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."

Info service? Bad name

I came in this morning to find the latest series of posts on PUBLIB about a new text answer service. If you go to the PUBLIB archives, look for the posts which have "Text to 542542" in the subject.

The second post mentioned the name of the service: kgb.com

My reaction was visceral and immediate. What kind of dummy would choose that as a name? But before I posted to PUBLIB, I checked. Yes, KGB is the Russian abbreviation of Komityet Gosudarstvjennoj Biezopasnosti (Committee for State Security). also known as the Soviet secret police.

As a quick reference (rather than wander downstairs, and to get "clippable quotes," I went to Wikipedia. Here is one quote which reflects part of the reason for my reaction:

During the Cold War, the KGB played a critical role in the survival of the Soviet one-party state through its suppression of political dissent (termed "ideological subversion") and hounding of notable public figures such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.

Here is a second quote:

One of the KGB’s chief preoccupations during the Cold War was the suppression of unorthodox beliefs, the persecution of the Soviet dissidents, and the containment of their opinions. Indeed, this obsession with "ideological subversion" only increased throughout the Cold War, primarily due to the rise of Yuri Andropov in the KGB and his appointment as chairman in 1967. Andropov declared that every instance of dissent, including for example religious movements that rejected the Communist Party, were a threat to the Soviet state that must be challenged. He mobilized the resources of the KGB to achieve this goal. Soon after Yuri Andropov's appointment one of the KGB departments was assigned to deal with religious leaders, churches and its members. Most dissidents were apprehended by the KGB and sent to gulags for indefinite periods, where their dissent would lack the strength it might have had in public.

Why would anyone in their right minds choose this as a name.Even worse, they call the people who work for them "agents." As a friend of mine would say: Holy cats!!

Now.....I have some other issues with the service including the fact that they pay the huge sum of 10 cents per answer. How trustworthy are the answers at that price.

I am about ready to begin a campaign against them on multiple levels.