Friday, day 5

Friday was short day, at least the programmed part.  Today was all about policy issues which on the surface might seem dry but the speakers made it anything but!  First Steven Worona gave us the big picture of privacy and security.  He reminded me a lot of Noel Petit in his general manner.  He drove home that you can’t have privacy without security and that you have to balance things.  His main example was that we want everyone to know who the candidates are getting money from but we don’t want anyone to know who we are giving money to — you can’t have it both ways.  He ended with “privacy is a basic human need.” We also looked at 2 scenarios.  The first made me wonder if we have a policy on talking to law enforcement — that mysterious “general counsel” came up again.  Another example about anonymous online chat counseling (something that we’re pondering) made me wonder what we would do if a student submitted a suicidal chat.

Next up was Tracy Mitrano who dove into questions and outlined the key factors/tensions at play here — law, social norms, technology, and market.  We talked a bit about e-discovery and copyright — especially section 110.  Chris from Stanford shared her q&a about this.  Holly from USC shared a link to The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy which in turn links to Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video which gives some examples that I find useful.  She ended with suggesting that institutions have an institutional policy process to guide creation of policies — at it’s simplest has 3 steps:

1. A bigwig asks for a policy on something
   1. do a cost/benefit analysis
2. Gather mid-level folks who will likely implement such a policy.  Have them refine it, but they cannot veto it.
3. Return to the bigwig for a blessing
4. Distribute and educate people about the policy.  It should be an educational experience, not a “club you over the head” experience.

Ok, it’s a 4-step process.

This all ended just after 12 noon.  That was end of the scheduled day.  Then I met up with Fred from Loyla Chicago and Stacey from U Kentucky and Win from SUNY Albany and we headed to the Georgia Tech Info Commons.  I snapped a few photos here and so did Win.  They had some nice computing spaces, a nice practice space, and a nice cafe.  We had lunch on the way back at the flying biscuit.  Good food.  I think the afternoon was the best time I’ve had with a bunch of librarians (they’re all in libraries).