LibrarianInBlack

Health Resources and other subject guides from Marcus P. Zillman

Marcus P. Zillman (an "International Internet expert"): Awareness Watch Newsletter.  The latest issue covers health resources.  The links are also available in an easier-to-digest web version at HealthCareResources.info.  He links to dozens of useful health-related resources, general and specific, for-pay and free.  Great to look at for your collection of health web resources. 

He offers a number of other guides as well.  I've found a number of good sites I didn't know about before!  Highly, highly, highly recommended!

found via beSpacific

Near-Naked and Butt-Kicking Librarians

Folderol points us to two fun librarian pages:

• Butt-Kicking Librarians (martial arts studying librarians)
• Men of Texas Libraries (with a fundraising calendar from the Texas Library Association--oh dear)

Comics resource

The Grand Comic Book Database is a database of comic book story details, creator information, and other info.  For more information, check out the About page.  A search for "Sandman" by title yields many results, various countries of publication having different offerings.  Many of the titles have scanned-in covers as well--very nice!

found via Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff

AmbientLibrarian Wiki

Peter Scott points us to the AmbientLibrarian Wiki, a resource "dedicated to helping information professionals (librarians, MLIS students, and others) learn more about Library 2.0 and other available web technologies."  Here's their Cool Tools section as an example.  There isn't a whole lot of information there yet, but it's growing--that's what wikis are all about.

OPAC sucks video

If you haven't seen Laughing Librarian Brian Smith's OPAC Sucks video yet, check it out for a giggle (or three).  Lyrics can be found here.

Google Answers Closes

Google Answers, the pay-for-the-answer service Google was so proud of (and which librarians more often than not spurned) is going away.  The service will stop accepting questions this week and stop accepting answers by the end of the year.  Questions started at $2.50, and would be answered by a Google-screened researcher within 24 hours.  Users would then rate the answer on a scale of 1-5.  The wonderful librarian Jessamyn West is quoted in the ars technica article on the Answers closure:

[O]nce you start paying people, you need to treat them some certain ways from a legal and ethical perspective, and the Google Answers model wasn't ready for that...

Caleb Tucker Raymond pulls together some interesting discussions on how this ties in with what libraries have always offered, what it means for the future of our own virtual reference services (simultaneous or asynchronous), and whether human-mediated answer services really are sustainable for the long haul.

Librarians in The Guardian

The Guardian has a featured career focus on Information Professionals.  They talk about a few different knowledge management careers and librarianship options.  From the article:

The sheer range and complexity of electronic sources, library leaders say, means librarians have their work cut out keeping workers and the public ahead of the information game.

But we knew that already, didn't we? ;)

found via Tom Roper's Weblog

Business how-to guides

Phil Bradley points us to a series of business How-to Guides from Work.com.  The site offers a series of guides on typical small business topics: employee issues, management topics, money and finance, sales and marketing, business plans, start-up information, etc.  In looking at some of the guides, I think that I would safely recommend this resource to users coming in looking for small business resources.

There are dozens of other good small business information sites out there.  Among my favorites are:

• SBA.gov
• Business.gov
• Infopeople's Small Business Network Information Resources list
• KnowThis.com's market research info

Super cheap portable MP3/iPod speakers

FreeAfterRebate drew my attention to this small and very cheap ($4.99 after rebate, plus shipping) set of portable MP3/iPod speakers from Geeks.com.  They're regularly $34.99.  The deal only runs through November 30th, so act fast!

• Link to the speakers product page
• Link to the rebate form

These could be handy to add to your library's podcasting kit, or for demos of your audio eBooks during classes, or just a sneaky cheap gift for the techie on your gift list!

Librarians' Book Review Search

Rick Roche has a Custom Google Search called the Librarians Book Revoogle that "search[es] across library and librarians' websites to find book reviews written by librarians for their libraries or on their blogs."  He talks about his newest addition with book reviews for librarians: Library Goddesses.  Read more about the Revoogle here.  What a handy useful tool!  Great usage of Google technologies for libraries!

