ibiblio in 40 – 50 words

We’ve been working on describing ibiblio in 50 words or less.
Here’s what we came up with most recently:

ibiblio, which began as sunsite.unc.edu in 1992, is an information commons and contributor-run digital library. Originally a way to share and support all kinds of free software, ibiblio also hosts over 1500 non-software related sharing projects on almost every conceivable subject and handles over 12 million requests/day.

Help us out! Add your suggestions are comments here.

Support Community Networks

The folks over at Free Press are circulating a petition in support of community wireless networks. Here’s the gist:

States across the country are debating whether to restrict or prohibit municipalities from offering broadband services to local communities. At a time when rural and low-income Americans increasingly find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide, state legislatures should not thwart competition in the marketplace from any service provider. Support the right of municipalities to offer broadband services by adding your organization to the list of signatories on the letter below.

These type of thing is a big deal because we can’t allow the telcos to crowd cities out of creating meshes of wireless connectivity in public places. In the not-too-distant future, we’ll consider wireless internet access something of an inalienable right, but not if Time Warner or Verizon sees fit. In the meantime, here’s an article from the NY Times providing some context on the challenges to community wireless.

Here’s the petition again.

Triangle Bloggers Afters.

It all came off rather well despite having grown to over 5 times the size of attendance that we had originally anticipated. Good discussions. Good behavior. Good people meeting good people. Props to Anton for getting this going and making it happen. Props to Fred for being on top of the wireless access and much more. Props to Jen O’Bryan who made it possible for us to know each other’s names and sites. Props to TJ and John Joseph for taping the event. Special thanks to Ed Cone and to Dan Gillmor for leading discussions. Thanks to the folks at lulu.com for providing the drinks and donuts.
What was it like? There is a nice collection of live-blog postings on the conference wiki. If you have notes, pictures and/or live blog entries, please add yourself.
I’m learning what went on from the wiki myself. When you are in the middle of things, you don’t get to pay the attention that you’d like to –especially if you are me and the laptop that you brought ends up being the one projected for folks to see the blogs in question and then it starts dropping the wireless at random intervals –grrr. My ancient T-book needs to be traded in.
Sally Greene took some pictures.

Blog Together – Feb 12 and more

The Triangle Bloggers Conference has grown to over 120 registered
participants including representatives from local and regional presses.

Three Blogger Events are coming your way in the next week. Triangle Bloggers Conference in Murphey Hall (Saturday 2/12), Dan Gillmor talk in Carroll Hall (Monday 2/14) and in Greensboro Dave Winer at the News and Record (Wednesday 2/9). Details and links below.

Triangle Bloggers Conference
Saturday, February 12
9 a.m. – noon:30 (and beyond) Murphey Hall 116
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Learn more

Dan Gillmor public talk
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism for the People, by the People
Monday February 14, 3:30
Freedom Forum Conference Center
Carroll Hall, UNC
Learn more

Dave Winer, community journalism discussion
Wednesday February 9, 7 p.m.
200 East Market St., Greensboro
Learn more

Mod_security

If you work on web infrastructure or hosting, you might be familiar with mod_security, a GPL’d, regex based IDS for apache server instances.

Old code is a huge problem for ibiblio; as you know, we’re a repository, so that explains why code like Paul Jones first HTML page is still available, in the same place its been for the past ten years. However, with the rise of third party software applications, being a repository for code that exposes us to vulnerability seriously limits our mission.

We’re experimenting with mod_security, with hopes that we might be able to stop the next Santy worm (I’m still trying to forget Christmas 2004) with one line of code. Thanks to Ivan Ritsic for his work.

Print Appearance: Ibiblio in January’s C&RL News

Barbara Moran (SILS-UNC) and Cheryl Davis’ (SILS-UNC) recent Scholarly Communication in the ALA’s College and Research Libraries News spotlights ibiblio. The article is concerned with how LIS students can gain practical experience in the multifaceted and ever-evolving realm of scholarly communications. Ibiblio is spotlighted as a hands-on institutional program that accomplishes this mission. Congratulations to Moran and Davis on their publication.

Preparing tomorrow’s professionals: LIS schools and scholarly communication

Friday Night Lights

Allright, so we’ve had a biig week at the Lab.

