Weighing the Pros and Cons

26Feb09

I’ve read a lot of very favorable reviews of the new Kindle, but never having used either of them I have to take this all at face value.  Thankfully, John Biggs, of CrunchGear, who has used both made up a list of reasons to buy a Kindle 2, and reasons to not.  The biggest reason [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, change or die, digital divide, tools of the trade   |  1 Comment
Tags: Amazon, kindle, Kindle 2

I’m optimistic

25Feb09

I was talking to a friend the other day who is not librarian, but who is a small-press publisher and who sits on the board of a private library, about the future of libraries. Despite his age of 62 years, he is completely on board with digitizing books and the future of libraries.
“I dropped [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, change or die, libraries   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: children, e-books, optimism, storytime, the future of libraries

Is that funny?

24Feb09

I told a librarian joke the other day. A friend and I were talking about teaching and communicating and I made the comment “I’m just terrible at disseminating information.”
It wasn’t a joke so much as a smart-assed comment, but the person I was talking to had no idea I was trying to be funny.
“That was [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, Fun Finds   |  2 Comments
Tags: Library Humor

You’re still not supposed to judge them that way

23Feb09

I simply cannot think of a better title for a blog about covers, so I’m just going to use it twice.  My friend Librarian About Town told me about The Book Cover Archive, which is a superrad website that archives book cover art– just like it sounds like it would.  It’s still in development, so you may [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, Fun Finds   |  1 Comment
Tags: Art, book cover archive, book covers

Big Brother is Facebook (?)

19Feb09

Recently there has been an uproar in the social networking community about claims Facebook made in their new Terms of Use policy about their ownership of the information the users post on the site, even after users cancel accounts.
The offending language claimed:
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with [...]

Filed under: By: Miss Information, Copyright, News, change or die, pop culture, tools of the trade   |  1 Comment

Oh, That’s What a Librarian Does

17Feb09

Next time some snarky guy at a party says “do we really need librarians anymore, isn’t that what google is for?” after I proudly announce my future occupation, I am just going to take out my ipod and show him this article  in the New York Times. I am still fairly convinced that a decent [...]

Filed under: A Day in the Life, By: Miss Information, News, Success!!, libraries   |  2 Comments

The Emerging Field of Digital Preservation

12Feb09

It is unlikely that at any point in time one group of librarians met to try to decide how to archive and preserve print materials. The process developed more organically than that, common practices became standards and were taught to future generations. However, the development of print resources wasn’t as abrupt as the digital revolution. [...]

Filed under: By: Miss Information, News, change or die, digital divide, libraries   |  Leave a Comment

Everyone loves Sully

12Feb09

This is somewhat old news, but worth mentioning nonetheless.  When Captain “Sully” Sullenberger brought down US airways flight 1549 into the Hudson River, he saved lives, but ruined a library book.  He informed the library that the book was ruined (the book was about professional ethics), and asked them to waive his late fees.  They [...]

Filed under: By: The Librarienne, News   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Professional ethics, Sully Sullenberger

Liveblogging the Kindle Release

09Feb09

The NYTimes has a blogger liveblogging the release of the Amazon Kindle 2 – comparing its innovation to that of the release of the iPod. That made my crinkle up my nose, but please, judge for yourself.

To help hype the release, Amazon asked Stephen King to write a book called UR available only on Kindle, [...]

Filed under: By: Miss Information, News, change or die, tools of the trade   |  2 Comments

From the Archives: The Art of War?

04Feb09

Another example of shameless self promotion. Kind of.

Claudia Covert, my mentor for my professional field experience and the Reader’s Services Librarian at the Fleet Library at RISD, spent years researching the origins and significance of a bunch of strange plans for boats she came upon in the archives. What she discovered was that a RISD [...]

Filed under: By: Miss Information, News, libraries   |  3 Comments