“How much effort do you want to spend securing your computer systems? Well, how much do you not want to be in front of a reporter’s microphone if a security breach happens?” I don’t remember the exact words, but that quote strongly resembles something I said to a boss at a previous job. Securing systems is unglamorous detail work. One slip-up plus one persistent (or lucky) attacker means years of dedicated efforts are all for naught as personal information is inadvertently released. See, for example, what happened recently with Sony Online Entertainment’s recent troubles.

It was in that frame of mind that I responded to a series of questions from a librarian taking a computer science class. (As someone else who straddles the computer-science/library-science divide, I wanted to encourage this line of thinking!) Now library systems typically don’t have credit card information, so they may not be attractive to individuals that seek to expose or exploit personal information. But our systems do have physical addresses, e-mail addresses, and sometimes birthdays or other personal data. And we have a professional ethic to keep patron use information private.

The person that sent me these questions asked that I not mention a name or affiliation, but that it was okay that I repost the questions along with my replies. I’m hoping this encourages some discussion because my understanding of the use of encryption in ILS products is very narrow and only somewhat deep (and is getting shallower by the day as my direct experience is going on ten years old).

Background on the project is that during our encryption unit, I realized that I didn’t know anything about what libraries to do back up our strongly stated policies about protecting patron privacy, so I wanted to find out more about it.

Questions:

1. What encryption tools/standards, if any, are used to safeguard patron accounts (name, items checked out, databases accessed, etc.) at the library?
2. Where in the systems do these tools typically fit — at the ILS level, or somewhere else? (e.g., university ID systems)
3. How are circulation and other records expunged? I.e., are they permanently deleted in such a way that hard drive forensics couldn’t bring them back?

In my experience, this patron information is not encrypted in integrated library systems. The difficulty is that if those bits of information are encrypted, they must be decrypted by the program in order to be useful (generating an overdue notice means the patron’s information must be known to the program, displaying the patron’s name on his/her account information screen, etc.). And for programs to decrypt they must have the secret key. And if the programs know the secret key it is trivial for an attacker to get the key as well. And since good encryption, by its nature, is computationally “expensive” there would be a lot of system load with all of the encryption and decryption of bits of information. (Computationally expensive is good because it makes it harder for an attacker to guess the correct key.)

Password Hashing Flowchart

Note that passwords are a special case. Passwords are not really encrypted in a database; rather the output of a “one way hash” algorithm is stored. When the user tries to log in, the same one way hash algorithm is applied to the text string entered as a password and if the output matches what is stored in the database the user is let in.

As the diagram shows, with the login attempts the hashed password is not decrypted; the output of the hash algorithm is compared to what is known to be the hashed password.

[Aside: I'm trying an experiment in this post. The diagram is a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) file. It seems to be showing up fine in the browsers I'm testing, but I have no idea how it will appear in the RSS feed or if you are using an RSS reader or receiving this post via FeedBurner e-mail. If you don't see the graphic, try viewing the post via the DLTJ website.]

The most effective encryption would be at the database management system layer. For instance, Oracle has “Transparent Data Encryption” feature. “Data is automatically encrypted when it is written to disk and automatically decrypted when accessed by the application.” Automatic encryption is not built into MySQL, but you can use a MySQL-specific function to encrypt a field. PostgreSQL has a contributed module that performs the function.

Another option — other than database-level encryption — is to have the operating system encrypt the underlying filesystem (for example, the Red Hat Encrypted Filesystem). That way all of the database storage files — stored in that filesystem directory — would be encrypted.

Note, though, that in any of these cases, the key is known to the computer somehow, and so it is possible for an attacker to recover the key and decrypt the data. There are, of course, varying levels of obscurity one can apply to the key, but I think we’re getting pretty far off on a tangent.

How often circulation and other records would be expunged would depend on implementations in each software system, but as a general guideline I don’t think a strong deletion mechanism is used to obliterate data on the disk. I’d be happy to be proven otherwise. And as you consider hard drive forensics, also think about pulling the same information off backup tapes; that would probably be easier to get to.

In a follow-up, I was asked:

WRT your response on Q2, do you have an idea of what level “most” or “some” libraries might have the encryption, or were you speaking purely from a view of what ideal/good situations might look like?

On 3, I have heard from a few others that there seems to be just deletion with no zeroing out features or the like and that it does take a period of time (1-2 months) for backup tapes to be overwritten. So it strikes me that the weakest link may be in the area we talk most about protecting.

