Current Cites for April 2007

Roy has just posted Current Cites for April 2007!

Our ranks have been swelled with such luminaries as Keri Cascio, Frank Cervone, Susan Gibbons, Brian Rosenblum, and Karen Schneider.

I had three cites (as usual) with one on Erik Arfeuille that's worth quoting here:

"Anyone interested in digital libraries over the past 10 years is sure to recognize the name of Erik Arfeuille. His regular compendium of articles on library-related topics, New Technologies in Libraries, was a welcome source of current awareness. It certainly gave me pointers on what to read (and recommend). Alas in a farewell message dated 4/5/07, he announces that his "workload" no longer allows him to produce the lists. While this is a shame, the nature of his contribution for so many years is appreciated."

You can find the issue here...

All-Time Favorite UIC Announcement

 Aaaaaaaiiiiiieeeee:

"Human Cadaver Workshop for Massage Therapists"

Don't they have rubber dummies? My student-dentist had three rubber dummies for patients before he got me. What's wrong with that?

SaveNetRadio.org

SaveNetRadio.org is where you ought to go if you've ever listened to Internet Radio and thought it was a welcomed contrast to all the crap (pardon my French) on Broadcast radio.

Unfortunately this nascent medium is about to be wiped off the face of the earth -- at least in the U.S. -- thanks to an extremely punitive and destructive increase in royalty fees approved by the Copyright Royalty Board.

Richard MacManus from Read/Write Web who has a post on the subject, quotes from Pandora Radio:

"The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora."

In other words, those who can least afford it are being forced to pay the most. This is nothing but an attempt to stamp out innovation and choice in the one medium, namely the Internet, that we have left.

Happy Birthday: SaveTheInternet.com

SavetheInternet.com celebrates its first birthday:

"Backed by growing support on Capitol Hill and at the grassroots, the SavetheInternet.com Coalition marked its first anniversary today by renewing its call to make Net Neutrality the law of the land. The campaign was praised by leaders in Washington, who pledged to carry on the fight for Internet freedom in the halls of Congress."

Survey for Web Designers

Jeffrey Zeldman's got a Survey for Web Designers over at Alistapart.

As he explains:

The information it collects will help us form a long overdue picture of the ways web design is really practiced around the globe.

The thing is pretty much a breeze to get through. You can take it by going here...

Bad Design, Thy Name is Haworth

Can anyone tell me where the Table of Contents is located on this page? Is it that they just don't want anyone to find out?

'Disruptive Innovation' About to Edge Out 'Conversation' in Platitude Sweepstakes

It had to happen. The long-reigning champ of "Uber Platitude" may be about to cede its title to a brawney new upstart.

Long a favorite on the Sincerity Circuit, the "Conversation Schtick" received a blow to its mid-drifts after trend-setting "The Onion" declared: "Let the conversation end".

This set the stage for a possible upset in the "Platitude Sweepstakes" with new-comer "Disruptive innovation" (child of plain old Innovation) about to gain the upper-hand.

Its use among geek commentators to indicate innovation that changes everything (as opposed to innovation that leaves everything exactly the same), is growing so disruptively that it looks set to overtake rival "Conversation" in no time.

Springtime in Chicago

Belmont Harbor Looking South: Belmont Harbor looking south
with the skyscrapers of downtown in the distance.

Wrigley Field: Wrigley Field from Clark & Addison.
The Score is 0 & 4 - Top of the 7th (against the Cards).

Happy Illinois Library Day!

 A couple of interesting links:

• http://www.illinoislibraryday.info/
• https://www.ila.org/events/reg_ild.htm

Totally Cool : LibSite Image Gallery!

With all the sites coming in on LibSite, I thought it'd be nice to set up some kind of image gallery. People could see thumbnails of the sites they're sending in grouped together like on Google Images or some image database.

Well, as it turns out, it was easier putting it together than I thought.

So check it out: "LibSite Image Gallery..."

TECH cocktail 4 (Chicago)

TECH cocktail 4 (Chicago): Free drinks and a bar full of geeks. What better recipe than that? This time round it was at John Barleycorn in Wrigleyville. 

LibSite Officially Launched!

 

As of Tuesday, April 10, 2007, LibSite.org is official launched! I just sent out notices to the four corners of the world.

Go Cubs!

 

Once a Cub's fan, always a Cub's fan. It's a fact of life on the North Side of Chicago.

(Today's Opening Day at Wrigley Field.)

LibSite.org : Sneak Peek

LibSite.org : A Recommendation Service for Library-related Websites:  Just a sneak peek of LibSite.org -- a recommendation service for library related websites. I've been working on it for a while and will probably be announcing it "officially" at some point early next week.

It's built around the premise that library-related projects need and deserve a higher profile, that the technology allows us to engage this material in any number of ways.

So of course, the site features a blog, a wiki, RSS feeds and email alerts (the last two being configurable down to the individual tag). Users can rate sites and add them to a "favorites" page. There's even a LibSite Widget that people can put on their own sites (see the side navigation here for an example).

Of course, the key is user-involvement. It's not going to be much of a site if I'm the only one contributing to it. Everyone can recommend sites and even when people don't feel like doing that, they can leave constructive comments or otherwise take advantage of libSite's features.

So have a look and tell me what you think: http://libSite.org [Wayback Machine]

C&RL : The Missing Pages?

Anyone else notice this? I was in the midst of reading "The Evolution of the Academic Research Library During the 1960's" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries, when the article suddenly dropped off the face of the earth.

The words on the following page didn't make sense. Then I looked at the page numbers: '104' on the page I was reading and '121' on the new page.

Opps, looks like they let something slip.