One Bill, One Steve, One Stage

Here'e the first of a seven-part video. The rest can be found on the D|All Things Digital site.

Multi-tasking

"G" is for Geeked Out
Originally uploaded by defining moment

Here's a photo I'll definitely be using in some presentation or another in the near future. (Yea, it's CC licensed.) An explanation of everything this teen is doing is available on the photo's flickr page.

A new twist in the "bookstore model"

I generally support the "bookstore model" idea when it comes to libraries. However, I'm not sure that what the Gilbert (AZ) library is doing is a good idea.

"When the new Gilbert library opens next month, it will be the first public library in the nation whose entire collection will be categorized without the Dewey Decimal Classification System, Maricopa County librarians say. Instead, tens of thousands of books in the Perry Branch library will be shelved by topic, similar to the way bookstores arrange books."

I'm not anti-change, but might this just be going a little too far? I worked in bookstores for ten years and, despite the learning curve involved in learning how to count (which is basically all that need to be done to find a book once you have a Dewey number,) I've always found it easier to find books in a library than in a bookstore.

Granted, I'm looking at it from the "I need this particular book" POV while the article is coming from the "browsing" POV. Does Library 2.0 mean ditching standard classification systems all together? Are they allowing tagging in the OPAC to help support this new shelving method? I guess I'm left with more questions than answers at this point. I'll be interested in seeing how this works out in the long-term.

Sicko

The quality isn't great but it's still the first trailer I've seen for Michael Moore's next film.

Christopher Hitchens @ Politics and Prose

Star Wars is coming to TV

In case you weren't aware, Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series is coming to TV. Here's a trailer for the series.

500 Glorious Gigabytes

Seagate FreeAgent 500GB USB External Hard Drive (8)
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian

My Seagate FreeAgent 500BG USB hard drive just arrived after being on backorder for two weeks. At only $149 this was the steal of the month. I'll be hooking it up at home this evening and torrenting away.

Flippah? Flipper? Study finds dolphins speak in dialects

MSNBC.com: "Dolphins living off the coast of Wales whistle, bark and groan in a different dialect from dolphins off the western coast of Ireland, scientists have discovered."

Blogging in the afternoon

Hello from blogging session #2 at the Omaha Public Library.

Internet moms: Getting the best of both worlds - CNN.com

CNN.com: "Jenni Hunt is an attractive, talented and ambitious professional from Portland, Oregon. She runs her own Internet business, selling on online auction site eBay and advising others how to navigate the site to gain maximum profits."

Blogging in the morning

Hello from the Omaha Public Library where I'm teaching my blogging workshop.

Blogging via Word 2007

I just discovered that when you select "New Document" in Word 2007, Blog Post is one of the available document types. So, I've set up my blog and am new writing this post. Once published, I'm hoping that it'll actually write clean code, unlike the Blogger for Word plug in available for Word2003.

RFID backlash gains momentum

CNN says: "In the past year, twenty-two states have introduced legislation regarding RFID technology, which uses tiny radio transmitter chips, or 'tags,' that can be inserted in a pallet full of goods, a pair of jeans, or a passport."

Hastings, NE

After a great Chinese buffet lunch with the directory of the Hastings College Library, I'm not now teaching Blogger.com to area librarians.

Internet Librarian 2007

It's official, I'll be giving a boatload of presentations at IL2007. I'll be giving my RSS pre-conference, a Sony Reader CyberTour, a Creative Commons CyberTour, and participating in panel session D203/4 "The Second Life Smorgasbord: Opportunities for All Types of Libraries in a Virtual Environment" along with five other presenters. Details on this session are below. See you there!

1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. & 3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
D203/4 The Second Life Smorgasbord: Opportunities for All Types of Libraries in a Virtual Environment
Moderator: Rhonda Trueman, Reference Librarian, Johnson and Wales University
Rosemary Arneson, Director of Carmichael Library, University of Montevallo
Kate Fitz, Public Services Librarian, Sacramento County Public Law Library
Michael Sauers, Technology Innovation Librarian, Nebraska Library Commission
Elisabeth Marrapodi Jacobsen, Library Director, Trinitas Hospital Library
Micki McIntyre, UMDNJ HealthyNJ Librarian, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
Second Life (SL) is a 3-D virtual environment where libraries of all types (academic, school, special, and public) from all over the world are collaborating to investigate, provide and evaluate library services for residents, educators and students in a virtual environment. From information services to programs, events, and immersive environments, all types of libraries and librarians with different skill sets are needed in the virtual environment. This panel of academic, public, and special librarians discusses their libraries’ involvement in this collaborative project and how libraries and librarians can get involved, contribute to SL, and what they might learn from the experience.

iPod song: two new verses

I've sent off my old busted iPod to buymybrokenipod.com. Two new iPod song verses have been written in it's honor:

I wish I were a brand-new apple ipod -
The kind that people hold dear to their hearts,
But, *sigh*, because my inner springs are broken,
They've sent me off to Frankenstein my parts!

