Category: ‘puters

A few bad apples may be spoiling the E-Rate program that provides Internet and phone service to a large amount of the country’s schools and libraries. There are tighter spending rules, a lower mandatory contribution from the telcos [thanks FCC!] and possible delays on cash outlays extending into 2006. Now might be a good time to contact your elected official and make sure they are aware of this issue and actively working to resolve it. If E-rate money isn’t forthcoming, what does that mean for CIPA? [thanks rebecca]

Washington State has a statewide virtual reference project that has an online core competencies training curriculum for virtual reference. Lots of good linked reading and exercises.

Meetup.com now includes librarian meetups. While the closest one to me is 130 miles away, this might be fun to pursue in Vermont. [juice]

Jon Udell has come up with a bookmarklet that is non-ISBN dependent that does pretty much what our little hack does. Plus, he talks about this whole REST-versus-SOAP debate where web services are concerned which is new vocabulary for me but worth learning. In old-school library news, a whole class of 4th graders said “No WAY!!” when I told them [and then showed them in the online database] that Tony Hawk was my age and had four kids.

Thanks to Steven Cohen and Michael Fagan and Andrea Mercado [and me, and Michael and Andrew whose emails with similar code I didn’t get til this morning], the WorldCat Lucky Bookmark lives! While I agree with Sarah that we can’t expect our patrons to grok the bookmarklet thing, as much as we might like them to, this one is [nominally] for staff. Go nuts team!
Lucky ‘Cat [in same window]
Lucky ‘Cat [in new window]