Library Stuff

I received an e-mail from Jimmy Atkinson of OEDb who has put together an anotted list of resources called Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources. Definitely worth a bookmark.

My uncle Larry (a fellow blogger and an editorial writer for the Asbury Park Press) writes about the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure that took place in NJ on Sunday:

“When you saw a young woman walking “In memory of my mom,” the impact of loss and, hopefully, renewal could not have been clearer. Fortunately, as many people or more were celebrating life. Reading tributes to “My sis,” or simply “Me,” brought a chuckle and a tear to the eye at nearly the same time.”

There is a lot of Cancer in my family and I was proud to take part in the 3 mile walk that followed the race. Even though some of us decided to only walk one mile (they created a short cut), it doesn’t take away from the feeling that we were helping spread the word of early detection.

By far my favorite part, however, was seeing my mother walk the one mile with us, cane in hand. Sure, we were slow, but when she crossed the finish line, arm in arm with her twin sister (A cancer survivor and Larry’s wife), I could’t help but to thank G-d that mom is still with us. Her bones may be a bit more brittle since the accident and surgeries that followed, but she’s still alive. And that’s what matters.

I love ya mom.

Pictures from the walk can be found here.

Brilliant use of eBay API. Missing Auctions will run searches for misspelled words in Ebay and return only those results. Slick. There’s even a customized RSS feed search form.

I ran a search for “libary” and saw some interesting stuff. This one is going in my remaining two presentations. (via)

Slick Mac software called dead.licious that will check for dead links in your del.icio.us account and provides the option of removing them for you.

I hope a PC version comes out soon. (via)

Ack!

I’ve yet to read the Pew study, but reading this makes me very nervous:

“Pew researcher Susannah Fox said one possible reason why Internet users do not tend to check sources or dates is because of the health Web sites themselves. Only 2 percent of popular health sites display that information on their pages, according to a study by the US Department of Health and Human Services that is scheduled for release soon, Fox said.

‘The question is whether consumers are doing the best that they can by going to general search engines,’ Fox said.”

The good news? The results of this study indicate that librarians are still SO needed when it comes to research and evaluation of resources. Now, only we could market our skills better…