Archive for January, 2006
Debbie’s Idea
January 31st, 2006Take a look at Debbiesidea.com, a neat little resource for book suggestions of what to read first from a particular author. Recommendations are based on the collective intelligence (meaning: anyone can add anything to any author page). It needs a lot of care and, obviously, more users, but it could be a useful [...]
Interview with Library Elf
January 31st, 2006Head on over to Pop Goes the Library for a one on one interview with Jeff Chow, creator of Library Elf. I love reading how neat tools get started:
“The inspiration for Elf came about because my friend started to receive a lot of overdue fines — he and his wife were having a hard [...]
Web 2.0 Journal
January 31st, 2006Congrats to fellow Web 2.0 Workgroup member Dion Hinchcliffe on the launch of the Web 2.0 Journal.
OPACs that Will Work…For Some.
January 30th, 2006Jenny Levine writes about a mock-up of a new “social-based” OPAC (but more than that), created by Casey Bisson.
Absolutely amazing stuff. Take a look at the screenshots. It has (almost) everything: comments, tagging, places for book reviews, a place for an amazon.com search, and more. This, my friends, is the two-way street [...]
gregword
January 30th, 2006gregword is the new personal blog by Greg Gershman, proprietor of Blogdigger. Subscribed!
Join Your Own Social Network
January 28th, 2006I’m having one of those “someone is trying to tell me something” days. I’ll break it down for you, then I’ll get to my point.
+ Hallie woke up with a terrible cold and cough this morning and we’ve been following her around with tissues all day (and man was she cranky [I can't blame [...]
Edge Cases and Aggregators
January 27th, 2006When I mentioned to Walt the other day that I’m now reading just under 600 feeds in my aggregator, he calmly said something like, “In this day, that’s not a lot” (I think he said something like that - I hadn’t even touched my first beer of the evening, so I think I am on [...]
The Strength of Internet Ties
January 25th, 2006One to read closely. A new report from Pew about the Internet and social networks. A must read when researching for the book. File….Print!
Those PubSubers Are A Bloggin’
January 25th, 2006The team at PubSub is blogging away. I thought I’d take the time to link to all of them:
+ Mandell Online
+ You’ve Got Ismail
+ Spathis.com
+ As I May Think…
+ Waka Waka Waka
+ ilovett
+ Eugeni.us
I haven’t mentioned this often, but the folks at PubSub are a wonderful team to work with. I’ve been there [...]
A Bit of Marketing Goes a Long Way
January 25th, 2006Libraries and Librarians are terrible marketers. So, when I see articles about great library programs when I’m doing work for the PLA Blog, I get excited. Here’s one that I loved to read.
Brookfield Public Library (located in the library blogging capital of the country [Illinois]) has set up two blogs and the process [...]
Some Thoughts on Conference Blogging
January 24th, 2006A Blogger at Every Table - A call to arms.
Rats! I Meant to Select C4, not E4
January 24th, 2006Two interesting photos of a book vending machine from The Elegant Variation.
Would this work for libraries so users can get books (maybe bestsellers) after the library closes? It could work like an ATM. Dip your library card, select latest Danielle Steel, and enjoy. The 24 hour book library (well, kinda - only [...]
The Master
January 22nd, 2006This quote from a.dern,librarian was too cute not to blog:
“It’s OFFICIAL…I am the Master of Library and Information Science! YES! I should have my degree in hand in a few weeks!
Now the Master must go out and find a job…and start paying back those student loans”
Finally, a master to which we can all bow down [...]
Catch Me If You Can
January 21st, 2006I’m going to be posting over at the PLA Blog for the next 4 days or so…
One notable event. Come celebrate our 1 year anniversary on Saturday evening at 6:00PM at the Rivercenter Bar (right by the lobby). Come one, come all.
More on Reading Lists
January 19th, 2006As I read more about reading lists (how they can be used to create hierarchies of data), I got excited about the possibilities surrounding Community Lists. So, I sent our OPML files to Dave Winer and, after a bit of tweaking on our end, our lists are now part of the OPML Editor Reading [...]
It’s (going to be) a Boy
January 18th, 2006We had our 20 week sonogram this morning (the due date is in June) and our new addition is going to be a boy. Even more important, he’s perfectly healthy. It’s great to get good news like that before I spend a week away from my two best friends, missing them dearly. [...]
