Life Without Online Privacy, Part 2

My colleague Eric Fair helpfully mentioned an additional EFF resource for Facebook users:

"How to Opt Out of Facebook's Instant Personalization"

Facebook changed its privacy settings layout, making it a bit more challenging to opt out completely. As before, unchecking the "Allow" box is not sufficient because you need to block each Instant Personalization website to fully opt out.

And for what it's worth, I'm not the only librarian with FB concerns.

Just yesterday, Woody Evans gave an online presentation called "Why Librarians Should Stay the Hell Away from Facebook."

His talk was part of the Innovation in Libraries for the Twenty-First Century conference.

It's your personal info! Be safe. Be smart.

Life Without Online Privacy

Despite the invitations and cajoling of many friends, I put off joining Facebook for quite a long while. And then I caved.

I've enjoyed connecting with dozens of people I would not have located otherwise, but Facebook's inconstant privacy policies and questionable use of private information is getting under my skin.

Writing at Wired.com Ryan Singel comments,

Setting up a decent system for controlling your privacy on a web service shouldn’t be hard. And if multiple blogs are writing posts explaining how to use your [i.e. Facebook's] privacy system, you can take that as a sign you aren't treating your users with respect. It means you are coercing them into choices they don’t want using design principles. That’s creepy.

More than a dozen consumer advocacy groups have filed a complaint about Facebook:

Facebook now discloses personal information to the public that Facebook users previously restricted. Facebook now discloses personal information to third parties that Facebook users previously did not make available. These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook’s own representations. These business practices are Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices.

Thankfully, privacy-minded "nerds" are creating open-source alternatives, including Diaspora*.

As The NY Times explains,

The Diaspora* group was inspired to begin their project after hearing a talk by Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, who described the centralized social networks as "spying for free" ... The four students met in a computer room at N.Y.U., and have spent nearly every waking minute there for months. They understand the appeal of social networks.

About a month ago I reduced my Facebook profile information dramatically. Today, I'm thinking of contributing to Diaspora*.

Would it be hard to start over on a new social network? Maybe.

Would I regret it? Doubtful.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) offers a handy chronology of Facebook's evolving privacy policies, which every user would benefit from reading. In short:

As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it's slowly but surely helped itself--and its advertising and business partners--to more and more of its users' information, while limiting the users' options to control their own information.

For more about online privacy, see the EFF's privacy page.

Five Feet High and Rising

This evening a gentleman visited our computer lab to view videos of the flooding in Nashville, Tennessee. He said he'd lived there for over 20 years before coming back to his hometown of Urbana.

Though the water level worries him about old friends and familiar places, he'd gotten a laugh or two from his YouTube finds. And so did I.

C-U Bike to Work Day

Champaign County Bikes (CCB) is encouraging everyone to get out and pedal this month.

Tuesday, May 4th, is C-U Bike to Work Day.

By registering online, you can score a free t-shirt and other goodies.

Want to know the best routes for commuting or roaming the region?

CCB has just issued a new Champaign-Urbana Area Bicycle Map, available online (pdf), at our library, and elsewhere.

See you on the road!

Photo courtesy of kamshots (CC BY 2.0).

Every Day Is Earth Day

One great thing about having a birthday on April 22nd is that CUMTD honors me by offering the community free bus rides all day long.

(rimshot)

But seriously, Happy Earth Day!

In related news: Friday, April 30th, is Arbor Day in Illinois.

Each state celebrates Arbor Day at slightly different times, as do countries worldwide, from Australia to Yemen.

The Arbor Day Foundation offers a variety of ideas on how to mark the occasion, including a resource called Celebrate Arbor Day Guidebook (pdf).

Locally, the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) based in Champaign is hosting a contest called Trees Bring Life to the Neighborhood.

There are five categories for everyone from kindergarten scribblers to professional adult photographers. Deadline: April 26th.

The ISA created a suggested reading list targeted to youngsters. You can find the titles below at, or through, our library ...

