tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-127314542024-03-07T02:33:37.059-06:00lis.domrants, raves, information, and trash-talkin' from Laura Crossett on things in the library and information science domainlaurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1138339717353977342006-01-26T23:27:00.000-06:002006-01-26T23:28:37.373-06:00this blog has movedGo to <a href="http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom">http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom</a> if you want to read the latest.<br /><br />Thanks!laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1138139704759361152006-01-24T15:35:00.000-06:002006-01-24T15:55:05.133-06:00on the move: lis.dom, carnivals, and possibly meLots of things are happening, and these are just a few of them:<br /><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span><br />First (though not exactly foremost), I'm happy to announce that <span style="font-style: italic;">lis.dom</span> is bidding farewell to Blogger and moving to my web site and to WordPress! With some much-appreciated help from my friend <a href="http://www.szcz.org">Mitchell</a>, <span style="font-style: italic;">lis.dom</span> will henceforth be residing at <a href="http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom">http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom</a>. [Feeds: <a href="http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom/feed/">RSS</a>, <a href="http://www.newrambler.net/lisdom/feed/atom/">atom</a>] 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 <a href="http://flexnib.blogspot.com/2006/01/technoratitopdog-meme.html">Technorati-meme</a>, 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.<br /><br />The Carnival of the Infosciences has made a couple of stops in the past two weeks. Check them out (if you haven't already): <a href="http://www.tangognat.com/2006/01/16/carnival-of-the-infosciences-20/">Carnival #20</a> at <a href="http://www.tangognat.com/">TangognaT</a> and <a href="http://schoolof.info/infomancy/?p=140">Carnival #21</a> at <a href="http://www.schoolof.info/infomancy/">Infomancy</a>.<br /><br />And finally, as for the "possibly me"--well, that's just one of those awful blogging teasers. More will be revealed, soon.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1137041774218613752006-01-11T22:47:00.000-06:002006-01-11T22:56:14.236-06:00Read Roger!Did you know that Roger Sutton (editor of <a href="http://www.hbook.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Horn Book</span></a>) <a href="http://www.hbook.com/blog/">has a blog</a>?<br /><br />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 <a href="http://yourfairybookmother.typepad.com/your_fairy_bookmother/">Your Fairy Bookmother</a>. Thanks to <a href="http://tinfoilraccoon.com/">Rochelle</a> for pointing that one out to me.)<br /><span class="down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span><br />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 href="http://www.hbook.com/publications/magazine/articles/jan06_gralley.asp">a nifty little article</a> in the most recent issue, complete with a <a href="http://jeangralley.com/books_unbound/">very cool demonstration</a> of what a digital picture book could be. And he points to a little bit of <a href="http://www.hbook.com/blog/2006/01/step-away-from-story.html">flawed logic</a> coming out of ALA (you're shocked, I'm sure):<br /><a href="http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6298172.html" target="_blank" class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog"></a><blockquote><a href="http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6298172.html" target="_blank" class="blines3" title="Link outside of this blog">ALA has inserted itself</a> into <a href="http://www.hbook.com/blog/2005/12/dont-listen.html" target="_blank" class="blines2" title="Link to another page in this blog">Audible.com's "Don't Read"</a> 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.<br /></blockquote>Good stuff, and worth reading, if you're so inclined.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1136993922282290092006-01-11T09:33:00.000-06:002006-01-11T09:39:38.566-06:00communities, suburban and virtual, then and now<a href="http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com">Rick</a>, my blogosphere friend and neighboring librarian (I live one suburb over from the <a href="http://www.fordlibrary.org">Thomas Ford Memorial Library</a>) has a wonderful post about <a href="http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2006/01/deep-in-microfilm-1950s-still-live.html">reading through old local newspapers</a> on microfilm.<br /><blockquote>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. . . .<br /><br />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.</blockquote>It sounds kind of like the blogosphere, does it not? Or like a suburban Wikipedia--if you can imagine <a href="http://lbr.library-blogs.net/subversive_gardening.htm">subversive gardening</a> in the suburbs.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1136857223480595872006-01-09T19:22:00.000-06:002006-01-09T19:40:23.903-06:00carnival #19Hear ye, hear ye (how I love to use archaic language in a digital environment): the first <a href="http://joy.mollprojects.com/myblogs/wanderings/2006/01/carnival-of-infosciences-19.html">Carnival of the Infosciences</a> (#19!) of 2006 is up and running<span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span> over at <a href="http://joy.mollprojects.com/myblogs/wanderings">Wanderings of a Student Librarian</a>.