Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Links, links, links, links....

Happy 10th birthday Blogger!

  • For those of us who have trouble on Mondays!
  • A newly named inherent behavior: Seeking [from Slate]
  • More than just death by PowerPoint, this talks about what the errors/problems are
Here is a "two-fer:" first it talks about the positive impact of high-speed [broadband] access on rural areas. But then I looked at the map which shows number of broadband providers. When I look at a map like this, I often focus on the places that I know about (mostly where I have lived). So, for example in both most of northern Maine, and in a tiny swatch of southern Arizona there are no providers. Well, a lot of that northern Maine is woods! I have canoed through some of that territory, there are really no roads, and only the hardiest of people. The southern Arizona piece is more problematic, but it sure looks to me like it is the reservation which is just to the west (and slightly south) of Tucson. When I lived there it was the Papago Reservation, but it is now called Tohono O'odham.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Links from around the web - later in August

First is Louisville: I had forgotten that I know the library director there, Craig Buthold. We served on a PLA Committee many, many years ago. More recently I have been in contact with Greg Schwartz, fellow Brown U alumnus.

Steve Lawson has taken the lead with this well written post and offer of funds.

More random stuff:

Library Journal needs to understand

Much more about blogging and their audience.

First of all, the typeface on their web pages is way too small. It looks like about 7 point type, and then, there is no way to enlarge it!

Second, the site is so ad heavy that it takes forever to load.

Third, their linking! If you are on a page where in the right (well, actual, middle because there is the column of ads) and click on one of the "Recent Posts," where do you go? To a whole page of brief announcements of the recent posts, and the one you clicked on may or may not be visible! If you want to read the whole post, you have to click AGAIN!

Then, for the longer blogs (Blatant Berry, Annoyed Librarian) only the first sentence or so will show up in your blog feed reader. (It might even be 140 characters, I have never bothered to count.)

If it weren't so important to my professional life, I would never go there!

[And that loading thing....one page has been loading the whole time I have been typing this!]

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Links from around the web

  • An interesting article from PW about the Google Book Search Settlement and a panel discussion at New York Public Library
  • When you "buy" a download, can you keep it forever? Some think not. Here is an article from boingboing on the topic.
Stephen Abram is always thoughtful. I had saved two posts from him:
  1. Streaming video is displacing DVDs
    But I wonder where does that leave the majority in Louisiana who do not have Internet at home?
  2. He also has some cogent thoughts on Bing and Yahoo (As he suggests, I have started using Bing.)
More posts
  • I picked this up off PUBLIB, where the poster noted that this conservative paper generally is against any taxes and increases in public spending, but does support public libraries. It is an interesting article.
  • I am a little disappointed that I did not make the Top 100 list, and I have some quibbles, like librarian.net not being in the top 5! But there are some other obviously good choices. There were even a few I had not followed/found.
That's it for now!