OLDaily

SecureKey Concierge
2020/05/21

I was required to log in to a secure government web site recently and in addition to the usual options (a PKI system called MyKey) I was given the option to use SecureKey Concierge. It works a lot like a Google login, except that it uses a trusted authority, like a bank. It felt a bit weird using my bank login to access a government service, but it worked perfectly and was easier to use than the cumbersome system I'd used previously. I have mixed feelings about the use of this system - on the one hand, I am no fan of the financial sector, yet on the other hand, I can't imagine a single government-issued ID ever gaining the sort of broad-based acceptance needed.

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How to Build an Online Learning Community: 6 Theses
Jesse Stommel, 2020/05/21

Jesse Stommel begins by taking an equity-based approach to community: "We should begin our efforts toward building community by designing for the students who need that community most, the ones most likely to have been feeling isolated even before the pandemic: disabled students, chronically ill students, students of color, queer students, and students facing housing and food-insecurity." This means a definition of community that goes well beyond the needs of an individual class and focuses on student-to-student connection and a range of student supports. This view extends the campus community into the wider community, is based on recognizing wider social realities, and "will depend on our willingness to continue feeling joy, having epiphanies, asking hard questions, and sharing our curiosity with one another."

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Utility, Morality, Strategy, and Scholarly Communication
Rick Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2020/05/21

It's interesting that I came across this item just after spending a day reading codes of ethics for librarians, and it might be worth reading the IFLA Code of Ethics before reading this article. Columnist Rick Anderson creates an odd sort of utilitarian alternative ethics for librarians in order to pose what is actually an interesting dilemma: should librarians serve primarily their local institution, or should they serve the wider community. And in particular, should they spend their resources promoting open access for the wider community, either by contributing to publisher-led open access programs, or by helping their own institution make its own academic research open access? I get the sense that he doesn't think library resources should be spent this way, but he doesn't come out and say it, instead offering various reasons to doubt the utilitarian position.

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