Dean Koontz book update

I've received some new information which leads me to believe that the book is on indefinite hold in the best case and dead in the worst case. I'm in contact with all involved and as soon as I have some solid information that I can talk about I'll post it here. There's no reason to demand a refund at this point and I beg your continued patience when it comes to this project. Thanks for your understanding.

Bad Haiku ===> Badku

Woo hoo! Amanda has her Badku feed up and running. (Language not appropriate for younger readers and those that are easily offended.)

Stanford iTunes

Just in case you don't have enough on your iPod to listen to, your subscribed podcasts are just boring, or you want to actualy learn something, Stanford has made lectures and other material available through iTunes.

Halloween costume idea

All the employees at a San Francisco indie coffee joint dressed as Starbucks employees today.

Halloween reference question

I just got a call asking if the library had a skeleton the patron could check out to assist her in studying for her anatomy exam.

This has never happened before...

I've completely caught up with my RSS feeds!

Data Visualization: Pulp SF style

Take a few thousand classic SF magazinecovers, mix in some programming and you end up with an interesting mix of data and images. (Find me one with a Dean Koontz story in it and win a mention here. A screenshot of your find will be appreciated.)

Sapien Bookcase

This is one of the coolest/minimalist bookcases I've ever seen.

"The Ex" (formerly the voodoo knife block")

It's out and you can really purchase it now from www.csbcommodities.com. Someone, anyone, think Christmas. Please!

Thinnest thin client hides in wall-mount LAN box

How about this as a solution for public access PCs? Plug a monitor, keyboard & mouse into the wall; instant public-access terminal.

Halloween 2005 @ BCR

Here's the photos. More added as the day goes by.

How Much Is My Blog Worth?

My blog is worth $12,419.88.
How much is your blog worth?

More Social Software

I've been playing around with a few more sites that I learned about at the conference. Check out my entries on 43 Things and Reader2.

All Your Base Are Belong to Queen

Cory Doctorow explains and links to the mashup of All Your Base and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Build your own Dalek

Yes, DalekCity is "the online home of the dalek builders' guild. Now that's a halloween costume!

Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | Are you Worthy™ | contest

Take movie monsters, mox with classical art and get the results presented at Worth1000.com.

Frappr!

Susan at PSU pointed me to this one. Frappr! lets you map your group. (Link goes to the map of attendees to the CODI2005 conference.)

iTunes Art Importer 0.9.2

I've got a 40GB iPod with hundreds of albums of music on it. There was no way I was ever going to get all that album cover art into iTunes also. Well, the iTunes Art Importer 0.9.2 actually does a very good job of it with minimal input. (It did come up with a completely off-the-wall for Queen's Jazz album but otherwise the results were impressive.)

Are you a WiFi user?

If you are, or if you're offering opening open WiFi to your patrons, you need to listen to episodes #10 and #11 of Security Now!. (Transcripts are also available but it's more fun to listen to.)

IL05: Follow-up

For those that heard the news (announced Tuesday night at IL05) about Microsoft joining the Open Content Alliance, and other interested parties, here's a flick photoset from the reception.

del.icio.us/travelinlibrarian

O.k. Now that I'm back from conference I've decided to try using del.icio.us to store my new bookmarks. You can check out my links at del.icio.us/travelinlibrarian and also subscribe to them via RSS. For the uninitiated, del.icio.us is a place where you can post and tag (think flickr) your bookmarks. If you want to know what I'm bookmarking as "interesting and useful" try looking at the above link. (There's not much there yet but I'm working on it.)

Travelocity RSS Deals

Travelocity is now offering RSS feeds of pricing specials. Just pick your city of origin and up to six destination cities and subscribe. Then sit back and wait for those cheap fares to arive in your aggregator.

IL05: All the photos

Here's where you can find all my photos from the IL05 trip. They're broken up into four categories: San Francisco, Monterey, the conference, and the California coast.

IL05: InfoToday Blog photo

I made it into the InfoToday blog, sort of. You have to look closely though. One of the plugs in teh first photo has my laptop at the other end and I'm the person in front of the balding gentleman. (You can only see my back...)

NEWSFLASH: Miers withdraws Supreme Court nomination

Miers withdraws Supreme Court nomination - MSNBC.com

IL05: Final @ Conference Post

This is my final post from the conference. Due to an 8pm flight home from San Francisco this evening, I'm stopping after the final morning presentation and having lunch & dinner somewhere up the coast. I'm disappointed about this as I'll be missing Stephen Abram's closing keynote but I'm sure he'll post the slides to his blog later in the week. (Funding issues are making me leave tonight instead of tomorrow morning.) Once I've had a chance to digest everything I've heard over the past 2.5 days I'll post a post-conference wrap-up and additional thoughts. Thanks to everyone who've been following me through this conference.

IL05: Fueling Engines for the Future

DeWitt Clinton, Software Development Engineer, A9.com

David Mandelbrot, Vice President of Search Content, Yahoo!

Peter Norvig, Director of Search Quality, Google

A9.com

• About
• Subsidiary of Amazon.com
• Founded in October 2003
• Based in Palo Alto, CA
• Powers amazon product search
• Google supplies both Web and image search results
• Growing a9
• Started with web, images, books
• Added Wikipedia, ref, yellow pages, moves, & more
• Most search engine APIs are similar albeit proprietary
• Which is why we introduced…
• OpenSearch
• It’s simple search syndication
• Behind OpenSearch
• Propose a common format for queries and results
• Identified the minimal subset of data necessary
• Reuse existing and familiar standards such as RSS
• A9.com – Click “choose more columns”
• Currently 298 choices
• Flickr photo search [M: !!!]
• PubMed OpenSearch
• OpenSearch response in XML/RSS format
• OpenSearchLaunch
• March 2005
• More than one/day added
• Creative commons licensed
• OpenSearch 1.1
• Built into IE7
• Flexible syndication formats including Atom support
• Extensibility (can work with SRW/U)
• http://opensearch.a9.com/
• Seattle PL is doing this

Google: Research Search Innovations

• GoogleAnswers
• Type in factual question, get answer and source
• What you might be looking for
• javascript not
• javascript not operator
• Statistical Machine Translation
• Translation on the fly of results
• In research right now
• Underlined words = not sure
• Effects of more data
• More words in data, better translations
• Google Mobile
• Local search on phone
• Google Maps
• Uses Ajax
• Satellite results
• Moon (no directions yet)
• Integrating additional data
• Katrina
• Seattle911.com
• Urinal dot net
• New York in the Movies
• Brewster Jennings Projects America
• PlaceOpedia (Wikipedia place aritcles)

Yahoo!

· Innovation acceleration

· FUSE

o Enable people to Find, Use, Share and Expand all human knowledge

· Challenge

o Attempts to find “all human knowledge” didn’t include for-pay content sources – couldn’t find everything

o Search Subscriptions

§ Searching popular for-pay content

§ Personalization allows users to always get for-pay content

§ Feed from partner web sites ensure…

· Challenge: once you find content, how can you use it?

o Find pic, can I post it on my page?

