Library Stuff

Hallie got a hold of my Blackberry tonight for the first time and knew how to (instinctively?) use it right off the bat. Scary.

According to AP:

“Time Warner Inc.’s AOL launched StudyBuddy in time for the school year. It is free, though a premium version with more resources is available for $4.95 a month. Users of StudyBuddy can even choose a grade range, such as K-2, to narrow choices even more.

June Herold, AOL’s vice president for education and consumer services, said StudyBuddy was a response to complaints that because regular search engines have to cater to so many needs, results aren’t as useful for homework.”

Er…Or, they could link to LII, which is free. Why reinvent the wheel?

Cool! Someone set up a Flickr Group for Kansas Libraries & Librarians:

“Welcome to the Kansas Libraries & Librarians Flickr Group! This group was created to help foster the community of libraries and librarians in Kansas.”

Peter Cashmore of Mashable fame, blogs about DOPA and the goal of the Save Your Space group to reach 1 Million signatures.

“[W]ith only 3,230 signatures so far, it doesn’t look like they’re going to make it. It seems that the average MySpace user is either oblivious to the legislation, or doesn’t understand it – something we could have predicted from the start.”

Boy, this is nothing like the filtering legislation, when the opposition came out in droves (still didn’t work though). With DOPA, I think that it’s more of an oblivious thing than anything else. Wait and see what happens after DOPA becomes law and libraries have to block access because they want (or need?) federal funding (goodness knows why we even bother with e-rate anymore, but I digress).

Internet users in libraries will go nuts. But will it be too little too late? Maybe.

Although, again, I ask: Where are all of the companies that DOPA will block? Why haven’t they spoken up? I really don’t think they care about access in libraries and schools.

Michael Sauers blogs:

“[T]here’s a move afoot to stop using the terms RSS and ATOM when it comes to presenting this technology to users (look at IE7 and you’ll see what I’m talking about, the word RSS doesn’t appear anywhere,) and just stick to the term ‘feed’. KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. Take a look at your blog/site. Are you offering more than one version of the exact same feed? If so, I’d strongly suggest you think about getting rid of all but one of them. Your users will thank you.”

I dunno. I think people have heard of “RSS” more than “Feed” Why add yet another term, which is something Michael wants us to do, right?

I do agree with Michael that we need to “KISS” RSS. Most aggregators support all forms of syndication and there is probably no reason to have more than one format displayed (unless there’s a podcast involved).

We’ve been through this over and over. It’s really old news, but something that we need to look at from time to time in order to keep our heads on straight. Thank you Michael for keeping it real, honest, and blogging passionately.