Note to Google

 Note to Google: No, we aren't open till 2am tonight. It's intersession.

UPDATE: I contacted Google through the "Feedback" page and they fixed the thing in about a day. Not bad.

On the Importance of High School Libraries

So the big news yesterday was the student protest at DeSable High School against the firing of their librarian. The students were right to do this. In fact it would seem more of a survival tactic than simply a protest.

It's amazing to think of an institution that claims to be about education that has no library function. What are the students going to do when they hit college? They'll each have to learn how to do research -- that's what going to college involves -- and this is infinitely harder to do if they have no prior familiarity with what a library is and how it functions. What's next? Take away the textbooks?

UPDATE: Good news...

Old Pal Unexpectedly Drops By

 

Current Cites for November 2015

 Current Cites for November 2015 is out! You can find the issue here...

I recommended an article titled, "When IT No Longer Remains Anonymous -- For All the Right Reasons" (EDUCAUSE Review). It looks at two approaches to academic IT depts. -- one reactive (okay) and the other pro-active (better).

Ask a Librarian

 

Interesting article looking at the transitory nature of the web. Technology and formats change all the time. In a sense, you never step into the same web twice. That said, the article subtitle, "If a Pulitzer-finalist 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can" -- just isn't true. I found most of the original "vanished" articles using the database Newsbank.

Current Cites for September 2015

 

Current Cites for September 2015 is out! You can find the issue here...

I recommended an article from Computers In Libraries that's near and dear to anyone who's experienced the same on a website they've managed, namely "Hacked! Lessons Learned From An URL Injection".

File Under, 'Things I Don't Usually Think About'

So I was at the local Subway Sandwich place, ordering a Ham and Cheese. The guy at the counter asked me what I wanted on it.

"Mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato," I replied.

"In that order?"

I was stumped. I mean, I don't usually get down to that level of detail.

"Go with whatever works best," I finally blurted out.

First Saturday of the New School Year at Depaul

First Saturday of the new school year at Depaul -- with colleague Jim.

Free Books: Tough Choice

 

At the Reference Desk: Free Books on the 'book truck' near the library entrance! It's either "WordPerfect: The Pocket Reference" (1987) or "Minute Manual for Apple Writer IIe" (1983). Tough choice.

I finally went with the "Minute Manual for Apple Writer IIe" -- I mean, how could I pass such pertinent pieces of information as:

How Much Can I Save on One Disk?

A normal Apple disk can hold a total of about 143k or 143,000 characters of information. The amount of usable space on a disk is equal to 128k to 136k or about 40 single spaced pages or 80 double spaces pages of text. When you run out of room on a disk and attempt to save a file, the computer simply beeps and displays the message, 'DOS :DISK FULL'. Put another disk in the drive and save the file again. (p.115)

At the Tech-in-Motion Timmy Awards in Chicago

 

Happy New School Year! (UIC)

First day of classes at UIC.

A Higher Authority

Personal Confession: Nowadays there's all this talk about 'STEM' in education. That's nice but frankly what got me going -- starting in high school -- was the notion of the 'Renaissance Man'. ‪#‎LongLiveTheHumanities‬

Funniest Reference Question of the Year (By Phone)

Patron: "Sorry, I know you probably get this question all the time..."

Me (interrupting): "Ask what you want -- we're here till 9pm!"

Patron: _SILENCE_

Patron: _MORE SILENCE_

Patron: _EVEN MORE SILENCE_

Me (finally): "Did you have a question"?

Patron: "That was it -- I wanted to know how late you're open."

Message to Box.com

You call this a slideshow? By default, over a third of the photo is covered up with usage data (of all things) on the right. Why not make showing usage data optional through a setting in the embed code?

Site Launch: GermaniaBroadcast.net

Today was the official launch date of GermaniaBroadcast.net. I announced it on all the usual social networks.

It's actually been up for maybe a month -- with me fiddling around, adding content, rearranging it and the like. I guess, an alternative name for the thing could be, "Fun with Drupal and Content Management".

The site is built around various digital records that we have of daddy, William Klein and his radio show, "The Germania Broadcast" (1927-1970). Working with the data, I managed to organize everything into four principle categories, Events, People, Places and Library (or 'Documents').