§ Search for Creative Commons

§ Licencing system

§ Yahoo created interface to all users to search CC content

§ Then users know they can use it

§ Feature allows search based on type of use

· Challenge: enable users to share knowledge with their community to create a better search experience

o Limit to number of useful relevant results

o How can I share what I’ve learned from my searches

o My Web 2.0 (“social search”)

§ Save results

§ Tag results

§ Share results

· Challenge: expanding the amount of content made openly available online while not upsetting the ecosystem

o Open Content Alliance

§ Joint effort

§ Approval of copyright holders

§ Multimedia & text

§ Full text rather and snippets

§ Freely crawlable

§ International effort

§ Uses common formats

Librarians' Internet Index

It seems that I'm now allowed to say that I worked on the redesign of LII since I'm listed in the credits.

IL05: Photo

A Picture Share! Originally uploaded by The Shifted Librarian.

Still a female-dominated profession...

IL05: “I” Roles – Who & What Do We Teach

Mike Crandal, The Information School, University of Washington

[M: This guy’s on the Dublin Core board of trustees!]

• Was reading “The Worlds is Flat” by Thomas Friedman when writing this presentation
• Changing landscape in our world and how it’s impacting organizations of all types
• Between dot com bust & today Google went from 150 searches per day to over one billion per day, only 1/3 coming from within the US
• Global internet usage went up 125 from 2000 to 2004
• The Great Sorting Out
• Where do companies (libraries) start and stop
• From command and control to collaborate and connect
• Multiple identity disorder
• Who owns what?
• Death of the salesman
• UPS DIAD (Delivery Information Acquisition Device)
• What we’re up against
• What we know about IT projects
• More likely to be unsuccessful than successful
• About one in five projects is likely to be full satisfaction
• Larger projects more likely to fail
• Relying on explicit knowledge is important
• Tacit knowledge is weaker
• Why is this happening?
• Avoid focusing on technology
• Look at the larger structures
• The organization
• Relationships
• Change in direction?
• Drastic fall in CS enrolment
• Reflection of the changing climate (dot com bust scared people)
• Who will fill the void in building high quality information systems and services?
• A possible solution?
• Reconsider our educational processes
• Rapid convergence of technologies
• Bring in from other disciplines
• Linguistics
• Anthropology
• Social sciences left on the side
• What’s to be Done?
• Emphasize more generic forms of learning rather than specific preoccupational skills
• Value of collaboration
• Ability of collaborate
• Problem solving
• Information Schools
• Integration of people, technology, management and policy
• Syracuse School of Information Studies
• Many disciplines all pointing to information in the center
• Technology is only one part
• All parts are as important as each other
• i-Conference 2005, Pittsburg, September 28-30
• Curriculum
• Programming
• distributed computing
• networking
• info systems
• organizations
• database management
• info analysis
• systems analysis
• telecommunications
• info policy
• The Core Competencies (SLA 5 years ago)
• Info resources
• Info management
• Info access
• Info systems & technologies
• Research
• Info policy
• Specializations
• Lib mgt
• E-government
• Comp intelligence
• Human-computer ineteraction
• Web design
• Info architecture
• Taxonomy management
• Info retrieval
• Security
• Etc…
• Real-world Orientation
• Project-based study
• Teamwork
• Active learning
• Internships
• Capstone projects
• Integrate theory into practice in real-life environment
• UW iSchools
• Enrollment projections shown
• Numbers going steadily up
• UW iSchool
• Demographic numbers
• 2004 – male/female 50/50
• 2005 – male/female 38/62
• 2005 day program – male/female 11/63
• Not just libraries are hiring their graduates
• Boeing
• Microsoft
• Seattle University School of Law
• Federal Loan Banks
• Non-Profits
• Untouchables
• Workers who are special
• … specialized
• … anchored
• … readily adaptable
• iSchools are producing the untouchables for the information age
• there will always only be a few “specials” but iSchools produce people that are the other three

IL05: Wednesday Keynote

Google Print: Making the Virtual World Real

Rich Wiggins, Michigan State University

• Cartoon: Why Google must never be bought by Microsoft
• The idea: The library of congress metaphor
• Schoolgirl in Carthage, TN accessing the contents of LoC (Al Gore)
• Other projects
• Small group of items, digitize it all
• Words & songs of Woddie Guthrie
• Library of the first ladies
• Worthwhile
• Extends access to all web users
• Preserves fragile content
• Why not all of LoC?
• LoC numbers
• What are you measuring
• What resolution
• What color depth
• What format
• LoC books only
• 20-28 million itmes
• 2-7 million unqiqe bound volumes
• 17-20 terabytes
• The idea
• Disk is cheap
• Digital imaging is getting cheaper
• Broadband is relatively cheap
• Labor can be relatively cheap
• Automation can help
• The germ of the idea
• Technology is rapidly improving
• Flatbed scanner is the wrong tool
• Cost
• Aprox 0.05 or 0.01 per page/image
• $10-12/hour labor, mileage, meals, lodging
• Digitize the LoC
• Aprox $2.5 billion dollars
• OCR
• Getting better and faster
• Digitize it now, OCR on demand
• Storage costs are plummeting
• RAID arrays
• Under 50 cents per gigabyte
• Inventory/cataloging costs
• Physical shelf space, $40/item
• If it’s worth purchasing, it’s worth digitizing
• Barrier: Rights Management
• Once digitized, can we deliver it?
• The paradox of latent value
• Aprox 1/3 of LoC print collection is now in the public domain
• Barrier: “The benefit doesn’t justify the cost”
• It’s more cost effective to digitize everything than “just the good stuff”
• Encourages preservation
• Deacidification
• Fire, digital is backup
• Benefit: access
• Benefit: Improved digitizing technology
• The “ideal” book scanner
• Benefit: Standards
• Open XML
• Cross document metadata
• Benefits: Large-Scale Rights Management
• 20 million volume collection will force the issue of fair use
• Today, Disney defines fair use
• Digital library projects: Think Big!
• Google project teaches this
• Apollo Program Analogy
• Google’s vision will be realized by a forward thinking company and not the government
• Why trust Google
• They’re smart
• They’re agile and innovative
• They show no fear
• They’re worth $100 billion
• They won’t do this alone

Google: Catalyst for Digitization or Library Destruction?

Roy Tennant

Roy: More access is better. Easier access is better. There’s more room for players and that’s a good thing. It’s good that Google is digitizing things. There’s room for everyone to be involved.

• Cartoon: Google, Devil or Merely Evil?
• Scary monster #1: A Copyright Cataclysm
• Libraries have long enjoyed “fair use” protection
• Google’s attempt to shield themselves under fair use may ruin it for us all
• Scary monster #2: Closed Access to Open Material
• They’re probably going to fix this problem
• Google print copies are locked to certain ones from certain publishers
• Public domain books are locked into showing just a certain number of pages
• Link to buy book but no link to the library
• Scary monster #3: Blind Wholesale Digitization
• Large research collections are not weeded by policy
• “We keep all kinds of crap”
• Outdated material
• “no more a good thing than buying books based on color”
• Copyright will restrict access to up-to-date, recent material
• Users will end up with the old crap since it’s more available
• Open Content Alliance is focusing on collections
• Scary monster #4: Ads
• Most g]Google profit coming from ads
• Needs eyeballs
• Ads for antidepressants next to Hamlet
• Viagra next to Lolita
• They’re responsible to their stockholders, not the public
• Scary monster #5: Secrecy
• Agreements between Google and libraries have mostly been kept secret
• The libraries could not talk to each other
• U of Mich revealed after FOIA request
• OCA is more open
• Rumors indicate UM has best agreement from lib perspective, others have less favorable agreements
• But we don’t know, nobody’s talking
• Scary monster #6: Longevity
• Google, Enron, WorldCom in common?
• Public companies motivated by profit
• Two are now gone
• Size doesn’t not shield you
• What do Google and libraries have in common
• Both on Earth
• Harvard library, 400 years old
• Google 7 years old
• Who should we trust?

