Archive for July, 2005
Another Wiki at a Library School
July 31st, 2005The School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama has a wiki.
Social Networks Research Report
July 31st, 2005This should make for interesting reading. A company called Wildbit has released a report [PDF] on online social networks and communities.
“Communities are not created; they evolve. The growth of an online community takes time and effort. Relationships must be initiated based on trust, and then carefully cultivated. Organizations must identify a sequence of steps [...]
Feed on Feeds Upgrade
July 31st, 2005My aggie (Feed on Feeds) has been acting up lately, so Blake upgraded it this morning to see if that would fix some of the slowness issues. We were 6 or 7 releases behind, so it was about time that we did it. I have been using FOF for more than a year [...]
Sun Times Article on Bookslut
July 31st, 2005By far one of my favorite literary blogs, Bookslut is the focus of an article in the Chicago Sun Times:
“This website — Crispin says it’s visited each day by 7,000 to 8,000 people — fills a sizable niche as an alternative to market-driven book review sections that focus on mass-audience authors. Instead of dishing on [...]
Excellent! (The “Bill and Ted” Excellent, not the Mr. Burns “Excellent”)
July 30th, 2005Hey, Meredith. When I read the study, I thought about making one of my “e-mail is dead” posts, but didn’t really feel like it at the time. I’m trying to be more of a “different strokes” guy these days, but I keep getting pulled back into so-and-so-technology-is-dead mode, especially when I read studies [...]
Finders, readers
July 30th, 2005Viv Groskop finds that the most pleasurable part of Bookcrossing is looking for the books:
“The proof of the reading is in the finding, though. Since I found out about the site a few weeks ago I’ve passed through Chancery Lane tube station but miserably failed to spot Freud’s Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Penguin). [...]
Kinky Librarian’s Librarians
July 30th, 2005Nadia, from the Kinky Librarian is taking a poll. Why not help her out?
Talk Digger
July 29th, 2005Frederick Giasson releases a pretty useful tool called Talk Digger which looks at the major blog engines and displays link back numbers for any domain. A nice way to get everything displayed on one page.
Rhodarian
July 28th, 2005Take a look at Rhodarian - “Rhodarian is an experiment in blogging brought to you by the staff of the Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services. We are Rhode Island librarians and our mission is to post items that are of interest to the general RI library community, categorized so that you can [...]
LII Sneak Peak
July 28th, 2005Karen gives us a sneak peak at the new LII, now named Librarians’ Internet Index. Just this AM, I mentioned to a reporter how great the LII is. I’ll reserve any comments until the full launch, but for the 5 minutes that I played with it the other night and the extra 5 [...]
Dealing with IO by Virtual Cloning
July 27th, 2005David Coleman:
“I have written a lot about what I call ‘attention management’ and what everyone else calls ‘Continuous Partial Attention (term coined by Linda Stone).’ Stowe has been blogging about this for months, and he and I have had a few discussions on the subject.”
“Basically, he believes that your social networks are your filter [...]
Council of Federal Libraries Fall Seminar
July 27th, 2005One of the side-effects of my publishing a blog over the past 5 years has been the opportunity to travel around North America (nothing in Europe…yet) and speak to library groups on various topics, most of which focus on keeping current and technology. This year has been especially busy.
I am thrilled to be taking [...]
Pictures in Yahoo Feeds
July 27th, 2005Yahoo is now putting pictures in their subject oriented RSS feeds. Screenshot below.
What I Read
July 26th, 2005A few colleagues have asked me what I read online to keep up. I’ve always given them a quick list as part of my answer. For those that want to see the full list, I’ve uploaded my feeds to Bloglines. There’s over 400 feeds in there but I only use 3/4 for [...]
New Web Site Design
July 24th, 2005I’m thinking of a Library Stuff redesign for the 5 year anniversary. What do you think of this? (NO need to call the lawyers…)
Wikipedia Statistics
July 23rd, 2005It’s hard to deny the power of Wikipedia when you see charts like these. (link via Populicio.us)
Band Night @ The Library
July 23rd, 2005Michael Casey (”Library Scientist and Information Technology Theorist”) posted some pictures of Band Night 2005 that took place at his library. Notice some of the stacks are cordoned off for the show.
