by Meredith Farkas on 12/8/2004 with Comments Off on Bringing LexisNexis to the masses: LexisNexis Ala Carte
LexisNexis 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 …
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Steven 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 …
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by Meredith Farkas on 12/8/2004 with Comments Off on Making digitization easier
Wow! 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 …
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by Meredith Farkas on 12/6/2004 with Comments Off on Holiday gifts for geeks (like me)
Can’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 …
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by Meredith Farkas on 12/6/2004 with Comments Off on Library education in the 21st century
I 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, …
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Wow, 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. …
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by Meredith Farkas on 12/4/2004 with Comments Off on On Being a 21st Century Librarian
Yesterday, 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 …
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I 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 …
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by Meredith Farkas on 12/4/2004 with Comments Off on Librarians asking for more
Rory 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 …
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by Meredith Farkas on 12/4/2004 with Comments Off on First holiday as a married couple
This 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 …
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by Meredith Farkas on 12/3/2004 with Comments Off on Hope for those with Linux-compatibility issues
I’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 …
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Tame 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, …
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by Meredith Farkas on 12/2/2004 with Comments Off on What are libraries looking for?
I’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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I’ve got jury duty tomorrow (and hopefully ONLY tomorrow), so I may not have time to post anything. I would really like to be on a jury as I never have been before, but I’m a bit nervous because I have a job interview on Friday that I can’t afford to miss. I’ll let you …
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Michael McGrorty has an eloquent article about the homeless and public libraries in his blog today. This is a really tough subject in public libraries. As librarians, we really don’t want to restrict access to anyone, but at the same time, we also don’t want to discourage many people from coming to the library because …
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There have been a number of recently published or written scholarly articles on blogging. Communications of the ACM has devoted most of their December 2004 anniversary issue to articles about The Blogosphere. I read the articles for free (one of the benefits of still being a University student) and didn’t really find anything in them …
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by Meredith Farkas on 11/29/2004 with Comments Off on Citizen journalism meets the wiki phenomenon
Amateur journalists take note: according to Wired, the makers of Wikipedia have now created Wikinews, which allows anyone to write and edit news articles (subject to a similar review process to that of the Wikipedia, of course).
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I’m probably grossly oversimplifying this, but I think there are two types of librarians: those who embrace technology and those who are antagonistic towards it or ignore it. I have seen this in my work at a public library and, surprisingly to me, at library school. I have been amazed that many people in my …
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by Meredith Farkas on 11/28/2004 with Comments Off on Great American History bibliography
December 2004’s American Heritage magazine features America Unabridged: The Definitive Guide to the Greatest Books About Our Past. This annotated bibliography covers a wide variety of topics and all of the time periods in American History, with materials chosen by many well-known historians. It includes not only books, but movies, photographs, and other works of …
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I couldn’t agree more with what Aaron Schmidt wrote about in his Ten Things to Stay Tech Current, but I think he should add a number eleven to his list: learn everything you can about open source and use OSS in your library. I really don’t understand why more libraries haven’t explored the world of …
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