LibrarianInBlack

Keeping Up with RSS

Andrea Delumeau has a new article on LIScareer.com entitled "Keeping Up with RSS". Today, I handed out a very similar document I had created to all of our library staff at All Staff Day. She points to a lot of good resources that give more information on RSS (articles, etc.) so go read this article if you're one of my regular readers (and I know you are) or if you were one of the MCFL staff who got all RSS-ified this morning, and are crazy about RSS already.

The U2 iPod

Yes, U2 has partnered with Apple to produce the U2 iPod, a snazzy black number with a red wheel (colors of their last tour, for those not "in the know"). The U2 iPod has 20 gigabytes and all 400 songs the band has recorded. It will ship in mid-November for $349. Or, you could be super-cool and just own all the U2 albums, like I do, and burn the darn things onto your much larger 40 GB iPod, and have twice the room for other bands too.

Prelinger Library in San Francisco

Hi all--what's your take on this?

We've built an appropriation-friendly library in San Francisco and are now welcoming visitors.
The Prelinger Library is an appropriation-friendly, browsable collection of approximately 40,000 books, periodicals, print ephemera and government documents, located in downown San Francisco, California, USA. Though libraries live on (and are among the least-corrupted democratic institutions), the freedom to browse serendipitously is becoming rarer. Now that many libraries have economized on space and converted print collections to microfilm and digital formats, it's become harder to wander and let the shelves themselves suggest new directions and ideas. Key research libraries are often closed to unaffiliated users, and many libraries keep the bulk of their collections in closed stacks, inhibiting the rewarding pleasures of browsing. Despite its virtues, query-based online cataloging often prevents unanticipated yet productive results from turning up on the user's screen. And finally, much of the material in our collection is difficult to find in most libraries readily accessible to the general public. Most important of all, people wishing to copy library holdings for research and transformative use often face difficulties in making legitimate copies. Since the act of quoting and recontextualizing existing words and images is indistinguishable from making new ones, we think it's important for libraries to build appropriation-friendly access into their charters, and we're trying to take a big first step in this direction.

Hum. Well, last time I checked, our library has an "appropriation-friendly" feel (within the guidelines set forth by the law, which I'm fairly certain The Prelinger Library has to also abide by). I don't think any of our libraries have economized on space (in fact, one branch just expanded), or converted print collections to microfilm & digital formats (with the exception of some older periodicals simply because the physical format cannot stand the test of time and public use). And I don't know that "many libraries keep the bulk of their collections in closed stacks"... This is, perhaps, more true of academic libraries, but hey! Every community has a free public library too!

*sigh* You know, I'm tempted to drive into the city just to see what they have. Anyone in the Bay Area up for a field trip?

link via Boing Boing

Book about Weblogs & Libraries

L. Anne Clyde, who I just posted about the other day regarding her great site about weblogs and libraries, has a book out entitled (durf) Weblogs and Libraries. You can get it through Amazon for $55.

Jenny is back :)

The Shifted Librarian is back, yay yay yay yay yay! Welcome back Jenny!

San Francisco & Free WiFi

The mayor of San Francisco, the oh so dapper Gavin Newsom, has announced that it will expand the number of places where anyone can get free wireless access, as well as making free computers available at community centers & housing projects throughout the city. There is already public WiFi center in Union Square. The new plans include adding access in the Civic Center, the Ferry Plaza, and Portsmouth Square. I must say that these are three very heavy "tourist" areas--and as a former SF resident, and current Bay Area resident, I wonder if it's geared toward "lookin' cool" to the visitors. Or perhaps I'm just being cynical, something I am often occused of (who woulda guessed?).

Political Signs & San Anselmo, CA

San Anselmo, CA (about a 10 minute drive from my house) is currently involved in a lawsuit regarding the following question: Should political signs be smaller than commercial signs? If you've ever been to San Anselmo (a teensy town that is home to some of the best antique shopping & fine dining in California), you'll understand why they're making such a fuss.

