Librarian Fetish

It is about time someone made the Librarian Fetish work for them, besides the Hot Swedish Librarians and the naughty librarian dress-up!

Shh...Library launches sex hotline

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- This isn't the typical whispering you might expect to hear at a library.

Vienna's City Hall has launched a "sex hotline" to raise money for the capital's main public library, officials said Tuesday.

It's unusual, but it's not particularly raunchy: Callers pay 39 euro cents (53 U.S. cents) a minute to listen to an actress read breathless passages from erotica dating to the Victorian era.

City Hall set up the hotline earlier this month to help the library raise cash for planned remodeling and expansion, Austrian media reported.

Anne Bennent, a famous Austrian stage and film star, reads passages from the Vienna library's collection of 1,200 works of erotic fiction from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the library said.

Officials said the hotline would be operational through May 31.

More Censorship

It is sad that this sort of thing has become almost unremarkable because it happens to frequently. I wouldn't want to be a young lesbian in Bentonville, Arkansas.

City Threatened with Suit over Library's "Obscene" Book on Lesbian Sex

Intellectual Freedom in an International World

A Chinese political prisoner is suing Yahoo (in a Northern California court) for disclosing his identity to the Chinese government, leading to his enprisonment.

Mostly we've been talking about IF issues in the US, but how does it travel?

More Virtual Reference Desk

I'm sure others have seen this, since it was the Library Link of the Day, but another article about evolving nature of reference:

Are Reference Desks Dying Out? Librarians struggle to redefine — and in some cases eliminate — the venerable institution

This one focuses more on the ways in which reference desks can move from a traditional in person interaction to technology like text messages, web based tools, instant messaging, email and even Facebook!

I'm not sure how I feel about this - while I love technology when it really helps, I can't help thinking that it is a lot harder to conduct a decent interview over email, etc. And what about reader's advisory?

Privacy in Virtual Libraries

Found via Librarian.net

Here is a working paper (based on a conference presentation) on privacy in virtual librarianship, called "Is Privacy Working? Planning For Stronger Privacy Measures Than Security Through Obscurity In Library Virtual Reference Services " by Mary Minow and Paul Neuhaus.

The paper discusses how virtual librarianship changes privacy concerns because of technology - a "conversation" with the librarian, once verbal and therefor ephemeral, is now recorded and written by virtue of the medium. This raises interesting questions: how does effect traditional user confidentiality?

The technology used by the library to allow access (IP restrictions, logins) to resources (electronic journals, databases) makes the user more traceable than the traditional methods. In the past, the patron could enter the library, look up information in a card catalog and access that information without ever providing proof of identity, until the patron desired to check out the book. Though virtual reference opens the library's resources for long range use, it does (contrary to most interaction on the internet!) take away their anonymity.

A clever name is only the beginning

Since creating this blog (purely for the name!) I haven't really used it. However, since I need a blog for my Intellectual Freedom in Libraries class - and what better exercise for my intellectual freedoms than using the word "bitches" - I will use this space.

So, welcome, my twos of readers.