Adam Smith, Product Manager for Google Print and Google Scholar

• Welcome all comments, it’s what makes our products better
• Better to have the information out there to see how people use and access it
• Walk a difficult path to make many parties happy
• Want to make the information accessible – at least discoverable
• Copyright is an issue
• This is just a small piece of the puzzle as ambitious as this project sounds
• Welcome other efforts and they’re positive for the community
• Publisher program uses a destructive scanning technology
• Library version is non-destructive, they created it, and secret
• New version of Google privacy policy has just been released

IL05: Blogs & Wikis Face Off

Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian

Steven M. Cohen, PubSub Concepts, Inc.

• What happened today?
• http://stevenmcohen.pbwiki.com/WhatHappened
• Our wiki and blog didn’t work. Why? – http://internetlibrarian.pbwiki.com/ - http://openinternetlibrarian.blogspot.com/
• Is there a need?
• ITI blog and what makes it different
• Flickr and Technnrati worked
• Other wikis that work
• LibSuccess – www.libsuccess.org
• Unofficial ALA Wiki – http://metedith.wolfwater.com/wiki/
• Advantage: blog
• East to post
• Chronological order
• Automatic RSS feeds
• Comments to posts
• Only authors can edit the contents of a post
• Why might the blog work? Because it gives non-bloggers a place to post thoughts and it could be easy to audioblog.
• Why might a blog not work? Because bloggers already have a place to blog, and non-bloggers don’t want to blog.
• Advantage: Wiki
• Anyone, anywhere can contribute
• True equalized collaboration when accounts are not required
• Can create any order/flow to the information
• Why work: Anyone can connect @ conference or not
• Why not: Not sure what to add and where to add it.
• Advantage: Technorati
• Automatically brought together all posts from participating blogs if tagged
• It’s been a lot of fun
• Advantage: Flickr
• 105 photos in less than two days
• Mass tagging
• Human beings
• Ideas/comments from the audience
• Online tickler file
• FARQ: Frequently Asked Reference Questions (blog)
• RSS to email – RMail
• There is a module for MediaWiki that will output RSS feeds
• http://eSnips.com/
• Google announced web-based database service today [M: All your base belong to Google]
• Blog ownership content issues, what are they?
• What you write is yours
• Re-use
• Work product
• Trademark blog vs. Bloglines
• Creative Commons License
• “flickr owns your pics” – complaints – changed the language
• http://www.CiteULike.org/
• Scholarly version of del.icio.us
• www.connotea.org
• Powermarks - www.kaylon.com/power.html
• For-fee social bookmarking
• www.furl.net
• More powerful than del.icio.us
• But not social
• Library Thing

IL05: Blogging @ the University

Susan Herzog, Eastern Connecticut State University http://il2005.blogspot.com/

• What is a blog
• Brief informational posts in reversed chronological order
• Frequently links to additional content
• Timestamp for each post
• Archives of previously posted content
• Library Weblogs
• Diary
• News service
• Collection of links
• Book reviews
• Project reports
• Photographic record
• Anatomy of a typical post – www.tarheelbloggers.org/thb/resources/blogging101/parts.html
• Why read blogs?
• Personal & Professional
• Keep current
• No spam! (hopefully – i.e. comment spam & splogs)
• Why create blogs?
• Professional publishing
• Personal publishing
• Provide information
• Why blogs
• Easy to
• Create
• Update
• Publish
• Collaborate
• No
• HTML
• Web page creation software
• FTP
• $$$$$
• Pew Internet & American Life Report: The State of Blogging - http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp
• Does your library have RSS yet?
• More importantly a blog?
• Don’t be left out in the cold
• University Blogs
• PR
• Intranet
• Outreach
• Portfolio
• Recruiting
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Course management
• Knowledge management
• Academic Library Blogs
• PR
• Intranet
• Outreach
• Library news
• Subject blogs
• Virtual Reference
• ILL
• Systems
• Cataloging
• Preservation
• First steps
• Find academic library blogs
• Start reading blogs
• Blogging presentations @ conferences
• Find academic library blogs
• Google search: blog university library
• Creating a library blog
• Why
• To communicate w/ your users
• To communicate w. your staff
• For user communication
• Library news
• Recent acquisitions
• Announce new services
• Recommended research sources
• Supplement/replace library newsletter
• Book/movie/web site recommendations
• For internal communication
• Announcements for staff
• Project management
• Benefits of library blogs
• Easy, no HTML required
• Quick – Blog This!
• Free – software purchase not required
• Innovative, cutting edge
• Attracts younger users
• Steps for creating a library blog
• Consider purpose & audience
• Choose software
• Develop policy
• Select a template
• Educate staff
• Post content
• Market your blog
• Audience
• Students
• Faculty
• Staff
• Software
• Blogger
• Moveable type
• Radio Userland
• Develop a policy
• Be sure it reflects well on your library
• Guidance for bloggers on what is and is not appropriate
• Select a template
• Features
• Archives
• Blogroll
• RSS feed
• Choose color schemes and style
• Test in multiple browsers
• Educate staff
• Who will post
• One person or team
• Train staff on the software
• Post content
• Develop a consistent style
• Use your own voice
• Check spelling and grammar
• Post often
• Market your blog
• E-mail
• Press release
• etc… (see previous session)
• Examples
• www.ACRLog.org
• http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/
• http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/rihlib/

IL05: Marketing the Weblog

Jill S. Stover, Undergraduate Services Librarian, Virginia Commonwealth University

http://librarymarketing.blogspot.com/ http://www.people.vcu.edu/~jsstover/internetlibrarian/marketingtheweblog.php http://www.people.vcu.edu/~jsstover/internetlibrarian/ilbib.html

