Archive for April, 2005
Shiny Happy Patrons
April 30th, 2005I’ve been in contact with Glenn Peterson at the Hennepin County Library regarding their new RSS goodies. Yesterday, he forwarded to me an e-mail conversation that he had with one of his patrons abut the new feeds. I’ve gotten permission from both Glenn and the patron to post the conversation here. If [...]
Wikis and Blogs at ALA Annual
April 30th, 2005ALA Annual in Chicago is (I hope) going to be a turning point in how information at conferences (presentations, dinners, meetings, etc) is delivered to those who are not at the conference as well to those who are at the conference and want to be aware of what’s happening, especially as a gathering as big [...]
eGov Monitor Rolls Out RSS Feeds
April 30th, 2005eGov Monitor, a portal for e-government information and news in the UK now has 13 RSS Newsfeeds for your aggregatation pleasure. (via Resourceshelf)
Checked Out Books – Mac Style
April 29th, 2005I love this. For you Mac nuts, take a look at Library Books a desktop tool which hooks up to your library catalog and shows which materials you have out. It only works for some libraries. You can even import the due dates into ical. Nice.
I showed off Library [...]
PLABlog Hits the SPL
April 28th, 2005Over at the PLA Blog, Barbara Macikas (Deputy Executive Director) is blogging her heart out while attending the PLIN event at the Seattle Public Library. PLA is one of the sponsors of the event.
Here We Go Again
April 28th, 2005I wonder if some “elder” librarians are just trying to get some blog attention by ignorantly insulting us, their supposed colleagues (and embarrassing themselves in the process).
Well, I’m not going to do Cronin the favor by linking to his drivel….Oh what the heck. Let the festivities and librarian-bashing begin (or should I [...]
YouReadMe
April 27th, 2005YouReadMe looks interesting:
“We’re lazy. There are just too many blogs out there. No mortal can read them all. And let’s face it, only a handful of the millions of blog posts each day are really worth reading.”
“So we created YouReadMe and let the computer do the reading for us. It reads tens of thousands [...]
NewsOK RSS Feeds
April 27th, 2005I think online newspapers are starting to get this RSS thing (They will undoubtedly need them to survive, IMO). Word today from ITLnet Blog that NewsOK has a bunch of feeds.
I Knew It! (Irony Noted)
April 27th, 2005I thought that there was medication available for Information Anxiety.
I’m not linking to it because it’s a spam blog, but here’s the URL:
http://recnews.blogspot.com/2005/04/anxiety-information-anxiety.html
Note: I’m making a joke here. Anxiety disorders, however, are not a joke. I, and millions of others, suffer from anxiety and have to deal [...]
More Library OPAC Tricks
April 27th, 2005Donna Pletcher sent in an e-mail describing, in detail, a neat feature of her library OPAC at the Bedford Public Library System. First, click on “search”:
“At the bottom, try out some of the new item links.”
“This is done by putting a 695 field in the MARC record with a specially created subject heading. [...]
Who Loves Ya Blake
April 27th, 2005The Lipstick Librarian loves Blake Carver. I mean she really loves Blake. Alot.
I can’t blame her. Blake is one heck of a librarian, techie, and all around nice guy. He is well deserved of all accolades sent his way. We love ya Blake.
Lots of OCLC Feeds
April 27th, 2005After looking at David’s post about a feed being available for new DDC mappings to LCSH, I clicked the link that says, “Learn about our feeds”, a smiled when I saw all of the neat DDC feeds that they offer. If you’re a DDC fan (c’mon, I know you’re out there), these are [...]
Zmed Revisted
April 26th, 2005Yesterday, I received a call on my cell from Ken Dobruskin (he called from Switzerland!) who created Zmed.org. He noticed that I linked to his service but had a few issues with it, so he fixed it. Wow! Great customer service.
Now, if you run a search it will display PubMed [...]
Charlotte Observer RSS Feeds
April 26th, 2005The Charlotte Observer has introduced alot of RSS Feeds. I mean alot. Including OPML. Neat. (link via Don’t Back Down)
Sage Messing With RSS?
April 26th, 2005I was playing with Sage today (for reasons that now escape me), and came across a shiny happy orange xml button when I landed at the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin page. The RSS Feed link leads to a blank page that says:
“This directory has no index file.”
Experimenting perhaps? One could only hope. [...]
Jessamyn is Wikipedia Worthy!
