March 2010
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Top Ten Films featuring Librarians -- Film... →
Last week I posted books written by librarians. This time it’s movies featuring librarians!
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Are You Ready for the New, Easier Wikipedia? →
Given these statistics, it’s no surprise that Wikipedia wants to make some changes. Recent reports point to slowed growth, a downward trend that may be partly to blame on the increasingly complex editing process, according to some experts.
Dr. Ed H Chi, a scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center in California, told the Telegraph that the site had become a “more exclusive...
dailylitemilydickinson:
Welcome to Emily Dickinson’s Poems on Tumblr!
This Tumblog is a serialization of Emily Dickinson’s Poems powered by DailyLit.
Follow this Tumblog and each day you’ll get one of Dickinson’s great poems.
The fun starts on Tuesday, March 30, but the countdown is ON. Hope you’ll read with us!
You can help us spread the word by recommending this Tumblog for inclusion in...
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If you have a serious question don't turn to KGB:... →
KGB purports to offer “high-quality answers on the go” for 99 cents. They are appealing to mobile users everywhere who just want answers. Looking at their sample questions online they are pretty much targeting old-school ready reference inquiries such as city populations and demographics, weather, trivia, and video game cheat codes.
I think there are strengths and weaknesses to text message...
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Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google -... →
The Internet defines the way that young people learn, communicate, and create. A recent report by the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative at Harvard’s Berkman Center stated that “[m]edia literacy skills overlap with safety skills.” In addition to learning how to phrase a search query, students need to learn how to protect themselves online, and how to share their work...
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Crossover Readers' Advisory Virtual Session →
Recommendations include young adult books for adults (“literariness” is a selling point), adult books for young adults (fast pace, believable content and characters (although flawed characters are often preferred), and an edgy, gritty side”), and a couple fantasy books that toe the line.
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San Diego Central Library shuts its doors... →
A library in my area has recently started staying open on Sundays, as per many patron requests and observations from librarians. Convenience is one thing that users cite, over and over again, as being a primary reason for using or not using the library. It’s something that libraries are (or should be) constantly looking to improve upon. Being forced to make things less convenient because...
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Tips for Searching the Internet for That Long-Lost... →
Useful tips for librarians helping with genealogy research, and also ghost hunters trying to vanquish dangerous spirits.
Obama picks up books for his girls at Iowa City's... →
N’aww. Too bad he didn’t visit the library two blocks away. >.>
WatchTHE BEAST FILE: GOOGLE (via Stephen’s Lighthouse)
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DRM-Free Downloadable (Sony) Music at the Library →
The libraries must pre-pay for a minimum number of downloads from Freegal, and each library user will be limited to, at most, 20 downloads per week. Libraries that see a spike in use can limit the number of systemwide downloads in a week or month to ensure wider access, and library card holders can also reserve downloads.
No download manager is required—a step that has complicated audiobook...
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Overdrive to Offer Honor System eBook Lending for... →
The purchase and usage model for DRM-free ebooks, at least to start, will be almost the same as for DRM ebooks. The library will be able to purchase one or more licenses for use by a single user of the book at a time. In other words, the patron will be able to borrow the ebook for a set borrowing period, during which time other patrons will not be able to read the ebook. At the end of the...
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LA Public Library System Facing Massive Cuts →
“As most of you probably know, the City of Los Angeles is struggling to close a $212 million budget gap for the coming fiscal year. You may also have heard that seven out of LA’s 15 city council members have staunchly refused to take a paycut, even though their annual salary, $178,789 as well as a free car and health insurance, is the highest in the nation for their positions.
But...
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Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context -... →
Mr. Shields’s book consists of 618 fragments, including hundreds of quotations … that Mr. Shields, 53, has taken out of context and in some cases, he says,’also revised, at least a little — for the sake of compression, consistency or whim.’ He only acknowledges the source of these quotations in an appendix, which he says his publishers’ lawyers insisted he add.
“Who owns...
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Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News... →
If we are willing to take crowd-sourced content - whether tweets, Facebook updates, blogs, videos or whatever else - as valid sources for information about our world, then a collection of these same media as carefully poured over and curated as found in a Wikipedia article should be even more trusted, not less, than those bits on their own.
