Books about consent, privacy, and personal space

To successfully navigate our place in society, we need to understand personal space and the importance of privacy and consent. Here are books from SRCSA library that address these important themes.
https://youtu.be/q6uBHWVvTnc

Sexuality and reader’s advisory

A question was posed to me as part of my studies in Children’s and Young Adult Literature: How would I provide reader’s advisory for young people who are looking for books related to sexuality?

Publishers need input from people with disabilities

A while ago, I wrote that library staffing diversity needs to include autistic perspectives to help identify trouble-areas when evaluating materials for the library. Well, mainstream publishing houses are a frequent channel for disssemination of these resources — but a Diversity Baseline Survey conducted by Lee & Low stated that 92 percent of publishing-industry staff do not have a disability.
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Self-checkout for privacy at Sonoma County Library

Source: Buzzfeed News, via Tumblr user ‘kassysgalaxyyy’

Having recently used self-checkout at Sonoma County Library, it seemed a good time to re-share this sign, promoting self-checkout options at the Sacramento Public Library. ​

NPR dropping comments from website

Effective Aug. 23, National Public Radio (NPR) is removing the “Comment” function from stories on its website.

‘Superman, Before Truth’: Academic guide

For those library personnel who work with young adults, I want to share a free reading and discussion guide for Superman, Vol. 1, Before Truth, a D.C. Comics publication authored by Gene Luen Yang (National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and National Book Award nominee).

You may wish to share this resource with educators at your schools.

Before Truth deals with the issue of online privacy versus public sharing, as Superman receives anonymous text messages from someone who has discovered his secret identity as newspaper reporter Clark Kent.

‘Superman: Before Truth’

The implications of Internet privacy versus purposeful online “branding” have made regular appearances on my blog, especially during an assignment for a course in Internet ethics, to argue that people do not need a right to privacy to discharge their rights as citizens.

With this course assignment behind me, I read Superman Vol. 1: Before Truth by Gene Luen Yang (DC Entertainment, April 2016).

It fascinated me to observe the iconic character of Superman wrestle with online privacy versus public sharing. Especially compelling were the far greater repercussions that could result from such a decision, than the average person’s lapse into over-sharing.

Teen self-help with self-checkout for privacy

Credit: aphroditzy on Tumblr

With this awesome sign created by library supervisor Justin Azevedo, the Sacramento Public Library points teens in the direction of sensitive information that they may be too embarrassed or afraid to ask an adult to help them locate. The sign reminds teens about self-checkout to help protect their privacy.

As Azevedo told Buzzfeed News, “I would notice how popular teen books on these topics were, but how rare actual questions about them from teen library patrons were. Most of the topics would be embarrassing to ask about, but some of them could threaten their privacy or even safety if asked in front of people or discovered by parents in a search engine history.”

Because the Dewey numbering system is a subject classification, many of these topics will likely have their counterparts in the same order in our Jackson County libraries — and our teens, too, can access them in privacy through self-checkout machines. (The photo was first posted by Tumblr user aphroditzy and Buzzfeed News elected to share a reblog by user kassysgalaxyyy).

Religious Explorations: Recent posts

Here are recent posts to social media in my professional role as Administrative Coordinator for the Religious Explorations program at a church in Ashland, Oregon, the Rogue Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. When curating these items, I look for resources and commentary that strengthen constituent families.

‘Think b4 u Post’

From this week’s course materials for my Cuesta College student internship: In “Think b4 u Post: Your Reputation and Privacy on Social Networking Sites,” hosts Josh McBride and Julie Lavery explain how misuse of social media can affect a person’s reputation and safety. The 22-minute video addresses serious subjects — reputation, public exposure, career consequences, cyberbullying, data mining and online predators — in an engaging and entertaining way. This program was leased by Cuesta College for student viewing from Films on Demand.

LinkedIn enables member blocking

The LinkedIn professional social network finally enables member blocking. In a post to the LinkedIn help center, Paul Rockwell, who heads up Trust & Safety, told LinkedIn members that “your concerns were heard loud and clear.”

To access the blocking function, hover your cursor over the downward-pointing triangle to the right of the contact button on the person’s profile. (Depending upon the degree of connection, the contact button might say “Send a Message” or “Send InMail.”) This will bring up a menu of several options including the ability to block and report.

How does social media affect your credit score?

U.S. and international lenders are examining Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles of potential borrowers. As related by Erika Eichelberger on MotherJones.com:

“Companies like Neo and LendUp seized an opening in the market to provide low-income borrowers, who may lack bank accounts or have bad credit, an alternative to payday loans. Though credit-worthiness is typically based on factors like employment, finances, and whether you make your credit card payments on time, these companies argue that they are able to serve borrowers that traditional banks deem risky because they are able to evaluate credit risk based on more subtle social media-based indicators.

“The problem, consumer advocates say, is that because there are few regulations governing this new way of grading borrowers’ trustworthiness, applicants can be subject to unfair and discriminatory decisions by lenders.”

U.S. mining data from Internet ‘partners’

Has your online communication fallen under government surveillance? The Washington Post and the Guardian reported Thursday that the U.S. government is collecting data from top U.S. service providers -- Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.

Petition seeks blocking ability on LinkedIn

Screen capture via SocialTimes.com: LinkedIn engineers propose member blocking

A Change.org petition asks that the LinkedIn professional social network offer what other social networks provide: the ability to block an abusive user. As related by Social Times, Anna Rihtar created the petition in response to stalking on social media by her boss:

“Rihtar could use her privacy settings to stop her stalker from reaching her on Twitter and Facebook, but she found that LinkedIn’s policies were different from those of the other networks. ‘Having written to LinkedIn customer service about blocking a user,’ she explained in her petition, ‘I was told I was only able to block a member if that member is prohibited from having a LinkedIn account by virtue of a court order.’”