<br /><br />Among its many gems are some<a href="http://grumpator.blogspot.com/2006/01/looking-forward-to-2006.html">obvious to some but good nonetheless interview tips</a> from <a href="http://grumpator.blogspot.com/">Grumpator</a>. Heidi Dolamore, who writes the wonderfully named <a href="http://quiddle.blogspot.com/">quiddle</a> (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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />In the meantime, enjoy the Carnival and consider <a href="http://infosciences.pbwiki.com/">signing up to host one yourself</a>!laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1136393209917136352006-01-04T10:46:00.000-06:002006-01-04T10:46:49.940-06:00low tech library 2.0: the picture<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/81812926/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/43/81812926_9919a2bbe4_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/81812926/">suggestions</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/newrambler/">newrambler</a>. </span></div>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.<br clear="all" />laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1136393293316617412006-01-04T10:01:00.000-06:002006-01-06T19:10:41.963-06:00low tech library 2.0<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/81812926/"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/81812926/" alt="" border="0" /></a><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span><br /><a href="http://www.tametheweb.com">Michael Stephens</a> reiterates that <a href="http://tametheweb.com/2006/01/defining_library_20_ii_is_it_m.html">library 2.0 is more than technology</a>, to which, I imagine, some of us are saying, "Well, thank goodness!" Not all of us have us have huge budgets to <a href="http://tametheweb.com/library_20web_20/">send people to conferences</a> or the space/time/staff support/equipment to hold<a href="http://walkingpaper.org/267">DDR nights</a> or coworkers who are hip to (or interested in being hip to) the latest hot tags on del.icio.us. Many of us are <a href="http://rochellejustrochelle.typepad.com/copilot/2005/11/rejoicing_and_c.html">still operating</a> <a href="http://www.librarian.net/stax/1556">in .98 beta</a>.<br /><br />But does that mean we can't use any of the <a href="http://tametheweb.com/2005/12/the_collected_principles_of_li.html">principles of library 2.0</a>? (Which, as many others have pointed out, are not so different from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_laws_of_library_science">principles of Ranganathan</a>). 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?<br /><ul><li>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.<br /></li><li>It's as anonymous or as open as the user wants.</li><li>It's interactive--I post responses to the requests (e.g., "Okay, the first few volumes of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ceres Celestial Legend </span>are in my next book order. The latest in the Alice series is <span style="font-style: italic;">Alice On Her Way</span>, which we own, and there's a new one called <span style="font-style: italic;">Alice in the Know</span> coming out in a few months, which I'll definitely get.")</li><li>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.</li></ul>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.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1136389091356640032006-01-04T09:38:00.000-06:002006-01-04T09:41:55.733-06:00lost and found @ apple<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/81812925/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/42/81812925_a56511a959_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/81812925/">lost and found @ apple</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/newrambler/">newrambler</a>. </span></div>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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br clear="all" />laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1135313989491280602005-12-22T22:20:00.000-06:002005-12-22T22:59:49.546-06:00privacy: a prefaceI have a long, thoughtful post that's still mostly in my head about online presence and privacy, and someday I'll get it all down in print (or pixels, or what have you)--probably about the same time I catch up on reading <a href="http://cites.boisestate.edu/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Cites & Insights</span></a> (<a href="http://walt.lishost.org/">Walt</a>, it's not even 2006 yet! Slow down! :-)). In the meantime, though, I offer these prefatory remarks.<br /><br />I just added <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/">some old pictures</a> to Flickr. The quality is not that great--many of them were originally Polaroids, and then I scanned them--but they have a certain sentimental value, and it's kind of neat to be able to see them out on the web. When I was uploading them, though, it occurred to me that being around and available online is not for everyone. Not everyone wants to put themselves out there, and I feel some responsibility for not forcing them on to a stage they didn't want to be on.<br /><br />It's true that almost no one can avoid being online somewhere--if not through Google, then through <a href="http://www.zabasearch.com/">ZabaSearch</a> or one of the other online white pages. But there's a difference between that and having snapshots of yourself with bad hair out in the world. Maybe that will change--but for some of my friends and family, it hasn't changed yet.<br /><span class="down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span><br />So while I have no problem letting you see one of <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/76073832/">my poor '80s fashion choices</a> or letting you know <a href="http://www.newrambler.net/nader.html">who I voted for in 2000</a>, or explaining <a href="http://www.newrambler.net/sixdays.html">how I got arrested</a>, or even telling you about <a href="http://www.dailyiowan.com/news/2003/04/10/Opinions/Learning.How.To.Be.Humble.Lessons.From.Charlottes.Web-413808.shtml%3ELearning%20How%20to%20be%20Humble:%20Lessons%20from%20%3Ci%3ECharlotte%27s%20Web%3C/i%3E%3C/a%3E%3Cli%3E%3Ca%20href=">the time they couldn't find my cervix</a>, I know that's not for everyone.