Resources to familiarize you with Second Life

Much has been written about Second Life in the mainstream media, and quite a bit has been written about libraries' presence in Second Life, including Info Island.  But a lot of library staff are a bit confused about Second Life.  Maybe you know it's an online game where people interact.  Maybe you know that you get to create a customizable avatar of yourself and buy things there.  But how to start? 

Stephen Abram pulled together a good list of resources to help you get to know Second Life--tips, tricks, and lessons.  He also mentions that Sirsi Dynix will be hosting a Second Life tour in 2007.

Six Big Things in Chat

Techcrunch features a nice summary of what's going on in live online chat: The Six Biggest New Ideas In Chat.  The first two (interoperability and in-browser chat [a la Meebo]) are the two biggest ones to me for libraries trying to offer live chat to their users on the cheap.  The post is a good read for anyone wanting to know the latest and greatest in chat developments.

Create tickets for your library events

Boy I really am on an image generator kick lately...  Use this Concert Ticket Generator to create tickets for your library's events--for the public and staff.  Tickets for all staff day, kids' events tickets, anything you can think of!

Library 2.0 Wikipedia entry considered for deletion

Thanks to Michael Casey at Library Crunch for informing us that the Wikipedia entry for Library 2.0 is being considered for deletion.  The Articles for Deletion Page has a lively discussion going on the subject--feel free to add your two cents.

Gickr: uick animaged GIF creator

Darlene Fichter points us to Gickr, a tool you can use to create quick animated GIFs.  You can upload images yourself or grab some from Flickr.

Warning Signs o' Fun

Michael Stephens has posted a couple of tongue-in-cheek library-themed warning signs (made with the Warning Sign Generator) on his blog, Tame the Web.  I liked his first one so much that I posted it next to my desk as a reminder to constantly reinvent what we do.  Think of all the fun warning and caution signs that you too can make...staff, public, whatever!  Even practical things like "Warning, computer out of service."  Here's mine for today.

Blog about moving ALA forward

The Free Range Librarian tells us that ALA's Member Participation Task Force has a new blog with discussions about "moving ALA forward."  The blog also points to a document, "If I joined ALA tomorrow, what would I want to experience?" created by task force members with ideas of what new ALA members would like to see upon joining.  There are a ton of post and comment feed options, but here's the main entries RSS 2.0 feed.  You can register on the site and then leave comments too...I think that a valuable discussion could happen here.

LibWorm: Librarian blog RSS search engine

Hot on the heels of LISZen, the biblioblogosphere blog search engine, comes LibWorm, a beta RSS search engine that searches 1,400 librarian blog RSS feeds.  How did they pick the feeds to include?

We consulted Steven Cohen and Blake Carver (creators of the now retired LISFeeds), who shared their list of feeds to get us started. Thank you, Blake and Steven! One other particularly helpful site was Amanda Etches-Johnson's Blogging Libraries Wiki.

Sometimes I remember mention of some biblioblogosphere post and would have use for a tool like this.  Worth bookmarking for future use!

Free Mailshell Anti-Spam software

An e-mail from TechSoup's Franziska Marks alerted me to a December 6th free giveaway of Mailshell Anti-Spam software. All U.S. and Canada-based public libraries and other types of nonprofits are eligible.  If your library is looking for some desktop spam software, here ya go--and it's free!

From the press release:

[F]ourth annual Stop Spam Today! campaign, a nationwide effort to help nonprofits and public libraries fight spam by providing free information, resources, and tools. The campaign culminates on December 6 in a one-day giveaway, during which nonprofits and libraries can visit www.stopspamtoday.org to order free copies of Mailshell’s Anti-Spam Desktop software. More than 275,000 copies of free anti-spam software were distributed during the previous “Stop Spam Today!” events, a testimonial to the ever-increasing need of nonprofits to protect themselves from unwanted software and its associated threats.

