Two papers to write this weekend, and I’m currently not feeling the muse upon me. So I cleaned my desk off, made room for new books I’ve acquired over the past few months, folded laundry, took a long hot soak (w/bath salts since my muscles have been a little sore lately - wearing heels too often) and am now settling in to an evening of reading legislative history.

Most people would think that the pursuit of a Master’s in Library and Information Science would have a lot more to do with the Dewey Decimal System and alphabetization than law.

NOT SO!!!

In my “Intro to Information Policy” class, we’ve been discussing all sorts of legal matters all semester, reading case studies and making good use of the Library of Congress’ legislative information system, known as THOMAS (http://thomas.loc.gov/). There, you can look up any public laws passed by ANY Congress since, well, the 93rd Congress (1973-1974). You can still access earlier ones at libraries and in paper form, but as far as an online index, 1973 is as early as you’ll get through there.

The paper I have to work on this weekend is my portion of a group paper on CALEA - Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994. What does this have to do with Information Policy?

Well, it’s all about access to information and how these laws and acts all sort of tie together and can create precedents or basis for future laws and acts - for example, the PATRIOT Act. I’m no legal expert, but my professor for the class is. She is/was a lawyer and is now on the librarianship side of things, going to all sorts of fun panels and discussions about copyright law, freedom of information, access, etc.

And as far as libraries go, the first three principles of the ALA’s code of ethics states:

I: We provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources; equitable service policies; equitable access; and accurate, unbiased, and courteous responses to all requests.

II: We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources.

III: We protect each library user’s right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted

So all these issues of censorship and right to privacy and copyright and internet access and freedom of information and PATRIOT Act and all the other things I can’t think of right now but that are equally salient and topical all come into play and force librarians and other information science professionals to be highly aware of the legal issues surrounding their chosen profession - perhaps as much as doctors or lawyers must be, and particularly in terms of freedom of speech and all the new technologies that are constantly becoming available and used to acquire, organize and disseminate information.

I mean, this is only my first semester… I’m no expert, nor am I even an amateur. I’m just standing on the stoop. Perhaps in the fall, I can consider myself on the threshold. After that? Who knows.

One thing I need to do is set about - after my 6 month anniversary on April 11th - getting the whole tuition reimbursement application going at work. I can save up enough to pay outright, but reimbursement would be good in the long run… if I get good enough grades throughout the semester, I’ll be reimbursed at the end… and can put that money right back into the next semester, rinse and repeat.

I’m doing well, so far. Good grades on all major assignments, good grades on minor assignments, and OK grades on participation. I just prefer to sit and listen, absorb the info and ideas, and form my opinions and thoughts after the fact while I’m ruminating.

Another thing I’m finding strangely and almost eerily coincidental is how often my workplace and my education are doing this little asymptotic dance… here’s the evidence thus far:

• The database from which MANY of my reading assignments this semester have been downloaded is owned and run by the company I work for…
• The lawsuit brought against Google by several publishing houses was a topic in both of my MLIS classes this semester; the company I work for is/was one of the main actors in the lawsuit so I was getting both sides of that situation.
• My professor in the Info. Policy class attended a symposium about the copyright act of 1976 in Washington, D.C. The only representative from a publishing house in attendance was someone from my company (and the fact that my school is Florida State University and work is based right here in the metro NYC area makes that pairing a little less likely).
• In performing my research on CALEA tonight, I did some searching for law journal articles on LexisNexis. One article caught my attention because it was basically what I was looking for, according to the abstract. I opened it up and saw the name of the author - which was very familiar and is the name of a co-worker (not someone I work with closely, but someone I have interacted with before). I read the author’s bio, and it IS my co-worker, who is attending law school and wrote a law journal note on CALEA. She thanked her co-workers at our company for all their support.

Granted, it’s not incredible, amazing, overwhelming evidence from the Universe proving that I’m MEANT to be doing this, but that’s one reason I’m not going to law school or planning to become a trial attorney
It’s just interesting how these things piece/fit/work together. So much for entropy… well, at least externally. My internal state is quite chaotic, thank you very much.

So… yeah. It’s my own little “Theory of Everything.”

I just know that I have to get my ass in gear, grab a pen and get to work on outlining the history and context of CALEA. I think I have all the info printed, saved, etc. - now I just have to arrange it into a palatable and logical format. I wish I could do a bulleted timeline, but bulleted lists are strictly forbidden by the professor. NARRATIVE ONLY.

Then I get to start on my Representation and Description paper for my Information Organization class, where I am looking at, creating and comparing several different metadata/cataloging records. I started that one already since, honestly, it seems a little more exciting to me. However, I have to get through the difficult and dry one before I’m allowed to play with the fun one.