In Which We Write Letters: Stop SOPA

via

Anna here. This post is cross-posted at the feminist librarian.


Depending on your level of involvement in things internet-political and techy, you may or may not be aware of the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) now making its way through congress. Introduced by representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), this bill mandates widespread monitoring of internet activity and has the potential to cause the internets as we know them to be fundamentally altered as blogs and other social networking sites are shut down for supposed acts "piracy." You can read more about the act at the Organization for Transformative Works, TechCrunch, and the American Library Association. The letter Hanna and I sent to our representatives is heavily cribbed from the ALA talking points.

Find your U.S. Representative here. 

Find your U.S. Senators here.

---

18 December 2011

Dear Representative Capuano,

As librarians, bloggers, and registered voters in Allston, Massachusetts, we are writing to ask you to vote against the proposed Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261.

This bill, if it becomes law, will cause a widespread “chilling effect” on use of the Internet for commerce, communication, and participation in democratic society. The bill strikes at copyright protections currently granted to libraries and educational institutions by creating the possibility of criminal persecution of institutions and institutional representatives. for online streaming and other use of online resources in library and classroom space. SOPA's requirements to monitor internet traffic violate free speech and privacy protections and may create new forms of government surveillance of private activities within and outside the United States. The predicted consequences of SOPA are far-reaching. If passed, the potential for new jobs, innovative new ventures, and economic growth will be stifled.

Citizen engagement in online spaces depends on the ability to share and discuss a wide variety of media content across multiple social networking and other Internet platforms. SOPA will effectively shut down the vibrant creativity and vital political discourse that has been made possible by the World Wide Web. On behalf of ourselves, our online community of bloggers, and our library patrons, we ask you to vote against H.R. 3261, and support alternative ways for protecting legitimate copyright interests online.

Sincerely,

Anna J. Cook & Hanna E. Clutterbuck

digging with which foot again...?

so after the last couple days -- not counting fridays -- which have been pretty horror-heavy, this wednesday i need to put on the historian hat again and talk about marianne elliott's recent (-ish; i'm a bit behind the curve, really) tome, the catholics of ulster.

first: it's giant. seriously: don't plan on lugging this book around a lot if you have a bad back or stiff shoulders.

second: there are holes. i started to write that they were "significant" -- but i'm not quite sure they are really.

elliott's whole point here is to debunk a very catholic-centric, nationalist-centric, increasingly-over-the-course-of-the-20th-century-republican-centric style of irish history, and so i'm sure she knows perfectly well what she's left out and has left it out (or minimized it) for a reason.

the thumbnail "plot summary" might run something like: a history of catholics in ulster from prehistory to the good friday agreement.

there's a lot of time spent on the early years -- the prehistory through, say, the late eighteenth century bit -- and then, to my mind, ever-less time as the book ratchets on towards the end of the twentieth century. which is a shame from my point of view, because that's the bit i'm interested in. still, there is enough provocative material here to make me leave my pencil in the book as a bookmark because i was making that many marginal notes. who knows if i'll never use them for anything, but they made me feel better.

my chief argument with the book might be that as time goes by and elliott gets closer and closer to the present day and -- in all fairness -- as the republican nationalist movement gets more and more catholic and nastier and nastier with it (not that i'm implying these two things are vitally linked or inextricable or anything because that would obviously be very foolish), she gets closer and closer to being dismissive of things which i think are very important.

of course, this could just be me thinking, "but i think it's interesting! talk more about what i think is interesting!" and there are plenty of books out there that talk about nothing but the things i think are interesting -- still, i think elliott comes close to sounding rather patronizing as she tries to describe the effects that something that happened over 200 years ago can have on the present day. the historical narrative started to become a bit clogged with elliott's own personal memories of growing up in northern ireland and, while i understand that she's doing this in order to make her own potential biases and point-of-view absolutely clear, it also starts to feel that maybe what she wanted to do was write a history up to about 1950 and then write a memoir.

in fact, the more i think about it, the more i wish she had done just that: written the history through...oh, say, partition, ended that, and then written a memoir. as it was, in the final chapters, i kept wanting to say, "but, wait -- if the people in question think that's really important -- aren't you being a bit dismissive by saying it isn't? shouldn't you take into account the fact that they -- being your subject under discussion here! -- think it is?"

i apologise for not having a more coherent argument to make about the text right now; due to bad weather and a long day at work, i'm more than a little out of it. but the summing up of all this would probably read: marianne elliott. new-ish book. go forth and read it if you are interested in a) things catholic; b) things irish; c) things irish catholic.

if nothing else, her bibliography is absolutely eye-wateringly wonderful.