• Marketing: It’s not what you think
• Is important… really
• Allows you to serve patrons better
• Has 5 parts
• Target market
• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion
• Seth Godin – “All Marketers are Liars”
• The Marketing Mix
• Circle: TM in the middle, the four Ps outside in quarters
• www.knowthis.com – marketing tutorials
• It’s all about your target market : questions to ask
• What do you have to offer
• SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
• http://skyways.lib.ks.us/pathway/audit.html
• Who are your readers and what are their needs
• Who’s in the blogosphere anyway
• PEW Data
• 65% of net users not sure of RSS
• 26% never heard of RSS
• 5% use aggregators
• Most bloggers are men under 30, net savy & well off financially
• Market Research
• http://KnowThis.com/research.htm
• American Marketing Association – www.marketingpower.com
• Find a perfect match
• Segmentation
• UIUC Blogs – www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/
• Georgia State – www.library.gsu.edu/news/
• Good segments are
• Distinct from others
• Homogenous within
• “profitable”
• Measurable
• Researchable
• Lots of ways to segment
• Age groups
• Undergrads / grads
• Activities / interests / opinions (observable behavior)
• Find a friends segment & learn about it
• Product (content & design)
• Your blog
• Content
• Subject matter
• Updates
• Uniqueness
• Voice/tone
• Example: http://ppkids/blogspot.com/
• Resources
• “Loose the Jargon, Voice Your Brand” in Business Week
• Writing for the Web – www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
• Design
• Reflects content & audience
• Gets attention
• Reinforces brand image
• Examples
• Summer Book Blog
• Teen News
• (addresses not given)
• Resources
• WebMonkey
• Ww.ColorBlender.com
• Price: Yours and your patrons’. Make your blog worth it!
• Place
• You’re your feed to work (RSS)
• Where’s the need for your feed
• Find a place partner
• Explain the rules (what is and is not allowed)
• http://library.mcmaster.ca.php/blog.php
• Examples
• NC State University Libraries (BIN) – www.lib.ncsu.edu/business
• Lansing (IL) Public Library (Toolbar) – www.effectivebrand.com/landingpage.aspx/cd92591
• An Arbor District Library (Catalog Blog) – www.aasl.org/catalog
• More Ideas: See RSS4Lib blog
• Promotion (do this last!)
• Decisions depend on your target audience (and you internal one!)
• Don’t reinvent the wheel
• Involve your readers – Roselle Library www.roselle.lib.il.us/YouthServices/BookClub/Bloggerbookclub.htm
• Involve your staff – Bethel Park http://bpchildrens.blogspot.com/
• Education – Ohio University Blog Post www.library.ohiou.edu/newsplog/?p-119
• Context & benefits – University of Minnesota http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ways.html
• Integration (brand, logos, etc.) – VCU Libraries’ Black History Month Blog
• Homework
• What does success man to you
• Talk Digger
• FeedBurner
• Review other blogs
• www.blogwithoutalibrary.onet
• Google blog search
• Learn from other bloggers
• Bloglines for librarians

IL05: Bathrooms

Just a note (positive or negative depending on your gender): The restrooms outside the Steinbeck room are both for Women. You'll need to go down a level for the Men's room.

IL05: Lunchtime comments

Well, the morning was fun and informative as expected. The free WiFi works in the "conference center" as expected. It is available in the Steinbeck Room (where I'm spending the day) but it's spotty. I got dropped once during the first session and once during the second one. I comfirmed this with others in the room so it is the service, not my laptop.

Also, there are not readily accessable power outlets in Steinbeck. So, on breaks it's first come first serve for us slaves to the juice.

Lastly, here's a tip for a fantastic conference: if you plan on spending lunch by yourself, try and hook up with some other attendees that are doing the same. I and two others showd up at India's Clay Oven at the same time and we all started to sit down, by our selves, at individual tables. I suggested we all share a table and had some great conversation about the conference, where we were from, and what we all do. Don't be shy, say hi.

IL05: Library Blogs — Ethics & Guidelines

Karen G, Schneider, Director, Librarian's Internet Index

• Why ethics matter (micro)
• [M: I lost this bit]
• Why ethics matter (macro)
• The harder we work to make the world a moral place, the better it is for everyone
• “books are for use”: we are a profession defined by our concerns for others
• rules to blog by
• Transparancy
• Fairness
• Cite it
• Get it right
• Be Fair
• Admit Mistakes
• Two other codes of ethics
• Rebecca Blood
• Only facts you believe to be true
• Link to it
• …
• Cyberjournalist.net
• Be honest & fair
• Minimize harm
• Be accountable
• 5 things not to say
• It’s only a blog
• So and so does it
• Everyone understood what I menat
• They can always look it up
• Nobody trusts the web anyway
• Define: Transparancy
• “An activity is transparent if all information about it is open and freely available”
• “For most blogs, we want to know what the writer’s starting point is.”
• Transparence tools
• The blogosphere is skeptical
• Jeff Gannon
• Claimed to be a White House correspondent
• Transparency tools
• A clear about page
• Can be humorous
• Must be true
• Full disclosure about conflicts, biases or vested interests
• A commitment to honest about who you are and what drives your writing
• Lack of transparency can catch up with you
• Don’t try to be something your not, they will find you out
• Transparency can be Strategic
• Groklaw
• Transparency minimized Fisking
• The act of critiquing in detail with intent of challenging its conclusion or theses by highlighting logical fallacies and incorrect facts
• Memogate
• Cite It
• Michael Gorman
• “Revenge of the Blog People”
• Tips for good citations
• Link to and name your sources
• Avoid anonymous sources
• Always check a secondary source
• Get it Right
• Judy Miller, NY Times
• "The quality of being near to the true value"
• "Investigative reporting is not stenography"
• Being Wrong has Consequences
• "There is nothing more pathetic than a librarian who gets the facts wrong"
• How to get it right
• Check your facts
• Check your facts
• Check your facts
• Check your facts
• don't publish until you check your facts
• re-check your facts after you publish
• Tips for accuracy
• dual source
• link to your sources
• Be Fair
• Bill O'Reiley
• Define: fairness
• "the attitude of being just to all"
• "giving people an equal chance"
• "not letting partialit stand int he way of what is right"
• Fairness Tips
• let a source know when he is "on the record"
• you can be opinioniated but don't present opinion as fact
• if you claim to be objective, then you better damn well present all sides of hte issue
• let your readers comment (within reason)
• Adimt Mistakes
• Bill Clinton
• define: mistake
• "to choose wrongly"
• a mistake can be an error of judgement or fact
• Addressing mistakes in blogs
• be direct, alert your readers
• add to or modify posts
• explain the mistake and the correction
• Ethics Exception
• the intentionally unreliable narrator
• justinland.typepad.com
• April Foolery
• RFID Implats: The New Library Cards
• Well-KNown Humor Sites
• The Onion
• When in doubt, Do what you know to be right

IL05: What’s new in Blogs, RSS, and Wikis?

Steven M. Cohen, PubSub

Steven M. Cohen, PubSub Concepts, Inc. http://stevenmcohen.pbwiki.com/BlogsWikis

• Trends
• Everything is in Beta
• RSS is built-in
• Splogs
• Sign up adn we'll tell you when we go live
• The end of desktop aggregators?
• It all happens seprately which adds to the commons
• Over the past year
• the big boys catch up with blog search
• Google catches up with RSS
• Google News is still in Beta
• Wikipedia getting lots and lots and lots of attention
• What;s in your wallet
• Small companies got bought by the big companies

• [M: I missed this headline...]
• Opencontent.org/oishi
• Memeorandom
• Digg.com
• Interaction and collaboration
• LibraryThing
• Reader2
• Livemarks
• NumSum
• Writely
• Life Management
• Ta Da List
• Backpackit
• 43 Things
• Bla Bla List
• Planzo
• Calendar Hum
• Are Meta Search Apps back?
• Gaba.be
• Kebberfegg
• Other Apps
• Meebo
• Upcoming
• RSSMix
• Feedshake
• Feedmarker
• Resources for new tools
• RSS Conpendium
• Tech Crunch
• Social Software from Weblogs, Inc.

