Lisa Norberg & Tim Shearer are my new favorite people. They told me today that the library has implemented a Google Scholar search box on the library’s main page. Here’s the announcement. Tim tells me that this search box is connected to EZproxy, so if I’m off campus & do a search I’ll be forced through the proxy login. Logical, yet a very nice piece of functionality. But it gets.. Read More
If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.
Paul is our new Representative to the Adminstrative Board of the Library. Me, I’m an also-ran. I was nominated for the position of SILS rep to the Faculty Council, & lost to my worthy adversary Deb Barreau. Actually I’m kind of relieved.
PH.Dotcom
The Village Voice on academic blogging: PH.Dotcom And a sidebar guide to best academic blogs: A Brief Guide to Blogodemia Note, however, that the VV misspelled Ph.D.
Scott’s Thoughts about the Future of Libraries
All my students out there among My Beloved Audience, listen up: Some libraries are closing due to lack of funding. It’s happening slowly now, with a few cases in California and Texas, but I predict that, unless something changes, wait… “unless WE change SOMETHING”… no passive language here… it will continue to happen. Different types of libraries will need to take on new roles to survive… This from a recent.. Read More
Oxyrhynchos
Here you go, Nelson… I was listening to NPR on Sunday & heard a story about Oxyrhynchos & the artifacts that were unearthed there. Apparently a process was recently developed that allows the writing on the papyri to be read, when the writing is faded or the papyrus is blackened (I can’t remember which). So now 104 trunks full of papyrus from Oxyrhynchos that have been sitting around Oxford since.. Read More
Microsoft’s answer to Wikipedia
Encarta encyclopedia tests edit system, from AP Microsoft Corp.’s Encarta encyclopedia is testing a system that lets everyone be an editor – in theory at least. Readers can suggest edits or additions to entries, although the changes are vetted by editors before they reach the page. Encarta is not requiring such novice editors to identify themselves, said Gary Alt, Encarta’s editorial director. But it is asking them to reveal the.. Read More
Film “sanitizer”
Now on DVD: The Sanitizer’s Cut, from the WaPo Ray Lines is one of the most prolific film editors working today. …the directors whose work he edits haven’t authorized him to touch their films, and often have no idea that he’s cutting dialogue and sometimes whole scenes. Lines is a film “sanitizer,” one of a new kind of independent and self-proclaimed “family-friendly” editors who delete scenes containing sexuality, violence or.. Read More
The problem of purpose
Another post to the Dig_Ref listserv yesterday included a link to this: Do Libraries Still Matter?, from the Carnegie Reporter This article is a trip through the history of libraries in the US, focusing, appropriately, on Carnegie libraries, and discussing “the problem of purpose” of the public library: to educate & uplift the proletariat or to provide pleasure reading to the middle class? Considering the role of libraries in the.. Read More
VRD 2005 Conference: Call for Proposals
A post to the Dig_Ref listserv yesterday announced the Call for Proposals for Papers and Presentations for the VRD 2005 Conference: The VRD 7th Annual Reference Conference Recognizing the Success of Reference November 14-15, 2005 San Francisco, CA The VRD conference explores all aspects of reference service in a broad range of contexts, including libraries and information centers, government, business, education, and other industry sectors or organizations. The theme of.. Read More
Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy
Scientific Conference Falls for Gibberish Prank, from Reuters A bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference in a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jeremy Stribling said on Thursday that he and two fellow MIT graduate students questioned the standards of some academic conferences, so they wrote a computer program to generate research papers complete with nonsensical text,.. Read More