Archive for April, 2005
Grat.uito.us - Fun With Tags
April 13th, 2005grat.uito.us:
“Welcome to grat.uito.us. Grat is a free, tag-based, wish list community. Built on ideas made popular by great offerings like del.icio.us and Flickr, grat.uito.us is a place you can keep a running list of things you would love to have! And as your friends and family sign up (remember, it’s free) you will be [...]
Information Anxiety
April 12th, 2005Cindi (well, her colleague) puts a twist on the information overload issue. She writes:
“A colleague of mine suggested today that perhaps the ‘information overload’ that we all feel couldn’t be dissipated somewhat by changing our attitudes–we’re not overloaded, we just have a *lot*. I’m not so sure. The problem that she speaks of, [...]
LS Link Blog
April 11th, 2005I posted the 50th link to my link blog over at de.lirio.us. I’m considering the linkblog an LS overflow site these days. I’ve been posting longer, more reflective posts lately at Library Stuff, so the linkblog is pefect for those articles and tools that I want to share, but I don’t want to [...]
Search Your Del.icio.us Tags in Gmail
April 11th, 2005A freakin’ suweeeeeeeet idea from Bill Mill who wrote a script that will automatically dump your del.icio.us bookmarks into your gmail account and thus make them searchable.
I’d love to see this taken a step further. How about the ability to tag my gmail e-mails (yes, I still use e-mail) and incorporate both del.icio.us tags [...]
StoryCode
April 11th, 2005The LIB links to an IAG post about StoryCode.Com a book recommendation system that takes scored book reviews by readers. It’s a very interesting collaborative tool that I wish I knew about last week to show off at TLA (oh well).
Take a look at this impressive tool. They have a help page which [...]
ACRL Conference Sets Attendance Record
April 11th, 2005From the Press Release:
“Close to 4,000 attendees from every state and 15 countries joined the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) at its 12th National Conference in Minneapolis, April 7 to 10. About 3,490 people attended the 2003 ACRL conference in Charlotte. Records also were set for the most first-time attendees (1,059) and [...]
Newsweek Talks Tagging - Gary Price Responds
April 11th, 2005Gary Price responds (quite elegantly, I may add) to an article that appeared in Newsweek about open tagging systems. The author of the article called librarians “greybeards” (an undeserved cheapshot) and was a bit misinformed on the way librarians classify books. Gary sets him straight.
Gary also says something that I wholeheartedly agree with:
“I [...]
Manybooks.net
April 10th, 2005For those into reading books on your PDA, take a look at Manybooks.net:
“10,524 eBooks formatted for reading on your Palm, PocketPC, Zaurus, Rocketbook, or Symbian cellphone. (Librie format in beta).”
For you RSS addicts, they have a feed for recent additons to the site. (link via del.icio.us)
Wikipedia? NYT? LS?
April 10th, 2005Yet more proof that you shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a primary resource. Or is this more proof that you should use the NYT as a primary resource? Oh heck, I can’t even get my stories straight. Don’t even use Library Stuff as a primary resource… (link via Blogdex)
PLAZOO
April 9th, 2005I tried out the search engine in PLAZOO and was somewhat impressed. It has current information in its results, which is important these days, and I was excited about their clipbox feature. The users have the ability to search within particular categories, which is a good move. I’d like to see how [...]
Edit Articles in Encarta
April 9th, 2005During my presentation on social networks this week, the topic of reliability and Wikipedia came up. One of the attendees mentioned that she’d rather use World Book over Wikipedia. While I agreed that I might do the same (I wasn’t really sure - I’ve been away from reference work for a while), I [...]
More on TLA
April 9th, 2005I’m home after two days of meeting and greeting at the Texas Library Association Meeting. Both of my presentations went well (they are both online - ppt format) and, as I said before, the people were wonderful. I want to thank the TLA committee for their generous hospitality, especially Maribel Garza-Castro for being [...]
UBC Google Scholar Blog
April 8th, 2005The University of British Columba Library has started a blog detailing “current information about Google Scholar for Canadian Librarians.” (link via del.icio.us)
I had an interesting discussion with two librarian colleagues this afternoon. We talked about Google and their various initiatives that will affect libraries. We talked about Open Worldcat and Google Scholar.
I think [...]
MCALL.com RSS Feeds
April 7th, 2005The Morning Call is now pumping out a bunch of RSS Feeds (5 of them), but you have to go through a terms of service waiver to get to them. Content providers: Please don’t forget that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Let’s keep it simple, k?