<br /><br />All this, really, is by way of explaining why, if you're one of my Flickr contacts, you've been upgraded from "contact" to "friend." Everyone can see pictures of me; I've made the ones with other people in them friend only, which lets my online community see them but keeps them at least a little bit private. If you're not listed as a friend or contact, it's not because I don't like you; it's just because I haven't gotten around to it (or I don't know who you are). But feel free to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/">add me</a>, and I'll reciprocate--and then you too can see poor-quality photos of my friends and family in front of my tree. Oh, the excitement!laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1134956476466963612005-12-18T19:10:00.000-06:002005-12-18T19:41:16.586-06:00book notesJessamyn West <a href="http://www.librarian.net/stax/1577">pointed</a> the other day to a piece about <a href="http://www.wynia.org/wordpress/2005/12/13/lifehack-your-books-dogear-writing-in-books-and-apologizing-to-librarians/">lifehacking books by writing in them</a>, with apologies to librarians. It brought to mind a bit from Roger Tory Peterson that I quoted in a paper I wrote about DRM and e-books last spring:<br /><blockquote>Roger Tory Peterson, author of the classic <a href="http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/0395854938/"><span style="font-style: italic;">A Field Guide to the Birds</span></a> wrote, when the book's second edition came out, that he was always happy when people showed him their copies of his book. </blockquote><blockquote>"It is gratifying to see a copy marked on nearly every page, for I know that it has been well used. Although the cover is waterproofed, I have seen many copies with home-made oilcloth jackets; I have seeen copies torn apart, reorganized and rebound to suit the owners taste; others have been tabbed with index tabs, or fitted with flaps or envelopes to hold daily check-lists."*</blockquote>Nothing new under the sun. (And if you really like reading about how to lifehack your books, if you haven't picked up a copy of Anne Fadiman's <a href="http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/0374148600/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader</span></a>, do so soon!)<br /><br />And on a final note, you can now comment on <a href="http://www.librarian.net/">librarian.net</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Apres moi le deluge.</span> <span style="font-family:Book Antiqua,Times New Roman,serif,Georgia Ref;"><em></em></span><br /><br /> *Roger Tory Peterson, <span style="font-style: italic;">A Field Guide to the Birds</span> (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934): xviii.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1134929095762853322005-12-18T11:14:00.000-06:002005-12-18T12:05:05.343-06:00this past week. . .<span style="font-weight: bold;">Monday</span><br />I finished up a collection development project for LIS 721, Library Materials for Children and discovered the existence of phantom reviews. I used Baker & Taylor's Title Source II to help locate some books and reviews, and my partner used Follett's Titlewave, and then we'd go look up the full citations for the reviews we found. . . or at least we tried. Let's say that for one title, B&T said it was reviewed in the July 2000 issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">Booklist</span>. I would dutifully go to <a href="http://as8lq5bp5v.search.serialssolutions.com/?V=1.0&N=100&L=AS8LQ5BP5V&S=AC_T_B&C=booklist">Dominican's databases</a> and start searching for the review. I couldn't find it by author, title, keyword, or date. I then tried going more directly to the source and looking through the <span style="font-style: italic;">Booklist</span> indexes (which exist somewhere on the ALA website, though naturally now I can't find them). No luck there either. It was time to get serious. I hit the stacks. I grabbed the microfilm and spent half an hour or so scrolling through <span style="font-style: italic;">Booklist</span> from July 2000 and from November 2000, when Follett claimed it was reviewed. No cigar. And this happened again and again, not just with <span style="font-style: italic;">Booklist</span>, but also with <span style="font-style: italic;">School Library Journal, VOYA,</span> and others. My partner, meanwhile, was having a similar experience with Books in Print, Book Review Index, <span style="font-style: italic;">et al</span>. I wrote my professor. Were we going crazy? Apparently not. She said she'd noticed this problem before. We did the best we could. A few days later, I mentioned this to my professor for LIS 745, Searching Electronic Databases, who pointed out that Baker & Taylor and Follett are, after all, in the bookselling business, not the bibliographic verification business. Still, it's maddening. My adventures in bibliography were not over, though.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Wednesday<br /></span>I turned in my final project for LIS 745, Searching Electronic Databases, which was a 25 item annotated bibliography on the subject of state guardianship programs for adults, prepared for my client, the Iowa Substitute Decision Maker Task Force, a group of people (including my mother) who are trying to establish such a program in Iowa. The week before, I did my final presentation on the project. I found many beautiful pictures with which to illustrate my presentation via the Creative Commons search on Flickr. I'm a big believer in giving people things to look at when presenting, but it does make for a monster-sized PowerPoint, which convinced once again that I really need to learn the <a href="http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/">S5</a> and/or <a href="http://www.librarian.net/stax/1286">Jessamyn West version</a> of slides. . . I thought about doing it for this presentation, but as time was beginning to get short, I thought perhaps that would be an untenable exercise in procrastination.