LibrarianInBlack

Google Apps for Education

Michelle Boule has a fabulous article on ALA TechSource on Google's new Google Apps for Education, a suite of their products including Gmail, GTalk, Google Calendar, Google Page Creator, and a customized Google Start Page.  It is (of course) in beta, and only a few schools get to participate in the first round.  Michelle has some great ideas about how this could change how libraries interact with faculty and students.

Free wiki hosting!

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that his company, Wikia, has launched OpenServing, free web hosting for any wiki developer.  For more information on this exciting development, check out the TechCrunch article covering the launch.  This is an excellent development for libraries who want to use wikis for either their public websites or intranets, but don't have access to their own web servers (and the number of libraries who fit that bill are more than I would like).  Build a set of subject guides like the St. Joseph County Public Library has.  Make your intranet into a wiki.  Build wikis to work on specific group projects or initiatives.  All for free!

Librarian's Ultimate Guide to Search Engines

The Librarian's Ultimate Guide to Search Engines, written by Scott Hawksworth for DegreeTutor, is a good starting point in learning about the history, terminology, search tricks, and features of the various search engines that are the bread and butter of our finding tools.

found via Peter Scott's Library Blog

Resume Resources from Libraries

There were recently some discussions on a couple of listservs about resume tools and websites.  Two of the library resume websites that were recommended (from the dozens people bandied about as their personal favorites) stood out to me in particular, so I thought I'd share them with y'all.  What's a blog pulpit for, after all? :)

• San Diego Public Library's Tutorials: SDPL has created a series of tutorials for users wanting to create resumes in Microsoft Word.  They cover what to include in a resume, resume wizards and templates, printing and saving, recommended books and online resume builders.  Well done!
• Montgomery County-Norristown Public Library Job Resume Templates: MCNPL has created a number of plug and play resume templates where the user identifies how many past jobs, educational degrees, and certifications he/she has, as well as whether or not an objective statement is required, and then a click on a link takes them to a very specific template where they type in information in response to a series of questions, and whizz, bang, zoom--there's the finished resume ready to save or print!  Very, very impressive!

StateHealthFacts.org

The Kaiser Family Foundation has added quite a bit of data to StateHealthFacts.org, including information about Medicare drug benefits, dentists, Medicare SNPs, nursing homes, AIDS, and a lot more.  To keep up to date with the new data they add, see their What's New page.  This site is a good one to bookmark for health statistics and general information. 

Each state has a profile, and you can compare states on various statistics as well.  Here is California's profile as an example.  Note the number of different information groups you can access using the menu on the left.  I found out that 19% of Californians are uninsured, compared to the US average of 16%.  I can also get even more specific statistics by age, gender, ethnicity, employment status, and more.  This site really is amazing!

found via ResourceShelf

Wiki for children's library services

More and more divisions of ALA are jumping on the wiki bandwagon.  The Association for Library Service to Children recently launched a wiki.  From their announcement:

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), is pleased to announce its new Wiki at http://wikis.ala.org/alsc. Joining in on the latest technology and communication phenomenon, ALSC established Wiki space to provide its members and others interested in library service to children a place to share ideas and best practices; network with colleagues; discuss issues, trends, and opportunities; and communicate ALSC committee happenings and events.

Geonome Studies database launched

The National Library of Medicine, of the National Institutes of Health, has launched a new database about genome wide association studies: dbGaP (yes, that's really what they're calling it--short for "the database of Genotype and Phenotype").  The initial database includes two genome projects: the Age-Related Eye Diseases Study and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Parkinsonism Study.

found via Peter Scott's Library Blog

Library websites value-laden but hard to use, says user

The Oldie magazine (UK) featured a piece about the frustrations of navigating public library websites: "Superbyways."  The article, by simply "Webster," talks mostly about how library sites offer a wealth of valuable and free resources, but criticizes them for findability (databases) and usability (catalogs).  None of this is news to those of us who have been struggling to better these very things for years now, but it's interesting for a non-librarian to pick up on it and think it was worth writing about.

found via Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog

how interesting

Kathy Sierra has a funny (and useful) post on Creating Passionate Users about a two-word phrase that you've surely heard in meetings, political conversations, arguments, and more: "how interesting."  From her post:

Say it when you're frustrated. Say it when you're mad. Most importantly, say it before you say or do anything else (including hit the "send" or "post" button).

