LibrarianInBlack

Sarah away for a while

Hi all.  I will not be blogging for a while, probably a week or so, due to a minor medical procedure I'm having that will leave me without the use of my left hand for a while.  No need to worry; I just wanted to let you know why I wasn't around.  Cheers.

Survey about LIS degrees & loans

Fill out a brief survey about MLIS holders and loans incurred: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=953253374665.

User control and user happiness

How much control should our users have? -- so asks Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users.  The conclusion: users need control, but not too much control--which results in the same negative results as not too much control does.  Sierra writes:

We shut down when we're faced with too many choices, even when those choices are about relatively simple things.

How does this apply to library services?  All sorts of ways... 

We should have library account access online that lets users customize certain things: the way they get notices, what they get notices of, what their landing page looks like...  Should we stop there or keep going?

We should let users customize their experiences when they access our online library resources too--but again, how much?

Interesting questions to ponder...

She's Such a Geek Photo Contest

I am so tempted to enter this She's Such a Geek photo contest from Inkling Magazine, being held in honor of the She's Such a Geek book.  Deadline is coming up soon--February 28th.  Enter ye geeky girly librarians...do us proud!

found via Boing Boing

Jim Rettig for ALA President

Candidate for ALA President, Jim Rettig, is using YouTube to get his campaign message out.  That he's using YouTube and there's a Segway, and it is indeed library-related, make me happy.  Good way to get your name out there, Jim :)

Stupid Questions

Librarians like stupid questions.  As proof check out the Cafe Press offerings that say so:

• Librarian: Ask Me a Stupid Question
• Librarians: Stupid Questions are our Specialty

NetLibrary offers title-level buying for eAudiobooks

NetLibrary is now offering a new purchase model for libraries for its eAudiobooks (aka Recorded Books).  Libraries can now individually add titles to their collections one at a time, or subscribe (as has been the model until now) to the entire collection as one bundle through an annual subscription cost.  For more information, see the press release.

Cute kitty video--I know, I know

Nora, the Piano Playing Cat is the most amazing video of a cat playing piano.  Both paws!  I know it's not library-related, but I don't care.  I think it's cute.

Dealing with Abusive Customers

Being in public service jobs, we library folks know that some of our customers are a little left or right of center in the "sane" department.  Some of them are downright abusive.  Library support organizations have started holding classes on dealing with mean customers.  In that vein, here is a worthwhile article entitled How to Deal with Abusive Customers on the site MicroISV on a Shoestring.

found via A Passion for 'Puters

An Open Letter to ILS Vendors from Roy Tennant

Roy Tennant's latest piece on TechEssence.info, Open Letter to ILS Vendors, recommends that in the face of the sustainable open source ILS options and the companies that can provide support for them, that traditional ILS vendors need to rethink their business models and their customer service.  While this situation itself and librarians' opposition to it is nothing new, to read Roy Tennant's articulate discussion of the subject lends weight to the issue...and somehow might make it more real to the vendors.  John Blyberg discusses some of the issues, and takes them one step farther, in his own post: Strategery.  From John's follow-up post:

What if our users decided that the $80-$100 allocated to the library from their property taxes would personally serve them better if it were spent on a Netflix subscription? After all, DVDs constitute the largest percentage of circulated items at our library. Yet, compared to Netflix, our selection is lousy, availability is a joke, and distribution methods? Ha.

New Cites & Insights

Walt Crawford's March edition of Cites & Insights is up for your perusal.  In it, he covers Wikipedia and other issues.

Bookified Librarians

Dave Pattern has taken images of librarians, including yours truly (see left), and re-created them using book covers as pixels.  See Librarians as Books 1 and Librarians as Books 2.  Hee hee!

John Blyberg gets a new job

John Blyberg has resigned from the Ann Arbor District Library and has taken a position at Connecticut's Darien Public Library as Head of Technology and Digital Initiatives.  I'm so happy that he will continue to share his genius with public libraries!