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Thursday<br /></span>I began the morning of my 30th birthday by oversleeping. I am hoping that this was the last gasp of the past decade rather than a sign of the decade to come. I finished up and turned in the paper on virtual readers' advisory for LIS 763, Readers' Advisory Services. Thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post on the topic, and thanks to all the biblioblogosphere folks who've created, written about, or fantasized about how we could make OPACs more useful and interesting. Not surprisingly, I found much more material for this paper by searching blogs than I did by searching professional journals. "Folksonom*" as a search term in one of the LIS databases turns up one citation ("Metadatering door de massa: <span class="hit">Folksonomy," by Sybilla Poortman and Gerard Bierens</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">)</span>, which looks really cool, but unfortunately it's in Dutch, which I can't read. Partly, of course, this is because I was writing about stuff so new that it simply hasn't made it in to professional literature. In fact, the very afternoon at work before I turned the paper in, I read a couple of new things I wanted to add. But I stopped, went to class, turned in the paper, listened to some cool book talks, and so completed my third semester of library school. One more to go!<br /><br />And now it's winter break, which I plan to spend a) reading, b) working some extra hours at my dog-walking job, c) sleeping, and d) getting serious about the job hunt. Expect more on the first and last of those in future entries--I'm also planning to a bit more blogging, now that I have a few weeks free from one of my obligations.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1134318103521367522005-12-11T10:15:00.000-06:002005-12-11T10:21:43.536-06:00IM RA etc.: technology for readers' advisory?I'm writing a paper for my Readers' Advisory class about the present and future of of online readers' advisory. I've been doing research in the usual academic sorts of places, but it just occurred to me that this would be a good question to bring to the biblioblogosphere.<br /><br />So, if you happen to read this and use or know of anyone using online resources for RA, leave a comment or e-mail me at lauracrossett at hailmail dot net. "Online resources" could mean anything from plain old websites to newer social software--blogs, wikis, IM, and so forth. <br /><br />The paper is due Thursday night, but I'm getting interested in the topic and may try to turn it into an article of some sort, or at the very least a blog post, so late contributions are welcome.<br /><br />Gracias!laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1133742101950719762005-12-04T18:05:00.000-06:002005-12-04T18:21:42.910-06:00index this!<a href="http://www.waltcrawford.name">Walt</a> writes that he is <a href="http://walt.lishost.org/?p=188">done with <span style="font-style: italic;">C&I</span> Volume 5</a>. If you’re a reader of <span style="font-style: italic;">Cites & Insights</span>, you’ve probably already downloaded and printed out the latest issue, as have I (though I haven’t read it all yet). I was particularly delighted, however, to be able to download and print out <a href="http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ5ix.pdf">the index</a> [.pdf] to the whole volume.<br /><br />I love indexes (or indices, if you prefer). So far as I know, the <span style="font-style: italic;">C&I</span> index is the first one in which I appear, which gives it a certain added appeal, but I like pretty much any old index. <br /><br />For one thing, an index is kind of a paper version of a tag cloud. Go pull a biography off the shelf and flip through the index. Chances are that some terms will have several lines of pages listed after them, while some will have only one or two. Some will also have sub-index terms underneath, rather like the sub-subjects in the <a href="http://www.daveyp.com/blog/index.php/archives/46/">OPAC tag cloud</a> that everyone’s been talking about. I’ve also always thought that a good index reads rather like a bit of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_poetry">found</a> <a href="http://www.poetryforge.org/teaching.htm">poetry</a>. <br /><br />And then, of course, there’s what I have always considered to be the greatest literary reference to indices: Chapter 44 of Kurt Vonnegut’s <a href="http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/038533348X"><span style="font-style: italic;">Cat’s Cradle</span></a>, called “Never Index Your Own Book.”<br /><blockquote> “It’s a revealing thing, an author’s index of his own work,” she informed me. “It’s a shameless exhibition—to the trained eye.”<br /> “She can read character from an index,” said her husband.<br /> “Oh? I said. “What can you tell about Philip Castle?”<br /> She smiled faintly. “Thing’s I’d better not tell strangers.”</blockquote>Want to know what? Well, as we say in my readers’ advisory class, if you want to find out, you’ll have to read the book.<br /><br />Technical notes for this entry: I’m trying Blogger for Word for the first time. We’ll see how it works. [Update: I wrote this in Word, but I’m going to be posting via Blogger, since so far as I can see, Blogger for Word is not for Mac. Furthermore, I was unable to cut and paste from Word to Blogger, so I had to cut and paste to Text Edit, then cut and paste from there to Blogger, then put in all the links again. Poopy.] I consulted several books in the course of writing this entry—a dictionary, because I was curious about whether there was a preferred plural form for the word index (not really, though indexes was listed first in <span style="font-style: italic;">The American Heritage Dictionary</span>, Second College Edition, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), which was what happened to be closest), and a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Cat’s Cradle</span>, because I couldn’t remember the exact title of the chapter, and because I wanted to use a quotation. I know there are many wonderful online dictionaries, both free and fee, plus of course that handy Google operator, define: X, but I never think to use them. It did occur to me to try out <a