With regards to the database-level or the filesystem-level encryption, I was speaking from a point of view of what idea/good situations might look like. One of the outcomes of posting these questions to a wider group of readers is, I hope, more real-world experience reports from people who might be running systems that actually do this.

Yes, I think those are weak links, with the backup tapes being the biggest problem. One can’t predict when blocks on a live filesystem disk will be overwritten, but overwriting tapes is pretty predictable — and easy because one doesn’t need access to the live system.

The turn of the year brings commentary on the past 12 months and thoughts on the future. This edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads looks at the relationship between libraries and electronic books with an offer by Sony to explain e-reader hardware to libraries and an opinion piece that libraries need to get their act together on the adoption of e-books. Then there is a look forward at possible trends for the new year; I try to pick out the ones that I think will have an impact on libraries. One trend that does seem to be emerging is the migration of libraries from proprietary software to open source software for their integrated library systems. Lastly, we’ll wrap up with a look at Public Domain Day.

If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

The Changing Role of Libraries in the Digital Age

At Sony, we believe there is a place for public/private partnerships. That’s why we’re so excited to be working closely with libraries and librarians across the country as part of our Reader Library Program. While there are several different views on the future of libraries, we believe that digital reading will be at the core of libraries, regardless of how they grow and evolve.

Sony’s Reader Library Program is designed to help libraries overcome the challenges of adopting eBooks and educating their constituencies on how to borrow, read and make the most of digital reading content. eBooks, like traditional paper books, will play an important role in our civic and cultural life, but only if they are made broadly available and people understand how to access and use them.

Steve Haber, President of Sony’s Digital Reading Business, publishes this piece in the Huffington Post about the Sony Reader Library Program. The program offers a 2-3 hour training session for library staff, donation of four models of Sony e-reader devices for library staff use, promotional materials for patrons and “bi-annual update sessions designed to keep libraries and their staff current with the latest developments in digital reading content, format and devices.” Although I found out about this via a tweet from the ALA PLA account, I don’t see anything in the program description that limits it to public libraries. The only requirement is that the “library must have eBooks available through a third party such as www.overdrive.com in order to be considered for our program.”

I also can’t help but be a bit cynical that “The Changing Role of Libraries in the Digital Age” is just a front to promote Sony products. But if it gets more libraries thinking about the role of libraries in a digital age, then it seems to be, on balance, a positive thing.

2010 Summary: Libraries are Still Screwed

In mathematics, catastrophe theory is the study of nonlinear dynamical systems which exhibit points or curves of singularity. The behavior of systems near such points is characterized by sudden and dramatic changes resulting from even very small perturbations. The simplest sort of catastrophe is the fold catastrophe.

When a fold catastrophe occurs, a system that was formerly characterized by a single stable point evolves to a system with no stability. The point where stability disappears is known as the tipping point.

One of my goals for this past year was to raise awareness of the tipping point for libraries that will accompany the obsolescence of the print book.

Eric Hellman, serial entrepreneur with an altruistic bent to make libraries stay relevant, create this end-of-2010 summary of the library/ebook tensions. The title comes from a presentation (20 minute recording part 1, part 2) by Eli Neiburger at the Library Journal / School Library Journal eBook Summit who bluntly states, “Libraries are Screwed.”

Does the libraries’ historic reliance on the physical codex doom us to obsolescence? (The “library memorial”, as Eli puts it early in his presentation.) Is the time, as Eric suggests at the end of his post, “for raising awareness about the catastrophic future of libraries” over, to be replaced by “build[ing] things that change the system dynamics”?

100 Things to Watch in 2011

As part of our annual forecast, JWT presents 100 Things to Watch in 2011. Some of the items on our list reflect broader shifts we’ve been following:

• Mobile as the Everything Hub: More consumers and brands are embracing a trend we outlined two years ago, one that will manifest in a multitude of ways next year—from mobile memes to “moblogging” to waning interest in point-and-shoot cameras.
• The evolution of media as content becomes digitized over various platforms: Books will take new forms, entertainment will go transmedia, and journalists will get more entrepreneurial.

Some reflect counter-trends to broad shifts in consumer behavior:

• To balance out our increasing immersion in the digital world, people will embrace face-to-face gatherings and digital downtime, and come to fetishize physical objects once considered humdrum.
• The trend toward Radical Transparency will see a growing backlash (Ignorance Is Bliss).

