However, those days are past. We now store information in and locate books via an online database, called an OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog). And those old cards, well…
That’s right. We’re getting rid of the old catalog cards. But before they go, I took a last look through them, and found some cool stuff.
From the classics:
To the Hopkins classics:
From the “I’m so glad there’s now a backspace:”
To the “Why is this in our library?”
No, really, why?
And if anyone can tell me what this is, I’d appreciate it. Because IT IS WEIRD:
Somewhere, someone has formed an apocalyptic conspiracy theory about these symbols.
The last thing I found was a stack of Senior Project catalog cards from 1998 and 1999. So hello, old friends.
And so commences Reads of Shame: A Series from your CalarcoLibrarians
This series will consist of Mr. Gette and Ms. Barrows being shamed into reading various books at irregular and inconsistent periods of time. These will be books that we really should have read by this point in our lives (as librarians and as humans), but for shameful, inexcusable reasons, have not. We will shame each other, and we ask the greater Hopkins community to finger point and assign books to us humble, shamed librarians.
For this first non-specific period of time, Ms. Barrows was shamed by herself and Mr. Gette into reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Why is it shameful Ms. Barrows hasn’t read Great Expectations? Maybe because she is obsessed with Mr. Pip, visited England (where she saw a massive Dickens museum display), and secretly watched the bad Ethan Hawke movie once.
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Mr. Gette has been shamed by Ms. Barrows into reading The Hours by Michael Cunningham. Ms Barrows was going on and on about how good it is while talking about how embarrassed she is that she’s never read Mrs. Dalloway (a preview of things to come?). And since Mr. Gette had read some Virginia Woolf in college,and had sort of thought about maybe seeing the movie, he figured maybe he should give the book a try. Plus, he doesn’t read much contemporary fiction, so this should be a change of pace.
The Hours
Reads of Shame, Round 1: Start!
Signing off, Jenny Barrows (does doing bicep curls with Great Expectations count as reading it?) and Kit Gette (who hopes The Hours won’t take hours).
Your neighborhood Calarco Librarians have recently decided to post bi-weekly highlights of new books added to our collection. Besides increasing our already high level of awesomeness, we are ensuring that you (yes, YOU) will be kept up to date with the finest or our fiction and non-fiction.
For a full listing of the library’s fabulous new books, please visit our What’s New LibGuide (curated by Debbie Dubois).
Monday saw the conclusion of the American Library Association’s Choose Privacy Week, and this is the first year that the Calarco Library was involved with Choose Privacy Week. We created a LibGuide, Glog and these blog entries as a means to inform the Hopkins community. In addition to these collected sources of information, Mrs. Dubois also created a survey to help us learn what Hopkins students and faculty understand (or misunderstand) about online privacy.
Of survey respondents, 38.5% were faculty members and 61.5% were students, with the largest percentage being 7th and 9th graders (23.1% each). 73.1% of respondents said they have a social networking account. The examples displayed for this question were Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest. It would be interesting to find out how respondents would define and describe social networking. If an agreed upon definition, rather than examples, was included in the survey, would more respondents have answered yes?
Regarding how often respondents visit their respective social networking accounts, 36% answered Very often (daily). However, 24% answered Hardly ever and represented the second largest group. Why do people sign up for social networking accounts and then decide not to regularly incorporate the services into their routines? About half (45.8%) of respondents state that they spend the majority of time looking at what other people have posted. Do people sign up for Facebook, Twitter, etc. primarily to create a presence online, or to keep track of other people?
We incorporated a few T/F questions into the survey, one being, “Setting my profile to private keeps the information I post on my social networking page completely safe because only my friends can view it.” Although 78.3% answered False (woohoo!), that leaves 21.7% of respondents who are confused about privacy and security settings. Does this matter if these are the same individuals who hardly utilize their accounts? In addition, are ALL respondents aware of privacy complexities such as third-party applications, location based services, targeted advertising and more? Individuals may be “using” their social networking accounts more often than they think; just because you do not update your profile picture or tweet everyday does not necessarily mean you rarely use your account.
Another T/F question asked, “You always have control of all pictures of yourself posted online, even ones you do not post.” A large percentage (87.5%) of participants answered False, which indicates that most respondents are at least aware of the need to check and possible change privacy settings related to photos and tagging.
The goal of Choose Privacy Week is not to convince people to delete their Facebook accounts and blogs, or to make people feel they must read pages of “Terms and Conditions” before signing up with a service. The goal is to raise awareness of the risks and responsibilities that are entwined with the advancements made in web-based technologies, and to inform the community of the library’s mission to provide information and uphold the values of privacy.
I would like to leave you with one last video related to privacy. John Palfry and Urs Gasser published Born Digital in 2010, and also piloted the Digital Natives project, intended to understand and support youth growing up in a digital age. Project participants created videos based on individual chapters of Born Digital, including this one that explains the concept of Digital Dossier
We hope our Choose Privacy Week observance encouraged you to take a closer look at your digital dossier. Do you feel more in control of your web-based identity? Comments, questions and suggestions for improvements are always welcome. Please comment on the blog or send an e-mail to jbarrows@hopkins.edu.
