Tomb of the Unknown Librarian

Zombie Idol Finalist

/paul — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:13:26 +0000

Boy I can’t believe I’m a Zombie Idol (Round Two) finalist in Maureen Johnson’s rewrite the opening, or in some cases the entire literary work except using zombies as characters or settings or all of the above. I chose Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (my version A Zombie’s Adventures in Wonderland).
Read my entry and all the other awesome finalists…

I’m not sure I”ll make the next cut but it was a fun exercise and of course a subject dear to my heart.

http://maureenjohnson.blogspot.com/2008/02/zombie-idol-round-two.html

iPhone Library uses

/paul — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:44:49 +0000

So I’ve had my iPhone for about two weeks now. I needed a new cell phone and an organizer/PDA, plus I had technolust. The crazy thing is that it has proven to be an awesome help at the library. During the past two weeks the I have:

Checked the wireless network at the library to see if it was up and running
Got directions to Rohnert Park for a patron, using Google Maps when our entire wired network was down
Browsed the catalog for titles about dog breeds while roaming the library
Took photos of the Eclipse book release party
Took photos of books I want to read in the future but not ready to yet
Looked up a definition of “Judas hole” while in a meeting

Eclipse release party

/paul — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:42:11 +0000

So we held our release party for Eclipse yesterday. We had ten copies for checkout, Sarah and Amytha made t-shirts and they gave as prizes. Sarah also awarded two tickets to see Stephanie Meyer at Books Inc in San Francisco to a couple of very lucky people. About fifteen people showed up. I only stayed to take photos but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

IU, So you think you can ChaCha?

/paul — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:10:30 +0000

The president of Indiana University has made a proclamation that all university employees, including librarians, will use the privately owned search engine ChaCha as the default search tool.

Come Monday, no more IU searches will be powered by computer-driven Google. Only by people-powered ChaCha. Later this month, IU will draft hundreds of librarians and information technology employees to be “credentialed” ChaCha guides for the university’s Web sites.

From the coverage it sounds like only ChaCha will be available and that librarians and staff will be actually working as unpaid guides. The move if successful will increase the “guide” pool for the search engine that relies on humans to generate search results.

They’re calling it a â€œstrategic alliance for research, development and services for the next generation of Internet search tools and practices.â€ If they simply put a ChaCha search box on every page that’s one thing but are they going to block Google or Yahoo, or redirect access to them? I hope information access at IU isn’t being serverly restricted, coopted, and privatized.

By the way, Have you ever noticed that using ChaCha search engine without logging in, the web results are sprinkled with sponsored links. Also they are not formatted any differently than regular results.

[Via the IndyStar]

Greensheets, Lectures and Bears, oh My!

/paul — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:28:42 +0000

I’m getting ready to teach my first class this Fall and who would have thought that preparing greensheets, calendars, and lectures would be such a bear. The hardest part is that I want to include so much information about information technology tools and applications. I’m also trying to incorporate formats that I’m comfortable with like using RSS to retrieve completed assignments from students blogs, and using Meebo for office hours. I didn’t even want them to have to buy a book if they didn’t want to and it was available in eBook format from the library.

I’m lucky that SLIS has a lot of tools available for teacher and students. I’d like to jump outside of the traditional BlackBoard/Elluminate environments, primarily for the sake exposing the students to something new but also to challenge myself to learn some new stuff as well.

Wanted: Martian Services Librarian

/paul — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:56:36 +0000

NASA will be sending a library to Mars with the Phoenix Mars Lander this weekend. Sounds like they are going to need more than a librarian. They’ll need a min-disc player circa 1995 where writings by Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, Asimov, Swift, and other notable visionaries will be recorded. I wonder how they will be indexed. Obviously the purpose of the mission isn’t just to get a small disk of data to the surface of Mars. If the mission finds traces of water or organic materials AND Mars gets inhabited someday, there will be a time capsule of literary genius or a little piece of “earthling” detritus for those future generations of Martians to play Frisbee with.

[via Yahoo News]

Email Dead… Again!

/paul — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:20:00 +0000

C|net has a story that highlights the demise of email among teens. It really is dead for people under 25. Texting, IM, MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, Blogging, and the plethora of other social networking sites have replaced so much of regular communication that email is essentially dead. It’s still necessary for transactions and stuff involving money but it’s not a mode of communication between peers. I hope libraries see what’s coming and start offering all of their services via Text or IM or even better FaceBook apps soon. The Buddy List is ever important so let’s get on with becoming a “Buddy” and not and outsider.

“I only use e-mail for my business and to get sponsors,” Martina Butler, the host of the teen podcast Emo Girl Talk, said during a panel discussion here at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Bulter said she only sends notes via a social network.

From C|net – Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead
by Stefanie Olsen

Morgan Hill Library Grand Opening

/paul — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 06:22:39 +0000

Yesterday, a new Morgan Hill Library held its grand opening with fan fare, speeches, Taiko drummers, a costume contest, storytimes, a passport to the library program, and a ton of other fun events.

I was there for the first part of the day taking pictures of volunteers, staff, local politicians and all of the other folks who made the new library possible. My good friend Emily was there with her husband, both in costume.

There was a mad rush to get in and soon the place was swamped with patrons picking up their reserved copies of Harry Potter, checking out DVDs, using the internet. Good fun. Check out the photos on Flickr

Questioning the economics of libraries

/paul — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:47:40 +0000

Freakanomics blog has an interesting posting on the economics of books, publishers, and libraries. Stephen Dubner really poses the question that if public libraries didn’t exist today could one be started without publishers, authors, and media-in-general getting on your case. Dubner points a couple things that most librarians know, libraries foster learning to read and life-long reading. Dubner thinks that with current economic pressures, the “owners” would prevent such a free distribution of ideas but they fail to realize that regardless of what they tried to do, “consumers” would do what suited them best, maybe a black market, or more prevalent individual book sharing, like the system that flourished in the Soviet Union… which essentially would be a public library of sorts. Besides, publishers know that librarians and libraries are their best customers, with some of the most defined marketing channels for books that don’t have a major marketing blitz behind them. As an aside, the best seller lists in the NY Times or other places are mostly recursive functions of marketing and not indicative of the overall quality or quantity. Libraries still buy best sellers but publishers produce a lot more than these few hundred titles per year and need to sell them to someone.

Besides, libraries do exist.

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/07/10/if-public-libraries-didnt-exist-could-you-start-one-today/

New app for eBooks

/paul — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:10:12 +0000

Information Today has an article that highlights Adobe’s new application for reading PDF & XHTML eBooks as well as managing a library of eBooks. Adobe Digital Editions has a slick interface very different from Acrobat. It also supports the Open Publication Standard which makes XHTML ebooks a lot more fluid and readable. I downloded the full version of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and it looked great even when I resized the window. Sony, HarperCollins, and a few other publishers have signed on and apparently approve of the DRM scheme. Sony will be incorporating it into it’s readers. And the publishers have made a few limited samples available.

The application downloaded and installed almost instantaneously on my Mac. PDF eBooks likewise were pretty quick to download and install. I’m on a fast (FIOS 6MB down) connection but launching Digital Editions was much faster than Acrobat Reader. It seems to have a very small footprint even with large downloads.

Will this format take off? Maybe we should encourage it. Will library customers be asking for this functionality? Libraries might as well offer it as one of their applications / plug-ins. Oh yeah, it needs Flash. Since it is not an exe it might work on most library computers without any fuss, but it can’t hurt to check.

[via Information Today]