Factiva RSS Feeds

When I say "Factiva," you think what? Well, you should start thinking "Free RSS feed about the campaign issues"!

Oh yes, Factiva is now offering free RSS feeds with updates on four key campaign issues (none of them dealing with the candidates' daughters or wives, incidentally) as they are reported. You can simply go to Factiva's Campaign site and view the results of the feeds in one place, or select an individual feed (Jobs & Economy, Health Care, War in Iraq, Budget & Taxes) and add it to your aggregator.

Google & Clustering

eWeek has an article on Google's ideas for expanding into translation and clustering (it's about durn time!)

While it might make sense for startups to deploy clustering technology today, Norvig said, Google still views the technology as too immature. It is most useful only for a small percentage of search results, he said, so Google is focusing on improving the technology and increasing its usefulness.

I say, let's give it a year and see what Google gives us.

The OneLook Reverse Dictionary

Tell the OneLook Reverse Dictionary what you're looking for, and it will find it for you, more or less. You can ask it "what, where, when" type questions. I asked "Where is Acapulco?" and one of the results I got (among several other irrelevant ones) was "slaughterhouse." I think it's an interesting toy to experiment with, but as a reference tool or a suggested site for patrons, I would hesitate.

Wall Street Journal, free?

The Wall Street Journal will be available completely free online for five days, starting November 8th. You can get more information at cnet. Go play!

Solutions to traffic decline after a redesign

Grant Crowell at Search Engine Watch offers some cogent advice for maintaining your web traffic after a massive redesign. I think the advice in this article applies not only to maintaining web traffic, but also to not frustrating your patrons with broken links, either from their own bookmarks or from outdated search engine results. If you're planning a redesign anytime soon, please read this article.

PC Magazine's Top 101 Sites

These were just released--check out PC Magazine's Top 101 Sites. Have fun!

Libraries & Blogs, it's a beautiful thing

I had known about this great site from Dr. L. Anne Clyde at the University of Iceland for some time, but Jessamyn reminded me of it--and it's grown since I last saw it. This is an absolutely excellent resource to put in your pocket for future reference.

Dewey or Don't We? Cookbook

Mmmmm, cooking by decimal order. This 281 page book of 374 recipes includes submissions from all over the U.S., as well as four other countries, and from public, academic, school, and special libraries as well as businesses that support libraries. Profits support the Iowa Library Association. In addition to being presented in Dewey Decimal order with Library of Congress Subject Headings, there are hundreds of quotes throughout the book on what authors and writers have had to say about food and cooking throughout history. A couple genuine LiB recipes are in here too :)

If you would like to order a copy, send your name, address and $15 plus shipping (1 book = $4, 2 books = $5, 3 books = $6 shipping) to: Susan Henricks, 3120 Shiras Avenue, Dubuque, IA 52001

Unsubscribe Link = Bad

Don't click on those "unsubscribe" links in spam messages. It may seem like the logical and intelligent thing to do, but as Bob Sullivan at MSNBC reports, it can do more damage than good, including turning you into an unwitting spam-sender. I'm currently teaching a series of courses to our staff, one of which is on computer security & privacy, and this is one of the points we cover. Just like clicking the "No" button on a window asking if you want to re-set your homepage will not always do what you would think a "No" button would do. There is no reason that spammers have to follow the rules of logic, or courtesy (as we well know).

More Newbie News

This Library Techtonics post by Andrea Mercado about being a "mixed media" librarian fits really well with Karen Schneider's recent post and my own post on the same subject. I think most of us (even, yes, those of us in the dreaded systems department) believe that you have to have all the skills and knowledge all the time--knowing print sources and digital sources, being able to help a child pick out a picture book and help a senior format her Word document. We're all things to all people when we're on the desk. From the Library Techtonics post:

The key is the *blend* of skills. Classic library skills, communication skills, people-networking skills, tech skills, and a love for the profession. Not just a way out of a recession. That's who the library schools should be putting out right now. And it's who libraries should be hiring.

I can't think of anyone who would argue with that fine bit of wisdom.

