Internet Librarian 2000: Internet Conference for Librarians and Information Managers

Citation

Arthur Mihram, G. (2001), "Internet Librarian 2000: Internet Conference for Librarians and Information Managers", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918dac.002

Internet Librarian 2000: Internet Conference for Librarians and Information Managers

G. Arthur Mihram

Internet Librarian 2000 (IL 2000), the Internet Conference for Librarians and Information Managers, was held November 6-8, 2000 at the connected Doubletree and Monterey Marriott Hotels in Monterey, California, providing one of the most pleasant venues for conducting a conference of its size. Approximately 2,200 registrants were present, with a total presence during the Conference of about 2,500 people. Approximately 100 exhibitors hired space in order to display their products during the Conference.

The Conference, held each November on the US West Coast, seems always to coincide (in even-numbered years) with the US Congressional elections. The sponsor, Information Today, Inc. http://www.infotoday.com; also organises annually in the springtime: Computers in Libraries 200x, held usually in Washington, DC; and Internet Librarian International 200x, held usually in London, UK. In addition, they organise each May the National Online Meeting in New York City.

Information Today, Inc., unfortunately, does not require that its presenters and panelists prepare and provide papers for inclusion in their Conference's published proceedings, though a considerable number (approximately 30) did this year have material appearing in IL 2000 (available from Information Today, Inc. at 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055, USA).

IL 2000 was organised along four concurrent tracks (in addition to both Pre-Conference and Post-Conference Workshops, registration for any one of which required payment of a fee in addition to the registration for the Conference), so that coverage by this single reporter could hardly be complete. Nonetheless, some effort was made to attend two or three concurrent and interesting sessions by appearing sequentially at segments of each.

File Protection and Privacy

At the outset, (Monday, 9 am), the Session ("News Nets: News Library Case Studies") included three presenters, one each from The San Francisco Chronicle; Time, Inc.; and The Sacramento Bee, which dealt with "intranets" in print and broadcast newsrooms, the intranet being a Web-based portal allowing an entrant to move rapidly to a variety of pre-organised news sources, usually beyond the particular newspaper's or broadcast studio's archive of its own work.

Though typically these intranets allow reporters to locate quickly earlier published/broadcast material, Pete Basofin of the Bee noted that outsiders frequently search their Funeral Notes and their obituary columns. Mr Basofin then related that, in California, many public records, such as driving records, had always been made available to reporters, and governmental agencies have been often quick to move forward to new technologies (e.g. from eight-track tapes to CDs).

When asked from the floor by this reporter as to a recommended procedure for ensuring that access to one's personal data be restricted only to those who truly need to know (e.g. police officials as opposed to reporters), Mr Basofin responded with the suggestion that we need to have some "electronic postmark and/or electronic return address" which identifies the enquirer for material within such databases. Of course, we should all consider the 1999 proposal (Mihram and Mihram, 1999) that any computer which grants access to data files of a personal nature (e.g. medical information) should maintain both a file indicating the "postmark" and identity of each request (and the exact file information which was released to the requester) and another file, a "tickler-file" which actively advises periodically (e.g. quarterly) each person whose file was requested and/or "entered" electronically. Of course, court-ordered police investigations would be exempt from such recordings of their requests (Mihram and Mihram, 1999).

Copyright Matters Indeed

At the following Session, ("Copyright and Digital Rights in the eWorld"), Dave Davies of the Copyright Clearance Center reviewed the history of US copyright laws from 1790, noting that in Ireland c. AD550 an incident occurred which might well serve as a historical precursor for the need for copyright protection even in an age preceding the printing press. He did not elaborate as to details of the incident within the early Catholic Church.

When asked from the floor of his reaction to the proposal (Mihram and Mihram, 2000) made at the CIL 2000 Conference in March 2000 in Washington, DC, that there is a Congressional duty to provide not only a "national electronic postal service" but also a means to provide "copyright protection", Mr Davies concurred that we shall require governmentally-sponsored or operated procedures, such as the issuance of postmarks and copyright labels by means of digital watermarking.

The Copyright Clearance Center, as a non-profit agency, has been quite instrumental in providing licensing solutions for digitised materials. Unfortunately, attempting to provide "fair use" via licensing access to digitised material in a library does not always convey an attitude commonplace among librarians: viz. the archival tradition, particularly as it related to the print medium: a clear record of any "second edition, third printing". This archival process is so pertinent to human knowledge and its progressive accumulation.

Trade Show, Book Fair, or Academic Conference?

Of course, this matter seems to underscore the intrinsic nature of the Conference sponsored by Information Today. The American Library Association's annual meetings may be considered to be a book fair, and, as it publishes no proceedings of the sessions at its meeting, it does not quite qualify as an academic conference.

Since Information Today's conferences deal not only with librarians but also with information managers, perhaps these, too, could be deemed trades shows rather than academic conferences. However, Information Today, Inc. does provide published (though incomplete) proceedings, and they should be encouraged to require that their authors/presenters be cognizant of, and properly refer to, the papers appearing in their earlier proceedings (and, of course, in related professional publications). Such an enhanced attitude would give even greater merit to their efforts.