As always, new technology is a theme.

• We’ll see smart infrastructure ramping up, tablets for tots as this platform gets widely adopted and some truly futuristic-seeming developments (3D printing, virtual mirrors, electronic profiling).

While some of our Things to Watch may not yet reflect a broader trend, we believe they eventually will ladder up to one. Retail as the Third Space, one of our Things to Watch from last year, and De-Teching, one of our Things to Watch for 2008, both gained momentum since we first spotlighted them. This year we included them among our “10 Trends for 2011.”

The people on our list—from pop culture, sports, architecture, fashion and other realms—have the potential to drive or shape trends in the near future.

THE TRENDS: 3D Printing; Deforestation Awareness; Ignorance Is Bliss; Odyssey Trackers; Social Objects; Africa’s Middle Class; In the Flesh; Older Workforce; Space Travel Goes Private; Apps Beyond Mobile; Detroit; Jennifer Lawrence; The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN); Art.sy; Digital Downtime; London Tourism; Storied Products; Auto Apps; Digital Etiquette; Long-Form Content; Pedro Lourenço; Stricter Green Building Standards; Digital Indoor Maps; Personal Taste Graphs; Automatic Check-Ins; Matcha; Digital Interventions; Piers Morgan; Tablets for Tots; Bamboo; mHealth; East London Tech City; Pogo; Tap-to-Pay; Banks Branch Out; Michael Jackson Lives On; E-Book Sharing; P-to-P Car Sharing; Tech Liaisons; Banner Ads Do More; Electronic Profiling; Micro-Businesses; Rooney Mara; Tech-Enabled; Beer Sommeliers Throwbacks; Biomimicry; Entrepreneurial Journalism; Mobile Blogging; Rum; Temporary Tattoos Go High-End; Bjarke Ingels; Mobile Memes; Rye Rye; Facebook Alternatives; The Nail Polish; Ryo Ishikawa; Brazil as E-Leader; Tintin the Movie; Fashion Fast-Forward Economy; Scanning Everything; Breaking the Book; Transmedia Producers; F-Commerce; Nanobrewers; Self-Powering Devices; Brigadeiro; Tube-Free Toilet Paper; Food, Ph.D.; Near Field Communication; Smart Lunchrooms; “Buy One, Give One Away”; Ukraine; Gay-Centric Hotels; Smart-Infrastructure Investment; The New Mobility Industry; Urban Industrial Parks; CAPTCHA Advertising; Global Disease, Refocused; Video Calling; Children’s E-Books; Smartphone Cameras Take Over; Green Luxury Cars; New Nordic Cuisine; Virtual Mirrors; Coming Clean with Green; Next-Generation Documentarians; Voice-Activated Apps; Group-Manipulated Pricing; Smoking on the Fringe; Costlier Cotton; YouTube the Broadcaster; Social Browsers Go Mainstream; Culinary Calling Cards; Heirloom Apples; Neymar; Decline of the Cash Register; Home Energy Monitors; NKOTBSB; Social Networking Surveillance; Objectifying Objects

This things-to-watch list comes in the form of presentation slides from JWT Intelligence. It is a general list with a few things that libraries should be aware of: #14 – Breaking the Book (selling smaller segments of monographs); #18 – Children’s E-books (interactive story designs); #23 – Deforestation Awareness (a document file format that cannot be printed); #25 – Digital Downtime (take a break from technology); #27 – Digital Indoor Maps (maps of library stacks, anyone?); #30 – E-book Sharing (mentions Bluefire Reader to read library-loaned e-books); #47 – Long-form Content (journalism and other forms); #56 – Near Field Communications (RFID-like patron card?); #67 – Personal Taste Graphs (“helping the right information find you”); #75 – Scanning Anything (proliferation of QR codes); and #87 – Tablets for Tots (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to sell a tablet preloaded with childrens titles).

Koha and Evergreen Shine in Breeding ILS Survey Results

According the Breeding’s data, 150 libraries migrated to Evergreen (I say migrated but his stats often reflect a “contract” not necessarily a migration) and 133 migrated to Koha. In contrast, only 53 libraries migrated to a SirsiDynix product, 48 to Agent Verso, and 28 to Millennium.

Lori Bowen Ayre summarizes ILS migration trends from Marshall Breeding’s annual ILS survey. The data on migrations is available in the forward and reverse directions. Does this mark a shift in acceptance of integrated library systems based on open source software?