StudyBuddy

StudyBuddy is a an AOL-based homework search engine.  Subjects can be browsed by grade level or you can search for specific terms.  There are also educational games and sections for teachers and parents.  I found enough that was useful here to warrant a bookmark :)

found via Sites and Soundbytes

Online form building tool

Wufoo is a tool that helps you build online forms.   If you don't know how to create online forms, or don't know the code necessary to do so, this will be a useful site for you.  It's a paid service, cost varies wildly depending on what you want, but there is a free version if you only need a few forms and aren't picky about the number of fields or entries you have.  Setting up the forms is quite easy and you can have form submissions e-mail to you and the person filling out the form.  There is an extensive review of the service on ResearchBuzz if you want to know more.

found via the Scout Report

Stock Photo MetaSearch

When you're looking for stock photos to use in your materials, both print and online, consider everystockphoto.    I've used this site for a while now to grab all sorts of photos, and have been very happy with it.  Photos (and they have over 700,000) are aggregated from various sites through this metasearch engine and are all Creative Commons-licensed.  It searches image sites like Flickr, imageafter, and freerangestock (among many others).  You can create an account for yourself and bookmark your favorite photos, tag them, and lots more.  This photo, for example, was created by .EVO., and simply required that I attribute its creator.  Other photos are more strict in their usage requirements, others more flexible. 

Babble: for the urban parent

Parents should check out Babble: a site for urban-area parents.  There is an online community/bulletin board section, as well as information about child-related travel, entertainment, health issues, and a lot more.  There is video and audio content, as well as tons of text.

found via Sites and Soundbytes

BenefitsCheckUp

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... Nah, not really.  It was just back in December on ResourceShelf that Gary Price pointed to BenefitsCheckUp, a site from the National Council on Aging.  From their press release:

Developed and maintained by the NCOA, BenefitsCheckUp is the nation’s most comprehensive Web-based service to screen for benefits programs primarily targeted to seniors with limited income and resources. Since 2001, close to 2 million people have used BenefitsCheckUp to find benefits programs that help them pay for prescription drugs, health care, rent, utilities, and other needs. It includes more than 1,400 public and private benefits programs from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

A good site to add to your lists of online health resources, senior resources, social services, etc.

I'm popular: Sarah's new online class goes over like lemonade on a hot day

I'm teaching a four week online class in April for California library staff, through Infopeople, called Web 2.0: Developing a Successful eBranch. 

I was planning on announcing it here once I got word that it was officially announced, hoping that some of my readers would be able to sign up.  I was teaching an in-person class here at work all morning, and the online class happened to also be announced this morning.  Within three hours, the class was full! 

If you're a California library staff person, you can still sign up on the waiting list.  Perhaps, given the popularity of this class, I'll be teaching it again :)

Bill Thompson doesn't believe Steve Jobs

After Steve Jobs's media-buster pronouncement that Apple would very much like to stop using DRM, a backlash occurred...including a wee bit from this here librarian.  An interesting retort came from the BBC's Bill Thompson, who feels that Apple's pronouncement was disingenuous.  From his article:

If Apple switched off Fairplay then they would probably sell a lot more songs, on which they make very little money, and a lot fewer iPods, on which they make a lot.

Gmail open to all

Gmail, Google's e-mail system, is now open to anyone who wants to use it.  Gmail initially launched in beta in April of 2004, and now, nearly two years later, it is finally open for general use though it does still have the beta tag. 

Being a relatively new Gmail convert myself, it took a little while to get used to some of the unique features of Gmail (like the conversation tracking and archiving vs. deleting), but I can now happily recommend it to anyone wanting a robust mail service.

Using NPR archives for research

In the last several months, I've found myself looking more and more to the NPR audio archives for information about various topics.  For example, someone wanted to know if anyone had been interviewed about the movie Breach--they had been (and then some).  Someone else wanted to hear how the Iraq war has been covered over time, if there have been changes in the way it's been covered.  There have been. 

I guess I'd simply like to suggest that library staff begin to think of the NPR audio archives as a place to search for all types of information: political, historical, cultural.  Because the info is presented in audio and usually text too, it is quite accessible for all users.  NPR has done a stellar job of "cataloging" their content, and finding what you need is extremely easy.

I'll also use this opportunity to extol the benefits of NPR's podcasts (no need to tune in at the exact time anymore--just get the podcast).  Their highly customized news feeds are also a great way to stay on top of what's going on in the world.  Go NPR!

