LibrarianInBlack

LiB Off on Vacation (well, mostly)

I'm off for a 4 day hiatus from work and this magnificent blog. I'm teaching an all day class for InfoPeople in Chico, CA at the Chico Branch Library tomorrow, and then it's off to hike my brains out in Lake Tahoe. Adios!

Umm, yeah, we're spying on you...

Mike from TechDirt points out an article in Business Journal that discusses a bill in the California Senate that would require employers to notify employees if their e-mails & computer activity are being monitored. Interestingly, the bill is opposed by the following organizations: the California Chamber of Commerce, California Manufacturers & Technology Association, American Staffing Association, California Manufacturers & Technology Association and the Motion Picture Association of America. Hmm. So, these organizations like to spy on employees without letting them know about it? Remind me not to work for them.

Subscription Databases vs. Google

David Rothman has a short article on TeleRead has a about his frustrations with library's databases. Rothman's story, to me, is a good example of why more libraries need to move to meta-searches (AKA federated searches). Asking patrons to guess which article or subject area would be in which database is purely ridiculous when there exists a technology that will do this step for them.

The second rule of Nerd Club is...

A spoof of Fight Club, this Nerd Club ad is funny, in a self-deprecatory sort of way for those of us who classify ourselves in the "nerd" category. My only complaint--why aren't there any nerd girls in the ad?

Hittin' the 2 o'clock wall...

There's a multi-question survey that, when you're done, tells you when you're apt to be the most tired during the day. Worked perfectly for me--at 2pm, each and every day, I just want to recline on a chaise lounge, sip some iced tea, and snooze for a while. Unfortunately, I am gainfully employed, so that is not an option. Check out the Knacker Factor to see your own cycles of tiredness.

I found this nifty link on SlashDot, if anyone's curious. Slashdot rocks the casbah!

Noam Chomsky has a blog

Mr. Noam Chomsky has a blog! And it has an RSS feed. From his post on the 12th about the occupation of Iraq:

Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population.

Thanks to Library Autononmous Zone for the link.

Anne Rice in the Suburbs?

Anne Rice recently put her New Orleans Garden District mansion up for sale. The 1860s building is a mecca for Rice fans, goths, and . The New York Times has an article describing the reasons for her move--painful memories and the flood of fans to her gates. If I didn't love the Bay Area so much, well, and had $4 million to spend, I'd probably bid on it ;) I'd love to live in the house of the woman who gave us Lasher & Lestat (& Anya, and Pandora, and...) Thanks to Dr. Web for alerting me to the story.

Put down the attachment and walk away slowly...

There are two services that offer drop boxes for large e-mail attachments. Dropload & YouSendIt. If you're trying to send someone a large-ish attachment, and his or her e-mail system has attachment size limits which prevent your message from being delivered, try these. You just plop your file in the drop box and your chosen recipient is sent an e-mail with directions on how to download the file. The files are automatically swept off the server after a time (2 & 7 days respectively).

Thanks to J-Walk and his commenter Ace Davis for the links.

Identifont

Trying to figure out what the blazes font someone is using? Try Identifont. Answer some questions about letter shapes and properties and you'll get your font. Came in handy for me when I was trying to identify a font someone was using on a Flash site (can't View Source for that, damn).

Tips for Tech Trainers

Michael at Tame the Web has posted his "Top Ten Tips for Technology Trainers in the Trenches." All good advice...particularly his encouragement to show off new technologies:

Adding circulating MP3 players to your library? Host "Meet the MP3" night at your library and give folks a chance for hands on contact and time for questions. Do the same for a new wifi initiative. Use your wifi savvy staffer who can explain such technology to folks and bill it as "The WiFi Wonder" will be available for support and questions in the library computer lab on Wednesday night" --- a darn nice thing to do to promote such a service.

We hold gardening programs and spirituality workshops. Why shouldn't we teach patrons about MP3s or WiFi?

The Future of Boolean Logic

The Library Link of the Day today is Mary Ellen Bates's article from eContent "Is Boolean Dead?" Her assessment is that Boolean continues to function behind the scenes of search engines, but we can't expect users to understand it or even want to understand it. As much as I hate to admit it, I think she's right. We're living in a keyword-string society, folks. The ANDs and OR NOTs of yesteryear are going the way of Dialog. Alas...

RFID Bibliography

The RFID in Libraries Blog has a link to ALA's RFID Bibliography. Good comprehensive resource for RFID information...

