Hi. I upgraded to WordPress 2.3 today because I just noticed a bug in the tagging plug-in I was using which means that any time I approved a comment for a particular post, the tags associated with that post vanished. Pretty weird huh? WordPress 2.3 has native tag support which means no more wonky plugin/WP interactions. It also has — hidden in the manage > import > section — a tag importer that will either import your tags from popular tag plugins or import your categories as tags. This is all good news. I managed to do the entire thing in about 20 minutes including adding tags to my current template, adding the tag cloud, downloading new versions of a few other plug-ins, and re-doing the little hacks I always make to my WordPress install including a custom stylesheet, removal of all the extra cruft from the dashboard, and pulling in a del.icio.us feed of the “addme” tag into my now blank dashboard area. Here are a few links that were helpful to me in doing this upgrade
Category: hi
book reading meme
I broke rule number eight, just now. [walt]
done messing with themes
Okay, the website is fixed and set to go with the new style. I’ve done a few things here so if you regularly read via RSS, you might want to take a peek at it. Here are the improvements:
- New stylesheet. Easy to read, photo of me, slighty different layout.
- Style switcher now works in all styles so if you don’t like this one, pick another one (in the lower right) and you’ll always be able to get back.
- I pulled in some RSS feeds so you can see the last five books I’ve read [this will encourage me to read more speedily] and the last five questions from Ask MetaFilter [often compelling]. I did this using feed2js. Big thanks to Meredith’s husband Adam for suggesting it.
Everything else should be the same. Please contact me if you see something broken.
can you control public domain images? should you?
Peter Hirtle has a great post over at the LibraryLaw blog about the Smithsonian’s attempt to control reproduction and subsequent use of the materials they have made available digitally and online, many of which are in the public domain. A group called Public Resource decided to push the envelope on the Smithsonian’s terms of service, specifically their copyright notice, and downloaded all 6000+ images and made them available on Flickr where they still are. Hirtle questions the legality of what Public Resource has done, but also questions the copyright that the Smithsonian asserts.
Again, I wish the Smithsonian didn’t try to assert control over its images. And while I think that Public.Resource.Org crossed the line, it is ridiculous that anyone else can now take any of public domain images Public.Resource.Org has distributed and do whatever they want with them. (Any contract limiting use of the images can only be between the Smithsonian and Public.Resource.Org.) That is just one more reason why repositories should focus on providing good services to users, rather than attempting to establish monopoly control over images from their holdings.
Update: I made this for you.
hi – 13apr
Hi. I spent an awful lot of time on the phone or on Skype today, most of it making things with other folks. In order
– Chitchatting with Casey about his Library Technology Report in which I write a chapter on Open Source Software Tools for libraries. We messed about with formatting and structure, laughed about how “Web site” is spelled in formal publications compared to everywhere else on the planet, and admitted the whole thing looks pretty good. Keep an eye peeled for it.
– Talked to Jay Datema from Library Journal and Bookism along with Peter Brantley for a podcast about all sorts of things. Specifically we discussed the nature of library content and social content becoming digital and the ramifications for archivists, librarians and plain old lovers of books.
– Did my weekly podcast with Matt Haughey from MetaFilter. This is always a fun weeks-end summary of what we’ve noticed on the site including my favorite posts from Ask MetaFilter
Then I swam. Then it was nighttime. I decided to take the train to CiL so that I can swing by and say hi to some friends in NY on the way. I have books and a few little snacks to bring with me. I’ll be in the CiL area from about Sunday night late til Tuesday afternoon/evening so please say howdy if you see me around. My talk is Monday. As with most of these quickie conferences, all my mealtimes are spoken for, but I still have some discretionary walking around time, depending on when I wake up. On the way back I’ll be stopping to see friends in Baltimore and then going to give a talk in Dodge City Kansas. People laugh when I say Kansas for some reason but I had such a good time there last time and finally got a good answer to my “please explain this Second Life and Libraries thing” question from some Kansas librarians.
So, I will be on the road for a while. Then I am coming back to teach an eBay class, some more digital pictures classes, maybe help one of the small libraries I work with install an actual OPAC instead of their in-library PAC and preparing a few more local talks in the next few weeks. I may not have mentioned this previusly, but I’m contributing occasionally (well, once so far) to the Slow Library website, so if you were waiting for it to come back from dormancy, that time has arrived.