Acronyms, Acronyms, oh my aching Acronym

Gosh darn those acronyms! If someone tosses off one more goofy acronym (that he or she knows no one else participating in the coversation understands, but uses it anyway to look "smart") I will scream.

Or will I? Perhaps I'll just go to Acronym Finder and look it up. And when someone says "I'm sick of maintaining my own ODS." I'll say "Oh, you mean Output Data Set" knowing full well they mean Open Domain Servers. Ha ha ha ha.

Ha.

Okay, it was funny to me.

link via J-Walk

Innovative Internet Applications in Libraries

Librarian Kathy Leeds from the Wilton Library (Connecticut) has put together a page of links to Innovative Internet Applications in Libraries, libraries doing innovative super-cool stuff. If you're looking for new technology ideas for your library, or just curious about what other libraries are doing with the technology at hand, a visit to this site is definitely in order. There are sections for Ages & Stages (children's & young adults pages), Book and Reading Lists, E-Journals, Local Databases, "My Library" Personalized Interfaces, Newsletters & Blogs, Site News & Evaluation, Special Collections & Online Exhibits, Tutorials/Guides, Virtual Reference Desks, Virtual Tours, Web Forms, and Miscellaneous. There is also a "suggest a site" link at the bottom of the page where you can submit your own sites, or someone's site that you really dig. The Marin County Free Library's Blog made it on, as did Librarian in Black, even though that wasn't an official submission. I found two sites featured on Kathy's site that impressed me particularly:

• Books in a Series--I'm not sure why I hadn't seen this site before, but it's a great list of books in series...in order from the Monroe County Public Library (Indiana). For Tolkien's Middle Earth series, they even managed to get the Silmarillion in the right place! One caveat: everything is arranged by author's name, so while that works for most series, for those series with multiple authors, you may need to look elsewhere. But hey, this is the best I've seen.
  
• The Reader's Robot--a site from the Thompson-Nicola Regional District Library System (British Columbia) that lets you pick from a dozen or so book genres, and then drill down further by sub-genre, author, title, or reviewer, and get reviews from the library patrons & staff of thousands of books. There is also a "Match My Reading Tastes" section, where you answer a ten question multiple choice quiz about books you like, and then get recommendations. An interesting experiment! And one that is updated frequently too (newest review posted Saturday).
  

Last Ten Songs I Listened To

Larocque and Roll posted a list of the last ten songs she listened to. Then, Jody at Steel White Table posted his. It sounded like a good enough idea, as I sit here on my lunch break eating dinner party leftovers, reading my feeds, and listening to my iPod, so here's my list:

• Living -- Moby
  
• Sanvean -- Dead Can Dance
  
• The Mystic's Dream -- Loreena McKennitt
  
• Leave in Silence -- Depeche Mode
  
• Oceania -- Bjork
  
• I Got It Bad, and That Ain't Good -- Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington
  
• Yesterdays -- Billie Holiday
  
• Dry -- PJ Harvey
  
• You Choose -- Pet Shop Boys
  
• Shoplifters of the World Unite -- The Smiths
  

Dinner Party Fun

LiB is quite busy planning a dinner party for 20 people tomorrow night. Please excuse her absence. There are sauces to be made, baby squashes to grill, and desserts to be concocted. She will return, in her regular capacity, on Monday. Cheers!

RSS Feeds from WebMD

WebMD is now offering RSS feeds. This is great news for health and medical librarians, and for those of our health-minded patrons who are rather tech-minded.

Trends in Public Libraries

The U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) has released their Results of Analysis of Trends in Public Libraries, 1990-2001. One thing surprised me, though perhaps it shouldn't have:

Total Operating Expenditures increased for each of the five groups over the period and if inflation is discounted using the Consumer Price Index, the expenditures in real terms still rose.

I figured with all the budget cuts and such, that would be reflected here. But perhaps the bulk of this happened after 2001, so it hasn't shown up yet. Anyone else have any ideas?

