librarian.net

I rarely post links to job here because it seems to me that most postings for library jobs are more or less the same. This one is different. The Open Library project, which I linked to here before, is looking for some new folks. You’d be working with a fun team of geniuses, most notably Karen Coyle who is the chief librarian of the project. Telecommuting an option. Interested? Read the job description, then email Aaron and tell him you heard about it here.

Tasks include: working with our chief librarian, Karen Coyle, to implement algorithms to do data merging and other processing tasks; writing scrapers and crawlers to grab various data sources; writing importers to parse this data into something that can be imported into our database; and managing all the people who want to help us with these tasks.

Chad strongarm^H^H^H talked me into hosting the wandering Infosciences Carnival which was probably something I should have done a long time ago anyhow. You can participate too, it’s incredibly easy. Send a link to the best library stuff you’ve been reading this week, either via del.icio.us using the carninfo tag or this submission form. Need to know more/ Check out the submission guidelines on the wiki, or just ask me or Chad. Thanks for contributing.

If you have a second, please take this ten question survey about academic libraries’ presence on social networking sites. [web4lib]

Merdith Farkas is doing a survey of the biblioblogosphere to follow-up on her survey from two years ago. Please take a sec if you are a library blogger and take her survey.

Coming on the heels of my article in Library Journal, Carolyn Hank has a survey on Blogger Perceptions on Digital Preservation that she’d like you to take.

I’m clawing through the fog of jetlag and email backlog. Thank jehu that I have Twitter to help me feel even further behind! If you have more free time than I do, you may want to help out with some surveys.

• Rachel Singer Gordon is looking for librarians pursuing nontraditional career paths and has a few questions she’d like you to answer.
• A “group of librarians” involved in the 2007 ALA Emerging Leaders program would like you to take a short survey about what new/young librarians would like to see more of at conferences. Jenny implies (and their blog confirms) that the Project L team is behind this, more power to them.

I’m putting together a little piece about open source software, sort of showcasing how it is or can be used in libraries. Some of the tools, like Firefox or Open Office, are somewhat well known while others like VLC or Paint.net are much less familiar. If your library is using an open source tool and liking it, would you mind putting a note in the comments or dropping me an email over the next week or so letting me know what you use and why you like it? Thank you.

Here are a few little things I’ve been reading on the subject this week.

- Dan Chudnov’s Talk slides: “FLOSS for Libraries: For Administrators”
- LifeHackers Geek to Live: Top 10 open source Windows apps
- Eric Goldhagen’s Open Source for Librarians powerpoint presentation.

From the web4lib list: “We are gathering data for our presentation at this year’s LITA National Forum. Our presentation is “Putting all the Pieces Together: Building a Cyberinfrastructure at the Georgia State University Library”. We invite you to participate in our survey regarding the technologies and web services you are using in your library.”

Please take the ALA Website Usability Survey. Please be honest. Jenny has included the text of a letter from ALA’s Executive Director explaning the rationale behind the survey. Even though I think this is too little way too late — maybe this should have beern done before the last redesign? — it’s still an attempt to right wrongs. Give them a chance, take the survey.

Rachel Singer Gordon is trying to get an idea of what library speakers are charging, and receiving, for speaking work, and what sort of work they are doing. Take a minute and go fill out her Speaking Survey.