Aligning LinkedIn with these other policies seems only common sense.

I was whomperjawed viewing a post on Rihtar’s privacy/blocking petition group on LinkedIn, suggesting that the dissatisfied user “send [a] message” by not using LinkedIn.

When I signed the petition today, I included the following statement:

“As a consequence of speaking out about being bullied in school, I’ve been subject to ‘victim-blaming,’ holding the victim responsible for somehow failing to prevent the abuse. With this petition, I see an attempt to redress a similar injustice. Requiring the target of harassment or stalking to curtail professional networking activities adds an unfair additional burden to the trauma of being abused.”

As Rihtar told Social Times regarding posts similar to the one I viewed: “The most important thing to anybody in the working world is networking and making connections with people. LinkedIn is the best avenue for that right now.”

There may be a positive outcome on the horizon; Social Times reproduced a LinkedIn “HackDay” entry from December 2012: “Having a stalker is a real thing, and we have no ability to allow members to block their stalkers. ... This hack fixes this problem, and lets you block members who are being unprofessional in a professional social network.”

Mother rewarded with book deal for violating daughter’s privacy

Dara-Lynn Weiss, a woman who put her daughter on a diet and then wrote a Vogue article about it, had a book published in January. The Heavy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Diet was released by Ballantine Books.

As reported last spring by Jessica Samakow for the Huffington Post, Weiss's article drew the attention of bloggers who questioned her methods (A link to Samakow’s article was posted this week to a discussion board in my online women’s health class).

Jezebel author Katie J.M. Baker called Weiss’s piece “the worst Vogue article ever”:

“Weiss' initial quandary is a complicated one, to be sure: what do you do if your pediatrician tells you your child is clinically obese? But the justifications to which Weiss clings as she describes the abrasive, often irrational weight-loss strategies she imposed upon her young daughter are truly disgusting, as is the obvious fact that Weiss was projecting her hatred of her own body onto her child throughout her year-long diet. The ickiness of the essay is only overshadowed by the accompanying photos, in which Weiss and her now-slender daughter — who even Weiss admits is traumatized by the events of the past year — don miniskirts and giggle girlishly over tea.”

The article was published in April in Vogue’s Shape 2012 issue.

After reading the account on Huffington Post, my main issue of concern wasn’t that the child, Bea, was overweight: although, to be sure, some of the other bloggers included in Samakow’s summary seemed to have much healthier attitudes about a child who was overweight.

One blogger wrote under the name Mom De Guerre because she said she would never put her child's well-being at stake the way that Weiss had. And Samakow described a piece by HuffPost blogger Janell Burley Hofmann as an “honest, self-accepting response.”

(Hofmann’s initial response to her daughter telling her, “I'm fat,” was, “You are built just perfect -- strong and healthy.”)

From the excerpt in Samakow’s summary, Weiss displayed a self-pitying attitude that I found distasteful:

“‘Everyone supports the mission, but no one seems to approve of my methods,’ she admits and then goes on to mention her own exhaustion: ‘It is grating to have someone constantly complain of being hungry, or refuse to eat what she’s supposed to, month after month.’”

What most concerned me was the way that Weiss exposed her young daughter to public scrutiny and possible condemnation.  I know from experience that adults can be quick to judge someone else’s child’s behavior without knowing her circumstances.

Weiss crossed an important line when she wrote about her daughter’s weight.

I can choose for myself to share details of my life, including struggles and challenges. And there are details about my life that I don’t feel comfortable sharing, even as I readily disclose other areas. It’s my life, my choice what, and how much, to reveal.

Weiss could similarly make a choice to disclose her own struggles or insecurities. But her daughter Bea did not get to make that choice; Weiss took the choice from her daughter.

Now that Weiss’s book has been published, Bea’s life will be exposed before that many more people, in a story that, based on advance praise, casts Weiss and not Bea in the role of heroine. Weiss does not deserve to be financially rewarded for violating her daughter’s privacy.

My thanks to Cuesta College instructor Allison Merzon for posting a link to the Huffington Post article on our women’s health class discussion board.

T-shirt repurposing: ‘I am a librarian’

“I guard your right to privacy. I protect your freedom to read. I support intellectual freedom. I am a librarian.” To create this garment, I took the logo from a T-shirt, and highlighted it with a “frame” of floral fabric. The layered logo-within-frame was then applied to another shirt. Hand-painted leaves were done by the vendor who sold me the shirt.

‘Con’ privacy argument: the takeaway

My main project during the Thanksgiving weekend was to complete and submit my argument about privacy for LIBT 117, Ethics in the Information Age.

To the Best of Our Knowledge: ‘Privacy’

I continue preparation for my “con” privacy argument for LIBT 117 in the Cuesta College Library/Information Technology Program.

My assignment is to argue that “Individual citizens don’t need the right to privacy in order to discharge their rights as citizens.”

Building a case against privacy on the Internet

My assignment for a Cuesta College course in Internet ethics is to argue that “Individual citizens don’t need the right to privacy in order to discharge their rights as citizens.”

Arguing con in debate over Internet privacy

Aug. 13, 2009: Toastmasters Club No. 8731, Tenacious Talkers, hosts a debate.

 I face an interesting assignment for LIBT 117 in the Cuesta College Library/Information Technology Program. Not only did our teacher assign each of us a topic, but also whether we would argue pro or con.