Update: Somehow I missed Ed Corrado’s review of the report and his follow-up focused on the Koha numbers. Both posts have a number of helpful and insightful comments from other readers as well.

Public Domain Day 2011: Will the tide be turned?

This year’s Public Domain Day, the day on which a year’s worth of copyrights expire in many countries, is getting particular attention in Europe, where events in various European cities commemorate authors who died in 1940, and whose works are now in the public domain there.

Many commented on Public Domain Day — a watershed day each year when copyrights terms are up and works enter the public domain — but I found John Mark Ockerbloom brief review of the state of copyright extensions in North America and Europe the most interesting. He also briefly mentions the desires by some to return to a more simple model of copyright terms and registration.

I was reading a story last week about the Linux Foundation‘s third annual report [PDF] of the Linux kernel, and in it was a section that talked about the affiliation of the programmers that contributed to the development of the kernel. This got me thinking about the affiliation of programmers in the library open source community. More on that after a brief detour to explain what the “kernel” is.

For those that don’t know the inner pieces of how computers are put together, the “kernel” is that part of the operating system that governs everything else. It gets to say what programs are run and shuts them down when they misbehave. It arbitrates access to devices like the keyboard and the disk drive. It is the first thing that runs when the computer starts up and the last thing to quit when the computer shuts down. It is the heart of the device you see in front of you. There are some parallels that could be drawn to integrated library systems. So this is a thought exercise down one of those parallels.

Much of the Linux kernel report is about the rate of change to the Linux kernel source code (faster pace, broader base of contributers). But there is also a section that talks about financial sponsorship of the work. Beginning on page 12, I’ve excepted a few bits under the heading “Who is Sponsoring the Work”

The Linux kernel is a resource which is used by a large variety of companies. Many of those companies never participate in the development of the kernel; they are content with the software as it is and do not feel the need to help drive its development in any particular direction. …

There are a number of developers for whom we were unable to determine a corporate affiliation; those are grouped under “unknown” in the table below. … The category “None,” instead, represents developers who are known to be doing this work on their own, with no financial contribution happening from any company.

The top 10 contributors, including the groups “unknown” and “none” make up nearly 70% of the total contributions to the kernel. It is worth noting that, even if one assumes that all of the “unknown” contributors were working on their own time, over 70% of all kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work. … The picture since [kernel version] 2.6.30 [in 2009] shows some interesting changes:

Company Name	Number of Changes	Percent of Total
None	9,911	19.1%
Red Hat	6,219	12.0%
Intel	4,037	7.8%
Novell	2,625	5.0%
IBM	2,491	4.8%
unknown	2,456	4.7%
consultants	1,265	2.4%
Nokia	1,173	2.3%
Renesas Technology	1,032	2.0%

If an Open Source ILS was Linux…

The second largest contributor would be a company that bases its existence on the open source product. Red Hat is known as the most successful commercial distributor of the Linux kernel, and its version of the kernel is used and trusted by a variety of commercial players. In the integrated library system community, an equivalent company would be someone like Equinox or ByWater Solutions. This might be as you would expect.

From there the list gets interesting quickly. Intel is primarily known as a hardware manufacturer, but it ranks third in the list of contributors to the kernel. It is hard to come up with an equivalent in the library community, but we might think of someone who is tangentially related to integrated library systems — say, Gale or ProQuest. (Until recently, I might have put OCLC in this group. With its introduction of Web-scale Management Services, though, it probably falls into the next category.)

Then it gets really interesting. Novell and IBM both have their own lines of operating systems and supplemental software, but they are also very large contributors of open source code to the Linux kernel. It would be as if Innovative Interfaces and SirsiDynix, in addition to creating their own products, also contributed substantially to an open source integrated library system.

Okay, like I said, making this comparison is a stretch. But it does lead me to think what it is about the culture of Linux community and the business opportunity of an open source kernel that makes this happen. Is it one benevolent dictator at the top (a.k.a. Linus Torvalds) looking out for the best interests of all involved? Is it a diversity of needs (such as servers to desktops to set-top boxes to phones in the case of Linux) under a big umbrella that makes sure everyone find enough value to contribute to the whole? Is it a form of job advertisements seeking to hire the best of 19.1% doing development on their own time? Or is it some sense of comradeship that transcends organizational bounds?

I don’t have answers, but it does seem like a useful case study to examine as we think about how open source software is created and sustained in the library arena.

