Archive for August, 2004
Open Audiobooks Project
August 15th, 2004Open Audiobooks Project - From the purpose:
“The goal of the Open Audiobooks Project is for volunteers to work together to create audio books of public domain texts for people to freely download, distribute, and modify. While the results will probably not be a match for books read by professional readers, we hope they will nonetheless [...]
A library weblog as an electonic newsletter
August 14th, 2004Off The Shelf is a weekly newsletter from the Reading Public Library in weblog format! This is the first of its kind that I have seen. It’s obviously been bookmarked and will be showcased in my presentations on weblogs this fall. The one thing that they are missing is a link to [...]
TxtMob for the library…
August 13th, 2004SNT Report links to this Wired article on Txtmob:
“[T]he new service from the Institute for Applied Autonomy was unveiled last month at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. There, TxtMob allowed more than 260 subscribers to automatically blast text messages to the mobile phones of every other subscriber.”
I’m ignoring all of the convention talk (this [...]
Social Interdependence and Library Anxiety
August 12th, 2004I started Library Anxiety a few days ago (I’m reviewing it for Public Libraries Magazine). This quote seemed related to my recent posts on group work and collaborative efforts in the library setting:
“…cooperative attitudes were related significantly to barriers with staff, comfort with the library, and knowledge of the library. Specificially, students who had the [...]
A Few Shameless Plugs
August 12th, 2004My fall speaking schedule is in place and I’m happy to report that most of it is local. Not that I don’t like traveling, but I’m glad that my foray back into the the speaking realm starts with local venues. Here’s the schedule:
On September 29th, I will be in Bellport, NY (that’s here [...]
Bell and Shank hooking up with Hope
August 12th, 2004Now this is great news. My “Keeping Current” cohort Steven Bell and his colleague, John Shank, have created an online community with the help of Hope Kandel (whom I worked with on a few occasions) at Learning Times. It’s called the Blended Librarian:
A Blended Librarian is “[an] academic librarian who combines the [...]
Be Still My Heart
August 12th, 2004I know this belongs over at LISBlogsource, but I couldn’t resists posting the news here. Walt Crawford has started a weblog for Cites and Insights, complete with an Atom Feed. Walt, you made my week. Thanks.
Libraries and Plogs
August 12th, 2004Randy writes::
“I have thought about embedding blogs into individual courses, and am aware of at least one professor, a good friend who teaches at U Lethbridge, who uses blogs in his classes. Last year, I began suggesting to students in some of the fourth-year engineering design courses that they consider using blogs as a [...]
Mr. Rogers’ new neighborhood
August 11th, 2004Gary linked to an interesting article from Federal Computer Weekly entitled, Mr. Rogers’ new neighborhood. A quote:
“Communities of practice were once considered a radical concept in government, but that is no longer the case. Now feds are warming up to the idea of sharing knowledge and using such communities as forums to make it [...]
Roosster
August 11th, 2004Here’s a cute use of RSS. Roosster has scraped sites that offer cheap prices on electronics. For those that want to save a few bucks on gadgets. Lots of feeds to choose from. (link via Logical Disconnect)
Social software talk
August 11th, 2004Topic Exchange has a page on Social Software. Of course, there is an RSS Feed. Subscribed.
Topic exchange is another example of what I was eluding to this week about social software: People working together for the betterment of the professional community. I had a conversation with K. Matthew Dames the other [...]
More on Social Software in Libraries
August 10th, 2004Alexander Johannesen, a software developer in Canberra, Australia working for the National library of Australia, writes:
“What is social software? It surely isn’t for socialising, but more to do with aknowledging the social aspects of interaction between computer users. Note this, because it is important, and quite possibly the very thing that keeps social software from [...]
DOL news via e-mail
August 10th, 2004Gary mentions that users can now get updates from the U.S. Department of Labor via e-mail. Why not RSS? The Department of Education sends out all of there new releases in RSS and E-mail. Starting to offer updates at this late stage in the game without an RSS feed is unbearable. [...]
Is Melvil Dewey Annoying?
August 10th, 2004Cast your vote at AmIAnnoying.com. A few reasons why he may be annoying:
“He cut his employees’ salaries in half, claiming that he needed money to hire more workers.
He was accused of and investigated for illegal business practices on several occasions.
He ran a restricted Lake Placid recreation resort, barring Jews from admittance.
He was forced [...]