~ ~ ~

and since this post is (marginally) concerned with things academic and scholastic, here's something else, too.

as you may or may not know, i live in boston. as you also may or may not know, the boston public library system is facing some "economic hardship." the latest iteration of this hardship is what seems like a serious threat to close the main branch's microtext department.

when my boss told me this last friday, i squawked at her for two minutes straight about how awful this was and how "they" couldn't do this before realising: a) she isn't my old boss and wouldn't either think i was funny or sympathise; and b) "they" might very well do just that.

it is fair to say that, without the microtext room at the bpl, i could not have written the history thesis i did. without the access to the historical irish newspapers collection they house, i would have had to cut my topic in half, redirect it radically, or give up on it entirely. i'm sure there are other people out there with similar stories.

i have spent a lot of time in the microtext room and i was never the only one there even when i was there at 9 a.m. on a saturday morning or 5 p.m. on a tuesday night. patrons ranged from professional genealogists to amateur family historians; college undergraduates; other graduate students like myself; and the average run of people looking for someplace to burn a few hours because they had nowhere else to be. the room needs a new carpet; the microfilm machines need repairing; the printers need upgrading; the librarians need some new reference materials. what they do not need is to be shut down or have a huge, incredibly valuable collection doled out piecemeal among the other branches of the library.

so, as this is the biggest public soapbox i have, i'm putting it out there: please. if you have half an hour of free time and you give a damn about this amazing, marvellous, free resource in boston, send a letter; send an email; make a phone call.

SUGGESTED ACTION: We are asking all concerned individuals to write to the following contacts and let them know that the resources and staff of the Microtext Department and the Newspaper Room should not be eliminated or dispersed. If you are a Massachusetts resident or Boston Public Library patron, please indicate that in your email/letter. The Boston Public Library Annual Meeting will be held Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 8:30am, at the Copley Square Library. Let's let our voices be heard and make an impact now before that important meeting.

Contacts:

Amy Ryan, President of the Boston Public Library 

aeryan@bpl.org

700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116

617-536-5400

Mr. Jamie McGlone, Clerk to the Board of Trustees

jmcglone@bpl.org

700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116

617-536-5400

Mayor Thomas Menino

mayor@cityofboston.gov

1 City Hall Square, Suite 500

Boston, MA 02201-2013

617.635.4500

Photograph by Gretchichi

the definition of irony

the first time i saw this headline, i thought, "oh, how nice. darnton's standing up for freedom of access. go him."

and then i went away.

and i thought about it.

and i thought, "gosh. how many times have i been in widener and thought--- wait. i've been in widener once. to pick up photocopies. for my professor. and i needed two forms of i.d. to get into the basement. they almost never do ill. they don't do consortia (that i know of). they barely do the neighborly thing of letting faculty of other colleges use their collections (unless you're some hot shit like niall ferguson or simon schama in which case they'll be all over you). you practically have to run over broken glass (and make some friendly faculty member at your own institution do it, too) to get six days a year of access as a graduate student. possibly they should look to their own access issues before bitching about other people's."

(i should note here that my quibbles with the harvard library system are largely with widener and their absolutely ridiculous access policies. the harvard special collections and archives are more than charming -- nice librarians, beautiful facilities, great collections, and, if you go to houghton on friday morning, they give you coffee and scones!)

"and now for something completely different."

so here's the latest i could find on the whole "lead in books" thing. the ala website was up the last time i checked but it took some messing around to find anything about this particular issue, so maybe it isn't such a big thing as it appears? i don't know, but i did find this news brief on the original legislation, a letter the ala sent to the consumer product safety commission, and the cpsc's response.

i also tracked down -- again, via neil gaiman's twitter which is just awesome and disturbing by turns -- a different blogger's post about the same subject. the blogger in question, nathaniel grey, went so far as to write to the ala's washington office and excerpts the letter he got in reply.

on the more amusing, less work-oriented front, i happened to luck into a copy of stephen king's latest short story collection just after sunset at the bpl today and ran through the first story, "willa," and half of the second, "the gingerbread girl," on the train home. so far, so good! i'm looking forward to his promised notes at the end of the book since those are always fun.

i also treated myself to two more episodes of the second season of torchwood which, i have to say, does not grow any more reassuring. fine by me so long as they're going to keep up this quality of show -- "meat," "adam," and "reset" were all riveting and i'm making myself be good and save "dead man walking" for tomorrow so that i don't run through my entire weekend treat in one night! i just can't imagine how they're going to ramp up from here to the season finales which i hear are killers. 

and i get to go see the new underworld this weekend -- happy dance! i notice a fair number of critics and fan sites who have already decided they hate it -- *shrug* what's not to like, really? vampires, werewolves, sharp things, leather -- where's the problem?

something nice for the end of the week

there's nothing like job security: library loans on the rise in the u.s., although technically this article says nothing about visits to archives being on the rise so maybe it's an even 50/50 "win some/lose some" situation!