href="http://books.google.com">Google Book Search</a> to see if <span style="font-style: italic;">Cat’s Cradle</span> had been scanned, which it doesn’t seem to have been, though there are plenty of books that reference it. A search for “never index your own book,” however, did turn up <a href="http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&id=E8L9bIzeK9QC&pg=RA1-PA143&lpg=RA1-PA143&dq=%22never+index+your+own+book%22&prev=http://books.google.com/books%3Flr%3D%26q%3D%22never%2Bindex%2Byour%2Bown%2Bbook%22&sig=iUJdl9uHryKeTA0YG68jgArKymY">this little gem</a>, which I’d love to read. Google, oh, Google, <a href="http://freerangelibrarian.com/archives/120305/google_book_search_.php">why do you not synch yourselves with Find in a Library</a>?laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1132722255448182172005-11-22T22:58:00.001-06:002005-11-22T23:04:15.466-06:00carnivals past, present, and futureGreg cleverly set up a <a href="http://infosciences.pbwiki.com/FrontPage">Carnival of the Infosciences wiki</a>, which, of course, comes equipped with its own RSS feed, so if you're not getting your Carnival updates elsewhere, go grab 'em there!<br /><br />Oh, and check out the past couple stops: <a href="http://asknettieday.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_asknettieday_archive.html">#15</a> at <a href="http://asknettieday.blogspot.com/">Ask Nettie Day</a> and <a href="http://www.librarystuff.net/2005/11/carnival-of-infosciences-16.html">#16</a> at <a href="http://librarystuff.net/">Library Stuff</a>.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1132721888378939442005-11-22T22:58:00.000-06:002005-11-22T22:58:08.433-06:00my librarian trading card<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/66073546/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/26/66073546_525d0ecbd4_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/66073546/">My trading card</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/newrambler/">newrambler</a>. </span></div>Yup, I got one too. <a href="http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/deck.php">Make your own</a> and <a href="http://flickr.com/groups/80982632@N00/">join the group</a>!<br clear="all" />laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1132676800689785252005-11-22T10:19:00.000-06:002005-11-22T10:26:40.703-06:00she's such a geekAre you a geek, and a writer, and a female? Why not submit an essay to a book called <span style="font-style: italic;">She's Such a Gee<span style="font-family: georgia;">k</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">, forthcoming from Seal</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Press next fall.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;">This anthology will celebrate women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana.</span> We're looking for a wide range of personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren't afraid to match wits with men or computers. The essays in She's Such a Geek will explain what it means to be passionately engaged with technical or obscure topics-and how to deal with it when people tell you that your interests are weird, especially for a girl. This book aims to bust stereotypes of what it means to be a geek, as well as what it means to be female.</blockquote>Thanks to <a href="http://pasta.cantbedone.org/">pasta</a>, you can read the full <a href="http://pasta.cantbedone.org/pages/S_OKSX.htm">call for submissions</a>. Thanks to <a href="http://www.szcz.org">Mitchell</a> for forwarding it.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1131551841508517302005-11-09T09:42:00.000-06:002005-11-09T09:57:21.526-06:00what help "the help" can offerI am still on a few mailing lists left over from my time as a graduate student at the University of Iowa. The other day, someone wrote to one about her experience taking a class on Extreme Web Searching at the <a href="http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/">UI Library</a>, and she kindly gave me permission to reprint her remarks on the experience.<br /><pre wrap="">I signed up for this nerdy class at the library to learn about search engines beyond everyone's fav, Google, and to my surprise, the class was fascinating. There are a whole slew of search engines apart from Mister Google, and they're doing remarkable things. (They also have bizarre names like Clusty, Teoma, and Dogpile.) Since many of y'all research when you're not writing, and since others may enjoy a nice vanity-search, I thought I'd pass on the links. This page should be live for a while.<br /><br /><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://myweb.uiowa.edu/sostrem/xtreme.html">http://myweb.uiowa.edu/sostrem/xtreme.html</a><br /><br />If nothing else, give KARTOO a whirl. I put in the name of the person I'm interviewing [for a conference] and thought I was bugging out when my results "map" appeared. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.kartoo.com/">http://www.kartoo.com/</a></pre> One might, I suppose, take this as evidence of librarians having done a poor job of marketing themselves as purveyors of useful and cool knowledge (i.e., a graduate student is surprised by what she can learn at the library?), but I am chosing to see it in a much more positive light. You see (and I'm admitting this here for the first time, at least in print), until I actually started library school, I was one of those people who thought the library had nothing to teach me. The more fool I. I'm glad to see that not everyone is as ignorant as I was, or as unwilling to take a chance on the idea that they might learn something from "<a href="http://www.mazar.ca/2005/09/18/comrades-in-arms-the-professor-and-the-librarian/">the help</a>."laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1131161353537264262005-11-04T21:17:00.000-06:002005-11-05T13:35:06.106-06:00the tinfoil carnivalI am going to stop apologizing for being so late in posting new installments of the Carnival of the Infosciences. As others have mentioned (I'm thinking at the moment of Walt Crawford's <a href="http://cites.boisestate.edu/v5i13a.htm">"Blogging Trumps Life"</a> [edit 11/5/05: of course I actually meant <a href="http://cites.boisestate.edu/v5i13a.htm">"Life Trumps Blogging"</a>--duh--thanks to Walt for noticing that little discrepancy] essay in the most recent <a href="http://cites.boisestate.edu/">Cites & Insights</a>), the beauty of a) RSS and b) multiple people keeping an eye on things and writing about them is that we do not all have to be responsible for everything.