The Lorax / Dr. Seuss

The Giving Tree / Shel Silverstein

The Green Hour: A Daily Dose of Nature for Happier, Healthier, Smarter Kids / Todd Christopher

Lives of the Trees: An Uncommon History / Diana Wells

A Festival of Trees: An Adventure in Israel / Disney's Small World Library

We Planted a Tree / Diane Muldrow

This Tree Counts / Alison Formento

Poetrees / Douglas Florian

Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees / Roger Deakin

Our Tree Named Steve / Alan Zweibel

A Friend for All Seasons / Julie Hubery

Arbor Day / Kelly Bennett

Pearl Plants a Tree / Jane Breskin Zalben

Arbor Day Magic / James W. Baker

Photo courtesy of Per Ola Wiberg ~ Powi (CC BY 2.0).

He'd Rather Be in Florida

Justice John Paul Stevens, who turns 90 this month, recently announced he would be stepping down from his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Timothy Egan (The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America) thinks that his replacement should fulfill--or perhaps not fulfill--a particular requirement.

At last count, there were about 200 law schools in the United States accredited by the American Bar Association, but apparently only two of them--Harvard and Yale--can be a path to serving on the highest court in the land ...

Harvard and Yale need no extra seats at the high end of American power. The law school at Yale is currently represented by three justices--Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito--the latter two nominated by George H.W. Bush, Yale University class of ’48, and George W. Bush, Yale University ’69, Harvard Business School ’75.

Five sitting justices have gone to Harvard Law School--John Roberts, Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (though she transferred to Columbia) and Stephen G. Breyer. Three of them were appointed by presidents who went to Harvard or Yale. That’s an Ivy inside straight, a picture of narrow-minded exclusivity that defies the meritocratic ideals of this big land.

Will Stevens, the court's "liberal leader," be missed?

In a profile of the justice, Jeffrey Toobin (The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court) identifies at least one crucial period of Stevens' deliberations, with an outcome President Obama would do well to review for his new appointment.

[T]he summit of Stevens’s achievements on the bench came during the Bush Administration, in the series of decisions about the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and he kept for himself the most important of these opinions. In the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush, among the first major cases to arise from Bush’s war on terror--and the first time that a President ever lost a major civil-liberties case in the Supreme Court during wartime--Stevens wrote for a six-to-three majority that the detainees did have the right to challenge their incarceration in American courts.

In his opinion, which was written in an especially understated tone, in notable contrast to the bombastic rhetoric that accompanied the war on terror, he cited Rutledge’s dissent in the Ahrens [v. Clark] case--which he himself had helped write, fifty-six years earlier. One of Stevens’s law clerks, Joseph T. Thai, later wrote an article in the Virginia Law Review entitled "The Law Clerk Who Wrote Rasul v. Bush," which concluded that "Stevens’s work on Ahrens as a law clerk exerted a remarkable influence over the Rasul decision."

For more on the history of the Supreme Court, please browse our collection.

Photo courtesy of Kyle Rush (CC BY 2.0).

The Messy Business of Democracy

PBS's award-winning series Frontline has produced a documentary on the recent health-reform legislation called Obama's Deal.

The program "reveals the dramatic details of how an idealistic president pursued the health care fight--despite the warnings of many of his closest advisers--and how he ended up making deals with many of the powerful special interests he had campaigned against."

The complete broadcast can be viewed online.

Most interesting are the widely diverging viewer comments in the site, expressing outrage (from both sides of the political aisle) about the legislation or the documentary's supposed biases; offering counter-perspectives (from other countries); and occasionally noting appreciation for what has been accomplished thus far.

A sample:

Although I'm in agreement with the notion that a nation as successful and capable as the United States should insure every American is provided with basic health care coverages and services, I detest how we got here, and do not believe that we have achieved "reform" in any serious regard. I have looked at the tea party uprisings in America with disdain and looked on in horror at how polarized we have become. Yet I also believe we should throw the whole Washington insider lot out and bring into lawmaking people who will put the interests of the American people first, and stop trying to protect their political careers and the interests of big Pharma, Insurance and health care providers. We seem to have totally lost our ability to "do the right thing" in Washington.

Watch it and decide for yourself.

Photo courtesy of marcn (CC BY 2.0).