IL05: Tuesday Keynote

Social Computing & the Info Pro Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Rochester Institute of Technology

• About a ½ dozen folks in the audience are blogging this, two years ago, there wasn’t anyone blogging her presentation
• It’s significant that social software is becoming part of the hallway conversation, not just the presentation
• Technorati indexed their 20 millionth blog yesterday. It was from an elementary class in France.
• Search for “liz” on Google and her blog is the third hit. That’s the power of blogs. Regularly updated relevant content that people link to
• She’ll be blogging her own talk. A first for her. (Not live though, “I’m not that good at multitasking.”)
• “The Long Tail”, Chris Anderson article in Wired magazine
• A few with a lot, most have a few
• The bulk of the content is in the most that have a few
• “I want to read the stuff that not everybody else already knows.”
• Librarians are good at knowing what’s in the long tail
• “if you liked that, you’ll like this”
• Social software is trying to create the computer equivalent of a good librarian. We won’t be there for quite a while.
• These tools augment, not replace
• “we need a human component. We need a social component” in these tools
• Blog: Creating Passionate Users (writer of the “head first” series of computer books)
• “we make the tools dumber because we think the users are dumber”
• You can’t change your users. You can educate them, but not change them
• Let’s make the tools foster better use.
• Make search better
• You go to friends before the web to find something to do @ conference
• That’s your social network
• How do you fin a good blog? Ask someone who’s also interested in that topic.
• Yahoo!’s My Web – bases results on list of trusted information sources (2 degrees – my friends and their friends)
• There are no bad links. Everything’s picked by my trusted resources
• Sent URLs by friends via e-mail, never going to get to it
• Now, put it into del.icio.us and then have your friends subscribe to it.
• “Information Network Discovery” – who are the experts in the field?
• See the resources. Also see the people who use those resources.
• Not all social networks are equal. They may be my friend and I’ll accept an IM form them but they may not be good at picking out good information
• del.icio.us – LaGrangeParkLibrary (username)
• Don’t bookmark at the desk, use del.icio.us instead
• Get to from any computer
• Patrons can get to from outside the library
• Social information filter for those that don’t want to save bookmarks
• [M: Note for my next reference book: USE THIS!]
• Link on library page: ad me to del.icio.us bookmarks (make me a trusted information resource)
• Wouldn’t it be great if your doctor would do this to point you to good resources? Or maybe the local health sciences organization?
• Warning: all this could focus you too much and remove outside, unexpected sources
• That’s where librarians come in.
• 1200 items in her del.icio.us account because she wants to share
• If you rely on tagging to find things, you loose the long tail
• Good folksonomy relies on critical mass
• Web design: what are people in del.icio.us calling it, this is what they’ll respond to, then call it that.
• If there isn’t a critical mass, it’s not tagged, and that’s what you’re relying on, you won’t find it
• Do I want a majority rules approach to naming things
• The ESP Game (Carnegie Mellon)
• Assign meaningful keywords to a random image
• Play against someone else
• When both of you pick the same word, you move to the next level
• When a word match happens several times, that word becomes taboo
• Lowest common denominator approach
• Shows interesting biases
• Pic of woman, typical response is “girl”
• Pic of man, “boy” almost never comes up
• Pic of black girl, racial slur comes up
• 43 Folders
• Lifehacker
• Continuous computing: just because it’s bad for you doesn’t mean it’s bad for everyone.
• Attention if a form of capital. I can’t demand your attention without giving you something in exchange. If I demand your attention, you’re going to find a way around it.
• Why do we want to control attention?
• The technology doesn’t let us do that any more!
• Negatives
• We all feel overwhelmed
• Everything’s competing for our attention
• Person on stage vs ceiling tiles vs email on smartphone
• NYT Article: “Meet the Lifehackers”
• People @ Microsoft who research how we deal with interruptions
• Bigger screens make you more productive
• The tools are out there but you still need to take control of what you need to do.
• Who better to control and influence tagging than the people who know classification (librarians)

IL05: Day 2

It seems that yesterday I didn’t bother to mark my posts with “IL05” which might have led to some confusion as I received an e-mail from a vendor wondering about in which context I mentioned his product. (It was in my notes from one of yesterday’s presentations.) So, today, for those benefit of those of you finding individual posts without the benefit of context I’ll be marking all my titles in hopes of pointing people in the right direction.

As for what I’ve been up to at the conference since yesterday evening, I had a wonderful dinner of Wild Boar Stew at a local British pub down the street. (Unfortunately, I don’t recall the name of the place) with Karen (Houston, TX) and Amanda (Cortland, NY). Despite a potential gathering of the very interesting at the hotel bar, I decided to call it a night and collapse for a full eight hours of sleep.

After this morning’s keynote, I’ll be in the Steinbeck Forum for Track A: Communities & Collaboration (i.e. Bogging) all day. I do believe that there will be live WiFi in that room so I’ll be able to blog live. Hopefully, there’ll be a seat near an outlet so I can plug the laptop in all day as I did yesterday.

Future Tech Trends for PLs

Sarah Houghton, Marin County Free Library Joe Latini & Ken Weil, South Huntington Public Library Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian Aaron Schmidt, Thomas Form Memorial Library I'm just going to run all of the predictions and recommendations together instead of separating them out by presenter and keep them brief. If you can't tell what the suggestion/prediction is talking about, you've got some reading to do.

• Opening up public computers
• Virtual Reference visits Jenny Craig
• The Googlzation of the masses (a.k.a. the OPAC sucks)
• Librarian Avatars
• Ubiquitous wireless: Citywide iniatives
• Serving the information/connection poor
• eInk & ePaper
• Enable our content to interact with people, itself, and the Web making libraries easy
• Web 2.0
• Blogs
• RSS
• Wikis
• Instant Messaging
• Podcasting
• Firefox plugins
• Browser toolbars
• Libraries need to be more agressive in how we provide services (stop waiting, just do it)
• Accept credit cards for fees & overdues
• Deliver more information and content via the Net (become a distributor)
• Take more advantage of staff knowledge
• Better PR/marketing
• Customized services
• Get out from behind the reference desk
• Take risks & don't be afraid to fail
• Let the libraries have control over eAudiobook loan periods

Steven's big head

Check out Steven and his speaker's gift.

Hardware Soulitions

Aaron Schmidt, Thomas Ford Memorial Libary
Bernadine Goldman, Los Alamos County Public Library

Hardware Solutions (Bernadine)

• Problems
• Stolen memory
• fights over who's turn it is on the Net
• reams of left over printout paper
• staff: is this what i went to school for?
• Researching a solution
• vendors at conferences
• library lit
• WebJunction
• LITA Listserv
• Site visits
• vendor websites
• online demos
• Features Wanted
• Internet access
• application software
• print cost recovery
• workstation reservations
• time management
• patron authentication
• Three environments
• PCs
• Thin clients
• USerful / Open Source
• Why we Chose Thin Clients
• not vulnerable to tampering
• updated from central server
• less physical space
• familiar software applications
• fit into technology plan
• (problems with USB drives not being supported)
• Technology planning
• take care in constructing it
• people take it very seriously once it's in black and white
• Getting your selection through the system
• local government procurement
• had to justify a sole source
• must be authorized to sign a contract
• allow plenty of time for attorneys
• be prepared to pinpoint many details
• Rules for installation
• no such thing as a turnkey solution
• it's never as simple as they claim
• installation takes longer than expected
• be a problem-solver
• be prepared to learn a lot
• Time line
• net access - day 1
• apps - gradually
• print cost recovery - 2 months
• workstation res - 5 months
• timer software - 5 months
• Patron reactions
• delight
• outrage
• privacy issues
• age-related
• alow for games
• screen flickering
• want more features
• Staff reactions
• stress!
• need time to learn the new technology
• wish system came with a manual
• wish it were more stable
• happy to stop waste of paper
• happy to have more workstations
• Lessons learned
• new tech is time consuming
• do your research
• can't be over prepared
• pay attention to infrastructure

Smart Computing at Your Library (Aaron) My fingers are tired, find it here.

