Archive for August, 2008
Librarian lights way for Ark. inmates with books
August 31st, 2008Pine Bluff Commercial – “Alexander is the first full-time administrator who oversees the libraries within Arkansas’ state prison system, which holds more than 14,000 inmates spread among 20 locations.”
Books vs. eBooks: Which Are Greener?
August 31st, 2008RiverWired – “But is an eBook really greener than a regular, paper book?” (via)
New York’s performance library offers more than just reading –
August 30th, 2008St. Petersburg Times – “You never know who you might run into at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.”
Coping with the overload
August 30th, 2008TELEGRAPH-JOURNA – “Technology was supposed to make life easier, but instead people seem to be working more and producing less, as information overload – the constant flow of e-mails, BlackBerry, Twitter, Facebook, and RSS feeds among others – takes over.”
Good news resources
August 30th, 2008Phil Bradley – “While a lot of news is negative, and there often appears to be more interest in bad stories rather than good, it’s helpful to balance things out now and then. So, if you’re tired of miserable news, try…”
Science Blogging 2008
August 30th, 2008They’ve got a FriendFeed room
So cool! Look at all the conversations. (via)
Twitterers Must Learn There’s a Lot to Be Said for Silence
August 30th, 2008Lee Randall – “There’s a legendary tale about the woman who Twittered her gynaecological examination during an earthquake. Another American woman is Twittering her labour even as I type, updating with such edge-of-the-seat entries as: “At 4cm. Epidural is in. Doing well.”
What Place for Politics on a Gay and Lesbian Library Listserv?
August 29th, 2008Wired Campus – “Librarians have a reputation for being flaming liberals. Left of Left. I’ve met more than one who wears the label “pinko†with pride”
Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload
August 28th, 2008Sarah Houghton-Jan: – “What is information overload? 27 instant messages. 4 text messages. 17 phone calls. 98 work emails. 52 personal emails. 76 email listserv messages. 14 social network messages. 127 social network status updates. 825 RSS feed updates. 30 pages from a book. 5 letters. 11 pieces of junk mail. 1 periodical issue. 3 [...]
Anti-porn group wants teen books under wraps
August 26th, 2008Kirkwood-Webster Journal – “A citizens anti-pornography group wants certain books in the St. Louis County Library’s teen section segregated from younger eyes and placed in the adult section.”
Library scofflaw: ‘They were good books’
August 25th, 2008MSNBC.com – "Pay your library fines — or you could wind up like Heidi Dalibor"
Don’t you just love this great PR for public libraries. Oy!
County orders library audio books English-only
August 24th, 2008WTOP: “The Frederick County Commissioners will not pay for audio library books in a language other than English, unless the book is teaching that language.”
Wow.
Everybody’s Business – Connected, Yes, but Hermetically Sealed
August 23rd, 2008NYT – “What if we didn’t have cellphones or P.D.A.’s? We would still have duties and families and bosses, but they would not be at our heels, yipping at us constantly, barking at us to do this or that or worry about this or that. We would have some moat of time and space around [...]
Please put a sock in it – this is a library
August 23rd, 2008Hephzibah Anderson: – “[T]he notion of an open-plan library is ridiculous, especially if you’re going to allow people to talk.”
Librarian fired for writing book on patrons
August 22nd, 2008Librarian fired for writing book on patrons – "A library employee in this Lake Michigan resort community has been fired for writing a book that describes a range of unpleasant patrons, from the merely unpleasant to online sex fiends, in a town she calls "Denialville.
Library-worthy MP3 players and review dates
August 19th, 2008CNET Reviews – “Many city libraries are now offering audiobooks as free downloads…but there’s a catch. Find out what it is below.”
Microsoft experimenting with a pause button for incoming e-mail
August 19th, 2008Webware – “Microsoft Office Labs has launched a new product called E-mail Prioritizer that will not only sort through your in-box to figure out what’s important, but also give you an honest-to-goodness pause button in case you want to escape an Exchange server e-mail avalanche.”
SEC Announces Successor to EDGAR Database:
August 19th, 2008More from beSpacific
Sanctioned Forgery
August 19th, 2008Publisher Recruiting People to Sign Books For the Author
More here:
Verizon exec: Some Net neutrality fans suffer from ‘paranoia’
August 19th, 2008The Iconoclast – “Verizon’s chief technologist took a swipe at Net neutrality advocates on Tuesday, saying the concept has become overly politicized and important engineering details have been overlooked in Washington debates.”
Will ALA speak out?
FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
August 18th, 2008Real Lawyers Have Blogs – “FindLaw appears to have been caught gaming Google by selling links to lawyer websites and, in the words of one blogger, possibly scamming their lawyer customers. And, as of Friday evening, it appears Google has already taken steps to penalize FindLaw.”
RSS Overload?
August 18th, 2008LawyerKM – “RSS overload continues to plague us.”
Of course, I disagree.
Unlikely?
August 18th, 2008San Jose Mercury News – “One local librarian called “on behalf of 10 others” to question the description. But it didn’t end there. The Internet is a far-reaching thing, stretching into libraries across the globe, which linked the story to the American Library Association electronic newsletter. Oh, boy. Heather Bistyga, a reference librarian in Greenville, [...]
New magazine-sharing site may violate copyrights
August 16th, 2008Yahoo! News – “A fledgling Web site called Mygazines.com encourages people to copy and upload popular magazines that are currently on newsstands. Visitors can read high-quality digital copies of dozens of current titles, including People, Men’s Health and The Economist, in their entirety.”
Allegany libraries adopt weapons ban
August 16th, 2008Examiner – The Allegany County Library System’s board of trustees has voted to ban weapons, handguns or firearms from its branches.
READ
August 15th, 2008Jamil
Originally uploaded by The Black Hole Kids
Does this (and more from this Flickr user) photo breach ALA’s Trademark on READ?
MLS Or No MLS
August 15th, 2008Great conversation going on over on Friendfeed about business cards and using MLS on business cards.
Books Un-Covered
August 14th, 2008Bookslut – “Awhile ago, my husband Brian said “wouldn’t it be funny if you were sitting on the subway reading a book and on the front cover it said, How to Murder a Complete Stranger and Get Away with It? Imagine what people around you would think, especially when you finally finished the book”.
Westlaw on Twitter
August 14th, 2008LawyerKM – “Westlaw even has a Twitter account that you can follow, if you like.”
CAPTCHAs work—for digitizing old, damaged texts, manuscripts
August 14th, 2008Artstechnica – “[T]he works that are most in need of preservation are likely to already be damaged or distorted, making the use of automated scanning and text processing less likely to succeed. Researchers are now reporting on a successful way to identify the words that computers can’t handle: turn them into CAPTCHAs, and get people [...]
