Our notions about privacy and just what about ourselves we can keep private are rapidly becoming obsolete in an age when massive commercial databases seem to share information without restraint. Why, one wonders then, is this such a problem for federal law enforcement?

But I do like the ZIP code information along with the address and phone number.

ALA currently has about 61,600 personal members. Their reasons for joining, their reasons for renewing membership or dropping out, and the ways they choose to participate vary. As much as many of us dyed-in-the-wool ALA members wish all members would vote, that is unlikely. A more realistic goal might be to bring it up to the 55% turnout rate in the most recent U.S. presidential election.

Some library workers have found ways to contribute to the profession through blogs, by forming online groups, and even by producing online conferences. They are doing this outside of ALA structures. A truly inclusive, vibrant ALA–one serving all its members well–will be open to complementary approaches and will amplify members' accomplishments, whether they have been achieved through time-tested structures or grassroots initiatives.

ALA needs to grow that 23 percent to 55 percent and on. I believe ALA can do that by developing additional meaningful ways library workers can participate in and contribute to ALA. We need to experiment boldly and be open to new ways of doing business and new uses of communication technologies. If members are involved and engaged in their association, they will almost certainly be more likely to vote in its elections. This is a key part of the platform I am running on for ALA president.

Here goes, five things you don't know about me.

1. Several years ago the engine went on the 1984 Pontiac Sunbird I inherited from a dear aunt who died in 1999 at age 92. In fifteen years she had put 22,000 miles on that car. It died on me a few miles short of the north end of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a bit more than 100 miles from home. It happened late afternoon on a Friday in September. At first I thought it had just overheated. But after a while it became clear that the engine would never run again. I was able to get a faint signal on my cell phone up there. But it turned out that it was also dying. I managed to complete two calls on it–one to AAA and the other to my wife telling her I didn't know when I would get home, nor how. The sun set. Fortunately I had been away for a few days so I had clothes in addition to the ones I was wearing. As the sun set, the temperature dropped, probably into the upper 50s. Good thing I was able to add clothing. After getting permission from the US Park Police to bring a tow truck onto the Blue Ridge Parkway (cars only, no commercial vehicles permitted) the guy AAA sent arrived to rescue me. It was nearly 9:00 when we got to his garage in Waynesboro, VA. He took dropped me off at a mom and pop motel and I was able to get an inexpensive room. I was also able to squeeze one last call out of my cell phone, to arrange for my wife to pick me up in the morning so we could rush home, change clothes, and then backtrack 50 miles to get to a wedding in which our oldest was a bridesmaid. We now have AAA Plus (towing up to 100 miles), I have had several new cell phones since then (have you found the one I lost in April 2002?), and the ancient Sunbird, with a rebuilt engine, never strays more than about 60 miles from home–within the AAA covered towing distance!

2. My tonsils were removed when I was thirty years old. I used to get several step infections a year; since then I have one at most every few years. So it worked. Nevertheless, if you have to have that done, I recommend that you do it when you are younger.

3. I have appeared (I wouldn't say performed) in the center ring of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. A guy who lived down the street when I was a kid and with whom I was in school from kindergarten through high school ended up working as an accountant and manager for the circus. He traveled with it and lived on the circus train. When we lived in Chicago and it came to town he got us complimentary tickets. Some years later after we moved to Williamsburg and the circus came nearby, he got us complimentary tickets–third row, center ring. Traffic getting there was bad and we arrived a little late. I had barely taken my seat when a clown bounded up the stairs, took me by the wrist and dragged me into the center ring. Thousands of people watched him try to pose me in various one-footed ways that required more balance than I could muster. I don't know if the act was finished or if the clown (a big international star, featured on the cover of the program) despaired over his choice for a straight man; but after briefly amusing thousands with my inability to do what he wanted me to do, he gave me a lollipop and sent me back to my seat. There I found four people who were pretended as much as they could that they had never seen me in their lives. My wife muttered, “I hope nobody we know is here.” It could have been worse. I think the next clown and the things he did with a guy he dragged from the audience made my family grateful that I was picked first. He got much bigger laughs, but was also placed in a much more embarrassing situation. There but for the grace of God go I…

4. When I was about twelve that same neighbor who years later gave my family circus tickets invited me to a Boy Scouts meeting. I haven't been to one since–just not my thing. I fit in better in the circus, actually.

