The Roomba that I wrote about in my last post arrived on Feb 15, not bad for a Valentine’s Day present! And the verdict is: we totally dig it, it scares the dog, the cat doesn’t care. How cool is it that we can be walking the dog, or making dinner, or whatever, and have a robot be cleaning the house at that very moment? Better living through automation, that’s.. Read More
The Obligatory Valentines’ Day Post
I was talking with AE earlier today & we both noted that the fact that it’s Valentines’ Day had barely registered, and that we hadn’t planned a post for today. So here is my Obligatory Valentines’ Day PostTM. I got my wife a Roomba for Valentines’ Day. I’m serious. I know that sounds really unromantic — I mean, let’s call a spade a spade here, I got my wife a.. Read More
Open Peer Review
Thanks to Monica for passing this along: A New Model for Peer Review? Peer Reviewers Comments are Open for All to See in New Biology Journal, from the Issues in Scholarly Communication blog BioMed Central has launched Biology Direct, a new online open access journal with a novel system of peer review. The journal will operate completely open peer review, with named peer reviewers’ reports published alongside each article. The.. Read More
Controversial? Depends on who you ask.
An interesting side-by-side comparison of coverage of the same event in two different venues: U. of Michigan President Defends Library’s Role in Controversial Google Scanning Project, from the Chronicle …a speech to scholarly-book publishers …participation in the controversial Google Library Project is “a legal, ethical, and a noble endeavor.” “The Google book project is a remarkable opportunity — and a natural evolution — for a university whose mission is to.. Read More
Festival of the Book
Paul beat me to the punch on blogging this, but here is the text of the email I got recently announcing the 2006 NC Festival of the Book: Subject: News: ’06 North Carolina Fest. o/t Book Greetings from the ’06 NC Festival of the Book: We’re proud to announce the launch of a totally-revamped and newly-updated festival site: www.ncbook.org There you’ll find a schedule of confirmed festival programs, as well.. Read More
The old home town: hotbed of radical librarianship
I posted the other day about my home town of Newton, MA Fighting the Power, as it were. And now comes this follow-up, also from John, who is rapidly becoming a regular stringer for my blog. Editorial from The Boston Globe: When librarians protect terrorists I still say that the Newton Library Director did the right thing, since after all the FBI agents who showed up at the library didn’t.. Read More
International Edible Book Festival
This wacky item comes from the good people in the Duke Libraries Preservation department, via Yvonne: Please join the Preservation Department in celebrating the first annual Edible Book Festival at Duke on March 31, 2006, from 2-4pm in the Tower Reading Room. What on Earth is this you ask? It’s a festival celebrating books by making them out of food. The festival has been around since 1999, but this is.. Read More
Media darling
A freelance writer for NewsFactor magazine contacted me at the beginning of January. She was working on an article about Wikipedia, as she put it in her email, “attempting to downplay the vitriol and folderol seen in recent press reports and instead give a better view of what Wikipedia does to weed out misinformation.” A tall order, I’d say. But on the plus side, you don’t see the word “folderol”.. Read More
The old home town stands up to The Man
Thanks to John, human news aggregator and Reporter-At-Large for PomeRantz, for sending this one along. The Homer Street branch featured so prominently in this story was my home library for many many years, since I was about 8 or so and that branch was first built. Newton library forces FBI to get warrant to seize computers, from the Boston Globe A matter of principle — and law — made Newton.. Read More
Kojo
I got a call in the office on Thursday from Brendan, one of the producers of the Kojo Nnamdi Show, which airs on WAMU radio, in DC. They’re planning to do a show on Wikipedia and the “wiki phenomenon,” as this producer put it. Originally the show was supposed to be on this Tuesday; I got an email yesterday from the producer saying that it’s been rescheduled to February. I’m.. Read More