Women in Tech

Business Week has a series of articles on women in technology, focusing on "up and coming" women in the tech world. One of the articles, "Technology's Too Small Sisterhood," points out the worsening gender gap in technology jobs, which reflects the steep decline of women earning technology degrees. I would have thought things would improve, especially in computer science, but apparently not. But hey, I didn't get a CS degree, and the job I'm in is largely CS-driven. Maybe all the women are getting LIS or IS degrees instead...do those count as technology degrees? *wink* In all seriousness though, I would be interested in hearing (in the handy comments section of this post) what other women in technology out there think of this article. Do you think the technology world is gendered? Hell, do you think the technology aspect of librarianship is gendered? Is it egalitarian, or more so than the other industries that the article mentions?

R.I.P. RefGrunt

RefGrunt is calling it quits after a year of funny-ass postings. Don't worry though, Refgrunt.com is still around.

Gmail me

I now have a Gmail account (courtesy of Blogger). Feel free to e-mail me, spam me, whatever at sarahfaery@gmail.com, especially if you, too, have a Gmail account. I'm doing a little covert testing...

Colin Powell on Meet the Press

During Colin Powell's recent interview on Meet the Press, his press aide tried to end the interview early by moving the camera off of Powell as Russert asks him about the faulty intelligence that was used as an excuse to go to war in Iraq. The press secretary is saying that Russert had gone over the agreed-upon time limit and that's why she tried to cut the interview short. You decide.

From the Transcript:

Russert: Finally, Mr. Secretary, in February of 2003, you placed your enormous personal credibility before the United Nations and laid out a case against Saddam Hussein citing...
Powell: Not off.
Emily: No. They can't use it. They're editing it. They (unintelligible).
Powell: He's still asking me questions. Tim.
Emily: He was not...
Powell: Tim, I'm sorry, I lost you.
Russert: I'm right here, Mr. Secretary. I would hope they would put you back on camera. I don't know who did that.
Powell: We really...
Russert: I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary. I don't think that's appropriate.
Powell: Emily, get out of the way.
Emily: OK.
Powell: Bring the camera back, please. I think we're back on, Tim. Go ahead with your last question.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

Review of Wired NextFest

Wired Magazine held its first annual NextFest this weekend at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The Librarian In Black attended on Saturday, and here is my review.

Digest Version: The technologies featured were very cool, but the set-up and the venue were not.

Extended Version: There were a lot of super-cool gadgets, ideas, and technologies at the Wired NextFest. My favorite by far was the FogScreen, a walk through display system in whcih images are projected onto a thin water-vapor surface. Totally cool looking. The prize for the most Orwellian exhibit goes to Brain Fingerprinting. From their publicity materials: "Brain Fingerprinting detects whether or not specific information is stored in a person's brain. Words or pictures are presented on a screen while a subject's brain wave responses are measured and analyzed by a computer. When a person sees a word or picture that is relevant and significant--for example, the dedtails of a crime known only to the perpetrator and investigators--his brain emits a specific brain wave response. Brain Fingerprinting technology analyzes
these responses to determine scientifically whether or not the relevant information is stored in the subject's brain."

The exhibits were set up in a series of round raised platforms, staggered down the warehouse-style venue of the Fort Mason building. While this looks pretty nifty when viewed as a floor plan, and clustered similar technologies in little bubbles, it was a foot traffic nightmare. Not only was the building clearly over capacity, but the layout prohibited many of us from getting to exhibits we wanted to see. The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd wasn't moving in clear lines because of the organic layout of the exhibits. Instead, everyone was swarming in a chaotic pattern, bumping into each other and a crowd standing at one exhibit prevented people at nearby exhibits from moving at all. I think I would have enjoyed myself a lot more if the set-up was more organized and accessible.

While the stuff was cool, I do think it was a wasted $15 per ticket. I could have researched these things online and not only learned more, probably, but definitely been more comfortable. I hope that for next year's NextFest, the venue designers pay a little more attention to the practical matter of traffic flow.

Who's Blogging

The ALA/APA Library Worklife newsletter has an article about blogging. The most interesting thing to me was that they mentioned Male Librarian Centerfold, who they imply is anonymous, but he isn't, by any means. He's got his centerfold body and mug out there for the world to see. Barring that, it is nice to see the library blogging world getting a little press.

Guess How Old I Am?

Wow, I am full of useless non-library, non-tech related things today! The AgeProject lets you guess how old people are, and then find out their actual age & the average age guessed by others. I came across one guy who I guessed was 48, and who was actually 24. Poor dude. You can also add your own photo to the mix.

Top 25 Weirdo Things You Can Buy on Amazon

Sheila Chilcote-Collins has created a list (through Amazon's listmania) of the 25 weirdest things you can buy on Amazon. My favorites were the Sugar Free Milk Chocolate Dipped Pork Rinds and Mr. Poopy the Octopus.

Dewey or Don't We?