Qualified public libraries, nonprofits, and charitable organizations in the U.S. and in Canada that are registered with TechSoup’s product philanthropy service TechSoup Stock are eligible for the give-away. Organizations that are not already registered are strongly encouraged to pre-register at TechSoup Stock (www.techsoup.org/stock) before December 6, 2006. There is no cost to register or to participate in the program. Pre-registration will start the qualification process and will expedite order processing and delivery. On December 6, all registered organizations need to place their software order within 24 hours through www.stopspamtoday.org.

More fun image generators

I love The Generator Blog, and when I save a few image generators that I particularly find fun, I share them with y'all.  So, here are some fun ones to try.

• Warhol Generator (see left)
• Prescription Generator (generate images to prescribe reading, particular books, even use it as a creative way to make a positively-worded "rules" sign)
• I Heart XXX Generator (banners and buttons proclaiming love for what else, libraries!)
• Police Car Door Generator (Library Squad, Library Force, etc.)

Police and Library outreach and collaboration ideas

I've been musing an idea around in my head that has very little to do with my own job, but which I think could benefit libraries, particularly public libraries. 

Libraries would like to have positive relationships with the police for a number of reasons.  We sometimes need them to help us deal with a problem--a particulary abusive user, fights, illegal activities, firearms, you name it.  So, usually, the only time we see them is when we're asking them for something. 

I also know that many public libraries have found that the police park outside in the library's lot to use the free wi-fi to do their police work--upload reports, check their mail, etc.  This is fabulous!

So, I'm thinking now, about other ways to fold in the police--to make contact with them in a positive way, not only when we're asking them for something.  And you know what?  We have something that they want.  Information. 

Not to confuse reality with television too much, but have you ever watched Law and Order or CSI?  How many times in each episode are the police looking for some piece of information...any kind of information.  Where someone was born, a shipping manifesto, the identity of a particular insect found at a crime scene. 

In the shows, at least, either the police magically have the exact knowledge required by this particular case to simply know the answer, or the contact some local history professor or expert, or they use a phonebook, on and on.  But these information needs are all things that the library can help the police force with.

What about making contact with your city's or county's law enforcement and letting them know that they can contact you whenever they have an information or research need, and all the various ways to contact you--in-person, phone, e-mail, IM, etc.  Collaborate, connect, and you will see your relationship with these very important colleagues grow in very positive ways.

Tool for capturing streaming audio

Ah, the copyright-miser's nightmare: Audio Recorder For Free.  This free tool will auto-capture any streaming media you have coming into your computer and capture it as a WAV, MP3, or WMA file.  Very handy!

found via Darlene Fichter's furl file

Another online answer service

Another online answer service has joined the fray.  Yedda (found via Sites and Soundbytes) lets users post questions, which anyone can answer.  Answered questions are kept for browsing too. 

You know, all of these "question answering" services  Ziki, Illumio, Qunu, FAQQLY etc.) all remind me a bit of the University of Illinois-UC's Undergrad Library Question Board (with an online and physical presence).  Students would post all sorts of questions, library staff would answer them (usually the LIS graduate assistants) and everyone was happy.  Libraries could easily create something like this on their own websites with a simple database-driven site, or even a blog. 

The tricky bit is this: how do we collect all of these question-answering services' "answers" into one place for harvesting?  A lot of the databases on sites like these aren't open to search engines, so the answers themselves sit unfound through search engines.  A meta-answer engine would be swell. 

FreeTechBooks

FreeTechBooks offers free computer science and engineering eBooks (including full on books and a smattering of lecture summaries).  For example, here's 1000 Java Tips.

found on Peter Scott's Library Blog

Iconaholic

Iconaholic offers free icons and full themes with a nice professional look, for those of you who want your buttons and toolbars to look just a little prettier. 

found via Sites and Soundbytes

Online Image Editing Tools

Image editing is a breeze for those of us who have nice tools like PaintShop Pro or PhotoShop on our computers...  But for the bulk of staff, who are left with Microsoft Paint (*bleargh*), image editing of any kind is a pain in the rear.  Enter some free online image editing tools.  Here are two you may want to try:

