Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

It’s no secret that I think internet filters are not only unethical and counter to everything librarians believe in, but that filters also don’t work for crap.  And now the filters are finally fighting back.

Some customers of FortiGuard, WebSense, and Barracuda (filtering products marketed to schools and libraries) are reporting that the internet filters are blocking the San Jose Public Library’s new website, sjpl.org, from their customers and marking our library’s website as spyware, spam, and/or “inappropriate.”  Why?  No way to know and no ideas why.  Filtering companies don’t tell their customers or anyone else how and why things are classified the way they are.  It’s considered a “trade secret.”  This lack of transparency is one of the problems I have with the technology behind filtering software–you don’t know what’s there and never will.

While of course I don’t actually believe the filters targeted me (in case anyone missed that), this is a lovely and personal case example of how filters don’t work.  Filters mis-classify sites and block constitutionally protected content all the time.  And in case anyone is going to argue that perhaps the people who owned our domain before we did perhaps mis-used it, they did not.  There was nothing at the domain for over two years before we had it–it was simply empty and unused. Before that it was a squatter site for a couple of years…one of those nasty link-ridden sites we all hate so much.  And before that, it was the library’s website (they lost the domain somehow before I was hired).

If you want to read more about how much I think filters are unethical and ineffective at doing what parents and politicians think they do, you can read my chapter on internet filtering and intellectual freedom in the brand new Library Technology Report I coauthored with by Jason Griffey and Eli Neiburger: Privacy & Freedom of Information in 21st Century Libraries. Or you can read the two longer posts I’ve written about filtering: “SJPL Internet Filtering Study – Testing Results,” and “Why internet filters don’t work and why libraries who filter are wrong.” Or view the presentation I gave at the 2009 Internet @ Schools conference: Trying Not to Filter.

The new website for the San Jose Public Library has finally launched!

You can see the site at SJPL.org.

The major changes that this new site represent:

• a new URL, sjpl.org
• a split from the combined website we previously had (with the SJSU Library)
• a new design, created by our web librarian Nate Hill
• new site content
• new information architecture
• new content management system (Drupal)
• a new way for staff to update content directly through a customized, simplified WYSIWYG editor

So you know…it’s not like it was a huge project or anything.

Other significant highlights of the site:

• Every single staff member at SJPL has been asked and empowered to create blog posts for the new site.  That means everyone.  No limiting by classification, specialization, or degree-holding nonsense.  We’re all smart.  We all have things we know about and want to share with our library users.  We currently have over 300 staff set up to create content and I couldn’t be happier.
• Content is not pre-moderated by any web staff.  When staff click “Save,” it goes up.  And rightly so.
• We offer commenting as a function on almost every part of our site, and user comments are not pre-moderated either.  Again, rightly so.
• We strove for minimalism and simplicity in both design and content whenever possible.
• We don’t use the words “database” or “OPAC.”  We chose words that our users actually told us they wanted us to use.
• We are making  heavy use of RSS feed content.  Take our branch library webpages as an example, e.g. West Valley.  You’ve got RSS populating the next upcoming events, the blog posts from the staff, and the newest items in that branch library’s collection.  Go dynamic content!

This launch is the culmination of a three year project.  I want to thank the current members of the Digital Futures web team (Tim Reif, Hilary Langhorst, Nate Hill, and Robert Sese) for busting their rear ends to see this thing through.  I know I bribed you with food and caffeine on occasion, but hey–a manager’s got to have her tricks.  Every ounce of energy we possess has gone into this project, and it is beyond satisfying to see it go live.

There will be more changes and enhancements in the days and months ahead, but for now – a *deep* sigh of relief.  And a beer.  Or two.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately doing the final stages of project planning and management for the launch of the new San Jose Public Library website (launching soon, I promise!).  This is the culmination of a 3 year project, from the earliest stages of planning and hoping to the final stages of a completely redesigned site (courtesy of Nate Hill), running on a new CMS (Drupal of course), with mostly new content and a lot of content removed, and we’ve turned over all content maintenance directly to the staff.

The coolest thing, in my humble opinion, is that we’re asking all of our staff to write content (in the form of blog posting) that shows up throughout the site.  Why is that cool?  First, I do mean all–pages, librarians, aids, managers, clerks, library assistants…from all branches and departments.  We’re not choosing who gets to write based on classification or degree-status.  To me, that’s only right, but for some reason it seems to surprise a lot of library people.  Second, we’re a rather large library and have 300 staff already signed up to write for us.  That is a lot of staff!  Oh, did I mention we’re not pre-moderating either?  When staff click ‘Save,’ it’s up live on the site.  We trust them.

What I’ve discovered about myself as a project manager as I work through this gargantuan project is that I am rather informal in the way I tackle things.  We’ve got an actual to-do list, which changes daily.  People sign up for what they’re responsible for, do it, and I talk to everybody daily to see where we’re at.  This too is informal, e.g. over coffee at Philz in the morning.  But no project management software is being used, no fancy tracking spreadsheets (I started with one but gave it up).

We currently have an 8 page to-do list for our Digital Futures team right now, with the scary big issues listed at the top (also listed on my white board — see photo) and the more detail-oriented stuff listed below that.  And you know what?  It works.  And what is the lesson I take away from all of this?

It doesn’t have to be fancy to work.

I think there is an inherent expectation that we’re supposed to use fancy tools to track projects, progress, and staff time expenditures.  And granted, those tools are cool…and make for impressive show-and-tells to the management.  But if doing something simpler works, don’t choose the complicated option just to look more impressive.  Simple is always better.

The other thing I’m learning about myself as a project manager is the following:

Trust your staff.

I realized the other day that I do actually trust my staff to be doing what they’re supposed to be doing.  I’m not asking them for a checked-off list every day of what they’ve accomplished, or riding them on arbitrary sub-deadlines.  They know when we go live, they know the work that needs to be done, and they’re budgeting their own time, burning the candle at both ends to meet that deadline, and letting me know when it doesn’t seem possible.  Our staff, all of them–not just Digital Futures, were hired because they had a skill set we wanted.  They are professionals and we trust them to do their jobs.  And that’s my job–to trust them to do their jobs, and to remove any and all barriers as they pop up along the way.  And there have been a few.

It’s weird to me that my job no longer involves the direct creation of content.  I’m not coding any more.  I’m not writing for the web any more.  I’m the way-maker, the barrier-smack-down-er, the black ops ninja style manager who gets things through that no one thought would get through.  There must be something to this whole ‘trusting your staff’ phenomenon, yes?  To keeping things easy, straight-forward, and efficient.  So, to all the fancy management theory and software to make you more efficient and track your employees better, I say: Screw it. Do your job and let others do theirs. We all get more done.