Art Access from Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago (the site of my favorite fieldtrips as a Chicagoland schoolchild) has this great site, Art Access, that showcases their permanent collection. Browse by collection (African American Art, American Art to 1900, American Indian Art, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, India, Modern Art, & Renaissance and Baroque Art). Then click on the individual piece for information and a short essay about the piece. The site also features a glossary of terms, lesson plans, family activities, book & video suggestions, and maps of the collection. Super fun to browse!

link via Sites and Soundbytes

RSS article in Business Week

I'm featured as the poster girl for RSS in an article entitled "All the News You Choose--On One Page" in the October 25th Business Week. You do need a log-in to see the article, go to BugMeNot for one if you don't already have one. The article is only available in the print version, unless you already subscribe to the print version, in which case you can see it online too. A lot of good that will do ya.

I got this gig by being a Bloglines supporter and media contact. Funny, that. I'm the entire first paragraph of the article, and then not mentioned again, but no worries--I won't take offense.

Sarah Houghton used to get her online news the traditional way: by visiting 10 of her favorite sites several times a day. But since joining the free online service Bloglines a year ago, the San Rafael (Calif.) librarian surfs no more. Now the news comes to her. Using software known as RSS -- for Really Simple Syndication -- Bloglines pulls together regular updates from a variety of sites. Houghton can check them each time she logs on to the service. "RSS is the primary tool I use to get news," says Houghton, 27. "It's all delivered to me; I don't have to go searching anymore."

Of course, the author explicitly asked me if I had stopped surfing, and I said no, that I still surfed, maybe a little less, but I still surfed. Somehow, that morphed into "surfs no more." Plus, RSS is not software but a format (the author just got it wrong, it didn't come from me, I swear--so no hate letters).

Metadata Blues

A great article entitled "To Metadata or Not To Metadata" is available on EContentMag. The skinny? Metadata is a pain in the butt to create, but like controlled subject headings, it's essential to creating an organized information infrastructure.

Movers & Shakers Awards

Library Journal is seeking nominations for its annual Movers & Shakers awards. The nomination form is a PDF so you have to print it out & send it in. You'd think they would have created a partner online form, but alas.

The editors of Library Journal need your help in identifying the emerging leaders in the library world. Our fourth annual Movers & Shakers supplement will profile 50-plus up and coming people for across the United States and Canada who are innovative, creative, and making a difference. From librarians to vendors to others who work in the library field, Movers & Shakers 2005 will celebrate the new professionals who are moving our libraries ahead. Go to http://www.libraryjournal.com/contents/pdf/LJMoveShakeForm2005.pdf and nominate someone today.

Nominate your favorite mover and/or shaker today!

Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars

The miniseries, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, concluded last night. It was fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. It's not often that a series that is turned into a movie or a mini-series actually delivers what it promises. But, in the case of Peacekeeper Wars, the writing, special effects, acting, costuming, creature design, heck...everything was superb. Farscape is an example of truly sweet, sweet science fiction.

LiB was quite involved in the Save Farscape movement when Sci Fi made the mistake of taking Farscape off the air two years ago. LiB is likewise quite pleased that the miniseries brought the world of Farscape back to the viewers, and hopes that Sci Fi will have the presence of mind to continue this magnificent series. If you're a Farscape fan too (and I know a lot of you are), please take a moment to say thank you to the people responsible for the miniseries. I did. After all of those angry letters I wrote about the cancellation, I figure I owe them some good karma for bringing it back ;)

New Search Engine in Beta

Here's the 411 on Exalead, a new search engine start-up. It's in beta, comes from France, has a really pretty interface, and offers a LOT of advanced search features, like:

• automatic stemming of searches with more than one term
  
• a proximity operator (yay!) which is something no other big-name serach engine has
  
• limiting by language, title, format, and domain
  
• a phonetic search
  
• approximate spelling searches
  
• webpage thumbnails on the results pages
  
• guided search on results page with "related terms" and "related categories"

Mmmmm...tasty! LiB is going to be keeping an eye on this one.