Now that I've let this out to the world though, I can't use it any more or you all will know what I'm up to :)  Still, there is an immediate use for this tactic with visits home to the family for the holidays and the inevitable uncomfortable political, religious, and ethical discussions that take place every year.

Research Options Besides Google

Meredith Farkas has written a thoughtful list of ways to do research other than using the big G, "Whatever you do don't use Google!"  She points out a number of gateway sites and resource lists, as well as other tips and tricks for doing research that will get you past, around, and better than doing a plain ol' web search in any search engine, not just the oft-assaulted Google.  Thanks Meredith!

LibriVox: free audiobooks in multiple languages

LibriVox, a collection of free volunteer-created audio books, has grown quite a bit since I first blogged about it in September of 2005.  The Centered Librarian alerted me to the fact that their collection of non-English titles has grown quite a bit.  You can find audiobooks in Chinese, French, German and other languages. 

For the complete list of their non-English titles, go to: http://librivox.org/completed-works-in-other-languages/. 

To see their English language catalog of books (176 now!), poetry, children's literature, short stories, and more, go to: http://librivox.org/librivox-catalogue/. This is quite a resource!

LoopNote.com

Phil Bradley points us to LoopNote.com, a service that lets you create a subject-oriented alert service and then people can subscribe to it via RSS, text-messaging, IM, or e-mail.  Kind of like a mini-blog, I guess.  A library could create an alert service for upcoming events by location, or new online content, whatever else you can think of!

Library Management, a la George Needham

George Needham has a must-read article on WebJunction: Forget the OPAC: Why Does Library Management Suck?  I recommend it for anyone in any way related to library management: managers, would-be managers, library school professors teaching management classes, library school students taking those classes, everybody.  He talks about how the only opportunity for advancement in salary in libraries (like schools) is promotion, and how that takes staff who are really good at what they do (be it cataloging or reference) and makes them managers.  And none of us are prepared.  If we took a class in library school about management, it didn't teach us what we needed to know, and more likely than not, we skipped that class in favor of something that seemed more practical at the time, like "Dialog searching."  He gives us four questions to think about, areas where he seems room for growth in library managers:

1. Can you be honest with your governing authority?
2. Can you talk with your staff about their performance?
3. Can you share information?
4. Can you let go?

Go read the article.  It's a goodie.

AP-AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey

This is a week old, but gimme a break--I'm trying to finish my book, work a full time job, deal with the holidays, and keep up with blogging at the same time.  Anyway, it's important so I'm still going to write about it even though many of you probably know about it already. 

The AP-AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey, which surveyed current IM users, has a lot of interesting finds, the most interesting of which (to me) are these:

• 72% of teens who use instant messaging send more IMs than e-mails
• 26% of adults who use IM send more IMs than e-mails (big disparity there)
• Teens use IM to share files: 56% share photos, 33% share music and/or video
• 30% of teens say they can't imagine living without IM, compared to 17% of adults
• 63% of teens say they do homework while also being on IM
• 53% of teens have used IM to get help with their homework, only 9% tapping a teacher or tutor via IM though (so who're they asking?  each other!)

These survey results can easily be used by librarians trying to prove the usefulness of IM reference services to their library management, especially from the perspective of teen services.  Teens are IMing not e-mailing, and they're already on IM while doing homework.  The library can be there with them, one click away, if you just get a free screen name and let your users know you're around to help.

A web-based operating system?

Robin Hastings reports on A Passion for 'Puters about Craythur.com, a seeming web-based OS.  You create a free account with a 100MB diskspace limit, and then run your life from the site--using their systems for  a calendar, file organization, tasklists, banking, bookmarks, contacts, and more.  An interesting foray into what all the gurus say is the next big change in the web--web-based operating systems.  No more being tied to one machine or moving files from place to place on portable drives or disks. 

Lots of these services exist piecemeal across different sites now--Google is as close as you can get to a one-stop shop (what with their Office-competitors, calendar, mail, etc.), and I'd be willing to bet that they'll be the ones with the first web-based OS.