Who's talking about your library?

Who's talking about you?  Who's talking about your library?  How about your town or school?  You can find it all if you track RSS feeds called "ego feeds."  I posted about these a while back (a few times actually), as did Stephen Abram and other librarian bloggers.  Stephen has now pointed us to another source for information on how to do this: "31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online," by Li Evans on the Search Marketing Gurus blog.  Quite a good list--adds a few things that I haven't seen elsewhere.

Online genealogy classes

Here's something to show to your genealogy-enthused patrons.  Via ResearchBuzz, MyFamily.com former MyFamily.com instructors are offering online classes at GenClass.com on a number of genealogy topics for $29.95 a pop.  They are four-week asynchronous classes on topics like building a family tree, Native American genealogy, Eastern European genealogy research, and more.

Important Update Note: The above correction was made after I received a nasty e-mail from the owners of the GenClass.com site.  The correction is that the instructors are from MyFamily.com, not the classes themselves.  The e-mail I received began "This is wrong.", included all caps, bold words, repeated punctuations marks (e.g. "????"), and phrases like "this is a disservice to your readers."  A simple "Thanks for the link, but can you correct this?"would have sufficed (as it has for other companies/organizations when I've made mistakes before.  So, as long as I was making the correction to this post in which I, for free, linked to a for-pay service, I felt that I should also let my readers know from whence these classes are coming, and the character and behavior of the site owners.

Plugoo: MeeboMe Widget's new competition

The always impressive Phil Bradley introduced me today to Plugoo, a beta project that lets users chat with you through a window on your webpage while you're using the instant messenger client of your choice.  Plugoo supports Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, GoogleTalk, Jabber, and ICQ.  It's comprable to the MeeboMe widget that wowed the library world not so long ago.

	Set up an account with Plugoo and add Plugoo to your contacts list in IM.  Then add Plugoo to your website.  When a user comes to your site, (s)he can see that you're logged in (or busy or offline, so says Plugoo anyway).  The user enters a nickname, an initial chat message, and starts chatting.  Users can use the enter key or the little arrow button to send new messages.  You can also customize it--changing the color and size of the window to match the look and style of your site.  Fortunately, Phil had already set up Plugoo on his blog, so I got to see it in action and take these screen shots.
	Unfortunately, you can only chat with one person at a time.  When I opened a second chat window with Phil, this is what I saw: ("conversation closed" then my original message).  I don't know if that's because Plugoo somehow recognized that I, on my computer, was already chatting with Phil, or if that's what all users see.  If the latter is the case, that could be user-friendlier.
	And this is what I saw when Phil went offline, which is fine, I think.  There are more FAQs about Plugoo on their website.  Plugoo over MeeboMe You can use whatever IM client you're already using to take advantage of Pluggo (with the MeeboMe widget you have to use Meebo). MeeboMe over Plugoo MeeboMe lets you chat with multiple users at a time.  MeeboMe's privacy policy and terms of service are very clear and on the up and up.  You have to e-mail Plugoo to get their privacy policy (contact [at] plugoo.com), and their TOS are theoretically available via a link during the registration process, but I couldn't get the link to work in Firefox or IE.  Additionally (and this is a biggie) MeeboMe handles multiple screen names in multiple IM clients, while Plugoo only handles one screen name in one client.

I think I'm still a MeeboMe girl, but for libraries who only want to use one screen name, Plugoo may be a serious contender.  What do you think?

EconoFix: auto repair site

EconoFix is an auto repair site created by an auto repair store in Florida, Econo Mechanix.  Their website, however, has some excellent free articles on common repair issues like how your car works, "car killers," engines, tires, transmission--almost anything you can think of. 

My favorite part is the Noise Library, where short .wav files of problems help you diagnose the weird sounds you're hearing in your own car.  You can even record the noise your car is making, e-mail it to the site owners, and they'll try to help diagnose it then post it on the site for others to listen to for help. How cool is that?

found via the Scout Report

Are you a word-a-holic?