Cluster host upgrades, some sites moved to the new fileserver (Check out Groklaw.net, Librarian.net, Wxyc.org, ibiblio.openphoto.org for some blazin’ examples).

We had this one bug, which we decided to call the php bug, that may or may not be the php bug, but we’re getting close to fixing it. Might just be a LVS issue. The host is isolated and I’m not getting any more timeouts (the symptom). Thanks to Simon for his assistance and tireless dedication to ethereal.

Bret D (Tha Irondog) is off to Charlotte for the weekend, doing a little Masters Paper work. I’m sure he’ll have a good little trip report to file. The Heels have a game up and coming this weekend, against Miami. I’m pretty proud of the fact I’ve weaseled my way into 5 home games so far this year (not a bad record for a non-student), but I think I might check this game from the couch. I say UNC by 14. Miami’s no joke at home, but the road…the Smith center is as imposing a place to play BBall as any, and factor in a rowdy (Game is at 8PM; it can be assumed there will be swilling of some sort beforehand) crowd, its imposing.

A couple shows upcoming to pay attention to:

This Saturday at the Local 506 – Tsunami Relief concert (in cooperation with the Cat’s Cradle) featuring Superchunk, Ghost of Rock, and local stalwarts Sorry about Dresden.

Thu 27 Jan: Sharon Jones at the Cat’s Cradle. Pure FUNK.
Fri 28 Jan: Arcade Fire at the Cat’s Cradle. Sold out, so sorry for those who will miss it.
Sat 29 Jan: The Moaners CD Release Party at Local 506. Melissa Swingle will rock you.
Sat 29 Jan: NC Indymedia Benefit at the Nightlight. Eyes to Space, Nathan Asher, five bucks and Danyele will love you for it.
Thi 3 Feb: Sun Ra’s Arkestra. Sun’s gone, but Marshall Allen will deliver some good times.

Other shows of note include Camper Van Beethoven – it inspires me that they are still playing, and Kristin Hersh, both shows that I’ll assume draw cult-y followings. At the Cradle. There’s a big local show on Feb 10 featuring the Comas, the Sadies, the Rosebuds and Portastatic. Be there if you need to be seen. Cradle as well. Down the road a bit, Neko Case will be performing at the Cradle on Feb 18, followed by Tift Merrit with the amazing Hotel Lights on Feb 19. Both will sell out.

Allright, this post has somehow turned into a concert report, but how else would you know how to be cool if you weren’t reading the ibiblog. How do you pronounce that by the way?

Triangle Bloggers Conf Growing – Feb 12

We’ve gotten a lot of folks signed up on the wiki for the Triangle Bloggers Conference. Many more than we had planned for originally. We’ve already secured a bigger room — now a small auditorium for the conference. If you have topics you want covered or a followup lunch group topic (like a Birds of a Feather session). Go to the conference wiki.

Triangle Bloggers Conference
Saturday, February 12
9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
NEW LOCATION: Murphey Hall 116
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
FREE

Dan Gillmor will also be doing a public talk on Monday February 14, 3:30 – 5:00 in the Freedom Forum Conference Center in Carroll Hall (home of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication). If you are more interested in hearing Dan than in meeting bloggers, then this is the event for you. We will have copies of We the Media for sale and for signing at both events.

Weather, Information Commons and Al Gore

Josh just pointed out that it 78 degrees here today on the Hill. I didn’t get to spend too much time outside, but I will say that my walk up the hill left me a little warmer than I’d like for this time of year.

In other news, Paul Lima has published an informative piece on information commons. As we attempt to define the role of the information commons in our experience, we also must come to understand the role we play in developing the commons.

Finally, our pal Glenn had a brush with celebrity today:

Al Gore is holding up a Science Commons T-Shirt there.

TriBlogCon: New Venue! Murphey Hall

The Triangle Bloggers Conference 2005 has outgrown the room we had reserved in Carroll Hall. I’ve secured the newly renovated auditorium in Murphey Hall nearby known as MU116. This is the Classics Department building so it comes complete with Ashcroft-offending statues at the entrance to the room. Tasteful, classic and partically clothed. The room has comfortable seating, plenty of technology and wireless access.
So the new info is:

Saturday, February 12
9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Murphy Hall 116
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
FREE