Update - The poster from the event, which took place at the Gwinnett County Public Library in Lawrenceville, GA.
Ohio University Libraries Blog Initiative
July 23rd, 2005The Ohio University Libraries have four blogs:
1) The News Blog, where I learned that the university started IM Reference this week. The NewsBlog has ben love since Juluy 2003!
2) Reference Blog
3) Business Blog - Active since March 2004.
4) Library System Status - Live since March 2004, but only 2 postings since.
Companies Turn to Knowledge Management to Solve Information Overload
July 21st, 2005Something to read when I have a moment. Key findings include:
+ “Too much information impedes decision–making. Over half (55%) of executives say that IT’s failure to prioritise information is the main barrier to effective decision–making. Consolidating information and providing consistent performance indicators are regarded as the most important step firms can take to improve [...]
It’s a Tag Tag Tag Tag Tag Tag Tag World
July 21st, 2005Two recenlty released tagging tools.
1) Tagzania - “Tagzania is about tags and places. If you register and log in, you can add places, points, to create and document your maps. When you add a point, you may tag it with keywords. That way, Tagzania is not only a place to build and keep your own [...]
LISNews.com?
July 20th, 2005What does this have to do with librarianship? Hey Blake, how’d this one slip by?
Blogs at UIUC Library
July 20th, 2005Word today from Sharif Islam who works at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Libraries. Check out their blogging initiative. They have 7 blogs going, some of which have been around for a while and some which recently started:
1. Issues in Scholarly Communication - “Issues in Scholarly Communication is a newsletter produced by [...]
What Are Tech Terms?
July 20th, 2005This just in from Pew. Public Awareness of Internet Terms:
“The average American internet user is not sure what podcasting is, what an RSS feed does, or what the term “phishing” means.”
I could have told you that. I’ll have to read the full report for more details.
GPO Says Feed on This
July 20th, 2005The Federal Depository Library Program (part of GPO Access) has an RSS Feed for their news and updates section. Here’s hoping that the GPO is working on RSSifying other parts of their site as well.
AADL Addiction
July 20th, 2005Whenever someone comes out with a neat tool, others make it even better. Case in point. We’ve been reading rave reviews about the new Ann Arbor District Library site.
Today, I see that Matt Hampel has created the AADL Catalog Search Plugin for Firefox.
This got me thinking (always a bad thing). Maybe [...]
RSS Feeds from Engineering Village 2
July 19th, 2005It looks like Elsevier has officially launched their Engineering Village 2 customized feeds (they did a soft launch a while ago). This is from their Ei Update:
“RSS feeds are available with the July 18th release of Engineering Village 2. Users can set their own customized queries and have the benefit of reviewing literature in [...]
15 Years of Happiness, Love, and Friendship
July 19th, 2005My wife and I started dating 15 years ago today. Happy anniversary sweetheart!
Library Spotlight From the Book Standard
July 18th, 20052 weeks ago, the Book Standard ran a story on the South Huntington Public Library. Today, there’s one on The Seattle Public Library. I hope that these “Library Spotlights” continue.
Podcasts at Petersons
July 18th, 2005Peterson’s, the college guidebook company (these books are fixtures in many library ready-reference collections) is Podcasting. Why is this important? Well, Peterson’s is owned by Thomson, who owns Westlaw (among many other fee-based databases), which means that a big information company “gets it.” Thomson has dabbled a little in RSS, but they [...]
Unamerican Activities
July 17th, 2005A great quote from Unamerican Activities, a Village Voice blog, written by Nathan Deuel. Deuel describes his experiences with William T. Vollmann after the author has given a speech in St. Petersburg:
“I was thinking: What if everyone in the English-speaking world—particularly its creative writers—each time they put pen to paper, or cracked a [...]