• Resizr: Upload an image, move a little slide bar to make the image bigger or smaller, then save the new image.
• Phixr: You have to register first, but then the fun begins.  Resize, rotate, adjust for color, add borders, and more.  (found via Library Stuff)

KidsReads.com

Found via Marylaine Block's Neat New This Week, KidsReads.com is a must-bookmark site for anyone dealing with children's reading, collection development, or readers advisory.  Not only do they have author information and book reviews, they also have great information on kids books in series--including almost 100 different series with titles in order (with summaries, page counts, and age ranges for each title).

If you're interested in books in series, you should also check out:

• Juvenile Series and Sequels from the Mid-Continent Public Library
• Young Adult Books in Series and Sequels from the Bettendorf Public Library
• Adult Series and Sequels from the Los Angeles Public Library
• What's Next? Series Info for Adults & Youth from the Kent District Library

Google Book Search improvements

Any Google Blog post that starts "As a kid, I was a bit of a fixture at my hometown library..." is going to grab my attention :)  This post, by Nathan Naze (Google Book Search software engineer) discusses some of the enhancements that have been made to Google Book Search recently, including:

1. Zooming in and out are now available
2. Books show up on one webpage now, one page beneath the other, instead of requiring a reload for each new page
3. Each book's "About this book" page features other related books
4. To me (and maybe I missed something earlier) the link to borrow the books in libraries seems a lot more prominent now than it was

Avoid the Zoo

It's not often that you read a piece that specifically advises against a website.  Tara Calishain does just that with her post on ResearchBuzz about a sketchy filter-crazed kids search engine called Zoo.com (from InfoSpace).  Her complaints are lengthy and valid (consult her original post for the full deal), but her major issues are that the results are heavily laden with advertising and even though the engine claims to be kid-friendly with automatic filters, it only filters for sexual content.  I agree with Tara--a big nix to Zoo.

Sarah's Quick Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes rock.  Any kind, any time.  But if you want some yummy potatoes that will make your guests sit up and say "dees ist guuut" (mashed-potato-full-mouth-talk), try these:

Sarah's Quick Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
8 Russet potatoes, scrubbed and pricked with a fork
2 heads of garlic
1 stick of butter, sliced
1-2 cups of cream
Salt and pepper to taste
Truffle oil (optional)
Fresh herbs (optional)

1. Heat oven to 450.
2. Cut the pointy edges off the garlic heads so each clove has a wee bit exposed.  Put on a big piece of aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil (rosemary-infused olive oil will add a nice something), and wrap up the aluminum so the cloves are enclosed.  Bake for about an hour.
3. While that's going, microwave all the potatoes together on high for 15 minutes.
4. Then bake the potatoes along with your garlic for 30 minutes.  They should be done (if not, give 'em an extra 15--potatoes are picky sometimes).
5. Using oven gloves, cut each potato in half and scoop out the goodness (you can use the extra skins/wee bit of stuck on potato as a tater-skins appetizer later if you add sour cream, chives, etc.)
6. In a big beautiful bowl, roughly mash the scooped out potato bits with the butter, squeeze in the roasted garlic, and add the cream (you may not need the full 2 cups, it all depends on your taste).
7. Bring out the beaters, whip those puppies into a frenzy and add salt and pepper to taste.
8. For garnish, drizzle a little truffle oil on top and accent with whatever fresh herbs you have on hand.

A quick tip: If you want to make these ahead of time to save time on your serving day, add an extra half-cup of cream--it will keep the potatoes moist when you reheat them later.

Age bias and technologies in and out of our libraries

Aaron Schmidt's post on VR security (see my previous post) also touched on a totally separate issue that needs attention: that the entire view libraries take of many of the new technologies that our users are using is inherently ageist:

It is only possible for librarians take issue with web activities like gaming, IM, blogging, and MySpace because these things are (incorrectly) seen as the territory of kids. If these things were introduced to the library world not as things that "those crazy Millennials are doing" but rather as new information trends, I doubt librarians would have been able to take such objection. Just because younger people were among the early adopters of these technologies does not give libraries the right to treat them as illegitimate.