The authors of the forthcoming recipe book Dewey or Don’t We? Librarians Cook are looking for submissions! Recipes will be accepted until June 20, 2004. LiB submitted two recipes, so look for some super yummy vegetarian entrees :)

The Shining in 30 Seconds

The Shining in 30 seconds, and re-enacted by bunnies. Like it? Try The Exorcist in 30 seconds, also re-enacted by bunnies.

Seeing what's under those black Sharpie marks...

European researchers introduced Eurocrypt, a piece of software that illuminates what's behind all those blacked out sections of government documents. Very cool. Now, how can I get my hands on this software?

Torin is Famous!

As promised, Torin is now on the Infinite Cat Project site. I sent his photo in last night, and there are already two cats after him! Sometimes the speed of the internet surprises even me :)

Infinite Cat Project

Cats looking at cats looking at cats looking at cats... Take a picture of your cat looking at a monitor which bears the image of the LAST picture in the sequence of the Infinite Cat Project. Look for Torin on the site sometime soon ;)

It's all about redundant access...

Michael Stephens's Tame the Web article, 10 Things A Library Can Do to Boost their Techie Stuff (without breaking the bank), is a must-read for every techie or management librarian. Want ideas on how to get up to date quickly & cheaply? Here ya go. And it's all about redundant access to the same information. Send news about your library out via a blog (an RSS-ified one at that)--not just through flyers in the library and a newsletter. Conduct reference interviews not only at the desk and on the phone, but through instant messaging too! Thanks to Michael for a great article.

...or the cat gets it.

A fun ransom note generator (also from J-Walk...check out his blog if you haven't yet...very funny).

Turabian is #3?

The Top 100 Library Books list is most interesting. Based on OCLC holdings, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-run Companies by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. is #1 at 3,971. I was pleased to see that Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes was #7. Lots of Reference books in this list...only natural, I guess.

link via J-Walk blog

Audit My PC

I can't even remember where I heard about this, but it's a great site. AuditMyPC.com will (for free) do a firewall test, a spyware removal test, and a pop-up blocker test on your PC. I was all-set on firewall & spyware, but was interested to find that my PC failed 2 of the 9 pop-up blocker tests, even though I have AdsGone 2004, updated yesterday. Hum. Audit yourself and let me know what you find :)

Official Google Blog

An official Google Blog has existed since yesterday at 11:40 AM. There is already an unofficial Google Weblog run by Aaron Swarz. I'm going to keep feeds from both--the more Google the merrier!

Blogger Gets an Upgrade

Google has conducted a massive re-tooling of Blogger. Search Engine Watch has a great article on the upgrades, so I won't re-hash all of that here. The most interesting upgrade feature to me, as we use Blogger for our library's blog, is the ability to post via e-mail. I'm going to have to play around with that a little and see how it works...

National Flag Coloring Book

Online, printable, colorable images of national flags are available at the Flags of the World website. Black and white outline images are available in 3 different sizes, and look pretty nice!

Thanks to the J-Walk blog for the link.

Vivísimo

Another resource that Mr. Price pointed out at the BayNet meeting....

Vivísimo is a clustering search engine. What does that mean, you might ask? The search engine automatically clusters search results into categories that are selected from the words and phrases in the search results themselves. The interface is intuitive and the clusters are almost always right-on-target (an exception being that "dog" is the top cluster for a search on "cat").

Sample search for "The Grateful Dead" brings back the following top clusters & # of results: Photos (33), Art (19), Lyrics (13), CD (17), Radio (5), Rock (15), Community (7), Live Grateful Dead (6), Grateful Dead Merchandise (11), Long strange trip (5). Pretty cool, huh?

Vivísimo also has a toolbar and a minibar.

Now if only Google, Vivísimo, and GuruNet could get together for one uber-engine, I'd be out of a job...

GuruNet

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while, and I have Gary Price to thank for pointing it out at the BayNet annual meeting last week.
GuruNet is an intelligent reference query engine online. From their self-description:

How GuruNet differs from a search engine
When you look up a topic in a search engine, it gives you only a long list of unfiltered links pointing to web pages. Some are junk. Some are inappropriate. GuruNet brings you an answer in a quick, concise, authoritative, readable snapshot -- and not a list of hundreds or thousands of links. With our award - winning technology, you save time twice: first by getting an instant definition or explanation, and second, by seeing the trusted source of the information.

A search for “cheese” brings back dictionary entries, a pronunciation sound file, encyclopedia entries, nutritional values, a sign language version of the word, a lexicon, and translations into other languages.

A search for "San Rafael, CA” brings back a dictionary entry (basically a place description), a pronunciation
sound file, encyclopedia entry, weather, & maps.