April 26th, 2005How is this for irony? There was a debate going as to whether Jessamyn deserved a page on Wikipedia. There was some confusion as to which Jessamyn West (she shares her first and last name with an author). Someone (who in the end voted for including the page) called a local library [...]
Hennepin County Library Catalog Results via RSS
April 25th, 2005Glenn Peterson at the Hennepin County Library sends word via e-mail that the HCL has added customized feeds to their online catalog. Hip Hip Hooray!
Run a “Quick Search” and the happy little XML button appears along with the results. Very nice. Also, the HCL has gone RSS happy with their subject guides. [...]
Johnson County Library Blog
April 25th, 2005Infozine has an blog post about the Johnson County Library Blog. I love this quote:
“According to Erica Reynolds, Web Content Manager for Johnson County Library, this technology will help library users stay informed of the resources and services available to them. ‘The primary reason to launch a blog is to provide a library news [...]
Litblog Co-op
April 25th, 2005Rick Roche, who has the neatest description tag on his blog that I have ever read (and seems to work with a very cool librarian blogger friend of mine) writes about the Litblog Co-op:
“A group of about 20 literary bloggers have started the Litblog Co-op, a joint blog to promote literary fiction. As part [...]
Internet Anxiety Disorder
April 25th, 2005I’ve enjoyed reading Bibliotheke lately. Two posts have come up on a few PubSub subscriptions. William Melody has some pretty strong views on subjects that I am also interested in. We disagree on a few topics and that’s ok with me. In fact, it’s much more interesting these days to read blogs [...]
The Smog of Data? To Each His/Her Own
April 24th, 2005Rochelle Mazar comments on the IO article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that has made the rounds in the blog world this week:
“[I]f you find you are too distracted by media to get any thinking done, unplug yourself and stop blaming technology for your inactivity. You always have that option. But please don’t presume [...]
Jessamyn on Wikipedia
April 24th, 2005I jumped out of my chair and “raised the roof” on Friday after reading Jesamyn’s comments:
“Wikipedia is just scratching the surface of the debates we’ll be seeing in the years to come. Librarians ignore Wikipedia, and by extension the new face of information, at their peril. Keep in mind I’m not saying that we all [...]
Regret The Error
April 24th, 20054 years ago, I became enamored in a site called Human Spell Check (HSC), which manually gathered spelling errors found on popular web destinations. That site has since been discontinued. On Friday, my aggregator led me to Regret The Error, which is similar to the now defunct HSC, but deals with other [...]
RSS Mix & LSLinkblog
April 24th, 2005You will now see the most recent posts that I make to the LSLinkBlog syndicated on the right side of the blog. I’ve wanted to do this for sometime, but couldn’t find anything I liked. This morning, a PubSub feed took me to RSS Mix, which has a News Wizard that thrilled me. [...]
Unofficial Wiki for ALA Annual
April 23rd, 2005Meredith has put together a wiki for ALA Annual. Its content includes not what is happening within the conference itself (although that would be very helpful), but information about visiting Chicago (restaurants, hotels, attractions, etc). This is very cool and will hopefully be added to by many of the conference attendees.
Speaking of [...]
Zmed – Free, Full Text Articles from Medline
April 23rd, 2005Verticals are all the rage these days (well, not all the rage, but lots of discussion). Today, Blogsnow led me to Zmed.org, a search vertical for content coming from Medline. The search bar doesn’t do much (it searches a different database, from practical.org), but the vertical is an interesting use of Medline. [...]
Happy Passover
April 23rd, 2005Eminem style. Show this to your seder guests tonight: Matzah, featuring Smooth-e (aka Eric Schwartz – of course!) – link via Blogsnow.
Dialog Press Releases in Your Aggregator
April 22nd, 2005Dialog now has an RSS feed for their press releases. Great news. The first pieces of content that a company or organization should syndicate is their press releases. (link via TVC Alert)
Weekend Tagging Thoughts
April 22nd, 20052 interesting posts came across my aggregator today on folksonomies. First, after a post on how “easy” it would be to implement tagging into the library catalog, Geoffrey Harder mentions that del.icio.us is working on a “bundling” tool, which brings feeds on topics in one place, or bundle. Great idea. To see [...]
Even More on Information Overload
April 22nd, 2005IO has become a hot topic this week (I even set up a PubSub subscription to track the conversation). Noah Brier (whose blog I’m going to subscribe to after I post this) has a few comments on dealing with IO:
“Well, for me it’s all about accepting the fact that I can’t read everything. It’s [...]