I agree with him wholeheartedly.  Telling an adult "no gaming" is a bit harder than telling it to a sixth grader, no?  I think it would benefit many libraries to talk at a staff meeting about what things they're banning/blocking/not offering technology-wise, and then see if they're based on some ageist assumptions.  Blocking gaming?  IM?  Saying "no" to USB drives?  Why on earth?  You better have a darn good reason...

What makes me even crazier, and this is another point for discussion at staff meetings, is that we're not talking about kids here when we look at the technologies our users are using.  IM, gaming, and MySpace are not about children.

• As of two years ago (and you know the numbers are higher today), 42% of American adult internet users IMed--and a quarter of those IMed more than e-mailed.
• Adult women gamers represent 43% of the overall gaming population.
• MySpace's average user is approximately 31.

New technologies, new online offerings, are not about kids.  And you know what?  Even if they were all about kids--why exactly would that be a reason not to offer them?

VR & IM Security

Aaron Schmidt points to a post from Oregon's Statewide Digital Reference Coordinator, Caleb Tucker-Raymond: a spam filter for questionpoint.  What, you might ask, would QuestionPoint need a spam filter for?  Well, questions come in via web forms, and like all web forms (like blog comment forms), they get spammed.  Fortunately, Caleb believes he has come up with a solution for his library.  The sad thing is that individual organizations are having to figure this out.  It would be nice if QuestionPoint developers would take this problem into consideration.  I can't believe they haven't been told about it.  Caleb writes:

I haven’t used Meebo or other web IM clients much, so I’m not sure if embedding and HTML image or movie or piece of malicious code would be a problem, but something tells me the IM people have it figured out already.

Indeed...I don't get spam in IM.

Aaron also points out that librarians and their IT staff have always assumed that these big name web-based chat services (QuestionPoint, Docutek, Tutor.com) are safe and not a security threat but that IM is.  Why is that?  Lack of familiarity with "the new," I would guess.  A guess that if you pay for it, it's inherently good and safe.  An assumption that if a company puts its name on it, it's safe (yeah, Microsoft has done a really good job with that one *guffafw*).

Library online presence webinar

Paul R. Pival points us to a free online webinar given on Halloween by Brian Matthews (The Ubiquitous Librarian) entitled "Conversations With Patrons: Extending Your Library’s Presence Online."  Accessing it is a bit of a pain though, as Paul points out.

1. If,like me, you don't already have an account with Library Online, you first need to go create a free account.
2. Then you have to wait for the community administrator to approve your account. (*grumble*)
3. Then come back here and click here to log in and listen.

The benefit is that once you have an account, you can get all the upcoming and archived webinars free...and free online learning is a good thing.

Free software to do 450 different things

Sites and Soundbytes (the author consistently finds great resources) points us to a fabulous list of freeware from eConsultant: I want a Freeware Utility to ... 450 common problems solved.  If you're looking for free software to protect against spyware, edit audio files, rip CDs, make PDFs, edit images, and like a bazillion other things, check out this list.  It's excellent.

A case of the sickens?

How about carrying some of these masks in your library to cover the coughing mouths of kid and adult users alike?  A bit more fun than the scary white things...

found via Boing Boing

Internet Librarian presentations online

Presentations from the Internet Librarian Conference are slowly becoming available on the InfoToday website.  Mine aren't there yet (no one asked for them, so I just sent them in to some generic InfoToday address), though they can be found here and here on my own site.

"Death of the Library" article

Binghamton University's Pipe Dream newspaper featured an article entitled "Will Web resources be the Death of the Library?"  The conclusion of the article is, you guessed it, no.  A quote from Susan Currie, BU Librarian and Associate Director for Public Services, sums it up:

"I don’t see books going out of style any time soon," Currie said. "It’s one thing to read a journal article online, it’s another thing to read ‘War and Peace’ online. It will take decades to digitize everything that’s in print and that’s without worrying about copyrights."

