Category: ‘puters

It’s been a week or so since I started using the RSS reader, and del.icio.us. I have to say, I’m fond of NetNewsWire and I feel that I don’t use del.icio.us nearly as much as I thought I would. The RSS reader has its drawbacks, mainly the fact that, like Capitalism or Communism, the whole system works better if everyone is on board. As long as I still have to hop on to the browser to read 1/2 the weblogs and other content I read, it’s less useful. For delivery of straight-up news, it can’t be beat. For any content I want to interact with [LISNews, blogs that I comment on] it encourages non-interaction and I’ve gone back to reading those web pages instead. As far as del.icio.us, I just don’t want to go through the extra steps for what I need to use it for, which is organizing links to add here and send other places, temporary stuff. Usually, I just drag the browser icon to my “add me” folder. Now I have to go to a web page, enter comments, hit submit. I can handle the lack of metadata and honestly, most of the stuff I’m likely to link isn’t really showing up a lot of other places. It’s a great tool, just not for me.

Searching for Stanford and ARL to try to get some more info on this story [a “shocker” says Library Journal] I came up with this nifty little document about applying Fair Use to the development of electronic reserves.

Technical services librarian Janet Rubenking wrote a useful column for PC Magazine about online databases, the type that would be connected to a library web site.[thanks carol]

Gates Foundation grants have done a huge amount towards getting libraries online. That said, they have regrettably opened libraries up to a lot of the crappy virii and browser hijacking problems that abound which are almost exclusively the result of insecure software, or software that has the potential to be secure but is configured insecurely out of the box. Microsoft makes, and sets default configurations on, most of this software. Librarian Way has a good short bit about the PC vs Mac dichotomy in the library world. I have been agitating just to get Netscape loaded on our Gates Foundations machines at my library, just so we can give our patrons a bit of a choice.

For those who are already up to speed on assistive technology, user groups are starting to form. The Visually Impaired and Blind User Group of Boston is one of many. And they have a teeny lending library. [thanks don]