<br /><br />I am nevertheless greatly pleased to point you to the <a href="http://rochellejustrochelle.typepad.com/copilot/2005/10/tinfoil_bigtop_.html">Carnival of the Infosciences #13</a>, hosted by Rochelle Hartman of <a href="http://rochellejustrochelle.typepad.com/">Tinfoil + Racoon</a>. Enjoy!<span onmouseup="" class="down" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);" id="formatbar_CreateLink" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" title="Link" style="DISPLAY: block" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);"></span>laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1131160147091320572005-11-04T21:09:00.000-06:002005-11-04T21:09:10.626-06:00get real about your rights<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/54137407/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/24/54137407_5b4e21d245_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/54137407/">get real about your rights 3</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/newrambler/">newrambler</a>. </span></div>Here's a photo of the display I did on teen rights at the library in honor of Teen Read Week (theme this year: "Get Real") and <a href="http://www.theseptemberproject.org">The September Project</a> (I put it up back in September and spent a month adding to it).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.librarytechtonics.info/">Andrea Mercado</a> did a <a href="http://www.plablog.org/2005/10/teen-read-week-franklin-park-library.html">very nice post</a> about this display and another one I did over on the <a href="http://www.plablog.org">PLA Blog</a> (thanks!).<br clear="all" />laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1130638981845173382005-10-29T20:48:00.000-05:002005-10-29T21:58:27.826-05:00on the uses of the biblioblogosphereI started browsing around in the biblioblogosphere sometime during winter break last year. I had heard of <a href="http://www.librarian.net/">librarian.net</a> and <a href="http://librarianavengers.org/">Librarian Avengers</a> and a few others from various sources, but when I dove in to the land of links, I really had no idea who any of these people were. And as I started reading, I had no idea who all the people they talked about were. Who was this Walt Crawford person, and why was everyone so excited when he got a blog? I had a hard time lining up real names and blog names for awhile--was Jenny the <a href="http://www.shiftedlibrarian.com/">Shifted Librarian</a> or the <a href="http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/librarianinblack/">Librarian in Black</a>, or maybe the <a href="http://www.freerangelibrarian.com/">Free Range Librarian</a>? And what the hell was all this RSS stuff everyone kept talking about? Feeds? Subscriptions? Aggregators? It was code to me; code being spoken by a group of people in the know, all of whom seemed to know each other and refer to one another in endless loops. In many ways, then, it was like a clique--like one of those supercool groups of people I never quite belonged to. But in important ways it was different from a clique--it existed (mostly) in virtual space, and, perhaps by virtue of that, it was a club that anyone could join. I never felt excluded in my early months of reading; I just felt like I was getting the lay of the land.<br /><br />Eventually I started to figure it out. <a href="http://www.bloglines.com/">Bloglines</a>! What a nifty tool! RSS goodness, as so many of the people I read would say. I figured out who was who. I started using my incredible printing privileges at school (they let you print out unlimited amounts of stuff for free--it's crazy, but hard not to like) to print out <a href="http://cites.boisestate.edu/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Cites & Insights</span></a>. And then, perhaps inevitably, I started a blog of my own.<span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span><br />Now, thanks to Michael Stephens of<a href="http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/">Tame the Web</a>, there are <a href="http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/archives/001819.html">a bunch of Dominican students blogging</a>. (Hi, <a href="http://whomovedmylibrary.blogspot.com/">Natalie</a> and <a href="http://7gracel.blogspot.com/">Connie</a> and probably some others of who whom I know but am forgetting!) I stopped thinking of this as a sort of unofficial Dominican forum and started thinking of it as my own little personal domain awhile back. I had the great privilege and pleasure of meeting a whole bunch of the people whom I had myself started to refer to casually at the <a href="http://scanblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/library-blogger-salon.html">bloggers' shindig</a> at ALA (thanks again to <a href="http://scanblog.blogspot.com/">It's all good</a> for sponsoring the party, and thanks to <a href="http://walt.lishost.org/">Walt</a> for sharing cab fare up to the Loop).<br /><br />I've been thinking a lot about all of this while reading various people's reactions to the <a href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html">Nielsen weblog usability article</a> over the past week or so. I won't reiterate the excellent critiques made by <a href="http://bookmark.typepad.com/the_thoughts_are_broken/2005/10/designing_jakob.html">Mark</a> and <a href="http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/10/bit-more-on-blogs-and-usability.html">Angel</a>, but I will say this: I never felt unwelcome by the first blogs I read (my <a href="http://rochellejustrochelle.typepad.com/copilot/2005/10/whos_your_blog_.html">blog parents</a>, as Rochelle so charmingly put it). I didn't understand everything I read, but it wasn't because people were using too much jargon or acting too clique-ish. I didn't understand everything I read because I was new to the biblioblogosphere and new to librarianship. I liked what I read; I liked figuring it out; and, most of all, I liked the feeling that I was entering a community I was welcome to join.