Karen checks out flickr

Social Software & Sites for PLs

Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian Jessamyn West, Librarian.net Flickr, Tagging, and the F-Word (Jessamyn)

• Features
• Easy upload
• [M: Jessamyn just said "groks"]
• easy find
• easy share
• Tagging
• Metadata by me
• ...by my family & friends
• ...by anyone
• Tagging vs Classification
• Can co-exist
• Must regognise the differences
• it's not a fight
• Folksonomy
• user created metadata
• grassroots community classification of digital assets
• flat namespace
• not mutually exclusive with other systems
• helps with scalability problems
• involves the users in the problems
• does have the "synonym problem"

del.icio.us (Jenny)

• social bookmarking
• the bookmarking version of flickr
• tagged boomkarks
• RSS feeds of tags and users
• You can search your bookmarks but others can't search your bookmarks
• Use to research new topics
• These are the sites are reading and are important enough to bookmark
• Hacks
• ToRead
• ToRent
• ForName (private = for:username)
• Download media in iTunes
• del.icio.us for your library
• LaGrangeParkLibrary (for the ref desk)
• Thomas Ford Memorial Library (aaron schmidt, displaying the feed back onto the Web site)
• Floksonomies sites
• CiteULike (accademic)
• last fm (music)
• 43 things (what do you want to do, meet others who want to do the same thing)
• 43 places (where do you want to visit)
• Technorati (blogs)
• MetaFilter
• Yahoo! Search
• Yummy! (hosts PDFs)
• Amazon.com search inside the book concordanance
• bookswelike.net
• LibraryThing

cameratossblogged

Jessamyn just showed us the cameratossblogged flickr tag.

People and Technology

David King, Kansas City Public Library Michael Stephens, St. Joseph County Public Library

Hiring and Keeping Techie Staff (David)

• External Hiring
• Job ad
• Get lots of applications
• Get apps from suitable candidates
• Attract, describe basic requirements, written from applicants viewpoint, use specific wording about the skills you want
• Be specific with "must have" skills
• Place the job ad where qualified people will see it
• Online for techie jobs
• ALA, LITA, Chronicle, LISJobs.com, Your Web site
• NON-MLS: Local newspaper, Monster
• Weeding candidates
• focus on basic job requirements
• preferred qualifications
• interview who's left
• Internal Hiring
• Can hire "good library employee" then train them
• Offer interally first is a good option
• Steal from other departments
• Why internally: skills, library-friendly, will work for food
• "This person should be a quick learner and enjoy technology changes"
• Hiring goals
• dedicated to the library
• enjoys service
• willingness ot learn
• already helps out with technology
• Keeping Staff
• Obvious things
• benefits, praise & recognition, pay, interperonal relationships
• If your the leader, be flexible and be willing to experiment
• Keep the involved in the library
• committees, planning, yearly goal setting for the library
• make them feel personally invested in the library
• Training
• on the job
• formal
• buy lots and lots of books
• Techies like toys! Give them some.

Ten Steps for Staff Buy-In (Michael)

Here's his blog post explaing all of them

1. Listen
2. Involve staff in planning
3. Tell stories
4. Be transparent
5. Report & Debrief
6. Do your research first
7. Manage Projects Well
8. Offer training for all technology (including the board!)
9. Let them play
10. Celebrate successes
11. Breathe & take care of yourself

Lunch

If you're at the conference and looking for a great place to eat, be sure to check out India's Clay Oven. Just go out the front of the Portola Plaza Hotel, cross the street and turn left. There's a sign outside and it's up on the second floor. (Warning: The Eggplant is spicy.)

Digital Content (eAudio Books)

Ken Weil & Joe Latini, South Huntington Beach Public Library

• First public library to circulate iPod shuffles!
• Started with a collection of 29 titles
• Starting to do music on the iPods (marketing to younger patrons)
• Why?
• Downloading cheaper than purchasing cassettes and CDs
• $1616 on cassette vs. $695 from iTunes for the first 29 titles
• Savings used to buy the iPods
• No replacement costs for tapes & CDs
• Titles available sooner
• Conserve shelf space
• More portable
• Licencing varies from company to company (iTunes, OverDrive, Recorded Books)
• There is no single good solution
• Why iPods?
• iTunes = library now ownes the item, others you need to repurchase on a schedule
• Downloading items via dialup is not viable, therefore circing the iPods
• Can import from existing Books on CD
• iPods popular
• Work with both Mac & Windows
• Universal access (no patron computer needed)
• (iTunes gets their titles from Audible.com)
• Copyright issues
• SHPL limits circ to the number of copies that the library ownes
• Apple knows what they're doing
• Purchasing
• iTunes ccount (CC or debit account)
• software
• search
• download
• store files on server (central location for downloader & desk where iPods are checked out)
• backup each title
• Cataloging
• Equipment: iPod Shuffles (They now have 20)
• Titles: eAudio books (original cataloging)
• Order Record (title, iTunes listed as publisher)
• Bib record (replaces order record)
• Material type
• Pushed on the front page of the Web site
• Catalog says "Required iPod Shuffle or other MP3 player" on these titles
• Processing
• title card w/ barcode
• contents card with iPod barcode
• CArying case
• iPod
• power adaptor
• radio transmitter
• audiocassette adapter
• user's guide
• aux input connector
• [M: Way sweet! Don't make them use headphones]
• Circulation
• check out titles and equipment
• loan rules
• 2 weeks
• no ILL or DA
• restricted to district residents
• $1/day overdue (they've been circing laptops for the past five years without any problems)
• borrowing terms & conditions
• Waiver form
• Will also load titles on to borrower's iPods, form indicates that loading library titles will erase all items on the iPod.
• Newer software and iPods are reducing this problem
• User Survey Results
• 46% borrow 2-3 times/month, 26% once/week
• 48% listen in car, 19% in portable player w/ headphones
• 35% prefer fiction, 29% new or bestsellers
• ever borrowed? 81% no
• 73% male
• age 30% 55-64, 21% 45-54
• What's new?
• Circing music on iPods
• Developing YA collection
• audio books & music
• selected by young adults
• Art exhibits audio tour
• Podcasting library programs & events

Flickr IL05

Be sure to check out the Flickr page for the conference. (Tag: IL05)

Web Trends & Innovations

Glenn Peterson, Hennepin County Public Library Sarah Houghton, Marin County Free Library David King, Kansas City Public Library John Blyberg, Ann Arbor District Library