Encyclopedia Mythica

No, Encyclopedia Mythica is not the latest Sci Fi Channel series, it's a great mythology resource! Covering mythology, folklore, and legends, this free resource is both browseable and searchable. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds to be notified of new articles. My only two issues with the encyclopedia is that the browsing navigation gets confusing (moves from side, to the main body of the page, to side again) and several of the articles/entries I looked up were "under revision." But all in all, a good resource, and one I would point high school students to.

link via Sites and Soundbytes

Gary Price Interview

Library Link has a nice interview with guru Gary Price. I particularly like his response to the question "What would you say to a college student looking into the LIS field?"

I think my decision to attend library school and become part of the LIS profession was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. Librarians have so much to offer. Our skills and services range from helping to develop anthologies, working at a busy reference desk, teaching information literacy, and so many others. However, we need to do a better job in teaching the public what we can offer and why it's important to them. When people need information, what they usually need is the solution to a problem. We can help them find that solution, whatever it may be.

I agree. Getting my degree in LIS was definitely one of the best decisions I've ever made. And with that degree, you can do anything--from doing storyhours for toddlers, to being a specialized researcher, to being an IT consultant. It's such a wide open and rewarding career. Thanks Gary, for reminding us of that!

NYT underestimates Librarians in Book Review

There is a book review of The Librarian in yesterday's New York Times Book Review. The review is written by by Neil Genzlinger. You can get a nice generic log-in to read the article at BugMeNot if you don't have one of your own.

Quoting from the review:

POOR librarians. Soon, no doubt, to go the way of blacksmiths and town criers, their chosen field made obsolete by Internet search engines and self-perpetuating electronic databases. But first, one last hurrah, in Larry Beinhart's raucous new novel, The Librarian, in which a Dewey decimal doofus holds in his hands nothing less than the fate of the free world....
What a pity that soon the only place to find one [a librarian] will be at the Living History Museum, alongside the mule skinner and the wheelwright.

Bah! Bah I say! Librarians are most certainly not going the way of blacksmiths & town criers. My goodness, our profession is more thriving than it ever has been. With the advent of search engines & e-databases, our jobs have simply evolved, incorporating those tools. And that's what they are--tools. People still need to be taught how to use them, and to be assisted when they can't figure out how to use them well on their own. Mule skinner and wheelright, my patooty. Shame on Mr. Genzlinger. Shame.

Itinerant Librarians

Itinerant Librarians--what an interesting, interesting idea. I can picture a masked man with a barcode scanner ducking round corners and cataloging people's books! And the Distributed Library Project is most engaging...something to delve deeper into this fine weekend. They do, to be fair, have some funny and rather outdated ideas about how libraries work (e.g. "Unfortunately, the traditional library system doesn't do much to foster community. Patrons come and go, but there is very little opportunity to establish relationships with people or groups of people."). Still, an intruguing concept.

link via librarian.net

What to do 'bout us young-brarians

Marylaine Block's "The Right Hand Knoweth Not..." article in her latest edition of Ex Libris discusses the dichotomy of the Librarian profession as a whole working hard to recruit new, young people, but then treating them less than kindly when they arrive. It's an intelligent, brief piece, and one that you should go read, right now. No, no, put down the pinot grigio. Go read it :)

I do like that she points out that young-brarians have to be willing to listen to the wisdom and experience of more established librarians. That is definitely a flaw that our/my generation has in the workplace. By the by, when I hit 30, am I no longer a young-brarian? Hrm...

WorldCat Opening Up

On Monday, OCLC announced that they are opening up the WorldCat program to Google, Yahoo, and others for crawling. For full details, see Gary Price & Steven Cohen's article at ResourceShelf. So, what does this mean for libraries? Well, Google and Yahoo may lead searchers to your library catalogs. Or not, if your records are not uploaded into OCLC, which some libraries' records aren't.