Library patron data released

The Muskegon Chronicle reports how 15,000 Lakeland Library Cooperative patrons (adults and children) had their personal information (names, phone numbers, library card numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses) displayed on the library's website.  The library took care of it within 24 hours of being notified by a savvy patron who saw the data, but no one knows what caused the problem in the first place.  They say they recently underwent a "software upgrade."  The library's ILS vendor is III, and somehow, I am not surprised. 

The article reports that patrons will be notified and issued new cards sometime in "the near future."  What disturbs me is this.  As Jessamyn West notes, there's nothing on the cooperative's website at all about the problem--what happened, what patrons should do, no reassurances--just.......nothing.

Five Things Y'all Don't Know About Me

I was going along fine, nobody tagged me, until Tara did.  Bah humbug.  So, here are five things you don't know about me:

1. I really, really like to cook.  I find it relaxing and enjoy seeing the smile on people's faces when they enjoy what I've made for them.
2. I am related to the late Katharine Hepburn.
3. I have quite an embarrassingly low tolerance for spicy foods, including seemingly innocuous things like black pepper and paprika.
4. I was raised as a Lutheran by my parents, the full-on church and Sunday School every week, but have been an atheist since around the age of 10.  So, between the ages of 10 and 18 there were some regular conflicts between Sarah/parents and Sarah/church figures.
5. I am married to a librarian (and no, I'm still not going to post my wedding photos).

So, the five people I'm going to tag to do this next are:  Helene Blowers, Heidi Dolamore (in a shameless attempt to force you to start blogging regularly again),   Michael Porter, David Dodd, and Laurie the Librarian.

Two more cheapy-cheap flash drives

Here are two more opportunities to get really cheap flash drives, both found via the FreeAfterRebate blog:

• 512 MB flash drive: $6.99 after rebate, $4.99 shipping
• 1 GB flash drive: $3.99 after rebate, $5.00 shipping

Both of these deals expire December 31st, so go put some money into the economy now.

Quotiki.com: Quote Search Engine

Phil Bradley points us to Quotiki.com, a wiki-format site for quotations. There are already a lot of sites dedicated to finding quotations, but as Phil says, why not bring on more, and a wiki at that, complete with tagging?  From their site description:

Quotiki is social quotes site that lets you quickly find and enjoy quotes.  As a member of our community, you can start tagging, submitting, rating and collecting quotes.

 

There is not a lot of content yet; a search for "library" only yielded one result: Roger Ebert's "Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."  But again, one more place to search when you can't find that weird obscure quote the patron wants you to find won't hurt you.

MapLib.net

I particularly like online mapping tools, as a perpetually lost person with a "worse than horrible" sense of direction (or so says everyone close to me).  I was interested to see Steven Cohen mention (quite some time ago--I'm way behind) the very cool MapLib.net, a tool that lets you turn any image into a Google map, applying all the Googly features you want to it, like zooming, annotations, thumbtacks with pop-up info, and more.  For example, take a look at this map of Tolkien's Middle Earth (which could have a lot more detail, but I won't pick nits).  Fun!  Libraries could upload images of their floorplans and note different locations of materials and other important things like bathrooms and such.  Anyone have other ideas?  I'm sure there are many that my tired little brain just can't come up with...

DRM & Higher Education Online Course

Found via a post on LIBREF-L listserv by Marvin Stewart, there's an upcoming multi-day online class (January 22-February 2) on digital rights management you may want to consider signing up for: DRM Technologies & Higher Education. Early registration (by January 6th) is $125, $150 thereafter.  From the course description:

Institutions of higher education, both online and face-to-face, use a variety of digital learning objects, courseware, digital materials, and third-party copyrighted works. In doing so, they struggle to balance two, equally meritorious, aspects of creating and using copyrighted works: the need to protect the rights of copyright owners and the need to ensure that copyrighted works can be disseminated widely in support of scholarship, teaching, and learning. The 2002 Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act requires that educational enterprises implement technologies that reasonably prevent unauthorized retention and dissemination of copyrighted works in accessible form. The DRM technologies used to control access to digital works often create barriers for access or discourage or eliminate uses that are authorized by law, and the development of technologies that protect copyrighted works has outpaced the development of technologies that both protect and permit legal uses of copyrighted works.