It's sad to be a dying apple ipod
Whose playlists briefly pass before his screen.
I'm jealous of that new one that he's holding;
I hope the headphones turn his earlobes green!

I reject your gravity and substitute my own!

During Monday's debrief of Friday's NLC grand opening in Second Life we were discussing dancing on the roof. Being a child of the 80s I made some sort of comment to the effect of "too bad we weren't dancing on the ceiling". Well, Allana pulled it off and Christa tested it out.

Just stop by our building and try it out. Just look for the ball on the ceiling of the first floor.

Aero & batteries

I've heard many complaints about running Vista's Aero interface and the negative impact it has on laptop battery life. I've not noticed this in particular but I mostly run my laptop plugged in. Well, Clint decided to solve the problem and created the Vista Laptop Battery Saver V 1.0.0.1. Just unzip the program, dump a shortcut to it in your startup folder and it sits in your system tray. When you're plugged in, Aero runs. When you unplug you're automatically switched to the lower-power-consuming Vista basic theme. Plug back in, and Aero returns. I tested it last night and it worked as advertised.

Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens debate at NYPL

Got a dead iPod sitting around?

Good think I didn't toss my old, dead iPod. It looks like BuyMyBrokeniPod.com is willing to give me about $70 for it.

Denver Public Library: Summer of Reading

RE: Contacting me for permission

Someone from Waitakere College e-mailed me yesterday asking for permission to reuse some content from this site. I tried to respond but any e-mail I sent bounced back. Can you try contacting me from another address? Thanks.

Facebook song

I think I need to work this into my upcoming Social Web presentations.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

New License Plate

Lowest SAT score ever.

Dude takes the SAT and answers every question incorrectly, on purpose. What a way to hack the system.

Amazon.com offers feeds of tags

RSS web feeds for tagged products (syndication)

Podcasting from school

Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle School Podcast Directory

Kodak has finally made me smile again

I'm from the hometown of Kodak so don't get me started on my opinion of the company (it's not good) but this video, allegedly only for internal use, but released to the public due to popular demand, is the best "marketing" I've seen out of the Kodak in literally decades.

Jessamyn insalls Ubuntu

I've blogged about my Ubuntu experiences previously and if I wasn't so tied to MS software for work, I'd be running it myself. However, if you're still wondering how easy it is to install and use, check out Jessamyn's fun video on installing Ubuntu in a rural Vermont library.

Second Life moves toward real life age verification

Official Linden Blog � Blog Archive Age and Identity Verification in Second Life �: "Once the age verification system is in place, only those Residents with verified age will be able to access adult content in Mature areas. Any Resident wishing to access adult content will have to prove they are over 18 in real life."

Obligatory Spider-Man post

Happy Go Lucky 335
Originally uploaded by Repoort.

I'll not be seeing it 'till the weekend so this'll have to do for now.

On presenting copyright

On Saturday I attended a training day for school media specialists. The three afternoon sessions were on Flickr & Blogging (presented by a co-worker of mine), Copyright (presented by someone I don't know) and Podcasting (presented by YT). I caught the end of the flickr presentation, sat through the whole copyright presentation and then did mine. At the request of a couple of folks who read my tweets during the copyright presentation, I've written this post.

Important note: I am not criticizing the presenter. Her presentation style was just fine and her information was accurate in the strictest sense. So please, do not view this a anything vaguely related to a comment on the presenter herself.

The first problem with presenting an issue such as copyright is the fact that it's a legal issue and the final arbiter of whether you're violating copyright lays with a judge or a jury after presenting a bucket-load of facts. Those situations generally require lawyers to sort out the details and several times the presenter reminded the audience "I am not a lawyer". This is not to say that she shouldn't present this topic. I've attended presentations on copyright with a panel of lawyers, and they couldn't do much better since many times the answer to a given scenario is "it depends".