<br /><br />There aren't many places in the world where you can get by--get ahead, if you want to think of it that way--simply on the strength of your ideas and your willingness to express them. The biblioblogosphere turns out to be one of those places. I'm immensely grateful for that. I haven't been blogging much lately--the whole life trumps blogging thing that many have experienced--but I still dip in and sometimes dive in to this wonderful set of waterways that all of you have built. One way or another, I plan to keep on tumbling through it, and I hope that next June, one way or another, many of you will all wash up in New Orleans.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1130103281998074422005-10-23T16:26:00.000-05:002005-10-23T16:34:42.000-05:00carnivals and dereliction of dutyI am so woefully behind that I have even neglected the marvelous Carnival of the Infosciences. I am sure that, due to the wonders of the biblioblogosphere, you have picked them all up elsewhere, but to give them the credit they richly deserve, here they are:<br /><br /><a href="http://davehook.blogspot.com/2005/09/carnival-of-infosciences-no-8.html">Carnival of the Infosciences #8</a> at <a href="http://davehook.blogspot.com/">The Industrial Librarian</a><br /><a href="http://bookmark.typepad.com/the_thoughts_are_broken/2005/10/carnival_of_the.html">Carnival of the Infosciences #9</a> at <a href="http://bookmark.typepad.com/the_thoughts_are_broken/">. . .the thoughts are broken. . .</a><br /><a href="http://wanderingeyre.blogspot.com/2005/10/carnival-of-infosciences-10.html">Carnival of the Infosciences #10</a> at <a href="http://wanderingeyre.blogspot.com/">A Wandering Eyre</a><br /><a href="http://christinaslibraryrant.blogspot.com/2005/10/carnival-of-infosciences-11.html">Carnival of the Infosciences #11</a> at <a href="http://christinaslibraryrant.blogspot.com/">Christina's LIS Rant<br /></a><br />And there'll be another one tomorrow!laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1130102657401018532005-10-23T16:22:00.000-05:002005-10-23T16:24:17.413-05:00my mantra<p>Here's the post I wrote in <a href="http://www.writely.com">Writely</a> sometime back. Life has become more hectic since then, but I offer this to tide you over for awhile.<br /><br /></p> <p>Everyone has their own set of frustrations (<a href="http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2005/10/06/must-have-been-a-bad-day/" title="Dorothea on DSpace">often</a> <a href="http://viaproni.typepad.com/viaproni/2005/10/urgh_argh.html" title="Amy on scanners">with</a> <a href="http://www.explodedlibrary.info/2005/10/opml_hassles_sw.html" title="Morgon on opml">technology</a>, sometimes with life in general). I've had my share over the past few weeks, too numerous and dull to mention, and thus instead I offer you today my favorite frustration mantra. You can find it at the very end of <em>The Jungle Book, </em>by Rudyard Kipling. </p> <blockquote style="margin-right: 0px;" dir="ltr"> <p> COMMISSARIAT CAMELS </p> We haven't a camelty tune of our own<br />To help us trollop along,<br />But every neck is a hairy trombone<br />(<em>Rtt-ta-ta-ta!</em> is a hairy trombone!)<br />And this is our marching song:<br /><em>Can't! Don't! Sha'n't! Won't!</em><br />Pass it along the line!<br />Somebody's pack has slid from his back,<br />Wish it were only mine!<br />Somebody's load has tipped off the road,<br />Cheer for a halt and a row!<br /><em>Urr! Yarrh! Grr! Arrh!</em><br />Somebody's catching it now! </blockquote> <p> Note: One should really always try searching the Web before typing. I was just trying to find a nice Open WorldCat record to link to, and I found that (not surprisingly) there are full-text versions of the whole book available from <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/rgs/jngl-table.html" title="Project Gutenburg">Project Gutenburg</a> and <a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/KipJung.html" title="the University of Virginia">the University of Virginia</a>. The UVA one even includes the proper italicizations, which the Gutenburg version lacks. </p>laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1128905062968341442005-10-09T19:09:00.000-05:002005-10-09T19:44:22.976-05:00brave new word processorWhen I first read about <a href="http://www.synchroedit.com/">Writely</a> (I can't remember where, though I've since read about the experiences that <a href="http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/09/writely-web-based-word-processor.html">Rick</a> and <a href="http://www.lethal-librarian.net/?p=56">Rikhei</a> have had with it, and I'm interested to see what comes of <a href="http://www.hiddenpeanuts.com/archives/2005/10/06/synchroedit/">Chad's</a> experiments with <a href="http://www.synchroedit.com/">SynchroEdit</a>), I was extremely excited. Writely (and its rival applications, including SynchroEdit and <a href="http://www.writeboard.com/">WriteBoard</a>, which Rikhei was unimpressed with) is a web-based word processor. All of them are hyped as collaborative tools--ways for multiple users in different locations to work on the same document, but they can also be used by a single user to work on the same document at multiple locations. That's the part that got me excited.<br /><br />For years I have been schlepping files around (either literally, via floppy disk, or virtually, by e-mailing attachments to myself) in order be able to work on them as I move from home to school to work. It's kind of a pain, since I often have to reformat documents--I use a Mac at home and PCs of varying ages and with varying editions of Windows installed on them elsewhere--and from time to time the transfer simply doesn't work.