Fri 27 Oct 2006
… for library school students, that is.
If their form is to be believed, they are asking you to send in your student ID as part of the process. Not sure if they really mean a photocopy or what, but I did send an e-mail asking how quickly they would return one’s ID… 
Humor aside, this is a neat offer for those who are in library school.
from Catalogablog
Fri 27 Oct 2006
My co-worker Tim just started his new blog, The Reflective Librarian. This would be his second start at blogging (he started one last spring), but I expect that this time around he will have some fantastic things to write about.
He is enthusiastic about what he does, whether it be librarianship, music or simply interacting with another human being. This, I suspect, will be an interesting blog to follow.
Thu 26 Oct 2006
With Halloween just around the corner, the best way to set the mood is with a classic scary story. Check out the Google Scary Stories page (a result of the Google Books project) and see the public domain spookiness that awaits you!
from Official Google Blog
Thu 26 Oct 2006
Ubuntu 6.10 has been released. The latest version of this free and easy to use operating system is available for download to try out and/or install on the computer of your choice!
I have found Ubuntu to be the smoothest version of Linux that I have tried, and expect it to become much more common as time goes on.
from OSDir.com
Thu 26 Oct 2006
… check on the just announced free upgrade to Windows Vista with a new computer purchase that includes Windows XP. This varies by OS version and retailer, so check before you purchase.
from Monkey Bites
Thu 26 Oct 2006
Neighboroo is one of the many mashups that exist using the Google Maps as the user interface. What Neighboroo does is give you a visual geographic layout of a variety of statistics, while doing a great job explaining those stats, and highlighting them by specific location.
Go to your chosen location, run through the categories, and see what I mean….
from Monkey Bites
Wed 25 Oct 2006
I know, I know… two posts in a row about Google…
But you see, they released this new thingamajig called Google Co-op Custom Search Engine that is essentially a do-it-yourself federated search engine creator. One configures it, then copies the generated code to a web page, and there it is.
Gonna have to play with this one…
from Official Google Blog
Wed 25 Oct 2006
In this post I gave my take on the use of Google as a verb.
On the official Google blog, Google’s lawyers give their take.
Fairly close… I still think my suggestion would have some great market appeal.
Mon 23 Oct 2006
It is still a bit early (tomorrow is the official release date), but it seems that the folks over at Mozilla have put the final version of Firefox 2.0 on their download site.
This isn’t as dramatic an update as IE7, but it is a steady improvement on an already excellent browser. I recommend it over IE7 for many reasons, which people have probably gotten tired of hearing from me, so I will leave it at that.
from OSDir.com
Mon 23 Oct 2006
Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 7, and they have paid attention to what works for people when browsing. If you are using IE, I recommend that you upgrade to version 7 now: you will be safer online, websites created to standards will finally be rendered properly, and you will finally see what the big deal is about tabbed browsing.
But wait…
(in addition, the first serious security vulnerability has arisen. This is a new version, so these things can be expected.)
Tue 17 Oct 2006
Shopping for something in the consumer electronics category? Want detailed information about what the product can and cannot do? Can’t find the manual for that product you already own?
Check out Retrevo Search, where you can type in the model number of a product, and in return you get the complete user’s manual, as well as access to reviews and message boards for the product.
from Monkey Bites
Tue 17 Oct 2006
The W3C has launched the Secure Browsing Initiative, an attempt to define standards that will help ensure that the browser, currently the most vulnerable element in web security, will become more secure.
Given the W3C’s history of establishing standards for many, many elements of the internet, not the least being XHTML and CSS, this initiative will likely have benefits to the security of everyone’s experience on the web.
from Monkey Bites
Mon 16 Oct 2006
Don’t you hate it when you miss someone’s birthday? OpenOffice.org had its birthday last Friday, October 13th, and I completely forgot about it.
I guess it is ok, though, as OO.org likes to give birthday gifts instead of receiving them: Version 2.0.4 was released, with some good additions!
from OSDir.com
Sun 15 Oct 2006
The University of Missouri - Columbia is hosting a plethora of webcasts of interest to library-type people under the banner of LiS Radio.
These range from interviews to classes, from conversations to meetings. Browse their site and see what there is to hear (but use the MP3 versions for now… they are having trouble with their QuickTime streams!)
from Resource Shelf
Fri 13 Oct 2006
Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Copywrongs and The Anarchist in the Library, has an essay in the current Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), titled Copyright Jungle.
You should read it. I don’t think things are quite as bleak as he portrays (I personally think that Fair Use will be affirmed in a significant legal decision, and help to partially offset the lengthening of copyright protection) but he does present a fantastic overview of where we stand in the copyright wars.
from ResourceShelf
(100 days, 133 posts!)
Thu 12 Oct 2006
The Joint Information Systems Committee, an organization based in England, has launched a tool to help libraries and researchers compare and contrast different online databases.
The Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) lets you quickly see the similarities and differences among different databases (at least a couple of them are British, so they may not be as useful comparisons for us across the Atlantic), as well as between different platforms (think EbscoHost, ProQuest, FirstSearch, among others).
There is a basic User Guide available, as well as an accompanying report that details the methodology.
The software is fast, the screen output is clean and well organized, and the site has a Creative Commons British Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. This could change the way you choose your databases!
from ResourceShelf
Thu 12 Oct 2006
It seems to be a Google day: Google has put some of their offerings together as an educational platform for K-12 teachers to use for their classes. Google for Educators has nothing that isn’t being offered elsewhere, but it presents it in a way that shows the potential of their software and services when used as a teaching aid.
For those teachers who really want to spice up their resume, there is the Google Teacher Academy, a “one-day experience” which is free to those who are accepted, but you must live in Northern California for now - they do plan to expand the program in the future.
from the Official Google Blog
Thu 12 Oct 2006
Google and the University of Wisconsin - Madison announced today that they will be partners in the Google Books project.
This is getting kind of local… less than 200 miles!
from Search Engine Watch
Wed 11 Oct 2006
At first glance, this seems like it ought to be tagged “Humor“, but take a few minutes to check this against your own catalog, and you won’t be laughing at all:
Typo of the Day has a mission… they will feature a common library catalog typographical error each day with the purpose being that we all test our catalogs and fix the entries containing the errors.
Today is the first day, and the typo is “Adminstration”. I checked our catalog, and it appears in three records (which are now fixed). If this turns out to be an average (and who knows?), in one year we could clean up 1,000 errors in our database.
So check your database… search for “Adminstration” and see what you find. Fix the errors. Make it part of your daily routine. We will all have cleaner catalogs for the effort.
from Catalogablog
Wed 11 Oct 2006
In the news today: Eudora, the e-mail client that has been around since the late 1980’s, will soon be based on the Mozilla Thunderbird source and released as an open-source project.
The reason behind this is that Qualcomm, the owner of Eudora, has been maintaining the software in spite of its being a wireless technology company. It wants to keep the program alive, but maintaining it takes more resources than it wants to devote.
Ten years ago, companies seemed to let software projects die, leaving users to use stagnant code, or switch to other programs. Now they are released to to wild, so to speak, where they have the opportunity to be revitalized and flourish. Not a bad way to go!
from Mozilla Dot Org