Last week, OCLC announced a “strategy to move library management services to Web scale.” With this move, OCLC is rebranding “WorldCat Local” to include functions typically associated with an integrated library system. From the press release:

OCLC plans to release Web-scale delivery and circulation, print and electronic acquisitions, and license management components to WorldCat Local, continuing the integration of library management services to create the Web-scale, cooperative library service. OCLC will begin piloting the Web-scale management service components this year.

There are many thing going on here. So, in order to get our bearings I think it is useful to break this down into two parts: the broader scope of web-scale integrated library system components and the narrower scope of the “quick start” trial version of the patron interface to WorldCat.org. But first we need to tackle the phrase “WorldCat Local.”

What is “WorldCat Local”?

OCLC now seems to be rebranding “WorldCat Local” from a discovery layer service to a replacement of a local integrated library system (although OCLC seems to go through great pains not to use the phrase “integrated library system” to describe this new offering). This rebranding varies depending on the page you are viewing: the press release has the quote at the top of this post while the first link in that press release (to the Web-scale, cooperative library management service) seems to speak of WorldCat Local in its 2007 definition. Andrew Pace’s blog post is somewhere in the middle: “OCLC is extending the WorldCat Local platform to include circulation and delivery, print and electronic acquisitions, and license management components.” In a conversation on the Code4Lib IRC channel, Roy Tennant says “AFAIK (as far as I know) WorldCat Local, which formerly was completely bounded by the catalog part, now will have different components, one of which is the catalog.”

Since the branding seems to be in flux, in this post I’m going to refer to WorldCat Local Web-scale Management Service (WCL-WMS) and WorldCat Local Discovery Service (WCL-DS). Any resemblance to current or future OCLC product names is quite definitely a coincidence.

Web-Scale Integrated Library System

OCLC’s vision is similar to Software as a Service (SaaS)¹ but is distinguished by the cooperative “network effect” of all libraries using the same, shared hardware, services and data, rather than the alternative model of hosting hardware and software on behalf of individual libraries. Libraries would subscribe to Web-scale management services that include modular management functionality. Moreover, libraries would benefit from the network-level integration of numerous services that are not currently part traditional integrated library systems, e.g., Knowledge Base Integration, WorldCat Collection Analysis, WorldCat Selection, WorldCat Local, etc..

Further down the Web-scale management services page there is a list of proposed services: Web-Scale Circulation and Delivery, Web-Scale Print and Electronic Acquisitions, Web-Scale License Management, Web-Scale Self-Configuration, Web-Scale Workflow, and Web-Scale Cooperative Intelligence. The list also has brief descriptions of each of these services.

Trial Version of Patron Interface

Initial Thoughts

It is this second effect that has caught my eye the most. When pushing the back-room library automation tasks of circulation, acquisitions and such from local systems to “the cloud”, we’re fundamentally talking about a system migration. We’ve got to unload all of the records from our current system, massage them however we need to, put put them in another system. The twist comes from the fact that the other system is not the library’s own. I have no doubt that OCLC can work with existing ILS vendors to migrate their information into OCLC. My questions and concerns come at the other end — what if you want to migrate from the cloud back to a local system?

This is where considerations of OCLC-as-a-cooperative take over. If OCLC were acting as a cooperative — acting on the best behalf of its members — there would be no question that the data could easily come back out. The announcement, backlash, and response to the proposed changes to the record use policy are, however, a dark cloud² over any reading of OCLC’s intentions. In a world where I could trust the cooperative to provide single-item lookups and batch aggregated extracts of holdings and acquisition data from the SaaS, what OCLC is offering could be a good thing. If it came along with demonstrations of real cost reductions (not simply “reducing the rate of rise” of costs) it would be even better. But OCLC has turned into a behemoth much larger than the collective whole of the collaborative, and I’m not sure I can trust them (collectively) at this point farther than I can throw the headquarters building in Dublin, OH.

Other Interesting Tidbits

In a future post, I’ll start to summarize the reactions to the OCLC announcement.

Footnotes

1. Software as a Service is a model for deploying software where a firm provides the hosting and support of a system for a client. For example, Google Docs is a SaaS deployment for office automation applications and Salesforce.com is a supplier of a customer relationship management system. As opposed to a model of software-purchase-plus-maintenance, SaaS involves a ongoing subscription fee. For more information, see the Wikipedia article on the topic.
2. Please pardon the cloud-computing pun.