Teen Time at the Library

    We're thrilled to introduce Teen Time in the Library! On Wednesdays and Fridays from 2:30-5:00, we're taking our large Russell Room and making it into a Teen Lounge, a place for local teens to be themselves and have fun.  It's open to grades 6-12, and just in case you're wondering, during Teen Time:

• Food and Drink are welcome in that part of the library.
• Some new, comfy chairs have been bought just for our teens!
• We have lots of plugs available for laptops, iPods and whatever.
• You can play music or other media to share with your friends.
• It's your space to spend as you want. Relax, play games, spend time with your friends, study, whatever you like! 
• Our librarians are happy to help you find materials for school or personal projects, just ask!
• You can get dropped off by the bus after school!

    Teen Time in the Library came about after we visited the local high school and spoke with several classes about what would make a good teen area. While we were there we discovered just how eager many students were for a place to simply spend free time with friends. Well, we knew we could help there, and set about getting new furniture and a few small touches to make our Russell Room feel a little more comfortable.
      We hope you enjoy having the space, and please let us know if there are ways we could make it better. This is just the first step we're taking for Teens, and we're always happy to hear ways to improve even further in the future!

Teen Tech Week Prizes!

Don't forget that this Friday the 9th at 3 the library is having a Tech Petting Zoo, with a door prize. We'll be seeing all kinds of older technology that led to the wonderful gadgets you carry today.  Compared to today's Mp3-Compatible Smartphones you'd be amazed at the lengths we went to just for music and other entertainment. It's a pretty eye-opening look at technology, and at least one visitor will be walking away with a truly fun and retro door prize!  It all starts Friday at 3:00, we look forward to seeing you there!

Online Privacy, Just what's going on behind the scenes?

I recently read an article discussing how the mass amounts of information that companies collect about us, online and elsewhere, and how it gets used. What stunned me in the article was how frankly they listed information was available to companies, and just how MUCH was available.  To sum it up for you all, here's the list of things that Were being tracked, and those that could have been:

Were Being Tracked:

• Use of Credit Cards and Coupons
• Surveys you have done, refunds you have mailed away for.
• Any Call the customer help line
• Any email from them you've ever opened.
• Any time you visit their website
• Your age
• Whether you are married and have kids
• Which part of town you live in
• How long it takes you to drive to the store
• Your estimated salary
• Whether you’ve moved recently
• What credit cards you carry in your wallet
• What Web sites you visit.  

What else they COULD track, but would not say if they did or did not:

• Your ethnicity
• Your job history
• The magazines you read
• If you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced
• The year you bought (or lost) your house
• Where you went to college
• What kinds of topics you talk about online, 
• Whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal or applesauce
• Your political leanings
• Your reading habits
• Your charitable giving and...
• The number of cars you own.

And this is all just one company, and what they can buy from their sources. I'm sure there's a lot more information out there that's been collected. Some of what's listed above I found pretty startling. The truth is, allowing companies to gather our information is a mixed blessing, it does let them better target their services more accurately to each of us. At the same time, it doesn't seem right that there's an industry set up out of sneakily gathering your personal information, and then selling it off to companies, and that's exactly what's going on today.  The good news is, there are things you can do to take your privacy back!

Most of the information above is being gotten from online sources, and there are plug-ins for most web browsers to help! Adblock, BetterPrivacy, Noscript and Ghostery are all popular ones for Firefox, and can be found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extensions/privacy-security/

Tell us: How concerned with online privacy are you, and what steps do you take to safeguard your private information?

For those interested, the article that got me started on this post was "How Companies Learn Your Secrets" on the New York Times Website. Take a peek at it yourself here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp

Teen Tech Week

It's almost here again, Teen Tech Week!
     I've got a number of interesting tech issues I'll be talking up in the lead-up to Teen Tech Week, but this year we're doing something a little special and giving you a Technology Retrospective.

That is to say, we'll be highlighting a lot of the tech that led up to the modern devices and technologies that we all know and love. It's worth checking out, it's quite amazing when you see just how far we've come!

We'll have technology on display about the library for all of Teen Tech Week, (March 4-10), and we'll be having a special hands-on demonstration and discussion on Old Vs. New Tech on Friday March 9th, running from 3:00-4:30.

Big Things Are Coming

Hello all,
      I want to apologize for not updating the blog recently, we've had a lot of big shifts in the Library of late, and more on the way. I want to let everyone know we have some really exciting stuff coming up for teens in the future, but I can't quite go into details yet. Keep your eyes peeled here though, because have a whole bunch of stuff to share with you coming up!

The NDAA Bill and the Internet

     Some of you may have been hearing about SOPA recently, it's been a pretty heatedly discussed topic of late.  For those who haven't heard of it before, SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill that's currently being debated by congress. The basic idea of the bill is to give the government the power to shut down sites that support making copyrighted works available illegally. Many people seem to be concerned that the wording of the bill goes too far, and that it could put many popular Internet services at risk.

     Now, I don't know many folks that use the Internet quite as much as teens, so naturally I thought this might be of interest to you all. I've included a few links to popular tech sites and their views on the bill, as well as a link to the bill itself. We'd love to hear your take on all of this in our comments.

For more information, look here:

Lifehacker's view on the NDAA

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) view.

The NDAA Bill itself.

Improve Your Google-Fu!

Okay, so I KNOW you can all Google to find what you need, but here's a neat little infographic I got off of one of my Librarian Blogs (Thank you Stephen Abram!) that teaches you Advanced Google Tricks that are especially good for research. There are better ways to search for school info than Google, such as MARVEL, but if you MUST use Google, these tips can help you get to much better information than you'd find without them!

The infographic is too big to fit here, but lots of good google help to be found right here!