The Librarian's Lounge

Phil Zimbardo on TED

I was watching this TED talk earlier in which Phil Zimbardo talks about the "Lucifer effect":

What strikes me is his list of the "7 social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil" which are as follows:

1. Mindlessly taking the first small step
2. Dehumanization of others
3. De-individuation of self (anonymity)
4. Diffusion of personal responsibility
5. Blind obedience to authority
6. Uncritical conformity to group norms
7. Passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference

This is my food for thought for today.

In other news, my Dell support contact has managed to successfully figure out the problem I was having with corrupted files on my laptop and has helped me get it back into perfect working order. I'm so thankful I was put in touch with him. This experience, which was handled by the Global Escalation Management Team, was entirely different from the first support experience I had with Dell. This tech was extremely knowledgeable, patient, and determined to help me out. And I didn't even have to reformat my drive.

Environmental issues

I just finished reading The Body Toxic by Nena Baker. What a frightening book. Frightening, but full of essential information that every American needs to know about what the FDA doesn't do to protect us from harmful chemicals in the products we buy and use every day. I wish I had seen the extensive notes in the back of the book before I started reading it. As it is, I'm planning to now go back and look at the articles and sites Baker references throughout this book. The focus of this book is primarily on chemicals that are known as endocrine disrupters and how our daily exposure to them affects our physiology and, in the case of women, even the health of our grandchildren. Whereas in Europe they have developed REACH to protect consumers from unnecessary exposure to some toxic chemicals, we in the US do not have a similar organization protecting us. Baker takes an in-depth look at the effects and uses of commonly-used chemicals in manufacturing and agriculture in the US such as atrazine, phthlalates, PBDEs, bisphenol A, PFOA, and PFOS. She also explores how the influence of large corporations on our government has been keeping the US behind relative to many other developed countries in identifying toxic chemicals and banning their use. She further looks at cases where big business has retaliated against scientists reporting on their discoveries of the effects of these chemicals with "damage control" campaigns and cries of "junk science." After reading this, I have a renewed appreciation for how careful consumers need to be about who they believe when it comes to these issues, and how important it is for all of us to be informed about the context of anything we read, including any unmentioned conflicts of interest that may exist in any author's, website's, government's, or organization's background. Baker's book is incredibly eye-opening and I highly recommend getting ahold of a copy. Here she is giving a presentation about her book:

As a person concerned about our environment, one thing that I try to minimize is how much I throw away and what can be recycled. But I also am concerned, as everyone is these days, about my money, which is why I've chosen to take advantage of my health insurance's mail-order prescription plan. But when I receive packages from Aetna Rx Home Delivery such as the one shown here, where massive amounts of waste is generated by the shipping of a very small product, I am just appalled. And the fact that my complex doesn't offer recycling makes it that much more difficult to tolerate it.

Speaking of recycling, I recently heard about RecycleBank, a company that pays its users to recycle materials from their home. What a great idea. I'd love to see this in my neighborhood.

Harassing the Customers

Around 1 minute 50 seconds into this clip is a real gem that speaks to a of experiences I've had as both a patron and librarian, bookseller and customer:

There is a very fine line that exists between customer service and harassment, especially in the world of books. Whereas in other retail areas such as clothes or shoes, generally customers want and expect prompt service, bookstore customers and library patrons are, more often than not, people who like to browse and like to have some privacy in the process. It's not that they don't want help, but that usually they want to be the initiators. They like to know that assistance is available and certainly want it to be friendly, but they do not want to anyone hanging around them in their pursuits. This doesn't mean they're plotting to shoplift and you don't need to hire a greeting brigade for "loss prevention" purposes. I've seen it enough times in action to know that a very hands-on overly-attentive staff can have a chilling effect on the very people they are trying to serve.

