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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Libology Blog
Established July 2006
ISSN: 1946-1852
by Rick Mason
Category Archives: Language
Non Words
What would you call a collection of non words? That question occurs to me with the news that Oxford University Press has a vault containing millions of “non words” notated on 4″ x 6″ cards. These are the words that … Continue reading
Posted in Archival, Classification, Definitions, History, Language
Tagged Classification, dictionary, English languages, Language, Linguistics, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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The Positive No
No One Nos : Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas is an article on A List Apart that discusses when and how to address those situations where, for a variety of reasons, your best option is to tell someone … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Definitions, Ethics, Language, Web Design
Tagged A List Apart, Ethics, Language, No, Web Design, William Ury
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Political Dictionary
Political Dictionary is one of those resources to make a note about, as it contains words and phrases unique to the political environment without being politically charged in defining them. Interesting terms include: Full Ginsberg Mugwumps Recess Appointment Vote-a-rama
Posted in Blogs, Definitions, Government, History, Language, Politics
Tagged Blog, definitions, dictionary, Ginsberg, Government, Human Interest, Mugwumps, Politics
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How to Respond to Bad Press
Mary A. Dempsey, Commissioner for the Chicago Public Library, responded exceptionally well to a story on Fox Chicago News that suggested that the $120 million spent on the library was a waste, given the amount of information on the internet … Continue reading
Thinking about the Free Range Librarian Thinking about Open Source
Karen Schneider has been Thinking about Open Source. This is a good thing, as she tends to do a great job exploring the interrelationships between people, organizations, and technology. I want to highlight one portion of her post in order … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Groups, Language, Libraries, Library 2.0, Open Source, Software
1 Comment
Mash-Up is not a new term
From the Oxford English Dictionary, via Ron Murray at the Library of Congress, through the Disruptive Library Technology Jester, comes the news that the term “Mash-Up”, with roughly the same meaning as today, is over 150 years old! The modern … Continue reading
Posted in Definitions, History, Language, Library 2.0, Web Design
Tagged English languages, Library, Library of Congress, Oxford English Dictionary
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Accent Folding
A List Apart has been a steady source of thought-provoking inspiration over the years, not only from a website building perspective, but also because much of what they publish crosses boundaries and impacts other projects and interests in my life. … Continue reading
Posted in ILS, Language, Libraries, Library 2.0, OPAC, Search, Web Design
Tagged Character sets, ILS, Libraries, OPAC, Regular expression, Search, Typography, Unicode, Web Design
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APA Offers to Replace 6th Edition of Style Manual
For the background on this issue, see Quis custodiet isos custodes. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the American Psychological Association has decided to offer copies of the second printing of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Education, Language, Libraries, News, Publishing
Tagged American Psychological Association, APA, Bill Drew, Facebook, Inside Higher Ed, social networks, the Chronicle of Higher Education;
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The title is latin for “Who watches the watchers?” The American Psychological Association’s current style book, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed., contains dozens of errors, several of them in examples and sample papers. Needless to say, … Continue reading
Cookery is Toast
My favorite example of “proper” library terminology that doesn’t relate to the language in use by the general public (or most library employees for that matter) is Cookery. The Library of Congress is in the process of retiring the subject … Continue reading
Posted in Cataloging, Language, Libraries
Tagged cookery, cooking, LCSH, Libraries, Library of Congress
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BBC Languages
BBC Languages is fantastic web resource provided by the British Broadcasting Corporation, and is filled with audio language resources. These include 12-week beginning lessons, a Quick Fix section containing “essential phrases”, and teacher’s resources. found via Librarian in Black
Stupid Disclaimer
A brief rant, if you will accomodate me for a moment: I encountered a disclaimer in an e-mail that strikes me as extreme enough to mention: This email, and any attachment, is intended only for the person or entity to … Continue reading
Posted in Copyright, Language, WebSearch
Tagged copyfraud, Copyright, disclaimer, general public communication, internet search, legal
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Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies
The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies is a British site “established by Jane Hart as a place to keep track of learning trends, technologies and tools.” Most impressive, at first glance, are the lists of free tools and resources: … Continue reading
Posted in Language, Libraries, Library 2.0, Online Services, Open Source, Software, Training, Translation
Tagged Centre for Learning, Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, Education, Jane Hart, Libraries, resources, Software, Training
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LibraryThing and Authors
LibraryThing has implemented the start of a solution for the problem of distinguishing authors with the same names. This has been a challenge for libraries since the beginning of cataloging. The accepted solution thus far has been Authority Records. I … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Cataloging, Classification, Language, Libraries, Library 2.0
Tagged Authority, disambiguation, elegant solution, LibraryThing, Wikipedia
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Fonterrific
A recent post, and the resulting discussion, on Metafilter has put me in a Unicode font frenzy. A few links of note from there and elsewhere: decodeunicode.org is a wiki-based collection of Unicode characters. You can browse as well as … Continue reading
Posted in ILS, Language, Libraries, Online Databases, OPAC, Software, Web Design, Wiki
Tagged characters, fonts, ILS, Unicode, Unicode.org, Web Design
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HotStuff 2.0
HotStuff 2.0 is described by its creator, Dave Pattern, as “an automatically updated blog… [in which] a daily blog post is generated using a single word that has seen a marked increase in usage over the last few days.” The … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, Language, Libraries, Library 2.0, Web Design
Tagged Blogs, Dave Pattern, Libology, Library, Words
2 Comments
Annenberg Media Streaming Video
The Annenberg Media website at learner.org is a resource that offers on-demand streaming video for “schools, colleges, libraries, public broadcasting stations, public access channels, and other community agencies”. These are top-notch programs, several which I recognize as having been used … Continue reading
Posted in Education, History, Language, Libraries, Online Services, Politics, Science, Video, Web Design
Tagged Annenberg Media, Education, History, Libraries, Microsoft Windows, streaming video
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Three Great Book Repair Guides
A Simple Book Repair Manual is a web-based guide created and hosted by the Dartmouth College Library. It covers what a library needs to set up a toolkit and make straightforward repairs. Conservation Book Repair : A training manual by … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Language, Libraries, Online Services, Training, Tutorials
Tagged Alaska Heritage Museum, Artemis BonaDea, book repair, Conservation Technician, Curator, Dartmouth College Library, Dartmouth College;, Stanford University, web-based guide
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Japanese Translation
I noticed when reviewing my server statistics that one of my entries was run through Google Translate. Curiosity being what it is, I called up the page: When I realized that the post was about (see it here in English), … Continue reading