Cambridge City Council votes for privacy

It's disappointing, as another reader noted, that the Channel 5 headline included "...May Cost Thousands" instead of "...Respects Privacy".

Well its a waste of money because the cameras were already up and are now being taken down. Cambridge has a full time City Council, they could have acted much faster and saved us the hassle of putting them up and given the money to some other city that wants the cameras instead. I think Cambridge should have to pay the government back for the investment.

-Please forward to our library board...

Please improve our public library so that our library leadership doesn't attempt to charge for library reference desk services, see also the John Schwartz article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html

On 2/14/09, Susan Flannery sflannery at cambridgema.gov wrote:
>
> from Susan Flannery sflannery at cambridgema.gov
> cc Bertha Chandler bchandler at cambridgema.gov
> Karen Brown kbrown at cambridgema.gov
> Mark Freed mfreed at cambridgema.gov
> date Feb 14, 2009 10:00 AM
> subject request for documents
> mailed-by cambridgema.gov
>
> I am in receipt of your request for "any and all documents available in electronic format prepared by and for our reference desk department and with respect to our Reference desk department policies and practices including our Reference Desk Department manuals, notices, memoranda, training materials, supervisory materials, et al".
>
> The Policy and procedure Manual of the Cambridge Public Library is available at the public desks of all of our locations. All of our policies, including reference policies, are included in that manual. You may ask for it at any of our locations.

Tried Pearl Street, Central Square Cambridge Public Library Reference Desk didn't know about the manual !

> Regarding your additional request for memoranda, etc. you have not specified a time period

1-14 February 2009

> so the search for this material would be exhaustive. In any event there would be a charge for staff time to search for and compile such documents. The Associate Librarian for reference Services would be the only person qualified to conduct this research. The hourly charge would be $36.00. It is possible that members of the Information Technology Department may need to be involved if you are looking for inactive documents. Once you are able to give me a scope for the documents you are seeking I will be better able to give you a cost estimate for the search.
> Susan M. Flannery
> Director of Libraries
> Cambridge Public Library
> 359 Broadway
> Cambridge MA 02139
> tel 617 349-4032
> fax 617 349-4164