I think it’s sad that Wikipedia has developed such...
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Yale Law Library Adds Bobblehead Dolls to Its... →
“‘The oldest lawyer joke I’m aware of is actually from the Middle Ages,’ Mr. Widener said. It involves a successful lawyer who renounces material things and joins a monastery. The abbot gives him responsibility for the monastery’s financial affairs, but things do not go well. Punch line: ‘It’s because I’m not allowed to lie anymore.’”
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Great novel? You must be having a laugh - Times... →
But there is another issue, too: one for which you can’t blame publishers or booksellers. The thing about being funny is that it’s really hard. It’s a lot harder than being serious. It requires wit, grace, agility, sensitivity; it requires knowing how hard to push and when to stop on a dime.
Craig Ferguson says comedy is difficult because senses of humor vary so widely. While there’s...
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Using Social Media to Connect with Teens « Tame... →
One contributer’s advice:
Be Yourself
Stay Active
Educate Them
Give Stuff Away
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Book Review - 'This Book Is Overdue - How... →
“In This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, she offers a lively parade of people and places, all related to library science, or sort of related. Johnson ushers us into the American Kennel Club Library and introduces us to the inevitable graying librarian in a boiled-wool jacket with a Scotty pin. She also teleports over to a Las Vegas “gentlemen’s club” called...
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Library site a hot new social media hangout for... →
What I find interesting about this example is that the students are interacting on a unique, password-protected forum, rather than something widespread and well known like Facebook.
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Why read the 'Great Books' when you can laugh at... →
Charles Dickens sees his work turned in a serial, with the iconic opening line of “A Tale of Two Cities” re-imagined in melodramatic “sands through the hourglass” soap opera style. Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” turns into a series of football plays on a chalkboard - and gains extra characters - Tamara, Venus, Serena and FloJo in the process!...
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Beyond Subject Headings: Adding Appeal to the Art... →
“In a recent webcast, sponsored by NoveList and Library Journal, author and consultant Saricks led off the presentation. She identified the first four elements that rose to the top in discussing appeal: pacing, characterizations, story line and frame, or setting. Mood and tone, and language and style play a role as well. (Most of the discussion concerned fiction, though appeal also applies...
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The Fiction-Writing After-Career of John Hughes |... →
The man who gave us Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Offalso produced a vast trove of (very) short fiction. If only we’d known it.
Click through for a couple examples of his shortshort fiction!
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Outbreaks, Attacks, Sackings, and Fires →
“Luciano Canfora’s The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World… contrasts the fate of the ancient Library of Alexandria with besieged public libraries today.” (via LISNews)
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In Support of Libraries and Librarians | The Daily... →
Unfortunately, the city’s proposed budget cuts are falling heavily on the public library. As my friend and fellow blogger Mary McCoy of the history department says:
“Most of the people they’ll be laying off (or to be honest about it, firing) are in their 20s and 30s. For most of them, this is their first job out of library school, most of them are children’s and young adult...
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ALA Asks The Wrong Questions - Annoyed Librarian →
In the course of the exchange last week, I became convinced that intellectual freedom is just a red herring anyway. Though there might be a threat to intellect in our country, there are no serious threats to intellectual freedom in the United States. Something called the Office for Intellectual Freedom naturally thinks everything is a question of intellectual freedom, but once again they’ve...
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The death of the library book - Libraries and... →
“I followed the signs back to the old building. (The new building is called “Glass,” the old “Stone.”) One of the reading rooms with its WPA murals is still open to the public. Its built-in shelves are stocked with large-print books. The intended demographic is obvious, although few people occupied these tables.
The restored murals illustrate the history of printing,...
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Web Illiteracy: How Much Is Your Fault? →
The ability to log into a service from an unrelated website is only a few years old. Is it any surprise that people are thrown by it? These commenters arrived from a search engine, looking for Facebook. At the bottom of the page where they landed, ReadWriteWeb offered them the opportunity to “Sign in with Facebook.” They did - many comments link directly to a Facebook profile. What...