Spring Is Here ... and the Bugs Too

In this video from Big Think, anthropologist Hugh Raffles at The New School asks us to resist the urge to kill insects and explains why:

Don’t swat a fly and don’t smush a spider. You don’t need to do that and just think about how interesting they are and maybe just look at them. I think we can--I really do think it enriches our lives to look at them and to pay attention to them.

Outbreaks, Attacks, Sackings, and Fires

This past weekend I finished Luciano Canfora’s The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World.

Canfora, an Italian scholar of ancient literature, examines the history of Egypt’s famous Library of Alexandria and the contradictory accounts of what happened to its books.

So many writers with differing agendas--both in antiquity and modern times--have had their say in this matter that it is difficult to unravel truth from fiction. With an impressive grasp of history and source material, Canfora tries mightily.

Much is disputed: the location of the collection, its composition, its size by volume count, which potentates helped build and care for it, and which despots destroyed it in whole or part.

Warfare, religious zealotry, political intrigue, hubris, and flames all took their toll at various times, and in nefarious ways, on the Ptolemic dynasty’s center of scholarship.

In one narrative of an event dating to the year 641, the Muslim Caliph Omar sends a message by envoy to the Emir Amrou Ibn el-Ass that if "[the library's books] contain matter not in accordance with the book of Allah, there can be no need to preserve them. Proceed, then, and destroy them."

Amrou, an educated man sympathetic to his Christian contemporaries and the collection they wished to preserve, reluctantly complied.

The books were distributed to the public baths of Alexandria, where they were used to feed the stoves which kept the baths so comfortably warm. Ibn al-Kifti writes that 'the number of baths was well known, but I have forgotten it' (we have Eutychius's word that there were in fact four thousand). 'They say,' continues Ibn al-Kifti, 'that it took six months to burn all that mass of material.' Aristotle's books were the only ones spared.

Today, libraries and many other institutions are under siege in the United States, though by accountants and public officials rather than foreign armies.

In response to lean economic times, nearly all states have cut social services, and library budgets are likewise on the chopping block.

The venerable Boston Public Library, founded in 1848, is considering the closure of eight of its ten branch libraries.

Recurring reductions in the Hawaii State Public Library System budget have forced librarians to rely solely on fees and fines to pay for new materials.

Here in Illinois, things are no less bleak. The state has been slow to forward funds to the nine cooperating library systems, including Lincoln Trail Libraries System, of which TUFL is a part.

Essential per capita grants to libraries were reduced by 16%. And the City of Urbana is predicting a budget shortfall of nearly $1.5 million.

All of this is happening at a time when greater numbers of people are seeking the resources of libraries [pdf].

In the grip of one of the most severe recessions since the Great Depression, more Americans are turning to their libraries not only for free access to books, magazines, CDs and DVDs, but also for a lifeline to technology training and online resources for employment, continuing education and government resources. In January 2009, over 25 million Americans reported using their public library more than 20 times in the last year, up from 20.3 million Americans in 2006. It is likely this trend continued or increased through the remainder of 2009.

That library funding is diminishing while library usage is increasing perplexes those of us sitting this side of the reference desk.

We may not be forced from our positions at the point of a spear or watch the governor (like archbishop Theophilus) reduce each library "to a heap of rubbish" or see them all "closed forever, like tombs" as in fourth-century Rome.

But the fate of our public libraries in tumultuous times speaks volumes about the men and women occupying seats of power, their wisdom, and their values.

Oh, Those Mommies!

Familiar with the local site ChambanaMoms?

Check out Babble.com's year-end list of "Top 50 Mommy Bloggers."

The compilation is divided into subcategories, including "most controversial," featuring women like FreeRangeKids' Lenore Skenazy (aka "America's Worst Mom") and Dooce.com's Heather Armstrong.

Pseudo-scientific trolling--er, polling--suggests that mommy blogs outnumber daddy blogs two to one. But "digital strategist" (i.e. bandwagoneer) Jessica Smith suggests that we'll see a shift in 2010, with more men posting:

As brands leverage social media more and more, the importance of not getting lost in the "noise" will be important if not totally necessary. While women tend to connect with each other emotionally and through story telling, men tend to be more direct and therefore provide instant gratification when providing their information.

(Uh, I think she's referring to the practice of corporations sending products to bloggers for potential review ... or whatever.)

