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Archive for December, 2004
Next Entries »Bringing LexisNexis to the masses: LexisNexis Ala Carte
Wednesday, December 8th, 2004LexisNexis is now offering its articles ala carte, which allows regular folks who are not affiliated with an institution of higher learning to search LexisNexis and buy the full-text if they so choose. You have to register to search (though the search itself is free), and then any article you wish to read costs only [...]
Why we blog
Wednesday, December 8th, 2004Steven Cohen has written a concise explanation of why he blogs, which perfectly describes what I hope to get out of blogging: When people ask me why I put so much effort into my weblog, I mention that I want to be well-informed about the technology that has an effect on my profession, and by [...]
Making digitization easier
Wednesday, December 8th, 2004Wow! File this under amazingly cool tools for digitization. Some computer science folks from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have come up with a took that can search handwritten manuscripts without requiring human intervention (rekeying). Here is an article about how it works. You can even try it out. This is a promising step [...]
Holiday gifts for geeks (like me)
Monday, December 6th, 2004Can’t think of what to get for the geek on your list? Take a look at some of the holiday product guides and 2004 best of guides from Wired, Ars Technica, PC Mag, Forever Geek, Extreme Tech, and Think Geek. And if those weren’t enough, Gizmodo has a huge list of holiday gift guides for [...]
Library education in the 21st century
Monday, December 6th, 2004I think our ALA president-elect, Michael Gorman, has the right idea on what the ALA should be focusing on. Education. According to the Library Journal, in a meeting entitled “The Future of Library Information Education”, Gorman expressed serious concerns about the state of library education and accreditation. Although I’ve only gone through one MLIS program, [...]
The Librarian
Monday, December 6th, 2004Wow, that was a bad movie. Every cheesy action movie and librarian cliche were stunningly in evidence, and I really feel that I should strongly caution Noah Wylie not to quit his day job at ER after this season (BIG mistake) . Cheesy can oftentimes be funny, but, in my opinion, this really wasn’t funny. [...]
On Being a 21st Century Librarian
Saturday, December 4th, 2004Yesterday, at my job interview, I was asked to talk about the 21st century library and what I would bring to it. I wish I had read this article by Robert S. Martin of IMLS (in College and Research Libraries News) before I went to the interview. While I did talk about libraries changing their [...]
Kahle vs. Ashcroft
Saturday, December 4th, 2004I don’t have anything to say about the case that hasn’t been said before, but I am really saddened by the fact that this case, challenging the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, has been dismissed. To me, this is a clear sign (among many) that our government has moved completely away from any consideration [...]
Librarians asking for more
Saturday, December 4th, 2004Rory Litwin has an excellent editorial in Library Juice this month. Undone by Flattery is about what librarians give up because we are so susceptible to flattery. After suffering daily with ungrateful and difficult patrons, we often feel like no one appreciates the service we offer to society. We love to hear people talk about [...]
First holiday as a married couple
Saturday, December 4th, 2004This year, my husband and I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time and it was a rousing success. Here is a picture of the table before the guests arrived. And here’s me (or part of me) setting the table. My mother-in-law is quite the gourmet, and my father is quite picky, so any praise from [...]
Hope for those with Linux-compatibility issues
Friday, December 3rd, 2004I’m surprised I hadn’t heard more about this news before I found this encouraging CNET article via Librarian’s Happen. Apparently, Adobe is moving into open source software development and marketing. They won’t specify exactly what their plans are, but the fact that they are hiring a Director of Linux Market Development and a computer scientist [...]
Libraries and RSS
Thursday, December 2nd, 2004Tame the Web this week has a great little guide on Teaching RSS to Reference Librarians. He’s got great links to other resources that will educate and inspire librarians to get excited about RSS. The Kansas City Public Library System and the Minneapolis Public Library are good examples of public libraries that have embraced RSS, [...]
What are libraries looking for?
Thursday, December 2nd, 2004I’m back from my wacky wild trip into our legal system. I’ll just say that I hope I’m never on the other side of the law, because it was nerve-wracking enough just being in the jury pool! And I don’t know if this is typical, but the courtroom was the coldest room I’ve been in. [...]
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