One of the funny things about librarianship, to me, is how much of our collective “hive mind” type of knowledge is wrapped up in mailing lists and their online archives. I still subscribe to at least four library-oriented mailing lists though in many cases I have a web-based option for following along as well. I’ve recently become aware of the “Best of PUBLIB” website which has a nice categorized interface to some of the best “strings of comments” that have shown up on PUBLIB. The other lists I read are Web4Lib which I read via the web and VTLIBRARIES and VLABOARD which, to be best of my knowledge, don’t even have public web archives.
Category: blogz
some odds and ends from the mailbag
As per usual I’ve returned from holiday travelling with a lot of cool links to share and the admission that I’m behind on my blog reading — and this is me who is never behind, this is all deeply distressing to me — and I bet you are too. Anyhow, some things I’ve enjoyed reading over the past few days. I’m putting a Computers in Libraries column to bed today and it’s talking about widgets. I like talking about widgets.
- Phone box becomes mini-library – small community in Somerset turns old phone box into a lending library/free box for books.
- Portsmouth (NH) public library is having a documentary showing of DIY Nation + artist get together this weekend which looks like fun and a nifty type of program to boot. Plus I sort of stupidly like that they can link right to the book in their catalog. It’s 2009, how many of us can do that yet?
- One line update/coda to the Des Moines photography situation from the DMPL marketing manager “At this month’s meeting, our board voted to remove the requirement that permission be granted for photos to be taken in our library.” Woo!
- Curious to know what’s going to happen at the Hayward (CA) libraries when they go to a Netflix model for lending [pay up front, then no overdue fees]. Looking forward to seeing the crunched numbers at the end of this.
- In another neat model, ArchivesNext reports on the Amsterdam City Archives’ “you ask we scan” approach to digitization. There are some linked slideshows and further data. Interesting model.
making a difference, general and specific
I have some odds and ends here that I wasn’t too sure where to put. I try to do linkdumps infrequently. Here are some things I’ve come across in the past week or so that seem to be a few people deciding to improve something and what came out of that decision.
- ALA diverted 65% of their waste from landfills at their last conference. I’m aware that there’s a case to be made that recycling isn’t a cure-all, but I appreciate that ALA is making the effort to not print a ton of stuff on brand new paper only to send it straight to the dump.
- The Firefox Metrics team figured out one reason why people stopped partway through the Firefox installation process. They decided to make some changes to help more people install Firefox on OSX.
- MIT Libraries now has a mobile version of their site. Note that if you look at it from a conventional desktop you wind up having to look at it via a mobile emulator of sorts. Still, pretty nifty though.
the discriminating librarian
I went through and did a whole bunch of adding and subtracting to my RSS feeds now that I’m feeling better (woohoo, the raring librarian, I also switched to a new file cabinet! *swoons*) so I may be reading some stuff that you’ve read a few weeks back. Of particular interest this week was Iris Jastram’s short post about someone trying to pretend to be a student in order to get the library to buy a particular book. Steve Lawson adds a little color commentary. Iris smelled something fishy and put the kibosh on it. Nice work. In related news, I am still getting the occasional email from spammers and other press-release mailers trying to get me to link to their blogs or review their books. If I get an email from a publisher, even a press release email, I always write them back and politely tell them
– that my blog is not a book review blog
– that I do not work in a library in a book-buying capacity
– that I do not appreciate getting emails like these
– that whoever they bought my email address from has sold them a bad list
I often get responses saying that they didn’t buy a list [is it against the rules to admit it if you do this?] and they just really liked my blog and thought I’d like their book. I’m at a loss. My particular problem isn’t terribly difficult. I block their address and my problem is solved. The larger problem of clueless marketing and (in Iris’ case, not so much in mine) aggressive responses to being declined seems to be a whole ‘nother piece of collateral damage from the economic downturn.
Good Ideas from Vermont Libraries
“The Vermont Department of Libraries has been publishing Good Ideas irregularly, beginning in 1988. Each edition includes the contributions of many public libraries. This blog was set up to continue the tradition but make it easier for librarians to search, use and print the resources.”