staff and a significant amount of saving. However there is another issue that this shift brings up. Namely, does someone else have to take the burden for state or local government's efforts to save money.
In this case, it's your local library. By and large, librarians are suddenly finding themselves having to assume additional duties - particularly in areas they are untrained for like social work - because government departments have moved needed documents to an electronic format and are sending the patrons "...to the library. They have people there that can help you."
In reality, librarians by and large do not have degrees in social work, yet we are being asked to fill that role while places like the Department of children and families congratulate themselves for saving millions of dollars by putting everything online. This shifting of the burden of responsibility is a travesty. Librarians should not be put in the position where one wrong answer on a form could potentially affect a client for more than a year.
One of the other problems with this shift to "e-government" is that the target audience for many services are on literate in the use of the computer. This is particularly true for those library patrons who may need food stamps or other welfare-related items. These patrons will need the most assistance, and they are increasingly having to rely on librarians who are ill-trained to help them.
Maybe what needs to happen is some data collection and billing. For example, the library could track all their e-government requests for help, track the time those tasks took out of a librarians day and send a bill monthly to the affected departments or (better yet) the governor's office in the hope that when budget time comes the legislature will see fit to free up more money for the public library.

Just heard about

So I just heard about this issue with the iPhone battery and felt the need to write about it. Now, I'm not going to claim to be an expert about electronics, but does it really make sense to solder a battery into a phone? As cell phones have gotten smaller and more powerful over the years, one thing that was easy to count on was being able to replace the battery when it died. In fact, this holds true for cordless phones as well. Now here comes Apple with a stupid mistake like this. Perhaps they are expecting the battery to last for 2-3 years until they have a second generation phone available, I don't know.
I do know this much, there is no way I would pay $499 for a phone in the first place and even if I could afford such a thing, what happens if I get a bad battery that dies within a month or two..???

Musing on Learn 2.0

So now I'm thinking about what to do with my MP3 player. I think it will be full of music for working out - it's smaller than my last Walkman - and I'll probably get an adapter for the cassette player in the car so I can stream books or music.
I'm looking forward to putting some of the music off my computer onto something other than a CD which skips in the car stereo....

Final week of Learn 2.0

Found interesting podcasts this week, especially the one on NPR which had the best "Car Talk" call of the week. The unfortunate thing I did discover with many of the Yahoo podcasts is how outdated they were. For example, the technology and beer podcast hasn't been updated since 2005, yet shows on the first page of available podcasts. Since I'm looking for more recent information, I suspect I will have to go outside of Yahoo to find relevant podcasts.
The other interesting thing I've come across is that podcasting is like blogging - anyone can do it and finding relevant information to your liking seems to require reference librarian skills... In other words there's a lot of trivial stuff out there and finding something you can really get into will probably take more effort than many people can be bothered with. Perhaps I should open a host site for good podcasts....

Copyright and the library

Copyright law and policy is of great interest to me. I took a class at FSU which included quite a bit about copyright and it's really amazing to me that more people are not getting sued for violations of copyrighted materials. For instance, we had an instructor who would bring in the DVD "Office Space" to show for his students on the last day of his class - not that he had any kind of license to broadcast it. Other people use different items they have "borrowed" from others out on the web - Disney characters, etc. - and create bumper stickers and window decals, seeing nothing wrong with doing this. It would seem that the prevailing attitude is one of "everyone else is doing it..." which always leads me to "... and if everyone else was jumping off a cliff..."

As far as DRM goes, I can understand why groups like RIAA would be in favor of it, as they see a need to protect their bottom line financially and to a lesser extent to protect the artists they claim to represent. However, having seen their absolutely absurd tactics for prosecution - the countless stories of people who cannot afford to fight back being targeted for alleged file sharing more details available here - as well as the issue of embedding spyware in the DRM code - as Sony has done - I would have to say I'm against DRM as it is currently used. While I don't disagree that the creator of the work should be protected. I do find it hard to believe there is a noticeable decrease in sales due to p2p file sharing as there is no firm data either way.



There has to be some sort of a happy medium where people can get the item they would like in a manner which least inconveniences them. On the other hand, the developer of a piece of music or a cartoon character should not have to worry about protecting rights or getting compensation for the creation.

Week 8

Week 8 with a week 7 podcast. Good subjects this week. I like online learning - most of my Master's program was offered that way. I think it allows the learner to work at their own pace better than many 'face to face' classes do. I haven't really offered nor been offered help with this course, but should I run across something that I cannot do I will be asking.

The Protopage is interesting and I will probably do more work on it at home. Not sure yet how to tag it properly. I'm not sure I will be using Flickr, I have some issues about that and I generally find the time to either put my photo's on my own web page or send them via email.

I think I'm going to sign up for Google's ad sense to see if I can make a dollar this month.... :-)