The Liminal Librarian

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve always had a soft spot for Montana. Less so at the moment, now that I’ve been reading on newlib and ReadWriteWeb and, oh, everywhere all morning about the city of Bozeman’s new application requirements — guess my long-term plan of working as a Montana librarian in retirement someday is going on the back burner . Not a joke:

Applying for a job with the City of Bozeman? You may be asked to provide more personal information than you expected.

That was the case for one person who applied for employment with the City. The anonymous viewer emailed the news station recently to express concern with a component of the city’s background check policy, which states that to be considered for a job applicants must provide log-in information and passwords for social network sites in which they participate. (emphasis mine)

What the? Login information? Passwords?? Really? I thought perhaps this was one of the news stories outlets tend to accidentally pick up from The Onion, but look at the background check form on the city’s own website:

Please list any and all, past and present, personal or business website or web pages, memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.
Website/Domain Username/Member Log-In Password (if applicable)

Whoa. (Not only that, they only give 2 lines for it — perhaps they don’t hire web designers or, I dunno, people who use the Internet in Bozeman.)

So, now let’s start taking bets on exactly how long it will take before public outrage makes them change the form. I say: Within the week. You? Update: I guess I was a week off !