The neat thing with Drupal is how you can connect one item in one category with items in any other. Say, the name of a singer pops up in the description of a concert in 1928 which happened at the Auditorium Theater; You can relate the person to the event and location going backwards and forward. The magic is called "Entity Reference" but again, I like to call it, 'Fun with Content Mgmt".

In any case, there's a slightly fuller explanation of the original radio broadcast plus background here: The Germania Broadcast : An Introduction.

Dumb 'Security' Idea About to Be Axed by Bank of America - Finally

Well, it took them a while but Bank of America is finally saying 'bye-bye' to a particularly ineffective form of online security called 'SiteKey'. Probably better known as a 'security image', the idea was to assign you an image which you were then expected to remember every time you logged in. Yeah, good luck with that.

There actually was research on this. Not surprisingly, researchers found that "users will enter their passwords even if their site-authentication images are absent." Brad Stone summarizing the results in the New York Times put it this way, "Of 60 participants who got that far into the study and whose results could be verified, 58 entered passwords anyway. Only two chose not to log on, citing security concerns."

Of course that was 2007 or more than eight years ago. The NYT article concludes with a comment from one of the original researchers, "sometimes the appearance of security is more important than security itself.”

I'd only add that all too often, the mere mention of 'security' is expected to triumph over everything including common sense. The truth of course is that everything deserves a healthy measure of skepticism.

Library Workers of the World United!

Wow, a student I've seen before just came up to the Ref Desk and thanked me for teaching him how to do research! Best feedback ever! ‪#‎NLWD2015‬ (link).

Current Cites for March 2015

 

Current Cites for March 2015 is out! You can find the issue here...

I recommended an article from The Journal of Web Librarianship with the title, "Use and Usability of a Discovery Tool in an Academic Library". It went over usability testing of the "discovery tool" (in this case, Primo by Exlibris) at KU Libraries. Funny thing is, I kept switching back and forth from the article to the two institutions I'm connected to -- just to compare notes.

Love Those ALA Profile Prefixes

 Renewed my ALA membership today. Love their Profile Prefixes. Click for larger image...

Neutrality Rulz!

Happy days are here again! At least for a while.

When people first started hooking up to the Internet, it was a two step -- or two layer -- process: You had your phone line which was owned by the local Bell carrier, and then you had an internet service provider or 'ISP' -- of which there were many.

Then the phone companies developed a slightly faster system (DSL) which, surprise, surprise, the ISPs had no access to. Within a short time, the ISPs simply disappeared. The phone companies, ATT & Verizon, after being broken up for a couple of years, zoomed back to national dominance -- this despite the fact that since DSL, they really haven't done much innovation.

And that precisely is the point where the Internet started to resemble a traditional communication network -- with mediocre service and a handful of players. All I can say is, 'bout time!

Eat Cake!

 "Eat Cake!" -- happy greetings that welcomed me on the way to the Reference Desk this evening.

Current Cites for Jan 2015

 

Current Cites for January 2015 is out! You can find the issue here...

Although my focus is usually tech, I went this month with a set of articles from Library Trends that looked at the state of libraries in countries from the former "eastern block". How libraries fared in what used to be known affectionately as "communist dictatorships" makes for interesting reading -- as well as what they've done since.

Daddy in Wartime London with the ABSIE Team

 

Amazing picture of daddy along with what looks like the rest of the 'American Broadcasting Station in Europe' (i.e. 'ABSIE') team in London in 1943 (see larger image). I just came upon it after going through a box of old pictures. Note, daddy is in the back with the headphones next to the guy in a sweater.

The picture above is a close-up (flipped) of the New York Times that the fellow on the right has on his desk. It dates from Sept. 30, 1943 and has the headline: "Naples' Fall Near as Allies Break Line and Pursue Fleeing Germans on Plain; Russians in Kremenchug, Aim for Baltic".

Here's a write-up I once put together on his tour of duty: "Daddy Was a DJ to the Germans in WWII" (6/9/07)

First Day at the Reference Desk for 2015!

Not asked once -- not once: "Would you have my textbook up in the stacks?" Devastating.