Whew!
January 18th, 2006You know a good product is a good product when you start to regress to childhood reactions when you can’t use it (I didn’t throw a fit or anything, but my wife did find me sucking my thumb while in a fetal position in the far corner of our bedroom this morning).
Welcome back Library Thing.
The Book Bar
January 18th, 2006What every house needs. A Book Bar:
“One of our non-Vestal housemates worked at the Stanford library, and his job included the task of throwing away old books, which apparently the other librarians couldn’t bear to do. We decided to rescue these books from that awful fate - and what better use for them than [...]
Is ALA Going Blog Happy?
January 18th, 2006Well, you know about the very popular ALA Techsource Blog (I’m very intrigued that the blog posts are put through the editing process - something that I could use every so often on this blog!). While looking at Pop Goes the Library, I noticed that YALSA now has a blog just in time for [...]
PubSub User Survey
January 18th, 2006As PubSub looks to the future (which is what we do best, right?), we have put together a brief user survey. If you have a moment to spare (should take about 5 minutes), we’d love to know your thoughts on how we are doing. Thanks!
Reading Lists and Comments
January 17th, 2006Dave Winer has been writing about reading lists lately as he tackles a new aggregator hack of his OPML Editor. As he has been working on that, I have found myself commenting on more blogs than ever before: either for work or to add to the interesting discussions happening in the library community. [...]
CiteULike: Empirical Analysis of an Evolving Social Network
January 16th, 2006CiteULike: Empirical Analysis of an Evolving Social Network
Community Lists Search is Now Available
January 16th, 2006Today, we released a search feature for the Community Lists. More on the PubSub blog (you might consider subscribing to the feed if you want to hear more about what were doing).
I am also in the process of weeding from the Librarian list (mostly those blogs that are no longer live) as well as [...]
ITI Starts Podcasting….Kinda
January 15th, 2006I just read over at The Ten Thousand Year Blog that Barbara Quint’s editorials in Searcher will now be available as a Podcast.
As David mentions, the URL for the Podcast will change every month. Thus, I can’t subscribe to it. Because of this, it shouldn’t be considered a Podcast, but an audio version of [...]
Michael Arrington Profiled
January 15th, 2006Michael Arrington is profiled in Mercury News today. Well worth the read if you are interested in how he got started with TechCrunch:
“Arrington got the idea for the blog while he was doing research for creating Edgeio — a search engine blog for classified ads posted on blogs — that he hopes to launch [...]
The Jenny and Michael Show
January 14th, 2006Coming soon to a city near you. Jenny Levine and Michael Stephens (clearly the “it” librarians of 2006) are doing a 4 city tour (hopefully more, fingers crossed) of a program that they have developed called “Conversation, Community, Connections, and Collaboration: Practical, New Technologies for User-centered Services”. Here’s the description:
“This session will focus [...]
Paying Library Fines Online? Priceless
January 14th, 2006I just noticed that my library has added a new feature to their catalog. Patrons can now pay overdue fees online:
“With our E-Commerce service, when you owe library fees of $5.00 or more you will see the option to pay online! From home or from an Internet computer in the library, click on [...]
Mobile Crunch
January 12th, 2006
mobilecrunch
Originally uploaded by stevenmcohen.
Congrats to Oliver Starr and Michael Arrington on the launch of Mobile Crunch:
“MobileCrunch is Mobile 2.0. Our mission is to identify, profile, test and even help develop the technologies, applications, services and devices that will define the next generation of connected mobile computing.”
Mobile Crunch is [...]
Libraries Build Communities
January 12th, 2006Over the next two weeks, I will be the finishing touches on a book manuscript on event blogging (which I’m writing with Marydee Ojala). I’ll probably take a week off from formal writing (yes, I’ll keep blogging) and then dive into my next big writing project. And that is…
Libraries Build Communities is a [...]
Librarians are “Excellent”
January 11th, 2006Marydee Ojala links to an article from U.S. News and World Report that calls librarianship an “excellent” career for 2006. Impressed? Hardly. Take a look at what they write about us:
“This is an underrated career. Most librarians enjoy helping patrons dig up information. They learn in the process and keep up to [...]