Library Stuff

A “new-to-me” term, and Jason Eiseman thinks that my blog is a good example of one. Sounds good to me.

Lifelong Access Libraries Blog – ‘”Lifelong Access Libraries is a national initiative aimed at causing fundamental change in how public libraries define, create, and deliver their services to active older adults, a segment of the population that is growing rapidly across the nation. We’ve created this blog to encourage discussion and collaboration among the library community and others interested in providing innovative services to active older adults.

New (to me) Librar* Blog – “Embracing the L words: library and local. This blog explores the relationship between the two.The Internet is localizing and becoming more aware of places (neighborhoods, communities, towns, cities and so on). In fact, to mis-quote a local business owner of some renown, local may be as red hot as the candy that bears the same name. The gist of this blog is that libraries, as locally-focused institutions involved with the flow of information within their communities, can follow this trend and get localer.”

Conglomerate – “[T]he main thrust of the article is that blogs “represent a cost effective mechanism for improving a law school’s reputational rankings and, perforce, its overall rankings in the infamous US News and World Report.” (via)

Michael Weiss – “What follows are a few mild observations and modest suggestions based on a frightening amount of Web trawling.” (via)

Bookslut gets a mention.

Ellen Goodman – “It’s worth remembering that the blogosphere is still so new it baffles spell check.” (via)

Walt Crawford – “The second Cites & Insights Book will appear Real Soon Now: A survey of current English-language public library blogs, mostly consisting of profiles of the blogs themselves.”

252 of them, to be exact. Wow!!

Tim O’Reilly on Worldcat Identities:

"A lot of people think that there’s a single big identity play out there, and focus on technology solutions, but it seems to me that in true bottom-up internet style, we may eventually build our online identities out of a mashup of all the tracks we already leave in cyberspace. (Seth Goldstein has been exploring this idea with Attention Trust.)

One more small step in this direction was released by the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) last week. It’s a prototype of an author identity system that shows holdings of books by any author in all of the libraries tracked by OCLC in its worldcat system. (Worldcat is pretty interesting all on its own — it lets you search for books in any library. It’s a "catalog of catalogs" just like the internet is a "network of networks.")"

Great concept.  I use Worldcat.org at least 5 times per day.  This new system does need a bit of work though.  Take, for example, a search for my name.  By looking at my identity page, you would think that I have written more than just one book.  Indeed, many people have asked how I have the time to study keeping current and social zionism. 

I’m not sure where the issue is.  It could be with the cataloguers that inputed the data or with OCLC.  I’m not a cataloguer and far from an expert at this stuff, but I can tell that an error has occured.  Any thoughts?

BTW, I love that my blog is in there as well.  Hmm, here’s a book that I came across by looking at su:Librarians Blogs.