NYT Photo Archives

The New York Times now has a photo archive available from their website. You can search by keyword or browse through the various categories. And of course, there is a profit to be had. You can buy copies of the photos for anywhere between $195 and $745, depending on size and framing choices. Still, it's fun to browse around and see what's there.

link via ResearchBuzz

Princeton Library's Bookbinding Online Exhibit

A new online exhibit from Princeton's Firestone Library's Department of Rare Books & Special Collections highlights historical bookbindings. You can choose the book you'd like to examine more closely, and get descriptive notes of the item along with a close-up digital magnification tool. You can see the grain in the leather, cracks, stitching--all of it. A true rare book geek's delight.

link via Reading Room

RSS in November Cites & Insights

Walt Crawford's November Cites & Insights is up. His essay, "RSS & Multimodes Revisited," rehashes his views on RSS...namely that RSS is not the end-all and be-all method to getting news from websites. However, Walt does note that he now uses RSS-feeds now to read around 90 sites, and that it saves him time and allows him to monitor sites that are good but not necessarily posted-to regularly. Not surprisingly, those are the two main reasons I love RSS.

Later in the article, Walt mentions Karen Schneider's post on multimodal librarianship and my reponse to it. And even though I understand why you "take slight issue" with my last paragraph Walt, I stand by my position that every librarian needs to be both analog and digital, no matter the size of the library, and no matter what position the librarian is in: desk reference, cataloging, administration, systems--it doesn't matter. Being all-digital or all-analog is going to put any librarian at a disadvantage in his/her day-to-day job and for long term professional development and advancement.

Steven Cohen at Library Stuff had a somewhat stronger take on the RSS article, and Walt has commented/responded to Steven's post in turn.

Bay Area Smoke

Wow, will ya look at that? A 25,000 acre wildfire north of Lake Berryessa, dubbed the Rumsey Fire, is so far only 5% contained. Smoke is all over the Bay Area, including here in Marin. Even though the fire is 70 miles north of San Rafael, there were ashes on my car this morning and when I got out of work there were a hundred or so dead bugs all over my car (presumably from the smoke). As someone with respiratory ailments, I'm supposed to stay inside. Of course, like a good little soldier I did go to work today, and feel awful now. I took my contact lenses out when I got home and they were yellow from all the smoke. I feel awful now, and just don't have the energy to blog tonight folks...sorry.

Clustered WMD Report

Clusty (the new Vivisimo project) has provided a way to easily navigate the over 1500 pages of the CIA's report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. You can browse by volume or search for particular terms. Thank you Vivisimo & Clusty!

Derrida & Reeve

Q: Jacques Derrida & Christopher Reeve have what in common?
A: They both had an impact on LiB, and both passed on recently.

Jacques Derrida, founder the philosophical school of deconstructionism, has died at the age of 74. Deconstructionist theory formed many of my literary theories in English graduate school, and made me the target of many nasty grad-student classroom discussions. Long live deconstructionism!

Christopher Reeve, Superman & stem-cell proponent, has died of heart failure at the age of 52. LiB remembers at the age of 6 or so, dressing up in her best dress-up clothes to watch the Muppet Show episode where Reeve appeared. I had quite the crush on Clark Kent (not Superman, mind you, but Clark Kent). My nerdiness revealed.

Down with Spyware...down I say! (Part II)

Last week I posted about HR 2929, the Spy Act, which made sneaky installation of spyware a civil offense. Now, HR 4661 has passed the House. This bill provides for criminal penalties for the sneaky installation of software on a PC. Two for two.

HAPLR Ratings are in

The HAPLR (Hennen's American Public Library Rating Index) is in! The site ranks U.S. Public Libraries on a number of factors. While there are necessarily arguments about the accuracy of their rankings, and the methods they use, it's still a good place to start. If you're in the job market right now, look up your prospective employers. Always good to know what you're getting into!

Libraries Enter the Digital Age? You don't say...

G4/TechTV (of which I used to be an avid watcher, but alas, no more since their big merger) had a feature on their TechLive show about Libraries Entering the Digital Age. Well, most of us did that 10 years ago or so, but that's okay. I understand that the media is slow to pick up on these things. The article discusses MP3 audio books and e-books in general at the Seattle Public LibraryKing County Library System.

