Consider: Untitled 1

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/24/untitled-1.html

more information in fewer hands

Weekly News Digest from Info Today reports on the Thomson happenings:

On April 17, The Thomson Corp. announced that it had completed its acquisition of Reuters Group, PLC, forming Thomson Reuters, a provider of "intelligent information" for businesses and professionals in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, scientific, healthcare, and media markets. Thomson Reuters has more than 50,000 employees with operations in 93 countries on six continents and 2007 pro forma revenues of approximately $12.4 billion.

Update: it shouldn't go unnoticed that Thomson Reuters had to go through tough federal anti-trust scrutiny to make the merge. Librarians have a duty to develop collections of information from diverse sources... a few more major consolidations like this & there won't be any diversity of database sources to speak of. Buy small press (and build homebrew) while you still can. I'm not knocking the value of what Thomson Reuters has to deliver, but I don't like being forced into smaller and smaller cattle chutes to get at what I need.

--

Reading: Not Loompanics Press anymore. Don't forget the value of niche info.
Listening: "Nutbush City Limits"

gale, readspeaker

At Library Journal, Michael Rogers reports that Gale's going to add text-to-audio software into 6 of its databases (including Opposing Viewpoints!)

Hope the voices aren't super canned and tinny sounding like other such audio/text programs are, but even if they are robotic I'll be very happy to have this tool handy. Yessir.

ok, so i'm a copycat

I'm a copycat too.
But man, I love me some playlist.com... been waiting for a really good .mp3 search engine for a while now. Love it maybe just as much as I do Pandora...
Enjoy while you can, before the RIAA or the CIA or Hillary Clinton or some other finger shaker takes it all away.
(You know, we ought to shake our fingers too every once in a while...)

sphering the square

News on AOL's Sphere deal at Information Today's Newsbreaks.
Comments here...

tags, cois, library thing

communities of interest, where descriptors have to be specific, exact, unambiguous...
tags are lazy, sloppy, hasty. taxonomies are cumbersome (cheap shot), unintuitive... but also unambiguous.
how to make tags for c.o.i.s unambiguous, precise? reference to the schema needed to define terms. building better schema, yes, but also building better ontological tools, meta-schematic maps that define where the references are, what they refer to (and when), and the context necessary to decide on one over another.

much more to learn.

how can library thing help us to make one instance of "rock" mean stone, and another instance mean the music? are tags a black hole? and they, don't they, still ultimately depend on the occasional human pruning, picking the "fucks" and "goddamns" from the record page once LT is integrated into your ILS?

we need better tagging tools.

this whole thing -- it has to be a 'how can we make this work better for us and our patrons' thing rather than a 'ooooh, i du-nnnnnnnnnnoooooo, should we or shouldn't we even dooooooo this' thing.
yes,
yes,
and hell yes. we need to do this. but smartly.

Thursday's TLA

Caught a couple good sessions in the TLA Net Fair area -- exhibitions hall.

Todd Humble of North Richland Hills talked about implementing RFIDs in the collection -- really good talk, really practical, pragmatic info. He raised the issue of read/writable tags and data swiping, which is a real worry if you go for the 'smart' library cards for your patrons (his system was wise enough not to). This guy's the real deal, right down to grinding down the surfaces of discs in order to make sure that 100% -- yes, really -- of the collection was tagged. From scraping and photocopying, creating faux covers, to foiling foil, Todd knows his stuff.

Second session was on Second Life. Ms. Lorin Fisher gave a good introductory talk on Second Life, Second Life Library (infoisland, or info archipelago now?), and the particulars of doing reference service in SL. I asked her abt making use of SL in the here/now of my community's daily, RL reference needs. I remain unconvinced that SL librarianship has much at all to do with RL service and getting the information to the people, despite the excellent points she raised about meeting professors teaching in SL on their own pedagogical turf. (I know of one prof teaching an anthropology course in SL at my college, but there are probably more doing it.) I just don't yet think SL serves the mass of us. I can't help but see it as a "wow, ain't this cool!" tool for the info-elite who have the luxury of time to romp around being a dinosaur-fairy-goth-robot in wonderland. But. That's not to say SL lacks potential, and I think Ms. Fisher did a good job in asking us to think about what that potential could be.

