An Introduction to Feeds reference

by Meredith Farkas on 12/30/2004 with Comments Off on An Introduction to Feeds

From Resource Shelf, I have found An Introduction to Feeds, which does an excellent job of describing what RSS is and how to use aggregators. I will definitely send this on to my dad, who I recently got set-up with Firefox, Bloglines, and del.icio.us. What is Christmas for if not to work on family members’ …

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Dispaches from the job hunt job search

by Meredith Farkas on 12/30/2004 with 3 comments

Today, Dorothea at Caveat Lector wrote about Them jobhuntin’ blues. Oh yes, I do feel your pain. After applying for jobs since late September, I really think I could get hired as a usability expert for human resource departments and universities. If it takes me more then three minutes on a university or library’s website …

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Searching handwritten manuscripts and Google libraries, our digital future, search

by Meredith Farkas on 12/30/2004 with Comments Off on Searching handwritten manuscripts and Google

Earlier this month, I had reported on a new way to search handwritten manuscripts that was developed by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Today, the New York Times has written about this exciting development, along with the fact that the head of the project is going to brief Google on it next month. So …

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What we have… hi, random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/28/2004 with Comments Off on What we have…

I don’t know what I could say that hasn’t already been said about the disaster in southeast Asia on Sunday. It is a tragedy beyond my comprehension — easily the worst thing that has ever happened in my lifetime. So many tens of thousands of people of all ages and from all walks of life… …

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Salinas libraries

by Meredith Farkas on 12/28/2004 with Comments Off on Salinas

The New York Times today has a story about the closing of the Salinas Public Library. What a sad situation. In a community comprised of many migrant and blue collar workers, losing the library may have a tremendous impact on community life (especially for children, immigrants, and the elderly). They may not realize it now, …

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New Cites & Insights and Simpsons puzzle random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/27/2004 with Comments Off on New Cites & Insights and Simpsons puzzle

Hi! The newest issue (Jan ’05) of Cites and Insights is out with some commentary on conference blogging, blogging ethics, and a bit on Google Print. Walt Crawford brings up the blog ethics debate started by Karen at Free Range Librarian: Karen paints herself in the awkward middle — people who want to do the …

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Happy Holidays random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/24/2004 with Comments Off on Happy Holidays

This will be my last post before Christmas. My posts may be a bit sporadic until Tuesday as my adorable niece and nephew are coming down for a visit with my sister-in-law. YAY! Here are pics of my niece and nephew at our wedding last August: Are they insanely cute or what? I hope everyone …

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Digitization’s long-term implications our digital future

by Meredith Farkas on 12/24/2004 with Comments Off on Digitization’s long-term implications

The Librarian in Black pointed the way to a fabulous tutorial on digital preservation. Anyone interested in the subject should take a look at Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems. Here are some other interesting works on digitization: Selecting Research Collections for Digitization by Dan Hazen, Jeffrey Horrell, Jan Merrill-Oldham. Washington State …

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A Net Nanny with an MLS intellectual freedom, libraries

by Meredith Farkas on 12/24/2004 with Comments Off on A Net Nanny with an MLS

Wow! In an age of shrinking budgets and shrinking staffs, the Phoenix Public Libraries has secured $175,000 to hire one full time professional librarian and three paraprofessionals to police their no-porn policies. The professional, this “Internet Resource Specialist”, would monitor people’s use of the Internet and deal with people’s requests to turn off the filters …

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The sound of silence random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/22/2004 with 1 comment

I’m not one of those people who really notices the sound my computer makes. All through college I practically slept with my laptop on the bed next to me (how romantic!). My husband, on the other hand, is really sensitive to noise, and has made it his life’s mission to build silent and cool running …

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Google’s Herculean task libraries, our digital future

by Meredith Farkas on 12/22/2004 with Comments Off on Google’s Herculean task

Here’s an interesting article from the San Francisco Gate about how Google has so far undertaken their Herculean digitization task. According to the article, at the rate they’re going at the University of Michigan, it will take approximately 19 years to do all 7 million books in the collection (and at $10 a book will …

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Teens in the library libraries, random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/22/2004 with 4 comments

Since I was up for a teen librarian position (which I did not get, sigh…) I’ve been thinking a lot about what libraries do for teens. The library I was interviewing at had a small area by the DVDs that was called the “teen section.” All this consisted of was YA books and magazines and …

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Satellite radio safe… for now intellectual freedom

by Meredith Farkas on 12/20/2004 with Comments Off on Satellite radio safe… for now

According to the Curmudgeony Librarian, the FCC has declined a request by a Saul Levine — a California radio station owner — to apply the same standards to satellite radio as they do to AM/FM radio. Essentially, he wanted satellite radio to be censored just like AM/FM radio: Levine argued among other things that this …

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Discretely blogging our digital future, random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/19/2004 with Comments Off on Discretely blogging

I don’t always agree with everything Free Range Librarian writes, but I think she is pretty darn right in her entry today about confidentiality and discretion. We librarians are all about free speech. But the First Amendment won’t make you less of a chump for kiss-and-tell blogging, and it won’t expunge the stain to your …

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Where Google leads… intellectual freedom, open source, our digital future

by Meredith Farkas on 12/18/2004 with Comments Off on Where Google leads…

Here is an interesting article I found via Resource Shelf. The Open Archive Initiative (OAI) and Google Scholar by Nick Luft looks at one positive effect Google (and specifically Google Scholar) may have on digital publishing. One of the greatest barriers to retrieving and exchanging scholarly information online is the fact that database vendors (and …

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