Don't be left without rights

The rights of Australian workers are being eroded by a federal government that has put the needs of big business (many of which are now owned by foreign concerns) ahead of its own population.

Since the WorkChoices legislation took effect in March this year, there have been several reported cases of serious worker exploitation and government back-peddling.

Many people have either forgotten or are too young to remember the working conditions that existed before the union movement fought for the forty hour week, the eight hour day, annual leave, equal pay for women...

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is spearheading an ongoing campaign to protect these rights.

There is a view that the union movement is an archaic institution representing a minority of workers and, among other things, has lost touch with workers' needs. While there may be validity to some criticisms of today's union movement (there is no thing without flaws), it is only through and within such a united movement that workers have any serious voice and power.

On November 30 there will be a nation-wide rally. I will be there, as I hope will many thousands of others.

And as a further reminder of why you should be there...

Searching for Google

Back in 2004 Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology at Google said: "My guess is about 300 years until computers are as good as, say, your local reference library in doing search. But we can make slow and steady progress, and maybe one day we'll get there."

This was an interesting admission by a senior manager of the leading internet search company - acknowledging the expert skills of librarians in a public forum.

Fast forward to 2006 and the buzz on a number of library-related discussion groups is that Google wants health librarians to volunteer their services to help build one of their sites, Google Health.

While I'm sure many librarians are delighted to be asked to contribute, perhaps Google could show it's appreciation of these specialised skills by paying for them. Does Google expect the IT professionals employed on the Google Health site to offer their services for free? I doubt it! Google employees (Googlers) enjoy some of the best employee benefits around.

Google is estimated to be worth around $20 billion. So why does Google expect professional services from librarians for nothing?

Has it something to do with the fact that libraries and librarians are seen traditionally as giving information away for free? Or is it something else?

I do not want to "shut the down the internet to save the libraries" (I, Robot - movie version), but just some acknowledgment that the library, and librarians still provide valuable information services and skills in a world where many of us "google" the internet for a quick fix of info.

Name that blog!

Having finally accepted that I would never write that world-shattering book (you know - the one that would change civilisation as we know it; make my name synonymous with literary greats; have the public gaze upon me in awe…) I decided to write a blog instead. That’s doable. Short pieces. Not too much to procrastinate over you’d think. Oh so wrong!

The first thing my blog needed was a name, a title. After all, I couldn’t write a single line until I had that title. (Funny, I had the same thought about that book.) Well that exercise took some deep thinking. Being such a late entrant to the blogsphere all the clever, witty or profound (read silly) titles I had originally thought of were gone – including several possible titles for that never-to-be-written world-shattering book!

Are names/titles important? Would rubbish by any other name smell like garbage?

So why Dodo Farming? Will there be another post?
For these answers and more stay tuned. Test-pattern follows….

[There is a whole page devoted to old Australian TV test patterns. Something we don’t see anymore, except for Channel 31’s fishcam.]