Library ELF is a little beta web service that will tell you when your library books are due and send you email reminders to return them. This is, of course, something vendors should be doing, but many aren’t. My only beef? How about offering a plain text email option, or maybe just an RSS feed alert instead? [catalogablog]
Category: ‘puters
e-rate hold up dragging into monthlong mess
A few bad apples may be spoiling the E-Rate program that provides Internet and phone service to a large amount of the country’s schools and libraries. There are tighter spending rules, a lower mandatory contribution from the telcos [thanks FCC!] and possible delays on cash outlays extending into 2006. Now might be a good time to contact your elected official and make sure they are aware of this issue and actively working to resolve it. If E-rate money isn’t forthcoming, what does that mean for CIPA? [thanks rebecca]
how do you learn virtref? here’s a curriculum.
Washington State has a statewide virtual reference project that has an online core competencies training curriculum for virtual reference. Lots of good linked reading and exercises.
librarians meet librarians
Meetup.com now includes librarian meetups. While the closest one to me is 130 miles away, this might be fun to pursue in Vermont. [juice]
bookmarklets galore!
Jon Udell has come up with a bookmarklet that is non-ISBN dependent that does pretty much what our little hack does. Plus, he talks about this whole REST-versus-SOAP debate where web services are concerned which is new vocabulary for me but worth learning. In old-school library news, a whole class of 4th graders said “No WAY!!” when I told them [and then showed them in the online database] that Tony Hawk was my age and had four kids.