TILT #45 Accessible joy from unusual places

Hello. I did a teeny mailing list redesign. Now I am out of the title/subtitle rut I was in with the advent of this new header.

This week I wrap up the Virgo Month of Leisure, the amusingly futile holiday which I “celebrate” every year. I actually managed to toss some of my responsibilities overboard this time around:

• I finished up consulting for the Drupal-based summer reading program I was helping support. Take a look if you want to use some open source summer reading software. Here’s another one, there aren’t many. I learned that I love writing documentation, but also require a work environment with a lot of structure and procedural rigor.
• Passport to Vermont Libraries ended. We decided to scrap the end of the program wrap-up party we’d planned. Too much work, not enough buy-in from others. Turned out once I broached the topic of not doing the wrap-up, the rest of the committee was pretty on board.

At the same time I’m picking up a few new things

• Redesigning the Vermont Library Association website. I built the current one with a small team, looking forward to getting one that is even more suited to what our membership wants.
• Doing some “street team” work for Wikipedia’s #1lib1ref program which is one of my favorite little events. If you’re Wikipedia-curious but haven’t really dipped a toe in, let’s talk.

So on balance, maybe I’m leisure-neutral this time around and not running at a deficit?

Last month I nerded out about… trolls, sort of. I read this article which cast aspersions on my lovely chosen home state saying we have “the most toxic trolls”. I said “Show me the data.” That led to this VPR interview about how to investigate this type of thing, this Jigsaw (Google) project web page, where you could test your own self-selected phrases for “toxicity,” and this tweet which is now my most popular ever.

And the data? Well, the Perspective API’s (questionable) toxicity-ranking is trained up on Wikipedia comments. Which skew a certain way. Why Wikipedia? Well among other reasons, because access to their comments is free. When you are training an artificial intelligence about humanity but you only use content which copyright allows you to use, that’s a problem. An article by Amada Levendowski, How Copyright Law Can Fix Artificial Intelligence’s Implicit Bias Problem, discusses that problem in depth, and how to address it.

Serious copyright nerds should check out the US Copyright Office’s Section 108 discussion document (direct link to 72 page PDF). Now that the Copyright Office is possibly moving away from the Library of Congress, it’s been emboldened to talk like it’s still sharing the values of libraries

Section 108 needs to be updated so that libraries, archives, and museums have a robust, comprehensible, and balanced set of exceptions in order to fulfill their missions.

… without actually doing so. Similarly House Bill 620 looks like it might help educate people about the Americans with Disabilities Act, but actually removes a lot of protections and remedies for people with disabilities. Oppose it.

Library trivia: the Winters-Bellbrook Community Library in Bellbrook Ohio was given to the town by the family of comedian Jonathan Winters. “Winters’ grandfather had a summer home in Bellbrook and purchased the West Franklin Street bank in 1906…. when Winters’ grandfather decided after a month that he no longer wanted the bank, he sold it for $1 to the trustees of Sugarcreek Township and stipulated that it could only be used as a library.” Here’s what the building looked like.

And here’s what it looks like now.

Another reason I needed to politely step away from one of my projects was because I am insistent that projects I work on have accessibility built into them. So if people need to use software that allows them to upload images, for example, ALT tags need to not just be enabled (and often buried in a series of complex menus) but actively encouraged. Are you listening to me Tweetdeck? Along those lines, here is a good howto on how to make sure your LibGuides are maximally accessible. The A11y Project is my goto place when I want to learn more about accessibility topics.

I get grumpy when libraries talk about moving the bulk of their print collections to deep storage. I was interested in the way this article about Arizona State’s archival storage system manages to put a good spin on it: books like archival storage better, if they could be said to like anything. Also librarians like forklifts.

Two more things that brought me an unusual joy:

• This lovely obituary of Ognen Čemerski a linguist and professor who translated Moby Dick into Macedonian, a language lacking maritime terminology.
• These beautiful palimpsests, with a website to learn more about the project.

May you also find some unusual joys this month.

Today in Librarian Tabs is written irregularly by Jessamyn West who also maintains librarian.net. It’s also available in your inbox via TinyLetter. Thanks for reading.