5. I have a bachelor's degree in English, a master's degree in English, and a master's degree in library science. These make me the family slacker in the formal education department. My brother earned his MD at Harvard and my sister earned her PhD at Berkeley. I'm a middle child; I even earned my degrees in the middle of the country.

Last summer Stephen Colbert demonstrated that Wikipedia's policy of allowing anonymous revision allows, at least briefly, for truthiness to prevail over fact. It was amusing and pro- and anti-Wikipedia partisans found evidence in the incident to buttress their views (or, perhaps, their own truthiness?).

There are better illustrations of the the weakness and the strength of WIkipedia policy and practice. John Seigenthaler dramatically exposed its weakness in his November, 2005, USA Todayarticle about the character assasination attempted on him in his Wikipedia biography.
More recently in a piece in the November 17, 2006, Chronicle of Higher Education, Ann Kirschner of CUNY related her experience of creating a Wikipedia artcile on Ala Gertner, “who was hanged publicly at Auschwitz in 1945 for her role in the only armed uprising at the camp.” Others edited and added information to her article. She concluded that “After my experience receiving an excellent assist from this anonymous knowledge army, I'm prepared to believe that Wikipedia's millions of eyes will continue its evolution and improve its quality.” Both tales can be interpreted as demonstrations that Wikipedia's editorial approach works. One, however, is also a cautionary tale.

That approach does not, however work uniformly. For example, the article on novelist Ian McEwan cries out for the treatment Kirschner's article has received. It focuses on tabloid controversies about his personal life and his alleged plagiarism in Atonement. As for analysis of his works, his narrative technique, his character development, his contribution to the art of the novel–not a word. The article cites awards his works have won as if those facts substitute for analysis. The editing history shows numerous minor changes, few of them more substantive than correcting an ISBN. Wikipedia simply does not provide insight about McEwan's notable body of work. Furthermore, the writing wierdly yokes the imaginary and the biographical (“Henry Perowne, the main character, lives in a house on a square in central London where McEwan himself lives after relocating from Oxford.”) One sentence ambigouosly implies that the still living McEwan has been “the focus of a posthumous controversy.” The Wikipedia process isn't working on this article!

That brings me back to Wissner-Goss's new software. NewScientist.com reports that this Google-like tool

assesses page popularity by examining the number of other pages that link to it and also the popularity of those pages. Another algorithm, that examines the number of links needed to get from one article to another.

It quotes Wissner-Gross as saying

“If I have a medical student who's particularly interested in neuroscience, I could custom-generate a list of reading suited to them,” he says.

This rests on faith in the Wikipedia editorial process and faith that Wikipedia’s users, in their selections that generate articles’ popularity, add as much value as editors added to Kirschner’s article. What if someone uses this tool to generate a Wikipedia reading list on contemporary British fiction and the list includes the aeanemicnemic McEwan article? This places responsibility for judging content value where it ultimately belongs–with the end user, with the reader.

When Wikipedia is good, it can be very good. See, for example, its article on hurricanes. Then it can be very bad as it certainly was for a time with the Seigenthaler article. And it can be something less than mediocre as it is today with the McEwan article. And that leads to the weakness of Wissner-Goss's new software–it limits itself to the Wikipedia universe of information. It may be Google-like, but its is less useful than Google since Google searches a larger universe. Yet, as useful as Google is (I think I have used it to advantage half a dozen times so far today), it misses much of the information universe. So far, the best mediator between the vast online and the vast print information worlds is the library and its helpful staff who understand the strengths and limitations of both world and can help others find needed information without limiting the search to either universe.