Bloglines - Article Reach

Bloglines user mmwong@u.washington.edu has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

I'd love to see a service like this at the UW Libraries. If WSU libraries don't have an article, either in electronic or print form, they will send the article electronically to students (provided another participating library has access to it). Very nice!

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Library Stuff The library weblog dedicated to resources for keeping current and professional development

Article Reach By Steven on Interlibrary Loan Another really cool customer service, from Washington State University Libraries. Link

Ridiculous Library of Congress Subject Headings: Week of November 26, 2007

Hello all,
Hope Thanksgiving was fun-filled and full of pie. I took a little break from searching for Ridiculous LCSH to spend time with my family. Thought I would mention a tag that I don't really think is silly to catalog - it's just silly by itself: Terrorist threat warning systems--Color codes. Also a tongue twister: Wheat root rot. Trying saying that five times fast. In regards to the first entry on the list, I think you should know that an award is handed out each year to the best clown of the year. It's called the "Coors Man in the Can."

• Rodeo clowns
• Kangaroo deterrents and repellents
• Pregnant women in advertising
• Railroad tracks--Weed control
• Holy wells--England
• Pine cone craft
• Bardin the Superrealist (Fictitious character)
• Bananas in art
• Fantasy cricket (Game)
• Scenic byways--Iowa

By the way, in terms of terrorism alert, I'm feeling sort of tangerine. More heightened than regular orange.

Bloglines - the most unusual books of the world

Bloglines user mmwong@u.washington.edu has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

This wiki is just what it says: it lists some interesting books, both in shape and content. My favorite is the book with the lighted lamp inside! :)

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librarian.net putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999

the most unusual books of the world By jessamyn on wiki In wiki format: http://mywiki.ws/The_Most_Unusual_Books_of_the_World. [slowreading] Comments

Bloglines - Social Networking in Plain English

Bloglines user mmwong@u.washington.edu has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

I LOVE the Common Craft Show's easy-to-understand tutorial videos that have covered so far how RSS and wikis work. Also light bulbs and zombies...kinda random. Anyhoo, here's one on Social Networking:

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The Common Craft Show The Common Craft Show

Social Networking in Plain English In explanation This video is for people who wonder why social networking web sites are so popular. One reason is because they solve a real-world problem: they make the invisible visible. We'll let the video explain how it works. Comments

Stop Bugging Me!

No, we're not talking wiretapping here--just pure pestering from websites that require you register before using certain features, such as e-mailing a story (e.g. the New York Times online edition). But privacy lovers--and lazy people who hate the hassle of registering--can rejoice, because now there's Bugmenot.com. This site shares logins and passwords that you can use to bypass giving your contact info to everyone.

For example, I just read an article from the NYTimes* and wanted to e-mail it to a co-worker, but didn't feel like registering w/ them, so I looked up the most successfully used login/password combo of siemens2/siemens and got in just fine.

*If you're curious, the article was "Meet the Life Hackers."

Bloglines - Defining Reading

Bloglines user mmwong@u.washington.edu has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

Attention all readers' advisors! The YALSA blog highlighted a new NEA report on reading habits of teens and adults. They point out that the researchers may have narrower view of reading that makes it seem like teens are not reading, even though they probably really are.

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YALSA YALSA

Defining Reading In Teen Reading Today the National Endowment for the Arts published a report titled To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence. (Link is to a .pdf file.) The report discusses the reading habits of teens and adults and considers the frequency with which different age groups read for pleasure, read a book, and read at all. Reading the study one has to ask, how did those gathering the data define reading? For example, there is a finding that states "Teens and young adults spend less time reading than people of other age groups." How can that be true? Don't teens read when surfing YouTube, looking for something on Google, figuring out how to improve their gaming scores, checking out photos on Flickr? Maybe it's because the authors of the report don't consider using the web, playing video games, or even emailing to encompass valid reading opportunities. For example another finding states "Even when reading does occur, it competes with other media." One of the sub-bullets in that finding is that "20% of their reading time is shared by TV watching, video/computer game-playing, instant messaging, e-mailing, or Web surfing." Isn't it pretty obvious that IMing, emailing, and web surfing require reading? There are some valid concerns about multitasking and reading comprehension outlined in this report. However, if we as a society don't seriously investigate how we define reading, and recognize that reading formats other than books is reading, we are going to alienate many teens and younger generations. When you read about the report (or read the actual document) think about what the research really looked at, how the researchers defined reading, and how the data does or doesn't reflect what you are seeing in your community and setting. Be careful not to make teens feel that just because they are reading something online, and not reading a traditional format such as a paperback book, that that reading doesn't count. Let teens know that reading in a variety of formats is something you respect and value. Comments

