• TimeLife.com | Ultimate Rock Ballads – power ballads of the 70s, 80s, 90s
  Thank goodness for late night infomecials, and that I don’t keep my credit cards near the remote control
  (tags: wishlist2007)

The CIO’s office and CITES Security are cracking down and have started a witch hunt to document (and in most cases, remove/eliminate) files with user sensitive data on them. The use of a university generated ID number is only a few years old — previous data used social security numbers as student identifiers and so it’s possible that professors have old spreadsheets with SSNs tucked away somewhere on their desktops that probably could be deleted (or archived securely.) The mentality is that if the data isn’t out there, it can’t get stolen or mis-used.

This is, of course, in response to the heightened sensitivity to identity theft and institutions mishandling/losing user data — and more so the newer pressures on notification and remediation that go with those kinds of information disclosure events. “Lose” SSN data and you need to tell the governor within 7 days, the Department of Education (national, not campus) starts calling the university president asking about it, etc. Unpleasant stuff. Worse than not getting your ethics training done.

But they’ve decided to call the program the SSN elimination program which always makes me think first about a different kind of elimination, and most notably the diaper free kind.

Tags: security

* We have an Ethics Officer.
* Training is required because it’s law. (”Because I said so.” arguments never go over well with me.)
* We have an Ethics Officer.
* Everyone is responsible for ethics.
* The Ethics Officer is under the Office of Executive Inspector General’s (OEIG) office.
* We have an Ethics Officer.
* There’s a revolving door policy on future employment (I didn’t sign a non-compete clause…)
* Did you know we have an Ethics Officer?
* If you’re bad, the OEIG Investigation crew will strongly recommend you be discharged and that you can never apply for or accept employment with the State. But, in my case, it’s BoT who enforces that. And a third party needs to report it. The OEIG is not a witch hunting organization.
* Mmmmmm procurement policies…..
* Gift ban: $75/food/day (at place purchased), item or items with cumulative value under $100 per prohibited source

One hour and 5 minutes later, done.

I recently started lurking a librarian coder/hacker listserv (code4lib) and have taken some side-line interest in a Roy Tennant post about a library software manifesto. Essentially, he’s analyzing some of the shortcomings in his experiences between libraries and library software vendors. His library software manifesto breaks it down into consumer and vendor rights and responsibilities.

There are some good things in there, but there are also some “duh factors.” The biggest, for me, being outside of the ILS software arena, is why these points are library software dependent? Many of them: “I have a right to full documentation.” “I have a right to not involuntarily beta test.” “I have a responsibility to report bugs as completely as possible, etc.” are just good software business practices. I realize Roy is a librarian and a technologist, and I understand his audience is librarians, but I think this is an area where libraries need to consider what happens outside of their industry. How does this manifesto hold up against Microsoft updates? Or TiVo? Or Linux? Or so many Web 2.0 applications that are so prevalent these days? Are your needs really unique?

My un-experienced assumption is that libraries are one of those environments where the software is critical to the business function but it’s often purchased/not developed in house. (Also in this boat: PoS/restaurant management software, BBS providers, among others.) This dependence makes the library/ILS vendor relationship that much more tenuous, and libraries are having to compete with information sources that are much more flexible (in house, rapid, targeted development) like what’s done at Amazon, LibraryThing, etc. It almost sound more like my experience with backup software — where the core pieces are purchased from a vendor, but the processes and reports and such that wrap it are in-house. In that respect, I agree that these tools are simply repositories for MY DATA, and I should be able to access and use that data in as many ways as possible (they should not be blackholes for data, or extortion points to get the data out in a way that I need.) But the vendor is only going to get you so far, and eventually you’re going to have to develop on your own some or all of it.

Other points seem petty, and that kind of minutia can really grind down a software product. (This, from talking with Steve, seems pretty common in the library sphere.) You only need read only access to the database if your API functions aren’t good enough to mine the data you need. I don’t know how my TSM database works, but I can “hit” most of it through available tools. Or perhaps people feel jaded by the RFP process — something designed to help flush out available options and make decisions based on key points like those mentioned in his manifesto (if those criteria are important to your organization.)

Another big point is that if you don’t know what you want (which is not uncommon or necessarily a bad thing — many projects I do start out as exploratory efforts to even see what can be done,) you cannot expect a vendor to provide it. The better you define your core processes and requirements (musts, shoulds, wishlists,) the stronger your case will be.

Anyway, I still need to stew on it a while, but thought I’d get a post out there. I’m sinking into a philosophy of agile IT — flexible tools, fast responses, solid services — maybe I should write up that in a manifesto.

• CARE Affiliates
  Service Oriented Architecture Repository
  (tags: ils)
• WeTalkDuringMovies.com
  A social experiment for watching movies and discussing them in real time online.
  (tags: movies online netflix)

• The Dis-Integrating World of Library Automation – 6/15/2005 – Library Journal
  (tags: 582final)
• FIGHTINGILLINI.COM // Illinois (7-3, 4-2) at #1 Ohio State (10-0, 6-0)
  Illinois is 3-14 against No. 1 opponents as it heads into its 18th appearance against the top-ranked. The last win over a No. 1 opponent was in 1956 when the Illini defeated Michigan State, 20-13.
  (tags: football fightingillini)
• Pearls Before Breakfast – washingtonpost.com