• Large Public Library Web Sites (David)
• Phoenix: Current information, online news, catalog, research, welcoming their customers, subject guides
• Seattle: interacting & introducing (action words)
• New York: programming/events, finding things
• Main focus: content, customers, communication
• Redesigning with Web Standards
• How are libraries doing it? (Glenn)
• No legions of Web developers
• 3.6FTE devoted to Web services in (6 actual people)
• 70% of reserves are being places through the Web site.
• It’s all about leverage
• Web application software
• Rapid Development Environment (Web site design specific software)
• Reference staff for content
• Learn more about XML (pull in RSS data)
• Subject Guides
• Starting points for finding information in specific topic area
• Bring together in one place all library resources on a topic
• What’s include
• Datdbases
• Websites
• Catalog links
• Events
• Blogs
• RSS feeds
• classes
• 2000 pages, Sarah’s it and get just 5 hours per week to work on the site
• Use blogging & RSS
• You don’t have to call it a blog
• Linked searches
• Simple HTML forms
• Printable PDF forms
• Reading/listening lists
• Collect patron feedback
• Lightweight virtual reference
• IM, Jybe (for library version coming soon), SMS
• An Arbor District Library (John)
• LAMP
• Linux
• Apache
• MySQL
• PHP
• Drupal CMS
• Trends (David)
• More redesings
• More connectivity (RSS, SMS)
• More video
• More patron content contribution

WiFi Update

It seems there's an open WiFi connection called "Schmi-Fi" which is accessable from DeAnza I. I've no additonal information on it's source or range.

WiFi Update

Well, it seems that there’s no free WiFi in any of the meeting rooms. All the signals are from the hotel and they’re charging $1/minute, $5/hour, or $300/day. Talk about price gouging! I’m suddenly not as impressed with the conference-based free WiFi offering.

Opening Keynote

Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet and American Life Project opened the conference, as he did last year, giving us a lot of statistics and annecdotes about how Americans are, and are not, using the Internet. (He mentioned that some times when he presents the screens are showing a live IRC chat about his talk, as he's giving it. Unfortunately, this was not done at this event.)

• 68% of adults & 86% of teenagers are Internet users.
• Broadband has surpassed the 50% mark at home.
• More than 2/3rds have broadband somewhere in their life (work, school, etc.)
• Cold: 1/5 of adults have never used the Internet. (Some by choice, some by circumstances.)
• Tepid: Dual-up users of today are less likely to upgrade to broadband in the future
• Hot: "Hyperconnected to the net"
• What are people doing: email, IM, news, finances, games, seeking help, interacting with their governemnt
• Chatroom use is declining due to hostile environment and other onling groups, i.e. blogs and live meetings
• Teens (12-17):
• more connected than ever
• love IM
• Nuts about cell phone, especially with text messaging and cameras
• Physicall proximity, time of day, and venue matters less and less
• Enjoy playing around with their identities (the facebook)
• Live in a world that's saturated in media
• 8 out of 10 play online games, 54% growth in four years
• 43% have bought something online. 71% growth in four years
• Health information use if growing also
• Teens are media creators themselves. (report coming out in the next few weekds)
• 19% have created their own blogs. Higher than in the adult population
• "Finatic multitaskers"
• Skeptic about advertising, yet just another input to be assessed for value
• Politics
• Internet rivals newsletters and rivals tv among younger users
• Internet is improving "social capital" i.e. social engagement & civic ties
• Using the Net for policical news makes you more likely to vote
• Concern: would people use online tools to isoloate themselves from their world/political views? Answer is no. Use of Net tools improves awareness and increases likeliness of researching opposing views
• "Major Moments"
• Crucial or important role with college searching, illnesses, financial decisions
• Also crucial when getting married or divorced
• Some companies doing "E-mail Free Fridays"
• Four trends: more people and things connected to the Internet, more people are accessing the Internet fomr mobile devices, content creation will continue to grow, increased social aspects of searching
• "The Long Tail"
• "Smart Mobs" (Howard Rheingold) suggest new social groups are emerging
• Modern life is charactized by "continuous patrial attention" (always scanning for the "one best thing")

Internet Librarian 2005 Group Page

There's a Blogdigger Group for the conference. I'm displaying the latest 10 headlines from the group over on the right of this blog's homepage via Feed2JS. Click on any of the headlines to retreive the fulll post.

IL05: Day 1

If you're reading this, know that the free WiFi from Deep Blue is working as described in the conference materials. I'm sitting outside the Steinbeck Forum waiting for hte morning coffee, I've got a low but solid signal, and I seem to be running at 11.0Mbps. (However, since I'm the only one hear right now I've most likely got all of the bandwidth to myself.) I'm sure that that will change as everyone else starts ariving.)

Internet Librarian 2005: Day 0

Spent most of the morning wondering around Fisherman's Wharf looking for souvenirs and postcards. After completing that successfully, off on a boat for a three hour cruise (luckily the weather didn't start getting rough, nor was the tiny ship tossed) to do some whale watching. We did spot a whale or two and there was a significant amount of tail wagging (by the whale, not us) but while we were too far away for my digital camera to do any god. This is the best shot I got. The conference officially starts tomorrow and I've been told there's free WiFi in the conference halls. Providing it works as advertised, I should be posting regular updates during/after each session. For those of you reading along and at the conference be sure to drop me a line so we can meet up. My basic schedule (subject to change at any moment) is Monday: Track B, Tuesday: Track B, and Wednesday morning: B301 then D302. I'm also signed up for the Blogger dine-a-round on Tuesday night.

Oh! And I found JellyBabies in town. Levis & More: The British Store has two more packages ($5.50 for 215g) on the rack. They're located in the Portola Plaza Hotel plaza.

Internet Librarian 2005: Day -1

Saturday morning and I'd left Denver for San Francisco. Spent the day in SF doing the Alcrataz tour, a boat ride around the bay, and wondering around Chinatown before heading down to Monterey. Here's just a few pictures from the day. (All photos will be posted once I've got much better connectivity.

Alcatraz Island

The Alcatraz library

City Lights Bookstore

JibJab

JibJab takes on Wal-Mart. (Only works in IE. What's up with that!?)
Thanks Stephanie

Darth Mao

darth mao
Originally uploaded by aaron schmidt.

Poor dog... He doesn't look evil, just sad.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Now Available

For fans of the the MS-compatible, free, open source, MS Office replacement Open Office, version 2.0 is now available.

XHTML & CSS book update

The page for XHTML & CSS Essentials for Library Web Design is up and had the code samples and resource documents for your downloading pleasure. The book is at the printer and should be out in a few weeks.

Book jackets

Slap one of these covers on your book and make all those nosy people on the plane and train do a doubletake.

Big Denver Public Library News

City librarian Rick Ashton will be retiring effective at the end of February.

Clive Barker

Clive Barker
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.

Appearing at the Tattered Cover, Denver, CO 20 October 2005 (Pic link goes to full set of photos.)

Free WebLive session

Firefox Search Plugins: Searching Your Library in the Browser

The Firefox browser has a built-in search bar allowing users to search such databases as Google, Amazon.com, and Wikipedia. What many don’t realize is that you can create customized searches that can be added to Firefox. This free WebLive session will walk you through the creation of a search plugin which, once installed, will allow your patrons to search your OPAC from within in Firefox without having to access the library’s site first.

Date & Time: Friday, December 2, 2005 10-11am MST

Limited to 25 seats. Anyone is welcome to register but BCR member libraries get the first seats.

