blogz

How to solve impossible problems with Google… by Google

Like many library people, I get annoyed when I tell people I can’t find something on their website and they tell me how to search for it. That said, I know there are things I still don’t know about searching and I like learning what they are. Greg Notess’ Search Engine Showdown is always a first stop. I also enjoyed this post–How to Solve Impossible Problems–about Google research scientist Daniel Russell’s presentation to a group of investigative journalists last week. It’s got two great parts

1. The impossible problem which is just a fun sleuthing puzzle about how to identify a randomish photo (though not so random as it turns out, solution explained)
2. Even more tips about Google that I hadn’t known including the public data explorer and using the word “diagram” when looking for schematic type stuff. Makes sense now that you think about it, hadn’t really thought about it much before.

How do you search for something that’s NOT online, a fun and fascinating homework assignment

Posted on 14Apr12 by jessamyn

“Over the last week in my new first-year undergraduate course, Media Fluency for the Digital Age, my students have been wrestling with a very counterintuitive digital media assignment, and I think it’s worth exploring why these members of the “born digital” generation found this assignment so difficult â€” and so rewarding.” Professor Greg Downey discusses the results of his “hardest ever” homework assignment. Be sure to read down to the librarian shoutouts, and feel free to leave him a comment. [via @debcha]

A good old fashioned linkdump

Posted on 05Apr1222Apr12 by jessamyn

Public domain photograph by: US Navy, National Science Foundation. Link.

I’m back at home after meeting with a lot of terrific librarians in four different states. March is the busy month and after last month my plan is “not getting in a plane more than once a month for work.” I’ll be speaking with my good friend Michael Stephens at the Indiana Library Federation District Six conference next week. I’ll do a wrap-up of the talks I’ve been giving sometime later but news for me is mostly having more free time to actually attend things and not just speak at them. Getting to go to programs at the Tennessee Library Association conference and the National Library of Medicine’s New England Region one-day conference about social justice has really helped me connect with what other people are doing in some of the same areas I’m interested in. It’s sort of important to not just be a lone voice in the wilderness about some of this stuff, so in addition to the SXSW stuff (and talking to a great bunch of library school students in Columbia Missouri) getting to attend library events as an audience member has been a highlight of the past few weeks.

However I’ve been backed up on “stuff I read that I think other people might like to read.” Try as I may Twitter is still for hot potato stuff [i.e. Google’s April Fools Joke specifically, I felt, for librarians] and not for things that I think merit more thoughtful or wordy presentation. So, as I enter the first Thursday in over a month where I get to hang out at home all day, I’m catching up, not on reading because there is tons of time for reading while traveling, but on passing some links around. So, here are some things you might like to read, from the past few months, newest first.

For Archivists, â€˜Occupyâ€™ Movement Presents New Challenges – becoming part of history includes keeping track of history. Howard Besser and others have been working to make sure that activism is archived. See his group’s website at Activist Archivists.
Are Privatized Public Libraries So Bad? – an interesting look at the good and bad parts of privatized libraries. Not particularly compelling to me, but worth understanding the viewpoints of people who argue that this is where the world of libraries is going.
Three cheers for the digital divide? Ann Treacy responds to a controversial Thomas Friedman post which said that we should spend less time trying to close the digital divide and more time getting super-fast bandwidth to “the top 5 percent, in university towns, who will invent the future” Treacy’s response is very thorough and very worth reading.
Five things we can do in the US to support the public domain – as cultural stewards, we should be working more on keeping cultural content in the public domain.
How Big Telecom Used Smartphones to Create a New Digital Divide – we hear a lot about how the increase in mobile broadband usage particularly among various minority populations is going to close the digital divide. This article examines how that’s not the case at all.

Happy Ten Year Anniversary Unshelved!

Posted on 16Feb1216Feb12 by jessamyn

A happy birthday to my friends over at Unshelved. I’m happy to have played whatever small part I had in their continued fame and awesomeness and I LOVE this jacket.

Library as Incubator Project – the best new website you may not know about

Posted on 30Nov11 by jessamyn

There’s an ongoing theme in library programming: trying to find stuff that isn’t the stuff that’s already been done. While there are aspects of “Just play the hits, man” in a lot of the work we do, that doesn’t mean we can’t find new, original and/or interesting things to do with the huge amount of local cultural content that we have at our fingertips but that might not be common knowledge in our larger communities. The Library as Incubator Project is a site full of great ideas, lovely photographs, sharp writing by three UW-Madison School of Library and Information Studies (and guest bloggers) outlining ways that libraries and artists can work together. Good ideas, well-presented.