RSS Feeds on FindArticles.com

FindArticles.com is now offering RSS feeds for search results. Very cool!

link via ResearchBuzz

Can't Find on Google

So, apparently there's this site called Can't Find on Google, a site where you can post inquiries when you can't find the information you're looking for on Google. I found out about this site on Poynter Online, where the author, Larry D. Larsen, wrote:

Last week I found myself in the rare predicament of not being able to find what I was looking for with Google. Where do you turn when the all-knowing oracle fails you?

His answer was apparently this web-board site where you can post your question and pray to other users for an answer. Fortunately, Shirl Kennedy from Search Engine Watch Docuticker & ResourceShelf posted a response telling folks to try librarians:

...your friends at ResourceShelf (http://www.resourceshelf.com/) and DocuTicker (http://www.docuticker.com/) would like to suggest that you try asking a gen-yoo-wine librarian.

She then goes on to detail Florida's online 24/7 service and points to a resource to find other states' services. Thank you Shirl! Silly people with their unreliable and sad answer websites... But it does point to the fact that we need to market ourselves better as information professionals, which is something we already know but haven't found a satisfactory answer to yet...

Library ELF

Libary ELF is a web service in beta-phase which will tell you when your library books are due and send you e-mail reminders to remember to return them on time. As Jessamyn points out, why aren't the vendors doing this? Why do all the cool apps come from indy programmers and not from the people who could actually charge money for this stuff? *sigh*

via Catalogablog via librarian.net

Down with spyware...down I say!

The U.S. House of Representatives voted (by a giganta-huge majority, by the way) in favor of legislation that would prevent the surreptitious installation of software. The Spy Act (H.R. 2929) would also require all software vendors to obtain the consent of consumers when they are collecting personal information, and impose civil penalties on violators. Another anti-spyware bill, H.R. 4661, is up for a vote this week and would provide for criminal penalties.

I'm not one to be optimistic about these things, heck, I'm not one to be optimistic about most things. But I think these bills have the potential to start imposing penalties on companies who are data-harvesting without our knowledge or permission. Stay tuned.

Techno-Analog Remix Librarian

Karen Schneider has a great post on her Free Range Librarian site about Librarians needing to be able to handle both analog and digital resources and services.

Because I'm a "Techie Librarian," I often get the comment, "Well, you don't work the desk, so how would you know how it really is," or "There's a reference book that does that faster than the web, but you wouldn't know that." Pshaw! I work the desk about 5 hours a week, a condition for me continuing as an e-Services Librarian. Every single Librarian, including catalogers and administration, should want to work the desk to stay in touch with what's really going on out there. And yes, sometimes a reference question is more quickly answered with a print resource. Just the other day, I was staffing AskNow (a virtual reference service--there's some serious irony here), and a patron asked about the difference between two types of a specific car model. The manufacturer's website didn't help whatsoever, so I ran out and got our Chilton's. Viola!

Every Librarian needs to be both analog and digital. Having 2 analog Librarians and 2 Digital Librarians on staff isn't going to help you, unless you have one of each staffing the desk at all times. We all need to be "multi-mode"; we all need to have skills in both areas. Welcome to the world of modern librarianship.

Google Print, yeah yeah yeah

GooglePrint is expanding big time. From Danny Sullivan's article on Search Engine Watch:

Google's nearly year-old Google Print program is set for a huge expansion of content through the launch of a new program today allowing publishers to more easily submit material for inclusion.
....
Google is inviting publishers large or small to provide books that will be scanned and included in the Google Print service for free. Books will be accepted if they have ISBNs and are in any form of English (US, British, Canadian, Australian -- any variant is acceptable).
....
A key difference is that the new program provides an automated account-based service for publishers to manage what's included in the program plus a share of ad revenues. In addition, the program scans the full-text of books, not just small excerpts.