i like the little chunk of obama's ala speech, too, although i think at this point in time pretty much any news article on anything at all has to feature some kind of quotation from some speech he's made, preferably within the last six months, full points if it's from the inauguration. seriously. i read articles yesterday about britain's public school system and they quoted obama. it wasn't quite entirely irrelevant, but it was really close! i can only assume there was some editor somewhere in london leaning over his desk, saying, "people love this guy! quote him! it'll get the hits up! we have to keep our stats higher than the sun!"

oh, and if you really have nothing at all to do this weekend and an aching desire to make that "to read" list enormous, check this out: the guardian's 1000 novels project. i'm not exactly certain how they've picked the novels in question but somehow or other they have divined a list of 1000 novels -- divided neatly by genre -- that they feel should be common knowledge. i don't know if the list addresses issues like non-english novels, novels in translation, etc., etc. the main page just says:

"Over seven days our writers recommend the best books to read about crime, war, fantasy, travel, science fiction, family and love. Don't agree with their choices? Series editor Philip Oltermann will be blogging on Saturday; come back and tell him why not."

i haven't spent a lot of time here 'cause, well, i had other things to do this week like go to work and sleep, but the lists look interesting if nothing else -- always good for a "but, hey, what about---" moment.

wtf

okay, it's really early (for a holiday monday, 8.30 is early!) and i know i don't deal well when it's early, but i just saw this on neil gaiman's twitter feed and he has it referenced as "This Is A Wrong Thing." right now, i can't come up with any better commentary on it other than it seems like the kind of thing that starts out from totally the right motives -- keep kids healthy -- and ends up doing something entirely lunatic -- removing books from libraries: new law could keep books off shelves.

i tried to find anything on this at the ala website but as of...8.55 a.m., the website was really very busted. i'll try again later.

saturday morning again

miraculous how it just keeps comin' round, huh?

sir john mortimer, the writer of rumpole, summer's lease, the titmuss novels, journey round my father, and, not last or least, the original screen adaptation of brideshead revisited (jeremy irons, anthony andrews, nicholas grace, laurence olivier, etc., etc.) died this week. i can't help feeling it's a little ridiculous to feel sad over the death of someone i've never met but, on the other hand, i also can't help feeling that a certain voice of sanity has left england as well as an excellent writer. if you haven't read any of the above -- or, in the case of brideshead, summer's lease, or rumpole -- seen them, i suggest an addition to the ol' netflix queue and library list.

librarians -- or archivists -- rarely get to lay the smackdown. only in the movies do we generally get to tote around weapons of mass destruction (in the form of books, of course), swing through forests, or try to track down demons; mostly in the real world we even try not to shush people too much. i think this is all to the good, but, on the other hand, i can't help getting a real sense of satisfaction out of the verdict in the trial of farhad hakimzadah in london.

the first headlines i saw on this story were from last november's guardian. approximately 150 rare and/or unique books in the british library's collection had been vandalized -- pages sliced out, maps missing, etc. -- over the space of a few years. the librarians worked with the police -- and their own reading room records and the like (use statistics to fight crime!) -- to figure out what was going on and tracked the entire problem down to hakimzadah. lord love the british, they immediately took him to court for it for vandalism and, basically, irreparable damage to international cultural heritage items. if you click through into the story above, there's a partial list of some of the volumes he went through and some of them are just heartbreaking -- and they can never be the same again. even with the sliced-out maps, pages, indices, whatever returned, the books can't be fixed to be the same. the informational value will be the same -- for the books that had all their missing parts found and if those missing parts are still undamaged, legible, etc. and i don't know whether they did find all the missing pages -- but the experience of using them will never be the same for any researcher after hakimzadah.

within the last two days, the trial has concluded and the verdict handed down -- the library gets to claim about three hundred thousand pounds in damages (plus the return of the items, obviously) and hakimzadah goes to jail for two years -- plus paying legal costs, restitution, so on and so forth. (the two links above are to two very similar stories, by the way; i just included them both for the sake of completion.) apparently, hakimzadah pleaded that he had a psychological "compulsion" to steal from the library to perfect his own personal collection. apparently hakimzadah had also stolen from the bodleian (which has to be pretty pissed it didn't notice what was going on -- i see no note of whether their items are returned or paid for) and previously from the royal asiatic society which let him off if he paid for the mutilated and lost items.

now, hakimzadah, as far as i can see, has absolutely no excuse for what he did. he was a topline academic, access to research collections across the world for basically anything he might need to get his hands on outside, maybe, of the vatican archives which i hear are a pain to get into. he had money to buy more or less anything he wanted for his own collection which was, so the article said, the fourth best in his field in the world.

so we don't really get to play with the book of the dead, or the language of the birds, or the nine gates of the kingdom of shadows (which is okay by me!), but do not mess with our stuff.