For a more detailed course outline, instructor information, to register, and more, see the course website.

SlideShare: PowerPoint Sharing Website

If you haven't checked out SlideShare yet, give it a once-over.  Think of it as the Flickr of Powerpoint presentations.  The huge variety of the types of slideshows included here is mind-boggling.  Just look at today's most popular slideshows: material in both English & Spanish covering the holidays, Web 2.0 and Blogging, androgyny, social software, successful entrepeneurship, on and on.  The next time you have to create a presentation, think of checking here first to see if there's anyone else's work you can use as a starting point.  And go now and upload all those presentations you have sitting around on your hard drive.  Share your knowledge with everyone; we are librarians after all.

Free Clip Art Site

Doris Dorling Kindersly (the famous reference world DK!) has a website with free clip art: DK Clip Art.  There are flags, dinosaurs, planets, holidays, sports and much more.  From the site's own description:

This mini site will help support class and homework activities with downloads of DK’s famous photographs that can be included in your school projects. They can also be used just for fun!

You may want to read the site's terms and conditions, but the basic deal seems to be that anyone can use this for school, home, or personal use.

found via ResourceShelf

Making browseable lists of your library's feature films

Aaron Schmidt writes about his process for developing a browseable list of feature films for the Thomas Ford Memorial Library's website.  He has created a blog, Films at the Ford, with individual entries for each film.  Each movie entry includes a short summary, a link to the IMDB entry, and an area for comments.  Very, very nice.  He's still experimenting with it (it's not linked to from the TFML website yet) and asking for comments from people willing to monkey around with it for a while and see what needs some tweakin'.  So, go monkey!

Puttin' your ref desk out o' sight

I ran across this YouTube video about how to find the reference desk at the Odum Library at Valdosta State University.  You have to climb stairs, something that is sadly not unusual in a lot of libraries.  Why is that?

Please, please, please--put your reference and circulation desks on the first floor.  At least have an information kiosk of some kind so that people don't wander around thinking "Where do I go for help?"  I am reminded of the Main Library (aka the "Graduate Library") at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.  You walk in, from any entrance, and don't see books, or a desk, or anything--just stairs, walls, and hallways.  *sigh*

But I guess if you can't have your reference desk on the first floor, the least you can do is make a video about how to find it :)

Denver Public Library YouTube Contest

The Denver Public Library has a contest using YouTube up right now for their teen users.  The theme is "How I Have Fun @ the Library."  The winner gets an MP3 player.  What a fabulous idea!  And so easy to implement--low cost, low staff time, high fun, high energy!

found via Tame the Web

Online classes/webcasts from The Education Institute

David Lee King points us to The Education Institute of Canada's online course calendar for January-June.  There are several really interesting-looking webcasts, online courses, and teleconferences.  While not free, the classes come in under $200 and the webcasts and teleconferences under $100 (Canadian dollars), even for non-members.  The ones that caught my eye particularly were Supervisory Skills for Library Staff (online course), Consumer Health and Medical Resources on the Web (online course), Planning a Successful Genealogy Trip (teleconference), and Placemaking: Creating Libraries as Public Spaces.  There are dozens of classes (some even in French, ooh la la)!  Check it out!

Google U.S. Patent Search

The Google Blog announced the new Google U.S. Patent Search (beta, of course).  The Advanced Search Page has a good number of limiters, including inventor, patent number, and U.S. and international classification codes.  They currently include over 7 million patents and are still expanding the database.  Patent searching was one of my least favorite tasks in library school.  This tool would have (theoretically) made it a bit easier and less mind-scraping a task.

One of our libraries featured in the SF Chronicle (and it got first place!)

Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle featured a good story, "3 New Icons of Community Pride:  Libraries designed to reflect civic priorities in Belmont, Hercules and San Mateo," about three libraries in the Bay Area, including one of the libraries in my system (the San Mateo County Library): the Belmont Library!  Walt Crawford picked up this story as well.  The author, John King, is the newspaper's urban design writer and of the three libraries, liked Belmont the most.  From the article:

Inside, those venerable oaks are the first thing you notice; the second is the especially convivial spread of books (this is the only library where "Proust at the Majestic" is displayed alongside "Git-R-Done" by Larry the Cable Guy). What gradually sinks in is how warm the space is, from the black ceramic tile on the floor of the foyer to the ceiling's white maple.