Sunday worm attack on SecondLife

A self-replicating worm spun gold rings around the virtual world Second Life on Sunday, forcing a brief closure of the game.  The rings slowed down the game, but otherwise don't seem to have done any real damage, beyond irritating people more and more about the game's slowdowns...

Library Cheer

At the annual conference for the California Library Association just two weeks ago, outgoing President Margaret Miles performed The Library Cheer, which you can now view in its full splendor on YouTube, thanks to Infopeople's filming and posting of it.

Quick promotional badges for your library website

Aaron Schmidt writes on walkingpaper.org about how he used a Web 2.0 Badge Photoshop Tutorial to create some very quick images (see left for one example) to post on library websites to draw attention to particular programs or services.  He also makes them available for free for anyone else who wants to borrow them.  Thanks Aaron!

Presentations from Jessamyn West

Jessamyn West has posted her two presentations from the Hawaii Library Association on her site, librarian.net (like you didn't know that).  Her "On the Fly Tech Support" presentation is particularly swell as it gives some really great tips and tricks for providing tech support for our tech-challenged patrons, something I myself am training on today in-house!  Thanks for providing these Jessamyn!

Library world speaker survey results

Rachel Singer Gordon finished her survey on library world speakers, and here are the results.  There is a lot of variety in what people charge and require for various types of speaking engagements.  I still think that someone should start an LIS Speakers Bureau.

ACLU sues over library filtering

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against a Washington library system for its use of SmartFilter.  From the ACLU press release:

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, three library users and a nonprofit organization today brought suit to ensure that patrons of a library system in Eastern Washington have access to useful and lawful information on the Internet. The lawsuit challenges the library system’s policy of using a restrictive Internet filter to bar access to information on its computers and of refusing to honor requests by adult patrons to temporarily disable the filter for sessions of uncensored reading and research. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane.
The North Central Regional Library District (NCRL) operates 28 community libraries in Chelan, Douglas, Ferry, Grant, and Okanogan Counties. The NCRL has used a blocking software product called SmartFilter, Bess edition, manufactured by the California-based company Secure Computing Corporation, to filter Internet content on all public computers at its branch libraries. Bess blocks a very broad array of lawful information, and the NCRL has refused to unblock sites for patrons. ...

Readers of my blog will already know my stance on filtering software--I don't believe in its usefulness.  But for gosh sakes, if you're going to have it in your library (or have to have it due to the funding you get), make sure it works and that you can unblock legal sites upon patron requests.

 

Cites & Insights available

Walt Crawford's latest Cites & Insights is available.  His Lazy Man's Guide to Productivity is a fun read :)

Library Video on YouTube: "Investigate the Possibilities"

Here's an example of a library using YouTube as a fun way to promote itself.  From the McCracken County Public Library (Kentucky), check out Investigate the Possibilities.  Fun, in a black and white schmaltzy kinda way :)

Science Fiction Book meme

Found on Walt Crawford's blog, and continuing the meme.  I'm surprised I haven't read many on this list, considering that I think of myself as a total science fiction nut.  Guess no list is perfect ;)

"Below is a Science Fiction Book Club list most significant SF novels between 1953-2006. The meme part of this works like so: Bold the ones you have read, strike through the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a star next to the ones you love."

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien *
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson*
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick*
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury*
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison*
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card*
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice*
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Yes, that's right--I hated Harry Potter.  Bring on the hate mail :)

Future Librarian T-Shirt

OK, this t-shirt is a great gift for your favorite LIS student, or budding librarian-to-be.  The holidays are coming up--buy one now!  This store, buyolympia, also offers a number of other swell gifts like the "reading is sexy" line of items, some cool ties from Angel Eyes,  ex libris anonymous recycled books turned into journals, and much more.  I spend a lot of money here on gifts...