This puts Google smack up against Amazon's "search within the book" capability, and Google isn't actually trying to make any money selling the books, they're just making them searchable. That spells success to me.

Feedster Feed

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Ads on the site--not at LiB (yet)

Two of the blogs I read regularly, J-Walk and Steel White Table, have added Google AdSense ads to their site. No disrespect to those with ads on their sites, but you won't be seeing any ads on LiB anytime soon. I feel like I do what I do on this site, yeah it costs me $200 a year or so to host, but I'm just philosophically opposed to ads on anything I do. Maybe it's that public librarian in me that wants everything to be free, open, and uncluttered.

Just so ya know it's there...

Clush is a new search start-up. Following in Vivismo's tracks, this engine clusters your results. Its database is smaller (only 1 million pages, which is piddley-poo compared to Google or Yahoo or Vivisimo). Like Gary at SearchEngineWatch I was not impressed with the results. Many seemed irrelevant to my search terms, and the results seemed paltry compared to what I'm used to. At any rate, it's a startup, so keep an eye on it--it will grow.

Blogs in Libraries

LLRX has a great article on RSS feeds in libraries. He gives examples of libraries who use the blogs for news updates and suggests ways libraries could better use blogs by listing new materials, subject-specific resource lists, and general information hunting tips. A must read for any librarian working in a library with a blog.

Tech-focused library blogs, well some of them anyway..

WebJunction has an article about technology-focused library glogs. It's by no means inclusive (umm, librarian.net, Shifted Librarian, yours truly?), but still, go take a look and see if any of the blogs that the author has chosen to list appeal to you.

Ambigrams Site

A site with a nice selection of ambigrams. What's an ambigram, you say? It's a word rendered artistically so that it reads the same when turned upside down or rotated 180 degrees.

link via Burp

Microsoft is equality-minded...right?

Liz feels alone. Very, very alone.

I'm in Seattle, because Microsoft's search team has invited me to be one of a group of 30 people providing advice and guidance on their new product(s). There was no information provided in advance about the other attendees, for privacy reasons. However, a few moments ago a bellman knocked on my door and hand-delivered a list of attendees.
(You know what's coming, don't you? You're wrong. It's worse than you think.)
Of 29 people listed as attending, I'm the only woman.

Subsequent comments to her post and other people writing about the situation on their blogs have highlighted the fact that they're all white. So, two or three dozen white men and one white woman on a panel. How cross sectional is that? Come on Bill, you can do better than that.

Lusty for Clusty

Vivisimo's new beta search engine, Clusty, is available at http://www.clusty.com.

You can limit the search right off the bat by choosing a category: Web, News, Images, Shopping, Encyclopedia, or Gossip.

The option of a gossip search was just too intriguing to pass up, so I did a Gossip search for Kevin Spacey. He only had three "clusters," one of which was "Other." I think I would rename this category "Famous People Stuff" instead of "Gossip," but that wouldn't fit nicely on a tab, now would it? The results are basically mainstream news stories about the person--play reviews, new movies, etc. So, I'm thinking, well maybe KS just hasn't done anything sketchy lately, so I did a search for your friend and mine, Miss Britney. She was tabbed nicely--Britney & Kevin Federline, Britney & Jessica Simpson, Britney & Fashion. Much better results. I guess I just need to be more interested in mainstream famous folks. *sigh*

The other tabs all worked well, though it's not clear that in addition to the clustered results on the left-side of the screen, the chunked-out bits of info in the center of the screen are also clusters. Not sure how to make this clearer though...perhaps people will just learn.

There's also an advanced search available, for those of us who like to tweak and play with search engines. And you can customize your search, adding tabs for eBay and the like, as well as creating a tab which will search the search engines & directories of your choice. And guess what? LII is one of the directories you can pick! Yay LII!

All in all, LiB gives Clusty a solid B+.

Look at the Internet through a frog's tummy

Tee hee! Silly animal-shaped PCs from Japan. If anyone wants to buy me the cute pink bunny one, I'll be ever so happy! link via Gizmodo