Deep in the Heart…
April 7th, 2005I’m in Austin TX until tomorrow afternoon for the Texas Library Association. I’m on a speaking break right now having done one in the morning and another in about 30 minutes. I’ve taken a bunch of pictures but can’t post them because I forgot my digital camera hookup at home. Sorry.
Oh, and [...]
More on New Materials Blogs
April 6th, 2005Following up on my post on new library materials, ‘Saecker’ (oh how I wish these blogs had names on them) writes:
“There are now a bunch of us within the Winnefox Library System doing new material blogs. All of us are directors of small rural libraries who needed a way to replace our previous automation system’s [...]
Hey NCLive Librarians
April 5th, 2005Lockjaw went to his library today, learned about NCLive and was excited about the results:
“I went to the library today, to do some research. While I was there, I had a great conversation with Michael, the Librarian. We talked about politics, General Patton, microfilm equipment, and other things. He pointed me to a new [...]
The State of State Libraries
April 5th, 2005I just subscribed to the Topix-Libraries feed and one of the first items was this informative article about the New Jersey State Library.
I’ve mentioned in the past how fond I am of the New York State Library (they have saved my behind on many an occasion over the past few years), but I don’t think [...]
T’s Crossed and I’s Dotted - The PLA Blog Continues…
April 5th, 2005I’ve been waiting to blog about this news for a while now, but I had to wait until I got the official thumbs-up from PLA. Andrea Mercado and I have become the official co-managers for the PLA Blog.
So, what’s next? Andrea and I have some work do to, but there is no shortage [...]
And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor(s)?
April 4th, 2005I just checked my stats for March and the numbers are staggering: 160,865 Total Sessions (”A series of Hits to your site over a specific period of time by one visitor”), 311,809 Total Pageviews (”A request to the web server by a visitor’s browser for any web page; this excludes images, javascript, and other [...]
Wiki Dot Gov
April 4th, 2005Federal Computer Weekly has an article on wikis:
“Patrick Hogan, learning technologies program manager at NASA, depends on a wiki site to program NASA software. An open-source program, NASA World Wind, lets users look at satellite imagery. They can peer into the Grand Canyon or follow the Nile River from its source, Lake Victoria, or leap [...]
Amazon.com Movers & Shakers
April 4th, 2005Did anyone know that Amazon has a movers and shakers listing for the biggest gainers in sales? Could this be useful for collection development? RSS Feed me please….
The Joys Of Weeding
April 4th, 2005Need a good laugh? Take a look at this blog post on weeding the library collection:
“You are supposed to discard material beyond the comprehension or reading ability of your patrons. Most of ours are doctors and nurses and pharmacists and in my experience they can read, which makes culling tricky.”
“Oh, if you throw stuff [...]
APA Journals Feeds
April 4th, 2005Peter Scott notes that the American Psychological Association has feeds for the TOC for all of their journals. For example, for American Psychologist, there’s a feed. Suweeeeeeet!
Congrats Amanda
April 4th, 2005One of my favorite librarians, Amanda Etches-Johnson, is stoked that the book that includes a chapter she wrote has been published.
“The book is chunked out into sections (libraries & the web, the library as place, the future of library associations, &c.), my chapter is part of the libraries & the web section and it’s on [...]
David Bigwood Practices His Presentation via Audioblogger
April 3rd, 2005Neat! David Bigwood is speaking at TLA this week (I can’t wait to meet him) and has posted a practice run on his blog via Audioblogger (it’s in two parts). I love this idea.
I’d like to see it go one step further. How about a screencast of the entire presentation. I’ve [...]
Feedmarker Upgrade
April 3rd, 2005According to his blog post, Bruno has made some upgrades to Feedmarker. I don’t have time tonight to look at the new features, but they look useful. I like the concept behind, “See users like you.”
Do You Blog?
April 3rd, 2005There is a very lenghtly (and well written) article over at the Washington Lawyer on legal blogs (blawgs). For librarians, check out the section on Blogs and Legal Research. A quote (one of many good ones):
“Stephanie Tai says her blog provides the kind of shortcut that helps law students, law reviews, and attorneys [...]
New Library Materials…
April 3rd, 2005I’m absolutely loving the Rambling Librarian lately (grab his feed if you get a chance). The other day, he pointed to a library (Omro Public) that has a blog for new materials, with links directly to the catalog records.
The blog hasn’t been updated in a few weeks so I’ll assume that [...]
More on the ACRL Blog…
April 3rd, 2005Joy writes:
“I am an official ACRL Conference blogger. Oddly enough, that means you can’t read my official ACRL Conference blog posts without paying for either the actual or virtual conference. Jane at A Wandering Eyre posted her concerns. I share those and offer this one as well: ACRL doesn’t get the mindset of bloggers if [...]