Gaming in Libraries--Jenny Levine's new book!

Jenny Levine's Library Technology Report, Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services, is available  now.  From the press release:

The issue covers video game consoles (e.g., MicroSoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's GameCube, and Sony's PlayStation), computer-based games (e.g., Myst, The Sims, Civilization IV), and Web-based games (e.g., Bookworm and PopCap Games) as well as some of the common gaming-equipment setups/configurations in libraries. In addition, Levine briefly looks at the popular and rapidly growing virtual-reality online community Second Life and the library services now being offered there.

Buy a copy for your library and for yourself now!  This is your one-stop shop to brining games into the library in a positive way, and who better to be your guide than Jenny?

A Vegetarian Thanksgiving

Being a vegetarian during the holidays can be hard for two reasons: family and friends pressuring you to eat some turkey/ham/whatever ("it's already dead, dear") and people getting into huge philosophical debates over animal rights over the dinner table (generally not pleasant dinner conversation, which inevitably turns into "why do we celebrate Thanksgiving anyway--our ancestors stole land and murdered innocents"). 

Anyway, we're spending Thanksgiving home alone this year, which is fabulous, but I was thrilled to see this Vegetarian/Vegan Thanksgiving website through LII's New This Week, In a Vegetarian Kitchen, with a ton of recipes for a substantive veg Thanksgiving dinner.  The Sourdough stuffing with pine nuts and raisins is making me drool as I type.

Canned Google Searches for K-12 Research

My former boss, David Dodd, and his librarian wife Diana Spaulding have built a couple of Google custom searches for K-12 school research topics: one on American History and one on Islam.  You can read more about it on David's blog, Librarian in Tie-Dye.  If you're curious about how Google Custom Searches work, read this review on SearchEngineWatch by Chris Sherman.  This is a very interesting project--and a direction that libraries could take that I hadn't thought too much of before.  Custom searches could go a great way toward helping our users get the most out of their web searching.

NBC announces podcasts

NBC is going to be podcasting significant segments of some of its more popular news shows like Today and NBC Nightly News.  All the podcasts will be available on MSNBC.com.

Teaching Tagging

Want to teach the concept of tagging to your staff?  Consider a physical exercise like this one, found on Tame the Web.

Ways to lose young employees

A while back, the biblioblogosphere talked quite a bit about ways to lose techie employees.  Now Laurie the Librarian has a list of her own employee-related no-nos: 21 Ways to Lose Your Younger Employees.  I don't think they're all necessarily ways to lose your young employees, but ways to definitely irritate them.  Her #11 particularly strikes me, though, as something I see far too often in libraries and something which would drive me away: "Only send senior employees for professional development and networking opportunities."  To say that your new/young employees don't have the right experience and then in the same breath not avail them of training/development opportunities is quite ridiculous, wouldn't you agree?

Chinese language databases from NetLibrary

According to this press release from OCLC, NetLibrary is now offering three online databases with Chinese-language content from Airiti, Inc.  The databases include "direct access to 338,000 full-text articles from leading Taiwanese and Chinese journals and a fully-searchable database of 12,000 images from the National Palace Museum in Taipei."  I'm glad to see OCLC further strengthening its offering of non-English content.

YouTube in the News

So, not only did YouTube get sued by soundalike UTube (cuz, you know, having too much web traffic is a really bad thing), but YouTube is also now talking about offering downloads--something sorely lacking from the site currently.  Rumors are floating around that YouTube will be offering downloads for mobile devices in 2007.

Using LibraryThing in the Library

Scott Pfitzinger has blogged about some innovative ways that libraries can use LibraryThing: using it as a collection development tool, a tool to help build "recommended" lists, find reviews, see what's popular with the reading public, on and on.  It's a nice list of ways to use this free "cataloging for fun" tool!

Free Friday Forums

The Bibliographic Center for Research is holding a series of Free Friday Forums about particular technologies.  Currently on their line up are classes on OCLC, NetLibrary collections, and social software.  Free is good!

Cat humor