Australia Day in the sun

Docklands Art

Yesterday, Australia celebrated its National Day with a public holiday. Much was written about Australian values and acclaimed actor, Geoffrey Rush was feted as the Australian of the Year.
Charlie Teo's speech earlier in the week was replayed where he asked Australians to celebrate migrants and had a not so subtle dig at the Tall Poppy syndrome and how it has impacted on his career as neuro-scientist.

Themes of the day included racism in Australian society, compassion to migrants and the endless replay of the Prime Minister, stumbling and losing her shoe, whilst being unceremoniously thrust into her car while Aboriginal activitists intimidated her party in Canberra.

Pavement Art

Yet when I visited downtown Melbourne yesterday, wearing my New Zealand cap, most people were happy and enjoying the beautiful sunshine and activities. People of all races and colours were out and about chatting to everyone. Even the security guards were looking happy and relaxed.
So in spite of what happened to Julia and Tony, the rest of us enjoyed the day. But it is important to discuss these issues and, although this debate is endless, enjoy the role migrants have played in the development of the Australia we live in now.
And now the PM's shoe will be auctioned off to raise funds for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy - perhaps a fitting end to a rather disgraceful incident. Australian's taking the mickey perhaps!

Compliments

Do you ever compliment someone who does you a service? Or do you just accept that if they do their job in a friendly and helpful manner, that's what should happen and you would only comment if you didn't receive good service.
I received 2 written compliments yesterday. I don't know what I did differently from other days - it must have been that my clients were themselves happy and were sufficiently moved to write it down. It wasn't that I had a good night sleep (not likely given the hot weather in Melbourne).
Given that libraries have had a bit of bad publicity lately ( see theTelegraph, UK and News.com.au articles, I was very moved to receive some positive, written comments. It makes all the other times worthwhile.
So thanks to those lovely people for positive day.
But....
I do have to ask you to pay fines and charges and I do have to kick you off the computer if your behaviour is bad. And I do have to ask you to take your phone conversation outside if you annoy someone.
That's also part of my job!

Privacy, Piracy and Hacking

The Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" seems about true at the moment.

As there is world wide, 24 hr blackout of Wikipedia (English site)in protest at the US SOPA Bill, other sites such as Flickr are encouraging users to blackout their photos also.
As a user of Blogspot I also wonder what these laws will do. Do I have to worry about linking to someone's else's content, even if they have an explicit "Share" link on their site? Am I supposed to ask permission every time I review a book and link to a picture of the book cover on the blog? If I quote an article on an online site will I be infringing US Copyright laws, if these bills pass? As a resident of one country outside the US, will my authorities crumble if they are asked to extradite me.
My content is my own, with occasional links to Youtube, published content in the news services and occasionally linked pictures with reference to the originator.
And yet, as someone who has recently been a victim of someone hacking into one of my services, provided online, do I allow criminal gangs and the odd young person to take my online information (identity) as easily as they seem to be able. What role does the social networking and service providers take in trying to preserve my identity information and freeze accounts that have been hacked? "Interesting" times indeed!
Do I need to ask all my providers to ensure I have 12 character passwords that have a mixture of Lower/uppercase/numbers/special characters by forcing this in the creation and maintenance of passwords. We do this at my library but it is noticeably absent on sites such as gmail, yahoo, blogspot, flickr, facebook etc. They tell you to have strong passwords but don't enforce it that much.
And what else can we do - ask for random number generators for each service, like my banks are now providing to (of course) Business customers!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation people have some interesting arguments! So does Crikey, though I would put piracy at a much higher level than 40%..

Overdue Library Books

Last night must have been a quiet night for TV news, or perhaps ABC were trying to give us a good news story. The Ivanhoe Librarian was pleased to announce the return of a long-overdue item (some 28 years overdue!)
As a librarian its pleasing to see items returned even one as long-overdue.

As a librarian I'm also ashamed (slightly) of having an non-returned item on my personal book shelves that was issued to me in 1978 (33 years ago!).
Most public libraries weed their collections regularly so even if I returned this item, it would only be chucked out. Many of my customers find it hard to understand why we don't keep all the authors they read 20-40 years ago. Some borrowers find it difficult to get the same sort of stories they have enjoyed for many years - too much bad language (The Slap), Drug use (The Slap), weird people or places and not the Midsomer Murder type tranquility & "gentle" violence. I get asked for a "good story" all the time, something I sympathize with!
Now I'm starting to find the same problem, with the favourite authors of my youth dying (even if their children are writing in their stead). Anne McCaffrey (Dragons of Pern), Isaac Asimov, Dick Francis, Virginia Andrews, etc are all clutching their pens at the pearly gates or beyond. Ursula Le Guin, a favourite is not seen on the shelves quite so much either.
But there are lots of good authors out there. Try Australian authors,  warm and fuzzy's like Di Morrissey, sparse and challenging like Helen Garner or Richard Flanagan. Ask your local librarian for reading help!
The good books are still coming into the library!