Belmont also had the smallest budget at $8.2 million, compared to San Mateo's $65 million and Hercules's (a branch of the Contra Costa County Library) $10.4 million.

Sidenote: the San Mateo Public Library is an independent city library and not part of the San Mateo County Library system, but we are both part of the same consortium.  Confused?  Our patrons are too :/

Having visited all three, and admitting my bias fully for the Belmont Library, I still like Belmont the best.  Why?

• its warm wooden ceiling
• public computers galore (over 70)
• simply designed modern, yet soft, lighting
• the wired group-study-friendly teen area
• the fireplace with big cozy chairs
• lots of face-out book and media displays
• one desk for reference and circulation
• a cafe run by the Human Services Agency of San Mateo County as a job training site
• 99% self-check out
• the kids' room with story time mushroom seats and bubble computer chairs
• an outdoor amphitheater (complete with a beautiful fountain) for programming in warm weather

If you'd like to see my own set of photos from the Belmont Library to explore it in its full glory, check out my Belmont set on Flickr. 

Two alternatives to MeeboMe

The biblioblogosphere went gaga for MeeboMe when it launched—and rightly so.  Just think: a free little box that you can put on any webpage anywhere and anyone can IM you anonymously!  Sweet! 

Now there’s Plugoo (found via a post on Library Clips).  The difference between the two is that with Plugoo, if users send you an IM, it automatically opens the IM client of choice (MSN, AIM, etc.) instead of you (the librarian) needing to go through Meebo’s aggregator webpage IM service.  Plugoo is available by invite right now.

There’s also a service called Gabbly that lets you simply add the prefix gabbly.com/ before any URL and then see other users who are on that page and chat with them (they have to do the same thing).  You can also add a Gabbly chat window to your site.

So now, choices, choices!  Which do you want to use to provide anonymous IM reference services on your library’s website?

Askville: another question answering service, this time from Amazon

Amazon has launched Askville, self-described as:

…a place where you can share and discuss knowledge with other people by asking and answering questions on any topic. It's a fun place to meet others with similar interests to you and a place where you can share what you know.

Hmm….sounds like another Yahoo! Answers or Google Answers (RIP).  Or, oh yeah, a library reference service.  The difference is that they’ve made it social—question-answering via social software.  If you answer questions you get “quest coins” and “experience points” if the answers you provide are actually right.  So, it’s like a scavenger hunt with prizes, or makes reference a game, as Christopher Harris points out on Infomancy.

It’s a site to be aware of, to participate in, and to think about in relation to all of our own online reference services.  Will Askville take off?  It has a catchy name, so it has that going for it.  Do people think of Amazon as a place to find information?  Yes—even librarians use it to get information about books, CDs, and DVDs, including ISBNs, reviews, accurate titles, author information, etc.  So, will people expand that out to thinking of Amazon as a place to find all information?  That, my dear friends, is what remains to be seen.

Webcast materials from "Best New Technologies"

Stephen Bell and Aaron Schmidt presented a webcast in late October entitled Best New Technologies: Keeping Up With the Storm for the College of DuPage's Soaring to Excellence Series. If you missed it, like I did, you can check out the slides and other materials as well as an excellent summary from Angel Rivera (aka The Gypsy Librarian).

Fun library comic

Marylaine Block discovered another library comic (in addition to the oft-read and cited Unshelved): Turn the Page is written by "Jayson," and while it only has 11 strips so far, I laughed out loud more than once while reading them.  You can also get it via an RSS feed.  Added to my feed list fo' sho'.

Record directly into YouTube

YouTube's new QuickCapture feature allows users to upload video directly to the site through webcams connected to their computers directly.  The video goes up as recorded--no editing.  From the concise explanation from Jacqui Cheng on ars technica:

The Quick Capture tool uses an Adobe Flash Player API to connect to the user's webcam. The user must first grant the Flash Player permission to use the camera and microphone—and must do so every time—before using the service. Once the user grants permission, he or she must then select the type of connection being used for the video and microphone: DV, FireWire, or USB.