For example, Micki McIntyre of the UMDNJ Health Science Library called the audience's attention to a report in the Sunday, November 5, 2000 (then: yesterday's) issue of the San Jose Mercury News, one providing a comparison of alternative search engines. It is this attitude of comparing, of criticising, others by which progress is assured. She made her remarks in the Session on "Same Tasks, Just New Tools."

Security and Privacy for Kids

On Monday afternoon, the Session ("COPPA: Security and Privacy for Kids") was chaired by Ferdi Serim, Editor of MultiMedia Schools, Santa Fe, NM. He discussed at length the difficulties of using ­ or obtaining, in some cases, approval to use ­ several filtering programs at a library's Internet access. Much of his presentation is to be made available on the Web: http://www.srsd.org/board, though he seemed to be unaware of ACRL Past-President Lee W. Hisle's paper (Hisle, 1998) and the work of Bruce A. Taylor (Taylor and Cleaver, 1997) of the National Law Center for Children and Families. Both were participants in the panel, "The Crossroads: Ethical and Legal Resolution of the Path to be Taken," announced on the program of the 10th Conference of the ACRL (Denver, March 16, 2001 http://www.ala.org/acrl/denver/pssd.html#11). (See the tape recording: Mihram et al., 2001.)

Mr Serim seemed willing to acknowledge that "content-markers" are requisite to any successful effort to restrict access to objectionable material, but voiced a concern, one which is unfortunately typical: Would not such markers constitute government censorship? Of course, if we move forward into our Age of Digitised Tele-communications, surely we can expect that "Electronic Family Circle Magazine(s)" would provide reviews not only of electronic books, but also videos and movies, so that they, being non-governmental agencies, could provide markers regarding obscenity, pornography, objectionable language, and violence. By subscribing electronically to these reviews, a parent (and/or a library) could effectively filter objectionable material, there being then no government censorship.

Unfortunately, this Session was conducted as a Pre-conference Session, Internet@Schools, not a part of the general IL 2000 Conference's program.

On Search Engines

A Session on "The Invisible Web" was very highly attended, and showed the audience the difficulties which the nearly anarchic nature of the Web is presenting us. A search enquiry can often provide 100+ resources to search, an experience quite unlike the one typically attending a person's satisfying visit to a multi-volume encyclopedia. Furthermore, the feeling of authenticity or truthfulness of a so-suggested Web site is frequently lacking. Still, the Session encouraged the use of the ever-increasing Web, advising a user of course to be vigilant in its use.

Similarly, at the well-attended Session, "Search Engines: The Engine Environment", Greg Notess of Montana State University reported on the ongoing interconnections among search engines. These are ongoing "mergers", but some require that one engine pay another for access to its content. Therefore, a typical user may be unaware that he/she is being restricted from some databases simply because of terms in his/her contractual arrangement with his/her Web interface.

Viruses

Marshall Breeding of Vanderbilt University's Library Technology Office presented "Life in a Dangerous World," in which he reported on the threats of "viruses". He noted the institutional experiences of recovering from a viral attack, but offered little advice on how to avoid them readily. Indeed, his response to a suggestion that there be, as standard operating procedure, governmentally-issued electronic postmarks so as to properly identify the source of any virus was rather astounding: he first needed to determine whether the suggestion would be considered politically liberal or conservative before committing his opinion (Mihram and Mihram, 2000).

We must appreciate that it is very unlikely that a company-sponsored procedure for providing "electronic postmarks and return addresses" could be long-lived. First of all, any such company will find that adversaries will try to find a way to interfere with the company's procedure. Or, a nearly bankrupt carrier may feel that economic survival depends more on intercepting, not delivering, messages ­ or on providing false postmarks. Of course, as Cardinal Richelieu, the founder of the national postal services, learned in the seventeenth century, it is the protection of political messages that serves as the basis of the governmental role in postmarking (recall the chaos described in the historical novel, The Three Musketeers).

Portals

The Conference included a few sessions on portals, a portal being viewed as a "supermarket" of sites on the Web. The attitude guiding these is that information professionals should not seek access to information so much, as they ­ the portals ­ locate the information itself. Michael Binder, Dean of Libraries at Western Kentucky University, reported on their efforts in this regard (http://www.researchindex.com).

Mary-Ellen Mort, Librarian at jobstart.org, called for "lortals," locally oriented portals, in a well-attended Session, "I Wanna Be a Portal". She noted that, typically, librarians are now being hounded for information on Web sites listing job opportunities for patrons, the electronic files being exemplary of a lortal.

IL 200l

The information professional would do well to attend one of the Information Today, Inc.'s conferences. One will be rather quickly brought up to date on the features which the converging technologies are making available, though it is a shame that their Conferences' proceedings are not being so academically treated (i.e. edited) by the organisers as they should be. The Conference this year (IL 2001) will be held in Pasadena (near Los Angeles), California, November 6-8, 2001 (http://www.infotoday.com)

G. Arthur Mihram PhD, is an Author and Consultant from Princeton, NJ. He has published numerous articles and books calling attention to our rather unwary entry into our Age of Telecommunications from the earlier Age of Written/Printed Communications. The intrinsic "control" mechanisms within the earlier age have provided the process under which science has so successfully proceeded. His biographical sketch appears in the present (millennium) edition of Marquis's Who's Who in America.