If, like Seth Rogen, you could care less about children or their parents' multitudinous opinions, rest assured ... you are not alone.

Photo courtesy of rutlo.

Appropriate Response to Hype: Yawn

As we look to the end of the year and the close of the Oughts, Salon.com writer Michael Lind challenges popular assumptions about America's status in the world.

His essay begins somewhat ominously, "The first decade of this century is likely to be remembered as the Decade From Hell."

But he quickly changes tone:

The lesson I take from [the last ten years] is that the distribution of power and wealth in the world is far more stable than you would think if you listened to our manic-depressive public discourse, where America is always either on the brink of catastrophic decline or unchallengeable global supremacy. The U.S. share of global GDP--a good proxy for power--has fluctuated around a quarter or a fifth since the early 1900s, with the exception of a temporary spike after World War II before the other industrial great powers recovered from it. The Soviet Union never came anywhere near challenging American primacy, and neither did Japan ...

Hyperbolic assertions about America's meteoric rise or meteoric decline are not the only kind of hype that pollutes public discourse. Academics and journalistic pundits alike are fond of drawing attention to themselves by declaring that we are on the verge of a radical transformation of the system of sovereign states that has existed in Europe since the Thirty Years' War and in the world since post-World War II decolonization. Once again, we see the fallacy of the straight-line extrapolation from a temporary trend to a cosmic transformation.

[more]

The Passing of Ponseti

The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that Dr. Ignacio Ponseti, pioneer of a nonsurgical method to correct clubfoot, has died.

The Ponseti Method was born out of his research into the long-term outcomes of clubfoot surgeries performed at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He found that many surgical patients experienced pain after adolescence in addition to stiffness later in life. He discovered that the condition, which appears in about 150,000 to 200,000 babies each year worldwide and is characterized by a deformity of the foot that causes it to turn inward, can be better treated with a less invasive method.

A child is born with clubfoot every three minutes (nearly 200,000 cases reported worldwide annually), and 80% of those children are born in developing countries with limited or no access to health care.

This brief video captures the impact of clubfoot on children in Uganda.

My cousin Jenny, who now lives in Mahomet with her family, sought Dr. Ponseti's help for her daughter.

Jennifer Trevillian’s daughter, Kelly, was born with clubfoot in 2000 and was upset when her doctor recommended surgery.

"I was devastated at the prospect of my child undergoing major reconstructive surgery; the thought of surgical pins protruding from my baby’s foot made my stomach turn," she said.

Trevillian learned about the Ponseti method online and traveled from Michigan to Iowa City to see if it would work for Kelly.

"He was very gentle with my daughter and made sure she was relaxed and comfortable," Trevillian said. "I knew that my daughter was in the right place and the weight was finally lifted from my shoulders. We are forever grateful to Dr. Ponseti, not only for what he’s done for our daughter’s foot, but for his life’s work in improving the lives of children all over the world."

The P-C offers a gallery of photos of Ponseti.

Consult the Ponseti International Association Website and other clubfoot sites for more information.

Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy)

Boston.com has posted a photo series showing the devastation of the recent typhoon in the Phillipines, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

Google.com has created a helpful page listing agencies to which you can provide donations.

Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia

The AP cites an Alzheimer's Disease International report today that more than 35 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's Disease and various stages of dementia.

The report puts North America's total at 4.4 million, although the Alzheimer's Association of the U.S. uses a less conservative count to say more than 5 million people in this country alone are affected. The disease afflicts one in eight people 65 and older, and nearly one in two people over 85.

The report forecasts a more than doubling of dementia cases in parts of Asia and Latin America over the next 20 years, compared with a 40 percent to 60 percent jump in Europe and North America.

The condition has touched members of my extended family, so I know I'm not alone in seeking guidance. Herewith, a sample of resources ...