If you are a word lover (and you know you are) check out Wordie, a website that lets you create lists of your favorite and most hated words, saved lists in various categories, see what other Wordie users have on their lists that match up with yours, and more.  It's social software for word-lovers, and as TechcCrunch says, "like Flickr without the photos." 

WeJustGotBack: travel site

Here's a good site to recommend to your traveling users: We Just Got Back.  The site lists travel advice from people who have visited the destination you're interested in.  It's definitely focused on families (read: families with children).  It allows you to search for destinations by your children's ages, content, region, and keywords.  It's quite good!

found via Sites and Soundbytes

Advent of the Book

A friend and colleague e-mailed me a link to this video, showing the advent of the book and the tech support that necessarily followed.  For anyone who has ever given or received tech support, this is a hilarious clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRjVeRbhtRU

LinkedIn: finally jumping on board

"Getting on LinkedIn" had been on my to-do list for ages.  I got a formal invitation from Michael Porter yesterday, and that did it.  I'm now on.  You can view my profile at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahhoughtonjan.  For those of you who don't know about LinkedIn, it's basically a personal profile site focused on education and employment.  It's really about making connections between employers and employees, through searches and "friend of a friend" mechanisms.  That's the best way I can think of to describe it.  Anyway, if I know you and I'm not in your connections yet and you want me to be, please feel free to e-mail me to connect.

Library Podcasting Resources for Staff

My library (San Mateo County Library) is recording podcasting content right now, though we haven't reached critical mass yet with the content amount to launch our podcasting blog(s).  I did think that it might be helpful to others if I shared the materials I'm using here to train our staff about what podcasting is, how to actually do it with the nice recorder we have, and all of the copyright issues that go along with podcasting. 

Feel free to use and modify these materials for your own staff, as long as attribution is given to me and San Mateo County Library for the original materials.  Consider it our contribution to the greater good :)

• SMCL Guide to Podcasting
• How to Record a Podcast
• Legal, Copyright, and Podsafe Content Issues

Update: Some people have e-mailed me asking me what our library includes in our podcasting kit.  The items are listed at the top of the "How to Record a Podcast" document (which is linked above).  They are:

• portable digital recorder (Edirol R-1)
• bag with lapel microphone and earphones
• bag with power cord and extra batteries
• fanny pack (for mobile speakers to use to hold the recorder)
• documentation and release forms

share your wi-fi, get some wi-fi

Casey Bisson posted an extremely interesting project dedicated to sharing wi-fi.  It's called the Fon Movement, and their self-description follows:

It all started as a simple idea. Why should you pay for Internet access on the go when you have already paid for it at home? Exactly, you shouldn’t. So we decided to help create a community of people who get more out of their connection through sharing.

You have to buy a special Wifi router and use it to (securely and safely) open your own personal wi-fi connection to everyone else. Once you do that, you can use the wi-fi at any other FON location (which you can find using the maps on their website).

Casey also tells us that GigaOM is was, but is no longer, giving away the routers for free right now if you buy bought the router and enter entered the promotional code 795811379574011.  Oh well.

Even better than this hardware option is the promise that a software-only version is on the way (I'll go for that).

flash bunnies make me giggle

Okay, for some mid-day restlessness, have fun with these Flash-generated bunnies from ickleburg.net.  Just do what the bunnies at the top of the page say; click on them and they'll bounce around and say amusing things.  It's highly addictive in a silly way (at least to me).  You can even download the bunnies, and some other cool stuff, for yourself on their Goodies page.

found via the lo-fi librarian

digital photo preservation for the average joe

Gary Price at ResourceShelf tells us that a new site has been launched for consumer-level digital photo preservation: SaveMyMemories.org.  From the IIIA press release:   

The International Imaging Industry Association [recently launched a] Consumer Photo Preservation (CPP) Web site, at www.savemymemories.org. The site was created to educate and motivate people to take steps to protect and preserve their digital photos - to take the mystery out of preserving digital images by revealing the needs, risks and proper methodology for storing, cataloging and preserving digital photos, in an easy-to-follow step-by-step approach.

