October 9th, 2008 Brian Herzog
Last year, I read a blog post giving instructions on how American citizens could request a check into your personal flight history, to find out if your name appears on the “no-fly” list. So I did.
The website seems to be gone now, but it was a simple form that submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Homeland Security. I’d never requested anything under FOIA before, and my personal history seemed like a place to start. I thought it was a good exercise, both as an information professional and as a private citizen.
So I was happy when, earlier this week (almost exactly one year later), I received a letter from the US Customs and Border Protection saying,
A search was conducted of the [Automated Targeting System] database, and we were unable to locate or identify any responsive records.
Which means I am flying under their radar (until this request, probably).
Not that I thought there would be anything untoward in my flying patterns, but these days, you never know. Now all I need to do is take my official “he’s no terrorist” letter to the nearest TSA worker for a smiley face.
[To request your own, try starting at CBP's FOIA webpage]
Tags: america, american, ats, automated targeting system, cbp, citizen, customs and border protection, department of homeland security, dhs, foia, freedom of information, government, no fly, request See Also
Posted under Personal, Technology | 2 Comments »
August 28th, 2008 Brian Herzog
It seems like I learn of a new web tool or website feature every day.
A patron had missed seeing Hellboy II in theaters, and asked to be placed on hold for on the DVD. Since it’s not out yet, or even close to being out yet, I told him I couldn’t place a hold in our catalog.
The next obvious question is when is the DVD coming out. Usually I use the “DVD Details” section of IMDB.com for that, but in this case they didn’t have the information. So I tried Amazon, and this is where I learned something new.
They didn’t have a release date either, but they did have a record for it - and it let people add themselves to the list so they’ll be notified when it is available. Amazon calls this their “1st To Know” notification service, which I thought it a great idea.
I didn’t go through the steps, but I’m guessing that putting yourself on the list is also committing to buy a copy. But even still, I like that they are flexible enough to accommodate anticipated need.
Which is unlike most library systems. In my library’s catalog, patrons can place holds on items as soon as we put an “on order” record in the catalog, but we try not to put in on order records too far ahead of time.
On order records for books aren’t too bad, but movies are a whole different story.
Because we have different records for wide screen and full screen and director’s cut and 10th anniversary re-releases and every other possible iteration, putting a record in too early means we might end up with holds for something we can’t actually get. Or, if we buy the wide screen release and every other library in my consortium buys the full screen version, patrons with holds on the wide screen will have to wait for their turn, even if they don’t care if they get the wide or full screen version.
Being able to get an idea of demand early on would help in knowing how many copies the library should buy, but this whole version thing is something we haven’t found a good fix for yet. Amazon selling DVDs is certainly different than a library loaning DVDs, but there has got to be something we can learn from their model to serve library patrons better.
Tags: 1st to know, amazon, first to know, hold, holds, libraries, Library, on order, orders, public, request, requests See Also
Posted under Library, Technology | 5 Comments »