Alzheimer's Disease / Mayo Clinic

Alzheimer's Disease / MedlinePlus

Alzheimer's Disease Fact Sheet / National Institute on Aging

Alzheimer's Disease Research Clinic / Mayo Clinic

Alzheimer's Support in Illinois / ElderCarelink

Illinois Alzheimer's Organizations / Disability.gov

"What Is Alzheimer's" / Alzheimer's Association

- - -
The 36-hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for Persons with Alzheimer Disease, Related Dementing Illnesses, and Memory Loss in Later Life
Nancy L. Mace & Peter V. Rabins, 2000

Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives
David Snowdon, 2001

The Alzheimer's Advisor: A Caregiver's Guide to Dealing with the Tough Legal and Practical Issues
Vaughn E. James, 2009

Alzheimer's Activities That Stimulate the Mind
Emilia C. Bazan-Salazar, 2005

Alzheimer's Disease: The Dignity Within: A Handbook for Caregivers, Family, and Friends
Patricia R. Callone [et al.], 2006

Alzheimer's from the Inside Out
Richard Taylor, 2007

The Anti-Alzheimer's Prescription: The Science-Proven Plan to Start at Any Age
Vincent Fortanasce, 2008

A Caregiver's Guide to Alzheimer's Disease: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier
Patricia R. Callone [et al.], 2006

Death in Slow Motion: My Mother's Descent into Alzheimer's
Eleanor Cooney, 2003

A Dignified Life: The Best Friends Approach to Alzheimer's Care: A Guide for Family Caregivers
Virginia Bell & David Troxel, 2002

Elegy for Iris
John Bayley, 1999

Encyclopedia of Alzheimer's Disease: With Directories of Research, Treatment and Care Facilities
Elaine A. Moore with Lisa Moore, 2003

Firefly Dreams (DVD)
Yoshinobu Hayana, 2004

The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer's (DVD)
Produced by Twin Cities Public Television, 2004

The Handholder's Handbook: A Guide to Caregivers of People with Alzheimer's or Other Dementias
Rosette Teitel, 2001

Inside Alzheimer's: How to Hear and Honor Connections with a Person Who Has Dementia
Nancy D. Pearce, 2007

Iris (DVD)
Roger Pratt, 2002

Life in the Balance: A Physician's Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with Parkinson's Disease and Dementia
Thomas Graboys with Peter Zheutlin, 2008

The Long Goodbye
Patti Davis, 2004

Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer's
Thomas DeBaggio, 2002

Mayo Clinic on Alzheimer's Disease
Ronald Petersen, editor in chief, 2002

Measure of the Heart: A Father's Alzheimer's, a Daughter's Return
Mary Ellen Geist, 2008

The Myth of Alzheimer's: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis
Peter J. Whitehouse with Daniel George, 2008

Preventing Alzheimer's: Prevent, Detect, Diagnose, Treat, and Even Halt Alzheimer's Disease and Other Causes of Memory Loss
William Rodman Shankle & Daniel G. Amen, 2004

The Validation Breakthrough: Simple Techniques for Communicating with People with Alzheimer's-Type Dementia
Naomi Feil, rev. by Vicki de Klerk-Rubin, 2002

What to Do When the Doctor Says It's Early-Stage Alzheimer's
Todd E. Feinberg & Winnie Yu, 2005

A World of Light
Floyd Skloot, 2005

Gadfly of the Week: Brooksley Born

As chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Brooksley Born predicted the present economic collapse ... more than ten years ago!

Born's views resulted in battles with then- Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, his deputy, Larry Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) head Arthur Levitt, members of Congress, financial elites, and--as she had much of her adult life--sexism.

According to The Washington Post,

She wanted to release a "concept paper"--essentially a set of questions--that explored whether there should be regulation of over-the-counter derivatives. (Derivatives are so-named because they derive their value from something else, such as currency or bond rates.) ...

"I was very concerned about the dark nature of these markets," Born said. "I didn't think we knew enough about them. I was concerned about the lack of transparency and the lack of any tools for enforcement and the lack of prohibitions against fraud and manipulation."

Despite threats and opposition, Born ultimately released the paper. But her critics, kowtowing to the banking industry, persuaded Congress to pass a moratorium on CFTC regulation of over-the-counter derivatives. Less than a year later, she left her post.

Only cave-dwellers are unaware of the recent economic turbulence, caused in part by these derivatives.

The good news?

On May 18th, Born was honored with a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. In her acceptance speech she said:

We are in the midst of the most significant financial crisis since the Great Depression, and regulatory gaps including the failure to regulate over-the-counter derivatives have played an important role in the crisis ...

