lis.dom

Go to http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom if you want to read the latest.

Thanks!

Lots of things are happening, and these are just a few of them:

First (though not exactly foremost), I'm happy to announce that lis.dom is bidding farewell to Blogger and moving to my web site and to WordPress! With some much-appreciated help from my friend Mitchell, lis.dom will henceforth be residing at http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom. [Feeds: RSS, atom] There are still a few bugs in the system--I'm working on categorizing all the old posts (and at some point I may even do the Technorati-meme, CW!) and at picking out, modifying as necessary, and installling a new theme--but, in the meantime, in the spirit of living in beta, I'm just going to move the main posting over there. I will leave these Blogger posts up, though, so old permalinks will still go somewhere.

The Carnival of the Infosciences has made a couple of stops in the past two weeks. Check them out (if you haven't already): Carnival #20 at TangognaT and Carnival #21 at Infomancy.

And finally, as for the "possibly me"--well, that's just one of those awful blogging teasers. More will be revealed, soon.

Did you know that Roger Sutton (editor of The Horn Book) has a blog?

We children's lit people are not so far behind the times after all. (And if you like children's literature--as I hope you do--and are a reader of blogs--as I assume you are if you are reading this--I hope you're reading Your Fairy Bookmother. Thanks to Rochelle for pointing that one out to me.)

Sutton (I just don't quite feel right calling him Roger, even if he does use it in his blog's name) points out a nifty little article in the most recent issue, complete with a very cool demonstration of what a digital picture book could be. And he points to a little bit of flawed logic coming out of ALA (you're shocked, I'm sure):

ALA has inserted itself into Audible.com's "Don't Read" ad campaign. For the wrong reasons, I think: "trademark violation," which is a bit obnoxious given that the ad is a parody and the ALA is allegedly in the business of protecting intellectual freedom.

Good stuff, and worth reading, if you're so inclined.

Rick, my blogosphere friend and neighboring librarian (I live one suburb over from the Thomas Ford Memorial Library) has a wonderful post about reading through old local newspapers on microfilm.

I sometimes hear that people today feel a little threatened by the amount of personal information on the Internet. In 1956 there was a tremendous amount of such information in the weekly newspaper. Of course, there were announcements of births, engagements, marriages, and deaths, as you might find in today's paper, but to a greater degree. One wedding story listed everyone who came. . . .

How did the Citizen get so much news? Did it have a large team of reporters? I think the answer to the last question is "no" and "yes." No, the newspaper did not have many reporters on its payroll. Yes, many people in the community called the newspaper with every bit of news they had. They participated in the making of the newspaper. It really belonged spiritually to the community.

It sounds kind of like the blogosphere, does it not? Or like a suburban Wikipedia--if you can imagine subversive gardening in the suburbs.

Hear ye, hear ye (how I love to use archaic language in a digital environment): the first Carnival of the Infosciences (#19!) of 2006 is up and running over at Wanderings of a Student Librarian.

Among its many gems are someobvious to some but good nonetheless interview tips from Grumpator. Heidi Dolamore, who writes the wonderfully named quiddle (and is running for ALA Council!) has also been posting on the topic of the great librarian job hunt. If you're looking for a job yourself, definitely check out her blog--she's been giving great run-downs on different kinds of interviews and what kinds of questions they ask.

I have, in fact, embarked upon the Great Job Hunt myself and may have more to say about it in the coming weeks and months--although it's also entirely possible that I'll be extremely busy with said job hunt plus the usual jobs and school and thus not posting much at all.

In the meantime, enjoy the Carnival and consider signing up to host one yourself!

See the entry below for more. . . the picture upload from Blogger doesn't seem to have worked, at least not from what I can see. Apologies if it worked in your browser and you're getting this twice.

Michael Stephens reiterates that library 2.0 is more than technology, to which, I imagine, some of us are saying, "Well, thank goodness!" Not all of us have us have huge budgets to send people to conferences or the space/time/staff support/equipment to holdDDR nights or coworkers who are hip to (or interested in being hip to) the latest hot tags on del.icio.us. Many of us are still operating in .98 beta.

But does that mean we can't use any of the principles of library 2.0? (Which, as many others have pointed out, are not so different from the principles of Ranganathan). No. This, then, is my inaugural post for a series on low tech library 2.0. I've been trying to come up with more ways for YA patrons to contact me. Since we don't have a YA space in the library--just some bookshelves and a bulletin board--and since I work in the children's room, out of sight from the YA shelves, I don't see them very often. Since my library doesn't allow IM, they can't IM me. Since many of our patrons don't have home internet access, IM and e-mail wouldn't be an option for them anyway. So I went with a very old-fashioned idea. Pictured above (at least if the Blogger photo upload worked) are some of the most recent suggestions that have come into the suggestion envelope I put on an empty slot near the YA magazines as another way for the YA patrons to communicate with me. How is this L2.0?

• It's where the patrons are--literally. There is a suggestion box up near the front of the library, and there's an electronic one buried in the library catalog (which I can't link to directly, since the catalog runs on sessions). Neither of these are very user-friendly, nor are they where teens congregate.
  
• It's as anonymous or as open as the user wants.
• It's interactive--I post responses to the requests (e.g., "Okay, the first few volumes of Ceres Celestial Legend are in my next book order. The latest in the Alice series is Alice On Her Way, which we own, and there's a new one called Alice in the Know coming out in a few months, which I'll definitely get.")
• It's my attempt to connect in some way with patrons and to make them feel that they have some connection with the library and with "their" librarian.

What other low tech library 2.0 (or whatever you want to call it) is out there? Feel free to comment below, write about it on your own blog, e-mail me at lauracrossett at hailmail dot net, or IM me (at home) at theblackmolly on AIM.

On Monday my computer (an iBook, circa 2003) had a complete meltdown--weird static on the screen, followed by more static, followed by the computer refusing to show anything on the screen at all, or for that matter do much of anything else.

So yesterday morning I drove it over to the Apple store. I got there about five minutes before it opened, and there were already 12 people waiting outside. I got an appointment for about forty minutes later, which I figured was pretty good, considering. The guy at the Genius Bar confirmed what I had suspected--my computer was the victim of the faulty logic board problem (see http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/). The bad news was that the computer had to be sent off for a week to ten days; the good news is that the repair would be covered. Whew.

So off I went to walk dogs for a few hours, and then I came home to shower and rest for a little bit before going to work at the library--and it was then that I realized that I no longer had the book I was reading, which I'd last had at the Apple store. I called up, and they said yes, they had it. Thus I got to drive back to Oakbrook, where, happily, the book was waiting for me, topped with the lovely blue sticker you see here. Trust Apple to make even their lost and found signs look pretty.