Links - Mid-February

My Google Reader is getting clogged up with saved posts, so it must be time again.

Andromeda Yelton shows up twice, first with a post on ALA Techsource about the costs of building a digital infrastructure for the National Archives. She questions some of the basic assumptions and costs.

On her own blog, she talks about what she calls "lexicality." This is the ability to express a concept in words. Her evaluation is that it is easy to clearly express and define a concept in "the sciences," but much less easy in other fields. That is what makes it so hard to look for things in catalogs...and even on Google. The bottom line is that in scientific writing, the concepts are terms which will show up in the full text of a work. The same is not necessarily true in fields like philosophy -- or I would argue, even library science.

I picked this up from Jessamyn, but several other including Brian Herzog noted it. (How did his blog slip off my list???) Would you have recognized a USB keylogger? I guess it started in England, I have not seen one.

I am sometimes looking for a library specific image for a flyer. Stephen Abram has noted a location for free images for library use.

Kathy Dempsey has a great post about why it is important to read the articles/posts/reviews/comments that are not favorable to libraries.

Karen Schneider posted about some of the trends that she has observed. They include:

1. the shift from DVD to streaming video (happening at a faster than expected rate)
2. wi-fi saturation [you'll have to read her post for this...]
3. laptops (at least on a college campus they are almost ubiquitous)

She ends by commenting on the need for power and tables. While I don't see that trend (and we are more like a public library than an academic), the February 1 issue of Library Journal did in an article called "The Quiet Plug Crisis."

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!]

LJ Webcast -- Fail

Have you successfully gotten an LJ Webcast? I signed up for one, went through the test that the site suggested, was told that I am fine and set up. But I cannot get sound. A bunch of PowerPoint slides are nice, but with effective slides (which is what I have seen for two events), you need to hear the talking!

Their web site has no contact for technical problems. The web regsitration has no info. Even the "partner" site providing the software/hosting has no tech contact info. You can "Contact a Solutions Expert" which sure looks like signing up for a sales call to me!

Library Journal Webcasts = FAIL

(And even their web site sucks. Very small print for the articles/blogs which you cannot enlarge, very, very long load times, and the RSS feeds only send a limited number of characters, not the full blog entry!)