David Bigwood on e-mail and spam
August 9th, 2004I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it: E-mail is a dead technology. The only reason I use it is because everyone else does (not a good excuse, but it’s the truth). David Bigwood offers up his thoughts on e-mail and spam:
“This morning I had 3 spam messages for every [...]
RSS blogs give me so many eyes and ears
August 9th, 2004Janet Tokerud on how weblogs and RSS fit into social networking in a post entitled, RSS blogs give me so many eyes and ears:
“What struck me is how great it is to be able to find out about this stuff in a timely manner. I doubt that I would have ever even found this excellent [...]
Walt on Social Software
August 9th, 2004Walt Crawford says that he doesn’t understand Social Software. Because of the good timing on my social software posts tonight, I feel the need to respond.
When I talk about Social Software, I’m not necessarily talking about Orkut, Friendster, and the rest per se , but a concept that I have been trying to [...]
More From Gary Price
August 9th, 2004Congrats to my colleague Gary Price for his quotes in an article entitled Searchin’ safari, which was published today in the St. Petersburgh Times. Having librarians getting face time in articles about search engines is more important than many would think.
Social Software and the Enabling Council
August 9th, 2004From an article enitled, Social Software and the Enabling Council:
“What these increasingly popular forms of ’social software’ demonstrate is that people will interact online around shared interests. However, rather than just connecting people on the other side of the world with an unusual passion for first editions of Local Government White Papers, we are increasingly [...]
SocialTwister.com
August 9th, 2004In my quest to read more about Social Software and it’s impact on the library community (thanks KMD for the push into this arena), I’ve subscribed to a bunch of new feeds, including, SocialTwister.com (RSS), whose description tag says:
“SocialTwister’s goal is to examine the impact of the Internet and Technology on our perception of both [...]
Spurl.net streams
August 9th, 2004For those not familiar with Spurl, it’s a social software bookmarking tool similar to the likes of Furl and Del.icio.us (although I’m not sure if Furl can be considered social software). Today, Spurl came out with Spurl.net streams:
“Spurl.net streams are a new and improved way for publishing spurls and working together in groups, gathering [...]
News You Can Use
August 8th, 2004For you Mac guys out there, you may find News You Can Use helpful. It’s an aggregator that fits in your menubar. Looks interesting.
Alice’s Adventures in RSS
August 8th, 2004Reading books in the public domain via RSS has been semi-hot lately. You can now subscribe to Alice’s Adventures and receive a page a day. Very little daily reading. Oprah, how about it? Do a show on how we can read clasisics in our aggregator. (I have Anna Kareninaon my list [...]
Beer Money @ Your Library
August 8th, 2004Excuse the non weblog/RSS/Social Software posts: I have a few new feeds that I’m trying out for my work over at Resourceshelf and have been reading some funny articles. For example, this story from Williamson County Review Appeal:
“Those who violate Spring Hill’s ordinance on beer sales could also unwittingly be contributing to a [...]
Promoting John Kerry @ the Library
August 7th, 2004I never get political on LS (and don’t intend to now - my friends and acquaintances know where I stand on most issues), but this seemed interesting enough to post here. Apparently, a patron in Monroe County, Indiana saw anti-Bush and pro-Kerry materials displayed at his local library and wasn’t thrilled (his blog description [...]
Library Bloggers Survey
August 7th, 2004Are you a librarian? Do you have a weblog? More importantly, do you blog about your life as a librarian in a library? If so, run (don’t walk) over to this survey and help out two of my buddies with an article they are writing. Library bloggers are part of a [...]
Movalog - All Things Movable Type
August 7th, 2004Even though I’m not using Movabletype anymore for my weblog, I still need to keep up with it for my weblog presentations. Movalog, while new, seems worthy of a subscription even though the feeds aren’t in full text. (ignore the comment spam- the main reason I left MT for Blogger). (link via Del.icio.us)
That’s Why they Invented Google
August 7th, 2004A funny (yet sad) Unshelved today.
Amazon starts aggregating content
August 6th, 2004Greg mentions that Amazon has started to aggregate feeds. Interesting.
Remember when libraries were competing with Amazon? Are we still doing that or have we resigned ourselves to being what we are and not compete with any other type of “book delivery” services? If we are still competing, and Amazon is going to [...]
Add your del.icio.us Feed to your Blog Feed
August 6th, 2004I haven’t used Feedburner yet (haven’t had the need to), but this new feature seems very impressive. Apparently, you can now add your del.icio.us feed to your blog feed:
“Our Link Splicer basically generates a feed item at the end of every day that summarizes the links that you added during the day, and then [...]