To register go to http://www.bcr.org/training/workshops/register.html

Bloggers for Internet Librarian 2005

Will you be blogging IL05 in Monterey next week. If so, be sure to get your "blogger" ribbon and join the Blogdigger group. Andrea has all the details.

A comment on Serenity

"I laughed. I cried. It became a part of me... As a matter of fact, I think George Lucas should just go out and fall on his sword. He should just, like, would out in front of his house and go 'Wow! With eight dollars and a recycled television program they just spanked me.' How many millions of dollars — I mean Lucas is making bank but I just want him to take his can of gassoline, sit in the middle of the Presidio, in front of all that beautiful land that he wasted to move ILM closer to where people want to live, light his ass on fire and apologize."
— Patrick Norton, on TWiT #25

flickr sudoku

Here's a cool new flickr toy: Play sudoku using flickr images based on keyword or username. (I'm just amazed I posted this before Michael Stephens did ;-)

"V for Vendetta" trailer

The trailer for V for Vendetta is up on the Apple trailer site. I've linked to the HD version so the smallest one is 42MB but worth every minute of the download time.

Star Wars LEGOs

Can it get any cooler than this?

• Millennium Falcon
• Death Star II
• Imperial Star Destroyer

Side note:
Here's a screwed upsearch box from the LEGO site

Phishing Philter

Microsoft released its Phishing Filter Add-In Beta today. To you it you must be an IE user, install the MSN Search Toolbar, and then install the Phishing Filter. My first tests (although I use Firefox for all my usual searching) did have it working as advertised and allowed you to submit sites that it missed.

USB contents on display

The latest feature added to USB drives is a display on the outside telling you how much space is left on the unit.

Reading list

TIME Magazine has released their list of the All-Time 100 Novels. I've read 21 of them. Not to shabby if I do say so myself.

• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume
• The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
• The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
• The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron
• I, Claudius, Robert Graves
• Invisible Man. Ralph Ellison
• The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
• Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Neuromancer, William Gibson
• 1984, George Orwell
• On the Road, Jack Kerouac
• Possession, A.S. Byatt
• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carre
• Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

A few more statistics: I've read all three SF novels, the one graphic novel on the list (which is also SF), and have met three of the authors on the list (Gibson, Stephenson, and Vonnegut.)

Dr. Who DVDs

According to The Gallifreyan Embassy the BBC will be releasing the 2005 Dr. Who series in Region 1. In Canada... but they'll still play in the US.

One for the geeky historians

Here's a list of the 100 oldest dot com domains including the dates on which they were registered.

Naming children

This kid's name is Google. I kid you not.

BlogThis! Problems

Have any other Blogger users noticed any problems with the BlogThis! bookmarklet lately? I have and I've finally figured out what the exact problem is. If I use the bookmarklet and I'm am not logged into Blogger is asks me to log-in (as expected) and then I get the usual BlogThis! window with the correct title of the item I'm attempting to blog (sometimes, as theis example didn't give me a title,) but without and post content. However, when I use BlogThis! and I am logged into the Blogger system, everything works as it should, giving me both the correct title and the correct link in the body of the post. Does anyone have any ideas as to a solution? I'm using Firefox and I have reinstalled the bookmarklet several times. Reinstallation has failed to solve the problem.

New Dean Koontz book

Just stumpled over a listing for The Husband on Amazon.ca. No real details, just a CA$27 coverprice and a May 30, 2006 publication date.

Anagram

There'a a new BBC Sci-Fi show coming next year titled "Torchwood". Now before I give you a link to more information, see if you can figure out what series is the source of the spinoff... Hint: Torchwood is an anagram of the originating series. Give up? Here's the link to more information.

Dawn of the Dead

The classic zombie flick redone with knit-puppets via Flickr.

iTunes 6!?

Uh, didn't iTunes 5 just coem out something like a month ago? Well, it looks like version 6 is now available.

Blonde Bond

It seems that Daniel Craig has been picked to be James Bond in the next film, Casino Royale. My response: Craig who?

Civics Student...or Enemy of America?

Don't take your photos to Wal-Mart for developing if they're political in nature. An employee might just turn you in to the cops. Guess they forgot to mention the first ammendment in the training program.

Death to CSS Hacks

I've never used a CSS hack and I've never taught a CSS hack. If the design I wanted reuqired a hack, I changed my design. Why? Well, this post from the IEBLog titled Call to action: The demise of CSS hacks and broken pages is what I've been warning people would happen for a few years now...

"We’re starting to see the first round of sites and pages breaking due to the CSS fixes we have made. We would like to ask your help in cleaning up existing CSS hacks in your pages for IE7. It is has been our policy since IE6 that under quirks doctype we will not make any behavioral changes so that existing pages will continue to render unmodified, but under the strict doctype we want to change behavior to be as compliant as possible with the web standards. For IE7, we introduced new CSS functionality (see Chris’ blog post for the full list) and cleaned up our parser bugs. This leads now to several CSS hacks failing. If you are using IE7 (you are MSDN subscriber or received a copy at the PDC) you may notice major sites breaking due to the use of CSS hacks and the strict doctype. "

I that didn't make much sense here's the point: If you're using certain CSS hacks (as discussed in detail in the article,) you site will break in IE7 unless you add yet more code. Here's a more simple solution: quick using hacks!

Great Library Marketing Idea

Here's one from the Axe Library: Reward the attendees of BI sessions bygiving them one free full-text printout.

Welcome to Blogging 101

This is my first post for my first session of my Blogging 101 class being taught at Pittsburg State University.

Big Brutus

Big Brutus
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.

Big Brutus located in West Mineral, Kansas

Pittsburg, KS

Leonard H. Axe Library
Originally uploaded by travelinlibrarian.

This week I'm teaching at the Leonard H. Axe Library on the Pittsburg State University campus. Go Gorillas!

Columbus Day in Denver

Interesting job

It looks like Marvel, yes, that Marvel, is looking for an MLS student for an Internship in Digital Asset Management. How's this for a job qualification? "Also important is a general knowledge of our characters and comic books."

Colorado library (bad) news

It seems that the state-wide courier that transported books between libraries within the state declared bankruptcy this morning. As a result, both the Denver Public Library and Aurora Public Library systems have suspended ILL via the Prospector system until a replacment can be found.

Harriet Miers

The University of Michigan Law Library has a list of resources on Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.

Speaking of zombies...

Here's a zombie infection simulation that you can play with.

More on movie context

As a follow-up to my posting of the re-edited trailer for The Shining, here's one that picutres West Side Story as a zombi flick.

Where's the Travelin' Librarian been?

I know I've blogged something like this before but I've been a few additional places since then.
create your own visited states map or check out these Google Hacks.

Which Serenity character are you?

I'm not sure I like my results...

You scored as The Operative. You are dedicated to your job and very good at what you do. You've done some very bad things, but they had to be done. You don't expect to go to heaven, but that is a sacrifice you've made for a better future for all. The Operative 75% Kaylee Frye 63% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 56% River Tam 50% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 50% Simon Tam 44% Capt. Mal Reynolds 38% Inara Serra 38% Shepherd Derrial Book 38% Jayne Cobb 31% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

More RPS

Laura sent me a link to this animated film involving a rock, some paper, and a pair of scisors.

Context is everything

Check out this re-edited trailer for The Shining to get a whole new perspective on the film.
via Neil Gaiman