Otherwise, played some wii nintendo bowling (my first wii experience ever) at the HighSmith booth. They told me pretty things about library furniture and gave me a plush lizard. Actually, their tables look like the best for our hypothetical (hopefully this summer!) game night needs, unless we rig something up homebrew by trying to laminate our own table tops.

Another good day at TLA, despite being spammed to shop at the scooter store by some guy in the hall (pushed a card out right in front of me whilst I was walking. I was like 'what's it for', he was like 'the scooter expo', i was like 'not interested', kept walking. the expectation that people will take what you put in front of their faces just because you have the nerve to stick it in front of them is insulting -- and now that feller knows it don't work on us all), and slight hassling about my lacking badge when I first came in (well mister, you better go back to your truck to get it)... fair enough.

(aside, the pic of Ms. Yarrow has a story, and it has to do w/ Meg Cabot a little bit... no time now tho).

**edit: to say, that pic ain't from Transmet! my goof -- it's Katchoo, right?**

What happened to Cali?

If you were waiting to hear the GeekBrief.TV session at TLA today, Ms. Lewis explains what happened:

When I arrived to setup for my speech, I found out that I was almost an hour late, and the majority of people that had been waiting patiently had moved on to other sessions.

I was devastated, and still am. I’m pedantic about time, and unless Neal makes me slow down, I’m early for everything. I can’t stand disappointing people, and it breaks my heart that I did today (They told me there were 50 librarians waiting for me). Since I like to be early, we were there walking around the whole time they were waiting.

There were a few people left when we got to the room, so instead of a formal presentation, we just sat down and talked informally about new media and podcasting.

This is the most embarrassing moment of my life, both personally and professionally. I want to publicly apologize to all the librarians who were in that room waiting, and to Todd Humble, the organizer.

UPDATE: I didn’t say why I was late. I put the time down wrong in my calendar, even after triple checking the time slot.

Could've happened to any of us!

ya, libraries might incubate talent

If they give a damn (like this High School librarian clearly does) and make the effort.
:)

the day at TLA

What a good day to be at the TLA convention!
I got to meet some excellent Texan librarians, learned a lot, and got some ideas for programs. I'm really enthused abt gaming in libraries (after hearing Eli's talk on literacy skills learned through gaming), but I reckon on starting with table top programs -- chess, mancala, RPGs.
Learned a lot about LibraryThing and its uses in lib catalogs -- also its uses in small communities of interest... which brings up contextual tags, other issues.
Look forward to tomorrow.

edit: to say Barbara Johnson of Beford libraries and Ellie Collier of ACC made an awesome presentation. they lit the fire of libr.thing up under me.

springshare libguides copy 2

Yeah, I got my teeth into this gummy junk now.

Of this corpus:

Google Schmoogle

Sure, your users can search Google and your online databases to find information. But you, the librarian, are the key to successful research. Heck, nobody knows research better! With LibGuides you help patrons find stuff they need and show them information they didn't even know existed! Now, patrons have best of both worlds! In addition, with LibGuides patrons can chat with you and ask questions in real time, via chat widgets like meebo, or by using instant messenger apps.

I find the following terms particularly problematic (in terms expressed previously):

schmoogle
sure
heck
stuff

The three consecutive exclamation points don't work to make me feel any, like, better. You can, heck, call me, like, totally stiff if you wanna! Talk to, like, the hand!

springshare libguides copy

What exactly the hell does this mean, once parsed past the hip and informal tone?

Google Schmoogle

Sure, your users can search Google and your online databases to find information. But you, the librarian, are the key to successful research. Heck, nobody knows research better! With LibGuides you help patrons find stuff they need and show them information they didn't even know existed! Now, patrons have best of both worlds! In addition, with LibGuides patrons can chat with you and ask questions in real time, via chat widgets like meebo, or by using instant messenger apps.

That librarians are there to help them and that Springshare wants to get paid to help librarians help patrons? Or what?

Should I not feel annoyed to be talked to in a hip and informal way? Is it because I'm part, generationally and attitudinally, of the 2.0 thing that it's okay to talk to me about selling your product in the same tone that you might use to leave a comment on my Facebook wall?

reference sweetness

is finding the exact set of statistics you need in Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center very quickly rather than digging through Lexis-Nexis tables for an hour, and teaching a patron how to do it for himself. Ah yes, so sweet it needs a bitter shot to chase.