I find it disturbing that those libraries discussing the advantages of following a "retail model" are rarely talking about how such practices may negatively impact patron behavior by indirectly creating more barriers to information access. They seem to be too busy wowing library conference goers with photos of their new merchandising techniques to mention the brutal weeding of the collections, the paraprofessionals working in place of professional librarians, or how outsourcing is leading to the privatization of public libraries, let alone any further trampling of people's first amendment rights.

This same episode of Black Books has another funny-because-it's-true segment in it - the ridiculous rules sometimes found in public places.

 

I think public libraries are more susceptible to this problem these days than independent bookstores only because those few independents that haven't been forced out by the big chain stores can't afford to alienate their customers by way of inane quirkiness anymore. Michael Stephens brought photos of similar rules to his presentation on Library 2.0 last winter in Phoenix. What I love about the clip from the show is that the bookstore owner can't even read his own handwriting or remember what the rules are, yet they're still hanging on the wall. I think that happens often in libraries, where sometimes rules have been in place for so long that no one can even remember why they were put into affect to begin with.

P.S. - If you want to watch this whole episode, here's clip 1 - (there are 3 altogether; the first I've embedded is part 3 actually, so watch them from the bottom up). This is quite an amusing show for anyone who's ever been in the business!

Wired's Latest Wiki

Wired has posted a new wiki that provides tips on being a whistle blower. Since it's a wiki, anyone can edit it. Do you have some tips or advice you'd like to pass on?

This made my day!

How's this for a cheap laptop? Now, if only it had an Nvidia graphics card so I could use it for Second Life...

Year of the Fire Pig

I stopped eating beef about 8 years ago. The catalyst for change was a particular documentary on PBS in which they showed how cows were being dunked, almost drowned, in these chemical baths to keep them disease-free. I don't think it was the same show, but also around that time I saw another program on PBS in which a calf was separated from her mother who was put in the back of a truck to be taken to the slaughterhouse. The calf cried and cried and chased the truck, trying desperately to keep up with it, as the mother returned the calls. It made me cry. The combination of these two scenes were my last straw. And I knew then that my life as an omnivore would forever be a tenuous thing: I knew it was only a matter of time and documentaries until I stopped eating meat altogether.

So there I was tonight, innocently catching up with episode 6 of This American Life, having no idea w
what it would be about. But from the first few moments in which they were filming a mouse being used in an experiment using electric shocks, I sensed this would not be one of my more favorite episodes. Memorable, yes. I believe the first part of this program which showed us viewers what a modern pig farm is like, has just gotten me off pork for life.

It's not like what I saw was any big revelation. Being concerned about animal rights has always been a part of my character and I do my little activist things to make a statement about it. I stopped eating at McDonald's when PETA did a campaign about all the inhumane practices in the factory farms from which they bought their chickens several years ago. I always look for the "not tested on animals" labels when I buy products and regularly gripe to myself that you just can't get away from companies like Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, which still do animal testing, when I'm shopping at Target or my local Fry's. I carry my little pocket guide from NAVS with me to help me make informed purchases. I'm dying to get to Best Friends someday to volunteer. It goes on and on.  I support a bunch of animal rights non-profits, particularly those related to helping primates. Their newsletters keep me in the know about current animal rights issues and supplement the reading I do at the library.

But it's one thing to read the stories and another, at least for me, to see the visuals. That's what really gets me. And seeing those pigs tonight, in pens so small that they can't even turn around, these genetically-altered pigs that could never even survive outdoors - that was enough. Like Eddie, the sound guy on this episode who gave up all meat altogether after this shoot, I am altered, and I don't say this lightly, permanently by what I've seen.

It's funny to me how "the last straw" happens, that culminating effect of having your buttons pushed over and over until you just can't take it anymore. It seems somehow fitting that this should happen in the year of the fire pig.

I just know it's going to be poultry next.

Should libraries be supportive of DRM?

From Wired comes this post that questions publically-funded institutions should be buying subscriptions to companies that support the use of digital rights management software.