<br /><br />Wouldn't it be great if I could store my files in cyberspace, and work on them in cyberspace, and have them accessible to me anywhere I can I get online, no muss, no fuss? That day may be coming, but it's not quite here yet. Writely lets me write and keep files on the Web, but so far (and I should cut them some slack; I know they're still in beta) it doesn't provide many of the functions that I need and want in a word processor. It's great for blog posts and probably for Web content in general; I like the template layout rather better than Blogger's, which I'm using now, though I haven't been able to post to my blog directly from Writely yet. But if I'm writing a paper or an article, there are a lot of things I can't do. I can't add footnotes. I can't get a page view to get an idea of how many pages I've written and how much space I have left to fill, and I can't get a word count. In theory you can export the document as a Word file or a .zip file; on my Mac, the .zip file came out nicely as an .html document, but the Word file came out as an Excel file, and I wasn't able to read it at all.<br /><br />Despite these difficulties, I'm still excited about Web-based word processors. I have a Web site in part because it's such a handy way to store information, although the process of storing it there is somewhat laborious. Web-based e-mail and blogs are wonderful because you can create them on the Web as well as storing them there. I look forward to the day when I can do fully functional word processing on the Web and stop worrying about how to get my words from one place to another.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1128138702107792192005-09-30T22:06:00.000-05:002005-09-30T22:51:42.126-05:00metablogging 2: the why I blog postSo <a href="http://libfoo.blogspot.com/">Travis Ennis</a> wants to know why we--we here being ML(I)S students--blog.<br /><br />The snarkier part of my nature is of course tempted to say "Because I can" and/or "Because I'm good at it"--two responses often given by Famous Authors who have been asked Why They Write. I am not a Famous Author (I mean, really, I'm not even dead yet!), and such a response would seem pretty obnoxious even if I were.<br /><br />I have always known that I am pretty good at writing--it's one of those things that makes up for other things, like being unable to run or throw or catch, being unpopular, being awkward and unsure of your place in the world. Going through an MFA program is a pretty good way to shake your confidence in your writing abilities, in some cases because everyone seems so much better than you do and in some because everything they're doing seems like such crap that you figure you can't be much better, but I got through more or less intact. <br /><br />I used to write a <a href="http://www.newrambler.net/journalism.html/">newspaper column</a>, which is still my idea of a totally ideal job. I keep hoping someone will say, "Here, let us pay you a living wage to give us 800 words several times a week on whatever you're thinking about," but it's never happened. I loved writing a newspaper column even when I only got $15 0r $20 for it, though, and I'd do it again for that little, or less. In the interim, though, blogging is a nice substitute. (Among other things, there are no deadlines and no required word counts. I sometimes miss the discipline of 800 words every seven days, but not too often.) <br /><br />There's a <a href="http://www.newrambler.net/ramblings/about-the-blog/">very long explanation over</a> at my other blog about how that got started, and there's a little explanation of my original reason for starting this blog in its <a href="http://lisdom.blogspot.com/2005/05/welcome.html">very first post</a>. Oh, and then a few weeks later, I hopped on the metablogging bandwagon again with <a href="http://lisdom.blogspot.com/2005/05/metablog.html">a little more explanation</a>. lis.dom's purpose has changed over time--as I've noted before, starting a blog in order to tell people about the existence of blogs is probably a little illogical--but some of what I've said before remains the same.<br /><br />At the moment, though, the real reason that I blog is that I want to be part of a community (or, as I sometimes put it, I want to be one of the cool kids). Can you imagine a library run by the members of the biblioblogosphere? I think it would be the most amazing library in the world. It would have all the hottest new technology, but the technology would work for us, not the other way around, and nobody would get burned. It would have provocative, timely, and enriching programming. It would be the place everyone wanted to hang out and where everyone was welcome. It would be staffed by people relentlessly, zealously working to make the library a better place--working to make library vendors give us what we want, working for, and often with, patrons to make sure they had the information they wanted. It would be a thing of beauty, if not a joy forever. Some people work in libraries that are closer to that ideal than others, but here--wherever <span style="font-style: italic;">here</span> is, wherever you imagine cyberspace to be--we all get to be a part of it. I think that's pretty neat.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12731454.post-1128122280336715692005-09-30T18:09:00.000-05:002005-09-30T18:18:00.343-05:00the obligatory banned books postJust in time for the end of Banned Books Week, here's <a href="http://www.dailyiowan.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=282445&page=1">a little something I wrote</a> three years ago, long before I ever thought of becoming a librarian. I find I still pretty much agree with myself.<br /><br />So read freely--and fight to keep our libraries free--free to speak in and free to use.laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05893550834832658123noreply@blogger.com0