This would be very useful to show patrons during digital photography classes at the library, and to add to any online resource guides you may have about photography or computer use.

new look for Firefox add-ons

Firefox Add-Ons got a whole new look, and I like it :)  For those of you who don't use Firefox, or do and don't use add-ons, add-ons are a way to enhance the performance of Firefox.  Some change tiny preferences in the existing settings while others introduce entirely new capabilities. 

If you're interested in seeing what's out there, start with the Recommended Add-ons, and move from there.  The del.icio.us, Answers.com, and Web Developer add-ons are on Lib's Firefox installations.  What do you use?

found via A Feed is Born

Kitty goodness

Do you like kitties?  Of course you do!  You're reading a library blog.  Silly me.  For two pages loaded with cat photos go to Kattalogen (from which the image to the left was taken) and Knitemare Cats.  If you have a slow connection, visit cautiously--your browser will be "thinking" for a loooooooong time.  But you will be rewarded with happy kitty time!

found via Boing Boing

Nolo Press podcasts on legal topics

Nolo Press is offering podcasts which will be of interest to both library staff and users.  There are over 50 topics covered currently (more being added as time goes on), including rights and disputes, legal news, wills, estate planning, and property law.  Topic #51 is one that any manager should read: What Are Some Common Mistakes Made When Disciplining Employees?

found via the Infoblog

Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues for Libraries

There is a free download available that you should check out: Handbook on Copyright and Related Issues for Libraries. Sponsored by the UNESCO Information for All Programme, the handbook is written by the Electronic Information For Libraries, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License.  The handbook covers the basics of what libraries need to know about copyright, both nationally and internationally.

found via Mary Minow's LibraryLaw Blog

Awesome mouse for traveling laptops

If you're an on-the-go laptop user and prefer to use a mouse (rather than the touchpad or stupid eraser-head pointer thingie), then the Mogo Mouse might be your dream come true. It's Bluetooth enabled and charges while sitting in your extra PC card slot (and everyone has one).  At $70, I would consider it a worthwhile purchase, for either work or home.

found via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools

March of the Librarians

Okay, everybody and his brother is linking to this, so I must, like a lemming, follow suit.  It really is funny though: March of the Librarians.

Human Rights Info on the Web

HuriSearch, a project from HURIDOCS that is available in several languages, is dedicated to providing consolidated access to human rights information on the web.  Bookmark this for your research needs.  I could have used this several months ago when I got a question about some human rights issues in Nigeria.

found via Peter Scott's Library Blog

LITA podcasts

LITA is cool.  Really.  You can quote me on that.  They have recently shown their coolness by posting podcasts of the Top Technology Trends presentation at ALA Midwinter, a welcome from the LITA president, and more.   All of these are well worth a listen.  And if you listen to the first TTT podcast, the one way at the bottom of the page, you can even hear the person who was reading my trends for me in my absence say "stinky-poo" ;)  Yes, I am amused by small things.  Can you guess what I said was stinky-poo? And no cheating and listening first.

Yahoo Pipes (and a nice tutorial)

Yahoo Pipes, a free service that remixes feeds and other data using a visual editor, is a great way to remix content without having to know any coding languages (an ever-increasing value-added component for any service).  Here's a Library 2.0 pipe as an example. 

Mr. Speaker has written a very nice tutorial on how to use Yahoo Pipes.  It's well-organized and quite valuable...especially since Yahoo doesn't even provide any tutorials on how to use them!

I haven't really found mash-ups of data like this that useful....Squidoo lenses and such.  Perhaps someone can convince me why these are better than other things, like RSS aggregator accounts, let's say.  I dunno...I just haven't found a real use for these things yet, and I feel like a techie poser because of it.  I feel like I should find them useful.  It's kind of like when you're at the modern art museum and you're looking at some piece of art, thinking "I should like this,it's in a museum after all" but knowing in your heart of hearts that you don't.  So what's wrong with me?

found via A Feed is Born

13 Ways of looking at a public library

Alice, on the OCLC It's All Good blog, has posted 13 Ways of looking at a public library, a list of 13 things that public libraries should be doing and providing: the things that the public expects us to be and do for them.  The list items range from "workforce training center" to "music and art center."  I think a lot of things have been left out, but that's the nature of short lists.  What do you think of the list?  Do you think it's accurate?  Do you think it's reasonable to expect public libraries to do all these things?  Does your library do them?