They also have a kids edition & a toolbar (with a paid subscription). After extensive use of the tool itself and reading some reviews, I would rate GuruNet as an essential reference tool, quicker for those factual queries we get at the reference desk, and a credible source to guide students to when they are doing research. The results they'll get here are a lot more relevant than the ones they'd get on Google, for everything from "Eminem" to "the Civil War."

Bookmark this site, librarians...that's an order!

Subservient Chicken

Thanks to a friend here at the library (Carol, you rock) for pointing me to this frightening Burger King site, one that, as a vegetarian and rare-TV watcher, I would not have ordinarily found. SubservientChicken.com lets you type in commands and the dude in the scary chicken suit does what you say...well, mostly anyway.

And yes, the chicken is wearing a garter belt--you'll have to click on the link to Subservient TV to understand that one.

At first, I thought the chicken was live (yes, I am easily schnookered). The first time I went to the site, the chicken was not in the frame and the text read "summoning chicken." Subsequent visits showed the chicken in the process of, seemingly, fulfilling someone else's commands. Also, telling the chicken to turn off the light yielded 4 different video responses on 4 different visits. But, the editing isn't perfect, so it's kind of obvious that he returns to a stock "starting position" each time. The programming on this site is fairly impressive, so I'd say check it out to see that, or just for giggles. And you can tell the chicken to read, and he'll pick up a book from the bookshelf. That's nice. The garter belt still disturbs me though...

Future of Search

Business Week has a small article on the new search technologies that search engines are expected to address in the coming years. The big areas they mention are ones that tech publications (online & print) have been throwing around for a while now: search & portal personalization, historical web snapshots, multi-platform searching (web, hard drives, e-mail account, etc.), and clustering.

Neil Gaiman has an ALA Read poster...

...and you can see it here.

The History of Games

Cornell University Library has a very-well designed and content-rich online exhibition on the history of games: Pastimes n' Paradigms: Games We Play. The photos of the games are wonderful, and the descriptions of the games, and how they fit into the culture of the time period, are enlightening. From the site:

The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections investigates the evolution of games since 1800 through PASTIMES AND PRADIGMS : GAMES WE PLAY. The exhibition includes a wide variety of antique and contemporary games, as well as rare books on rules, strategies, and recreation. Featured items include early nineteenth-century geographical board games; a Civil War game; suffrage games that garnered support in the battle for women's votes; a vintage Monopoly game (the subject of Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman's first book); gambling punchboards; and a selection of games inspired by television programming. Although they differ in design and presentation, they share a single message: the game is the medium.

Thanks to Baa Baa Blog for the link.

The Penguin at the Public Library

The Howard County Public Library in Maryland has installed Linux on its 200 public PCs. And, everyone is happy with the results. Well, maybe not Microsoft, but everybody else. Kudos to them for taking the leap.

NYPL's new site

I am so, so jealous. NYPL's new website is not only pretty to look at, the navigation is intuitive! It gives all of us something to aspire to...

Mmmmm, laser keyboard

IBiz's virtual laser keyboard has been released. At $99 a pop, it's an expensive toy, but hey--it's cool. Jenny Levine asks if buying this baby means you're a gadget whore. LiB's opinion is "no," but I am not the world's most objective person on gadgets :)

Fund Free Mammograms

Go to The Breast Cancer Site and one click later you've funded free mammograms for women in need. A short simple way to earn some karma points this fine Tuesday...

The Feed Monster...

I went through my Bloglines account today and weeded out RSS feeds that either didn't give me any useful information on a regular basis or hadn't been updated in over two months. I got rid of about 40 feeds, but when I looked at my total feed #, I found that I am still left with *drumroll please*

200 feeds!

I am afraid, very afraid. At what point do RSS feeds begin to control me, to become as mind-numbing and addictive as television?

User-Centered Design

A study done at the Health Sciences and Main Library University of Saskatchewan reveals that *gasp* user-based design (in this case for virtual reference) is a good thing. Who woulda thunk it? The biggest lesson to be learned is that you need to make it obvious what's clickable, and where it's going to take the user when (s)he clicks it. Simple enough, eh?

Thanks to Jessamyn for the link.

Sassy Sasser

The Sasser worm is out to get you. The crap thing about this worm is that it doesn't require opening an attachment to activate, and can strike even if no one is using the PC. When a machine is infected, error messages flash wildly and the computer may reboot repeatedly. Fun!

Got it? Get uninfected here.

Michael Gorman elected ALA President

Michael Gorman, dean of Library Services at the Henry Madden Library, California State University-Fresno (yay Californians!), has been elected president of ALA for '05/'06. Congratulations Michael!