This post is off topic for this blog, so ignore it if you like. A number of people connected with archives and preservation activities read this, though, and I think it’s important for people to know that the Internet Archive was subjected to a National Security Letter and successfully fought it, thus becoming one of the very few recipients of these Orwellian orders to be allowed to talk about it. Please read the article.
The FBI has issued tens of thousands of National Security Letters. If you’re the target of one, you can’t tell anyone, not even your own family. The Patriot Act originally prohibited people from even talking to a lawyer about them, but that ban was struck down. I have never been issued a National Security Letter, so I can tell you I haven’t. If I had been, I couldn’t say anything, and if you asked me, I’d have to say, “I can’t answer that.”
Correcting Harvard Library rumors
In spite of rumors that have shown up in the #hlth feed on Twitter, no one at the Harvard Library was laid off yesterday, let alone “everybody.” We were told, however, that there will be cutbacks.
We were told that we should all fill out “employee profiles” online to aid in determining what future career we’d have, if any, at Harvard. An official pronouncement quoted in Library Journal has denied that we will all have to “reapply” for our positions, but many of us find the distinction subtle even if it’s technically true.
Take a look at this post for a good summmary.
Further update: Here’s a transcript of yesterday’s presentation at Harvard. There is one significant discrepancy between the transcript and what I and others recall: Helen Shenton did not say at the 9 AM meeting that the deadline for employee profiles was February 29. The deadline was initially earlier — mid-February, I think — and was changed to February 29 by the end of the meeting, following numerous expressions of concern from the audience. (She may have said February 29 at the later meetings.)
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Posted in commentary, off topic
Tagged Harvard, libraries