Digitization Efforts Cut by House

The Library of Congress is taking a hard hit from the House of Representatives.  Karen Schneider reports that:

Close to a decade's worth of digital preservation efforts just took a major hit in House Joint Resolution 20, which zeroes out $47 million in appropriations for crucial work in this area.

The Library of Congress's budget for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program is now essentially gone.  Karen writes more about the projects that this money was going to, and I join her in mourning its loss.  LC also lost money for their new catalog and some new furniture.  Librarians are, by nature it seems, rather frugal.  So, if they're asking for furniture, you can bet your bippy they need it.

Preservation is an essential part of our profession.  If this makes you mad, speak out about it--on your blog, to your representatives, heck--to your parents and friends.   This stinks royally, and as someone who had intended to go into preservation librarianship, not technology, it makes me want to kick something.

Link Reporting Tools from Google

Webmasters often use the link: command in Google to see who is linking to their site.  Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land writes about a new tool Google is offering for webmasters that gives you more information for link: searches.  You have to be registered with Google Webmaster Central and claim your website (either with a provided meta-tag or by uploading a provided file to your site server).  You still can't see all the backlinks, but you get to see a whole lot more.  Useful for library webmasters everywhere!

What devices will work with your downloadable audio books?

If your library has a collection of downloadable audio eBooks, you have no doubt gotten the question: "Will they work on my iPod?"  We all know the answer is unfortunately "no" to that one (see recent post on DRM for more information).  But if the collection you have relies on Windows Media Player, then you should know about the PlaysForSure website, which lists devices that support WMP.  From their devices page, you can narrow the search by capacity, physical size, price, and other factors.  The collection you subscribe to, say OCLC/NetLibrary's Recorded Books or Overdrive's Digital Library, should also be pointing to resources that list devices that will work with their specific collection as well.

Free keyword suggestions

Wordtracker, one of the most used keyword service providers, has launched a free keyword suggestion tool that lets webmasters enter a keyword and receive the top 100 related keywords in return.  Webmasters can use this to create more comprehensive metadata for their webpages, making it easier for users to find their webpages.

found via Search Engine Watch

Library column in Utne Reader

The UTNE Reader is introducing a new column, Shelf Life, written by the publication's librarian Danielle Maestretti.  I'll be keeping an eye on this one!  The first column included the following opening:

My job does not include shushing. In fact, quiet is the last adjective I'd apply to the Utne Reader library, and not only because the staff is anything but. Enforcing whispering tones does not fall within the domain of the Utne librarian, nor that of most other librarians nowadays. The weathered image of the librarian as a grandmotherly, finger-waving bookworm has been defunct for quite some time. Librarians are more likely to be protecting civil liberties, promoting literacy, and guarding people's access to information than pursing their lips.

found via Random Musings from the Desert

Star Wars 30th Anniversary Kit from Random House

Star Wars is celebrating its 30th anniversary (the same year I celebrated my 30th birthday--see Star Wars' age is how I remember how old I am).  Anyway, Random House is offering a free event kit to libraries and booksellers to celebrate the anniversary.

To tie-in with the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars we’ve created a FREE event kit to help booksellers and librarians like you offer something extra-special to your customers. Not only is Star Wars a fun event, but it can greatly increase traffic at your store or library.

For more info, go to: http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/starwars/starwars_eventkit/

Survey about student educational technology standards

What should students know about technology before graduation?  That question wasn't asked when I graduated from high school, which (scary as it may seem) was just over a decade ago.  But now that question is essential to providing students with viable skills for either the workforce or college.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has completed a draft of National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for students.  The NETS are a list of things that students should know about technology before graduation.  The ISTE wants feedback from educators (and librarians count as educators, right?) on the draft.

You can read more about the project here: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=6864

You can take the survey itself on SurveyMonkey. 

Steve Jobs speaks out about Apple DRM

Any of us in libraries offering downloadable audio books to our users have faced the iPod conundrum.  Most users have iPods as their portable music players (heck, I do).  But no company, including Apple or Audible, offers a platform from which libraries can offer their users iPod compatible audio books.  So--what do we do?  We buy what is available in the hopes that we can serve as many users as possible, while at the same time lobbying Apple, OCLC, and Overdrive (and others) to make audio books that will work for iPod users.   So far, no response.  Until this week.