Now that's what I call librarianship.

tax time

Ref desk duty: to say, sorry, I can't do your taxes for you...

ABCs by Marion Bataille

edit: The second video, just above, was put in to demo finding and embedding science vids during a library instruction class. Carry on.

Sir Arthur has passed on

Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90

Sir Arthur C Clarke was famous for his science fiction writing

Legendary British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

He came to fame when his story, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was made into a film by director Stanley Kubrick in 1968.

Once called "the first dweller in the electronic cottage", his vision captured the popular imagination.

Sir Arthur, who was born in Minehead, Somerset, and was a radar specialist for the RAF in World War II, become a full-time writer in the 1940s.

A farmer's son

Sir Arthur's vivid - and detailed - descriptions of space shuttles, super-computers and rapid communications systems were enjoyed by millions of readers around the world.

His writings are credited by many observers with giving science fiction - a genre often accused of veering towards the fantastical - a human and practical face.

A farmer's son, he was educated at Huish's Grammar School in Taunton before joining the civil service.

my week so far

pogue mahone, dear readers. or pope mahone. whatever.

spencer: right again

You need to be reading What You Already Know. Spencer is right on, here, right down to the gardening.

"Let the ISD pay for it"?!?!

I am rotfl. Really am.

---

Reading: Laurence Freeman. Quenches about like well water.
Listening: Frank Zappa (Is that a real poncho, I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?)

the myspace shrug

an old ghostfooting post worth not forgetting (rediscovered via Angel):

« greenfield video everyware

Terence McKenna’s lost library »

state of the library

May 15, 2007

Librarians I’ve talked with haven’t generally been pleased with ALA’s 07 State of America’s Libraries. I hear grumbling. I hear mumbling that the report is self-serving. I hear much cynical dissatisfaction that the ALA is out of touch, glancing rosily around at a future they don’t much get. Maybe that’s not fair. I mean, after all, they presumably haven’t cooked the books to get to these statistics.

Angel makes a good point:

And we still have our work cut out for us in terms of educating people about social networks. That we have a bunch of hysteria mongers trying to legislate something they don’t understand is simply disgraceful.

Truly any new big numbers of library visitors are mostly visitors to library computer labs, no? What do folks overwhelmingly do on the computers? Visit social networks, yes. The report says that public library connection speeds don’t live up to user “needs”. Ha. Haha.

Folks, we’re standing around shrugging at each other over web2.0, yet to really imagine and implement good information services that use social networking, folksonomy, or user-generated content to excellent effect. We’re mostly trying to convince our administrative overlords that we should at least have this discussion, to at leat talk about the potential benefits and pitfalls of making ourselves availabe on, like, Facebook.

And while we stand shrugging, web3.0, a more or less intelligent “semantic” web, is slowly growing its bones. What will it take to make real technological (and therefore cultural) leaders out of librarians? Maybe it’s a lost cause. We fold to “hysteria mongers” who are even more short sighted than we are.

I’m not feeling very hopeful, either, at the moment. And I am beginning to think that the real information service action is corporate. We didn’t build it, they didn’t come. Yahoo! built it. Google built it. Ask built it. MySpace built it. Our patrons don’t come to us, they just come for MySpace.

We’ve dropped the ball.

1. 

   First, thanks for the link. To be honest, by the time I posted about, I figured it would slip unseen. Anyhow, you hit it well. We need to get our overlords in the library world to at least start having the discussions. The patrons are already at the next level (well, for the most part. I don’t buy every single patron has gone 2.0 either). I would like to think that we can get librarians to that point you mention of being leaders. Unfortunately, I look around, and I hate to say this, but it may take some people just getting weeded out. I probably should quit while I am ahead (I am in a setting where certain “leaders” can do best by simply retiring and getting out of our way). It’s hard to be hopeful, but we should at least try. Best, and keep on blogging.

   by Angel May 15, 2007 at 3:01 pm
   
2. 

   Hey, I feel ya.

   If librianship as a profession doesn’t soon have a signficant attitudinal shift, it’s gonna break like an old lady’s hip.

   by woody3 May 16, 2007 at 7:28 pm

Hello world!
[The above post was done in an info literacy class to demonstrate embedding videos into blog posts in blogger. A good class -- an attentive, with-it bunch. Thanks Pennie for bringing them to the library!]