On October 23, 2008 I gave a talk at Netspeed 2008 titled Hackers in the Library. The talk was designed to build awareness regarding information security threats in libraries and to dispel the myth that “nobody would want to hack a library.”

In this presentation I tell many stories of actual security incidents that I have encountered in various libraries and punctuate these stories with reports from the media of similar events in libraries around the world.

The slides for the presentation are now available for download in MS Powerpoint (PPT) format. The slides include embedded notes covering the content of my speech and additional commentary and links. I have also included some questions and answers that have come up after the talk.

Here is a CSS recipe to display any ordered or unordered list in multiple columns.


<style>
.fourColumns > li {
min-width: 25%;
float: left;
}
/* This will clear the floating in standards compliant browers... might not work in IE */
.fourColumns:after {
display: block;
content: '&nbsp;';
clear: both;
}
</style>
<ol class="fourColumns">
<li>An item </li>
<li>Another item </li>
<li>A different item</li>
<li>Item four </li>
<li>etc </li>
<li>An itme </li>
<li>An item </li>
<li>Another item </li>
<li>A different item</li>
<li>Item four </li>
<li>etc </li>
<li>An itme </li>
<li>An item </li>
<li>Another item </li>
<li>A different item</li>
<li>Item four </li>
<li>etc </li>
<li>An itme </li>
</ol>


That all becomes

1. An item
2. An item
3. Another item
4. A different item
5. Item four
6. etc
7. An itme
8. An item
9. An item
10. An item
11. Another item
12. A different item
13. Item four
14. etc
15. An itme
16. An item
17. An item
18. An item
19. Another item
20. A different item
21. Item four
22. etc
23. An itme
24. An item
25. An item
26. An item
27. Another item
28. A different item
29. Item four
30. etc
31. An itme
32. An item

Today, February 12, is Darwin Day.

Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin — the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.

See also, the Darwin Day entry on Wikipedia.

Word on the street is that Ezproxy, the remote access solution for libraries, is to be acquired by OCLC. I predict a change in the licensing and potential litigation for users in the future. More to the point, this should be seen as a call for an open-source equivalent.

For years ezproxy has been an outstanding solution for providing library patrons with remote access to licensed web resources. It has been dirt cheap with excellent support. Yet, at the same time the documentation is poor and the configuration bizarre. I know, I administered a large, complicated, ezproxy for a library consortium for many years.

With all strengths and weaknesses combined, ezproxy was head-and-shoulders above any competitor. Ezproxy’s well-earned popularity meant that there was really no advantage for anyone to create an open-source equivalent. However, now that it is to be acquired by a large library vendor, we can expect many reasons to emerge. The quality of support will likely change over time. The licensing is likely to become complex.

I believe that either a Java application or a apache module with a management tool for building, managing, and distributing the rules-sets for specific web resources is in order. Apache would be interesting as it already has an API for doing authentication/authorization and could be integrated with federated identity through emerging projects that would be seperate (that is to say, ezproxy wouldn’t need to support these… apache will). This is also true of Java in some sense as well as many Java Application Servers have identity management components that would help with this. But they are not open-source (generally speaking… some specific ones are).

This awesome short film on YouTube came to my attention because it is tagged with the word “librarian” (I’ve got an RSS feed that shows all “library” videos on YouTube). Apparently, the whole thing was created in less than 48 hours: the whole thing. It was an entry in the UNLV 48 Hour Film Festival. Wow! I think everyone with an interest in film-making should go out and make a video answering the question: “If you travelled back in time and got stuck, what would you do?”