Steve Jobs posted an essay, "Thoughts on Music," to the Apple site.  The essay basically disavows any responsibility on Apple's part for the DRM-showdown between Apple and everyone else.  The article seemed logical at first, until I realized that Jobs left out one major fourth option as a solution to the problem: for various DRM-system creators to get together and try to figure out a schema that will satisfy and work for everyone involved--including book and music publishers. Is there some reason that they can't do this that I'm not aware of?

Why don't they do this in my opinion?  $$$$$. Because then they (both Apple and Microsoft) wouldn't have a lock on their markets, and they would potentially lose money. I think the opposite is true--if you open up DRM to allow any content to work on any device, I think you would see an increase in overall purchases of digital content. Right now I am hearing from people who are hesitant to get into the digital content market because the DRM is so limiting. For Jobs to miss this basic option in his article shows me that he either thinks the people reading it are stupid or that he doesn't care about cooperating with other content providers. In either case, it is clear that protecting corporate profit is the #1 goal here, users be damned.

UPDATE: A colleague e-mailed me to let me know that the Coral Consortium, a cross-industry group of many big-name content and technology providers who are promoting interoperable DRM, sent a formal letter to Steve Jobs pointing out the very same fourth alternative that I pointed out (and that anyone with any knowledge of DRM would have noticed). 

New Sci-Fi novel tackles libraries in the future

A new science fiction novel tackles the issue of libraries fate in the future: Ranbows End by Vernor Vinge.  University of California–San Diego faculty are protesting the university library's destruction.  Why is it set to be destroyed?  That's right--complete online databases that make all physical knowledge representation unnecessary.  If you're interested in reading about your job's hypothetical end, this is the book for you :)  You can read a great in-depth review of the book by Terry Calhoun on IT Trends.

DOPA returns: this is important for all libraries

Republican Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska has introduced a bill called "Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act" (#S49.IS). This is simply the new version of the DOPA bill, including all the original DOPA propositions with two additional Titles added: restricting the sale of personal information of children for marketing and raising fines for child pornography violations.  Because DOPA is now sandwiched between these two other things that sound hunky dory, it is more likely to pass than it was last time. 

Now, why should librarians and their patrons care about DOPA?  As I said the last time around, the bill would "require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms." If your library gets E-Rate funds, this applies to your library.  Social network websites are defined as:

• (i) is offered by a commercial entity;
• (ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information
• (iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users
• (iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users;
• and (v) enables communication among users

That is pretty much every website out there that allows interaction of any kind with users: Amazon, Flickr, Yahoo Groups, Flickr, MySpace, Blogger blog with comments.  Libraries accepting E-Rate funds would have to block all of these from minor users as a result of the passage of this bill.

Excellent Web 2.0 Video

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, created a fabulous video that does a great job of explaining the evolution of the web and Web 2.0.  Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us has been posted to YouTube and other video sites like Mojiti, where users can add their own content/comments to the video itself (that's truly Web 2.0 in action).  The video was posted only a week ago and already has over 600,000 views.  See?  That's what happens when someone produces quality content on the web--people snap it up, it gets spread through viral marketing, and voila--you have yourself some well-earned popularity.  At any rate, this is a video I bet a lot of us are going to snap up to help explain the phenomenon of Web 2.0 to staff and users, and rightly so.

Free online Spanish/English Dictionary

From Merriam Webster, a free Spanish/English dictionary available online.  From their main website, you can search a dictionary, thesaurus, or now a Spanish/English dictionary.  A good tool to add for both staff and your users.

found via ResourceShelf

Rollable text reader

Check out this beautiful rollable e-reader from.  Polymer Vision recently announced that they are in the process of developing a roll-up-able eInk device with Telecom Italy. The device will supposedly have a 5" screen that rolls out of its holder, 4 gigabytes of memory (which sounds a little paltry to me. given what users will likely want to load onto the device), and more.  Get all the details from their press release.

found via TeleRead