using itunes as a cheap and easy music preview tool

While we’re talking about social software, let’s talk about libraries using the tools that their students and patrons are already using. Union College in Schenectaty NY takes advantage of iTunes’ feature allowing other people on the same network to listen to each other’s music. So, if I’m at the library using the wireless and someone else is at the library using the wireless and has decided to make their music available, I can listen to it as if it were my music. The library uses their own copy of iTunes to offer tracks of new music that is available for checkout at the library. Innovative, free and clever!

on reading: books v audio books

I count audio books on my reading list, same as all other books, as long as they’re unabridged. Two links about audiobooks, the New York Times writes in defense of audiobooks in Loud, Proud, Unabridged: It Is Too Reading! while audible.com has been strutting around with this “edgy” ad campaign at dontread.org, while I applaud their chutzpah (and their printable DON’T READ posters) I’m always a little squicked out when a for-profit entity sells me stuff through a .org domain.

Speaking of audiocontent, take a listen to this recording of Ranganathan talking about Dewey from a 1964 recording (it’s noisy at the beginning, stick with it)