Digital "Telephone"

Remember that game of Telephone where the original message gets wildly distorted? Blogs (like any means of communication) can also get things wrong, even after three degrees of separation. Here's where library and information professionals can step in, and remind folks to verify their sources!

From the Young Go-getter blog: http://tinyurl.com/yt2mmp

Bloglines - Need Help with an Avatar?

Bloglines user mmwong@u.washington.edu has sent this item to you.

YALSA YALSA

Need Help with an Avatar? In YALSA Info. Here's a short video on an introduction to making an avatar. Feel free to watch it to get ideas for your own for the Create Your Own Avatar contest during YALSA's Gaming Extravaganza during Midwinter. Another great resource for creating avatars can be found here created by librarian Jami Schwarzwalder. Posted by Kelly Czarnecki Comments

Bloglines - New Book on Google

Bloglines user mmwong@u.washington.edu has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

interesting article on Google...how do you feel about this company?

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Stephen's Lighthouse Stuff of interest to me that may be of interest to library folk.

New Book on Google By stephen Are you or your institution one of Google's partners? It's a tad pricey but Steve's bookks are always good. Stephen E. Arnold Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator "This is the first time someone has made a detailed study of the major patents held by Google and has extrapolated the company's possible business strategies. Traditionally, it has been difficult to get to grips with what Google is. The company is not specifically secretive; rather, it is unforthcoming about its aims, plans, strategies and ambitions. "Provide access to the world's knowledge" is about as focused an articulation of mission as one can get from the Google people. No big PR puffs; no in-depth briefings. And, from a quick outside perusal, the company seems to dabble in all sorts of technology areas and buy up all sorts of high-tech companies, which makes measuring progress or evaluating strategic orientation somewhat difficult. Stephen Arnold, in this successor to "The Google Legacy", concentrates on analysing Google's potential via a study of the company's intellectual property (patents). Google is a company of engineers and mathematicians, not a company of sales, promotion and legal wizards. Mathematics is the foundation of Google's wizardry and, as analysed by Arnold in this new study, the Googleplex is a wondrous construct that gives Google a major competitive advantage in a wide variety of possible fields: enterprise services and computing, web and enterprise search, publishing, banking, advertising, telecommunications. The Googleplex can crunch, analyse and extrapolate rapidly, intelligently and economically from extremely large quantities of data. The owners of such a machine can test and probe a variety of markets, and their existing base income from advertising gives them billions of dollars to use in their probes and explorations. "Innovation at Google is the fuel needed to power the Googleplex and to satisfy Google's hunger for ever more powerful, capable systems and software," explains Arnold. "Google, unlike Amazon or Yahoo, is built on mathematics, not engineering". This major new study of Google concentrates on deriving information about the company from an analysis of its key patents. These patents are often difficult to discover, since Google rarely files under the Google name; an exhaustive hunt of some of the key Google technical staff is required in order to unearth many of the patents held by Google. "I have a keen awareness of Google's transformation from a search company to a digital Exxon or Wal*Mart," writes Stephen Arnold in the current study. "These are companies that operate at a scale that their competitors cannot easily match. If Google can continue its upward trajectory, it will emerge as a genetic variant of the multi-national corporation or what I call a supra-national enterprise."' Lots more after the link. Stephen

OPL Plus (not just for OPLs anymore) : GREAT FIREFOX EXTENSION

michelle has sent you a link to a blog:

Here's a handy Firefox extension called Read Me Later. I plan to use it so I don't have to clutter my del.icio.us account with one-time only reads on the web.