While over-the-counter derivatives have been justified as vehicles to manage financial risk, they have in practice spread and multiplied risk throughout the economy and caused great financial harm. They include the credit default swaps disastrously sold by AIG and many of the toxic assets held by our biggest banks. Warren Buffett has dubbed them “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

We now have a unique opportunity--a narrow window of time--to fashion and implement a comprehensive regulatory scheme for these instruments.

Let's hope Washington is now more willing to listen to her.

Humuhumunukunukuapuaa

Can you spell this word? (Or even pronounce it?) "Humuhumunukunukuapuaa" is of Hawaiian derivation and is the name of a small triggerfish. And it just happens to be one of the favorite words of spellers currently competing in the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Yes--this is the week in which 293 eager spellers are converging on Washington, D.C. for the most prestigious of all bees. No one from Urbana-Champaign made the cut this year, but Central Illinois is well-represented. You can watch the survivors vie live on television. ABC is carrying the finals at 7:00 p.m. CDT this Thursday, May 28, 2009.

If you want to find out more about the Scripps bee in particular, visit the Scripps official web site. Here you can find a list of past winning words (2008's was "guerdon", meaning a "reward", or "recompense", according to the Bee's official dictionary--Webster's Third New International Dictionary, 2002 ed.). You can also test yourself to see how well you spell.

Want more a more in-depth spelling fix? Check out some of these great spelling bee resources available in The Urbana Free Library Adult Department's collection.

MOVIES:

Akeelah And The Bee
Akeelah Anderson, the 11 year old heroine from South Los Angeles, has a gift for words and with the help of her tutor and neighborhood fans overcomes her own and her mother’s resistance to spelling bee stardom. (2006; widescreen)
DVD / AKE

Bee Season
Family dynamics change as young Eliza demonstates an amazing gift for spelling any word she hears. (2006)
DVD / BEE

Spellbound
This charming documentary follows the preparation and spelling performances of eight young hopefuls competing for the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee crown. (2002)
DVD / 372.632 / SPE

BOOKS:

American Bee: The National Spelling Bee And The Culture Of Nerd Words: The Lives Of Five Top Spellers As They Compete For Glory and Fame
James Maguire, 2006
372.632 / MAG

How To Spell Like A Champ
Barrie Trinkle, Caroline Andrews, Paige Kimble, 2006
372.632 / TRI

The Art Of Spelling: The Madness And The Method
Marilyn vos Savant, 2000
421.52 / VOS

The Terrible Speller: A Quick-And-Easy Guide To Enhancing Your Spelling AbilityWilliam Proctor, 1993
428.1 / PRO

National Bike-to-Work Week, May 11-15

National Bike-to-Work Week is half over already, and I'm certain yesterday's unrelenting thunderstorms did little to encourage bicycle commutes. But there are other impediments, too.

WIRED magazine asks, "How bike friendly is your boss?"

Aside from Quality Bicycle Products in Minnesota (where I worked nine years ago), I'd say most employers could do better.

Showers? Wow that'd be nice. A secure, covered parking place for my bike? Awesome. (For now, I'll keep dreaming.)

Champaign County Bikes is one local organization working hard on behalf of cyclists. The group's mission is to "encourage and facilitate bicycling as transportation and recreation, and to promote public awareness of the benefits that bicycling brings to our community."

"Towards a Healthier Community" describes ongoing efforts to make CU a more friendly place for cyclists and pedestrians:

Improving bicycle routes, lanes, and the connectivity between destinations in our communities is highly desired by Urbana and Champaign residents. Public input on several transportation studies conducted in the past 2 years have resulted in both cities moving forward with plans for safer and better bicycle infrastructure.

Urbana, in conjunction with its consultants and its Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, has begun to create a bike route and lane system to meet the City Council goal of becoming a Bicycle Friendly Community within five years. Champaign approved a new transportation master plan that includes a bike plan with routes and lanes. The University of Illinois is also working on similar plans.

Copies of the CU Area Bicycle Map are available at our library and online.

Finally, Sangamon County is also doing its part to encourage employees to leave their cars at home during Bike to Work Day (Friday the 15th).