After entering in the title, description, tags, and categories in the text boxes to the left, the user is all set to click the "Record" button.

I think this will be a plus for some, but a useless feature for others.  It's great if you don't have any video editing software, and end up just uploading videos straight anyway.  But if you edit your stuff at all (which most of us should do, at least a little), then it's useless.  You can find a lot of videos on YouTube of people testing the new feature.

Get published in the Journal of Web Librarianship

The Journal of Web Librarianship is looking for manuscripts to publish in the area of, you guessed it, web librarianship.  It's a new journal with its first issue set to come out in early 2007.  For more info, go to: http://www.lib.jmu.edu/org/jwl/

Melody-based music search tool

Nayio Media, based in the same city I work in--San Mateo, has launched a new search product: Humming Search.  Users hum or sing a song into their computer microphones and search for songs based on the melody of what they've sung. 

The product has been available in South Korea for 3 years already.  The search screen is pretty straightforward (see above).  The engine taps the contents of Napster's 3 million-strong song library and gives users potential matches with links to listen to the songs for free through Napster.  Warning: the search page requires an ActiveX installation.

Proquest sold to Cambridge

The Cambridge Information Group(Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, more specifically) has purchased Proquest's Information and Access Division (that'd be the one that makes all the stuff for libraries, among other things) for $222 million.  Wow.

found via ResourceShelf (well, really an IM with Gary Price, but he pointed me to his piece here too)

Special report on books from Forbes

Forbes has a special report on books, with a first sentence of "Are books in danger?"  Ooh, that's a promising beginning.  Of course, they then say that they're not in danger, that people are actually reading more now, not less.  The special report includes a dozen or so articles by authors like Cory Doctorow and Jonathan Enfield.  They cover everything from how electronic publishing isn't killing print publishing, preservation, reading skills, books that are made into movies, book burnings, authors making their work available free online, and plagiarism.  Well worth the read. 

Donate USB drives to African schools

If you have extra flash/USB drives hanging around, consider donating them to Inveneo.

Inveneo is a non-profit that brings information and communication technology to remote and rural ares in the developing world. We're holding a Thumb Drive Drive. Donate old USB thumb drives (16mb and larger) so that they can be provided to school labs in the countries where we operate including Uganda, Rwanda, and Mali. Low capacity thumb drives are the AOL floppies of the 2000s. We'd like to put them to good use. Donations are tax deductible.

found via Boing Boing

Fresno Library's MySpace Forum

I blogged a couple of days ago about the library in Fresno, CA holding a forum on MySpace.  Cool, right?  Well, we have a first-hand account of the forum from Rob Darrow, who tells us that the documentary and following panel and discussion were excellent and that the teens involved were "articulate, honest, and concerned about online safety."  Exciting!

New York Times 100 Notable Books

The New York Times has named its 100 Notable Books of 2006.  I can definitely tell I've been out of the collection development business over the last year--I don't recognize the vast majority of these titles.  You could do a book display around their list; pull the ones you have available (if they're even on the shelf).

When Librarians Attack...

Janie L. Hermann on Library Garden points us to a fun article on TheSpoof.com yesterday: "When Librarians Attack!" DVD Enjoys Brisk Sales.  *chuckle*

Free USB drives

There are two free USB offers available right now (found both through the Free After Rebate blog), and both expire December 16th (that's Saturday), so act fast!  Give these out as prizes for staff development contests, at your all staff event, or just get one for your own use!  Come on people, free storage!!!

• Free 128 MB USB drive, plus free shipping (Office Depot)
• Free 1 GB USB drive, $7 shipping (RitzCamera.com)

Using Enterprise IM for a collaborative virtual reference service?

Caleb Raymond-Tucker from the Multnomah County Library posted to the DIG_REF listserv about using Enterprise IM solutions, free and open source, for IM reference at the library.  He's developed a webpage about the subject: Enterprise IM proof-of-concept for virtual reference. 

So, basically, instead of using Trillian, Meebo, or Gaim to aggregate your multiple screen names with all the various commercial chat services out there, you also have the option to follow Caleb's model.  He has created a patron test interface that you can try out and also provides screenshots of what it looks like on the librarian's end. 

