Links and comments

ALA is coming up at the end of the week. Time to clean off the desk -- actual and virtual!

What counts as "broadband?" Jeff Scott has a good analysis with comments about this. His comment that defining it as one-half of a T-1 line is short-sighted, is insightful. Louisiana was one of the first states to have Internet available to the public in every "main" library in the state. Many are finding that the bandwidth currently provided is not adequate. Many libraries here, and elsewhere I assume, were hoping that the stimulus funding would help them improve network speed. This seems not to be the case.

Annette Day and Hilary Davis have an interesting article about the process of journal selection (and de-selection) for academic libraries in a group blog which I have only recently found: In the Library with a Lead Pipe.

Meredith Farkas is back and continues to be insightful and probably ahead of her time. She talks in a recent post about relying on free/web-based services to deliver critical functions. Her post makes me also think about how is our discussion about things like Library 2.0/Web 2.0 being stored for the future. We can read about the late 19th discussions on the pros and cons of public libraries collecting and circulating fiction because those discussions took place in print. Will library scholars of the end of this century be able to do the same for our discussions? (I'm also going to point to a related/similar discussion imbedded in Walt Crawford's August (?) Cites and Insights. I am sure, since I was reading it in the doctor's office yesterday, that his "Writing about Reading" has influenced my thoughts on Meredith's post.)

I am watching the Google OS situation somewhat closely, in part because we are considering purchasing a "netbook" for our regular travel.

Finally, is my new work love: statistics. In a short (3 minute) TED talk, mathematician Arthur Benjamin talks about the need to redefine the teaching of mathematics. Currently, calculus is the "holy grail" or highest level. He notes that most of us do not use calculus in our daily lives. (Engineers are exempt from this characterization.) However, if everyone had a better understanding of statistics, a lot of us would do better in life.

The link is above....I will try to embed it here:

From the news

I don't usually read USA Today, but that is one of the perks of staying at the Holiday Inn. Yesterday's paper (5/1/2008) had a couple of articles worth commenting on.

First, one of my few favorite TV shows, Boston Legal, was in danger of being canceled. It is #1 on the list of shows that USA Today readers want to save. Hmmm. I may need to see what's out on the web to try to save it. [That was the banner on page 1, and the top story in section D.]

There were economic stories on the front page which received comment at yesterday's WAPL program on the economic impact of libraries. The Fed dropped the interest rate again (and it did not help the stock market yesterday).

Air travel costs are going up. That is not good news, especially with my need to visit family, and travel for the ALA conference. I am glad I have most of my tickets locked in.

Then there was the story about college tuition. The headline was, in my opinion, very misleading. It caught my attention partly because David Ward yesterday showed a slide which dramatically showed the lifetime earning impact of having a college education. The headline seemed to be saying that was not true. However, that is not really what the story was saying. There was a report recently which showed that most of the increases in college tuition do not go to directly supporting the teaching of students. That is incredibly different than the headline! I guess for me, the good news is that for private, 4-year institutions the cost increases (as a percentage) were smaller than public universities or community colleges, and that the proportion going to direct student education costs was higher than the public universities and community colleges. I guess it is just media at work!

[I would have linked to the USA Today articles, but they charge. So that's that!]