Because of this, most copyright presenters will err on the side of caution, especially when presenting to people from schools as, after all, you don't want to do something that will get your school sued by a copyright holder. So, for example, the presenter mentioned this example from the flickr presentation in which the Westmont Public Library is using flickr to promote new materials. According to the presenter, before doing this, the library should "check the license" in the book to see if this "use" is allowed and, not finding such permission in the item, contact each of the publishers individually, get permission, file that permission away, and then proceed with photographing the item and posting it on flickr.

O.k. that might follow the letter of the law but I would hardly call that a realistic course of action. (In fact, School Library Journal would say that this falls under fair use.) Granted, that is the exactly the technically correct advice to give and I don't blame her for it. But such advice, in my opinion, needs to be tempered with a bit of reality. Maybe something along the lines of "this may, or may not, fall under fair use and be prepared to stop doing it should a publisher object." However, no such advice was given and I could tell that by the end of the hour, every school-media specialist in that room looked a bit more paranoid than they did at the beginning of the hour.

I am not trying to say that this is the fault of the presenter. She's presenting on copyright and therefore does not want (I assume) to run the risk of giving someone "bad advice" and getting in trouble for it later. That's natural. However, the fact that she's in the position she's in, shows just how screwed up the current copyright law is.

P.S. I will give the presenter kudos for pointing out that Mickey Mouse is the driving force behind copyright updating.

P.P.S. From NPR's Morning Edition today: Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web

Interesting quote about blogs

(Unfortunately, I don't remember where I heard it or who said it.)

"If you blog as an afterthought, your readers will read it as an afterthought.

You're Invited!

You're Invited to the Grand Opening of the Nebraska Library Commission in Second Life!

Second Life is the online virtual world built and owned by it's residents. More than 400 librarians from all types of libraries are using Second Life to provide programs, services and materials to their patrons in the virtual world.

For example, at the Nebraska Library Commission in Second Life, we have installed a rotating exhibit of photos from Nebraska Memories. The photos on display will be changed on a regular basis, so there will always be something new to see!

We will also be scheduling events and training in the upcoming months. Check back here and at our Second Life building to see what we have planned!

So, join the Second Life community by creating your own personal avatar (it's FREE!) and come visit the Nebraska Library Commission at our new building on Cybrary City.

Skydiving

Ok, this may be the closest I ever get to the real thing but I must admit once I got the hang of it I had a pretty good time. (That's PlanetNeutral Fackler a.k.a. Greg Schwartz taking the plunge with me.)

Classic early Muppets

NLC Vendor Day 2007

Yesterday several dozen librarians from throughout Nebraska joined NLC staff and about a dozen library vendors at the Cornhusker Marriott in Lincoln, NE for the second annual NLC Vendor Day.

Overall I'd say it was a success. All of the sessions were well attended and many great questions were asked of the vendors about their products. Both of my sessions, Second Life and Hot Topics in Technology" were also well attended.

More specifically to me, my use of YouTube as presentation platform seemed to go over very well. All of the feedback I received indicated that it worked well and gave everyone an idea of what it was like to be in Second Life without actually going there. (That, and I didn't use PowerPoint at all so that's a guaranteed plus.)

From the presenter's persepctive YouTube did leave a bit to be desired. Due to the fact that all YouTube video pages force you to scroll to see the whole video window and each time you move to the next video in a playlist you have to re-scroll, I decided to use the playlist that I embedded in my blog the previous day. This way I could scroll down once, click play, and let it run, pausing when I needed to address something specific. Unfortunately, I didn't test this plan fully in advance. It seems that embedded playlists will play the first four videos and then force you to click over to the YouTube site to play the rest. (For purposes of ad revenue I'm sure.) So, due to this I was back in YouTube, scrolling to align future videos on the screen. It wasn't a complete breakdown of the plan but it did catch me off guard, something I try to avoid during a presentation.

The only other comment I would make about this method of presenting is not to go over the 30 minute mark when showing video. I pretty much kept to exactly 30 but I started to get the feeling at the end that if I'd gone any longer I would have started to loose some of the attendees.

Overall I'd give the day a 9 out of 10 and my YouTube experiment an 8 out of 10. (My photos from the day can be found by clicking on the photo in this post.)