One of the key benefits is that you can push pages to users (not true "see what I'm doing" co-browsing, but not just sending clickable URLs either).  There is still the limitation of multiple librarians not being able to monitor a single screen name.  Once some smart code monkey cracks that nut, the revolution will truly begin.

PLCMC Learning 2.0 Finale

The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County has finished their famed Learning 2.0 program (which has inspired and will continue to inspire similar programs throughout the world).  362 staff started the program and 222 finished it completely, learning all 23 Things.  They announced the winner of the laptop via a YouTube video, one more nod to the very technologies they were promoting through the program.

Videoblogging resources

David Lee King recently did a webcast for the Education Institute on Videoblogging.  Over on his blog, he links to the PowerPoint and offers up some supplemental information as well: videoblog resources and libraries that are videoblogging.

Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015

Vincent Flanders's Web Pages that Suck website (a good read with "daily suckers") also includes a recently re-edited article written by Flanders: "Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015."  He lists 14 common mistakes web designers and webmasters make.  And as always, one of the best ways to learn what to do is to learn what definitely not to do. 

Historical Archive using Flickr

Library Stuff linked several days ago to a nice historical digital archive presented by the Palos Verdes Library District (California): The 40 Families Project.  The project contains oral histories, biographies, and historical photos.  The mission of the project is to preserve the history of the Japanese American settlers of the area from the early part of the twentieth century.  And they're using Flickr to organize and present the photographs.  How awesome is that?

Meebo salutes libraries and librarians

A post yesterday on the Meebo blog, entitled librarian love, talks about the ways libraries and librarians are using Meebo and the MeeboMe Widget to serve users both on their public machines (as a way for users to IM even if IM is blocked) and as a way to provide reference services via IM.  They highlight work from Jessamyn West and Aaron Schmidt.  Way to go guys :)

Mozart's work free online

Over 600 pieces or Mozart's sheet music are available from the International Mozart Foundation in the Digital Mozart Edition.  You can search or browse for content.  The site is in German (I think--my German's rusty).  The content is a complete digitized version of the New Mozart Edition published by Barenreiter in Germany.

found on News.com

Charles Darwin complete works online

The complete evolutionary works of Charles Darwin are now available online, a project of the University of Cambridge and a few other worthy organizations.  Enough said.

found via ResourceShelf

WEB 2.0 and Its Technologies for Collaborative Library Communication

Robert J. Lackie has a very interesting article in MultiMedia and Internet at Schools magazine: "WEB 2.0 and Its Technologies for Collaborative Library Communication."  In it, he discusses the wide interpretations of what Web 2.0 is and means and how it can help libraries.  He talks a little bit more about the concepts over on Library Garden as well (also well worth reading).

Feedster new features and look

Feedster launched a new look and a neat new feature recently.  The new feature is Feedpapers, a tool that lets companies etc. develop their own content channels of RSS feeds.  There's a nice write-up about Feedpapers here: http://www.feedster.com/corporate/partnership.php

found via ResourceShelf

Reference & User Services Quarterly online counterpart

Reference & User Services Quarterly is now online.  RUSQ (the publication from RUSA) a website (http://www.rusq.org/) that they say "serves as an online companion to the print edition."  The website, which is a blog, includes posts about RUSA and links to PDF versions of columns and articles from the print publication.

found via OPL Plus

Teen Tech Week

YALSA has announced the first ever Teen Tech Week for March 4-10, 2007.  What is your library doing to celebrate this week?  If you go to YALSA's site for Teen Tech Week you can register (and win stuff), find resources and program ideas, and take a look at the wiki with more ideas.

Send text messages from e-mail

TeleFlip is a free service that lets you send text-messages to a cell phone from your e-mail account.  You just send the e-mail to ###-###-####@teleflip.com.  Any replies will go back to your e-mail address.  So, in a time where libraries are trying to offer reference services via text-messaging (and some are doing so successfully using a for-pay product), I'm trying to figure out how we could use this free tool instead.  But a piece is still missing.  How does the user send the question to us in the first place?  We could use this to send a reply, but how do we get the initial message?  We'd need a cell phone still, no?  If I'm missing something obvious and someone else's brain is working better than mine, let me know...because this'd be pretty darn cool.

 

found via MetaFilter