Blog: OPL Plus (not just for OPLs anymore)
Post: GREAT FIREFOX EXTENSION
Link: http://opls.blogspot.com/2007/11/great-firefox-extension.html

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Library Journal - What's Still Wrong with Reference

How would YOU like to improve reference services?

What's Still Wrong with Reference
Read the full article at:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6497259.html?nid=3282&

Bloglines - Connect-the-Dots Tattoo

Just for fun!

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Neatorama The Neat Side of the Web

Connect-the-Dots Tattoo By Alex on Tattoo, Etc. Colleen Venable is obsessed with giraffes (it all started when she lost a giraffe toy as a child, which sets off a 3 year hunt for that particular stuffed animal. Long story short 1,712 giraffes later, she found it!). As part of her art project The Stalking and Murdering of a Childhood Giraffe Project, Colleen decided to get an "extremely visible invisible tattoo": a connect-the-dot tattoo of the giraffe toy. (She traced the giraffe with a pen for us all to see) Links: Colleen's Flickr Photoset | LiveJournal account of the whole shebang Comments

Ridiculous Library of Congress Subject Headings: Week of November 12, 2007

Hey, this is a short post on ridiculous LCSH because I'm starting to feel the pressure of classes, and I really should be working on assignments. Here are this week's findings, including one for French speakers:

• Primate remains
• Walk-up windows
  
• Total war
• Runescape
• Library Web sites
• Mad scientist films
• National parks and reserves - United States - Humor
• Late blight of potato
  
• Quinze joies de mariage

Match the picture with the subject heading!

Become a del.icio.us Power User

Probably many of you are already hip to the organizational usefulness of del.icio.us. I jumped on the band-wagon myself last Spring while working on a project for LIS 521, discovering that it would let my partner and I easily share web resources. However, since that time I have largely forgotten about it, and only manage to think about it when I come across something that is desperately important for me to look at later, even though I know damn well I'll never actually make it back.

Well, no more! Check out this blog entry from Web Worker Daily, and take in some tips that will help you become a social tagging dynamo!

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/11/01/become-a-delicious-power-user/

Library Comics

Of course, there's Unshelved by Gene Ambaum (who's also a 2007 Library Journal Mover and Shaker) and Bill Barnes. But now there's also Shelf Check (by Emily Lloyd) and Turn the Page (by Jayson).

And if you're inspired to create your own online comics, there's Stripgenerator.

Ridiculous Library of Congress Subject Headings: Week of November 5, 2007

Every once in a while, I come across something that should be a subject heading in the Library of Congress. Two cities in the United States (Angels Camp, California and Jefferson, Oregon) claim to be "Frog-Jumping Capital of the World," while Valley City claims to be the "Frog-Jumping Capital of Ohio." Old Mill Village, Pennsylvania holds an annual frog-jumping competition as well. In terms of monographs, there is a short story called the "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain and a children's book called "Jump, Frog, Jump" by Robert Kalan (that has received 5-star reviews on Amazon!) Yet the Library of Congress fails to recognize the activity as worthy of classification. Seems to me we should be cataloging and preserving this important piece of our American heritage.

An important distinction: Frog-jumping competitions generally measure jumping distances of amphibians. However, a frog-jump is also a human endeavor recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records - where a person holds his or her big toes while jumping. The current record for human frog-jumping is 10 meters in 9.5 seconds.

• Swimming - Kick
• Nursing - Pictorial Works
• Sport Utility Vehicles - Crashworthiness
• Peat bogs - Statistical methods
• Hunting dogs in art
• Strap-on sex
• Buddy films
• Male pregnancy

Other things to be concerned about this week: November initiatives and robot frogs. Rock the vote and put a stop to frog-bots.

Happy Halloween?

A little belated, but perhaps a head start for next year's costume?

Your very own Christopher Walken mask: http://www.brandonbird.com/halloween_treat.html

(Found via Unshelved's blog)