Gates Foundation grants have done a huge amount towards getting libraries online. That said, they have regrettably opened libraries up to a lot of the crappy virii and browser hijacking problems that abound which are almost exclusively the result of insecure software, or software that has the potential to be secure but is configured insecurely out of the box. Microsoft makes, and sets default configurations on, most of this software. Librarian Way has a good short bit about the PC vs Mac dichotomy in the library world. I have been agitating just to get Netscape loaded on our Gates Foundations machines at my library, just so we can give our patrons a bit of a choice.
Author: jessamyn
a few more blogs I’ll be watching, and a note or two about RSS
The Curmudgeony Librarian and the Kept-Up Academic Librarian are being added to my more-frequently-read list. One thing I haven’t seen people mention lately about the benefit of reading content via RSS+aggregators is that it lets you skim. Now maybe this sounds crass, but I can access more content more quickly and filter out what interests me in order to give it a closer look, if I’m not doing the point-click-wait tango of getting 20 different web pages to load and render.
del.icio.us/jessamyn
Another tool that alll those chatty blogging librarians seem to be checking out lately is del.icio.us, a bookmarking tool that is striking for its simplicity, ability to share lists and [best of all] an ability to create your own authority control structures via a keywording system that becomes a set of hotlinked categories. I’m mostly using it presently for my “to add” list of links for librarian.net, and because I enjoy the URL del.icio.us/jessamyn.
hi
Hi. A lot going on today. I feel like I’ve uncovered two separate areas of continuing interest with yesterday’s posts. I’m also reading Sixpence House which is another one of those books for bookish people. Powell’s Books sent Greg and I a check for “affiliate” money or whatever and it’s just enough to take us out to dinner someplace nice [where nice=napkins]. I’ll report back since librarian.net readers directly funded this meal.
“what ever happened to reading?”
The Journey to Literacy [and back again?] tries to answer the question “What Ever Happened to Reading?”
For hundreds of years, people have bemoaned the end of serious (or what is sometimes known as “high”) culture — yet culture survives. Yet at this moment in history, as the mass media and the Internet converge, one thing is clear: the ways we transmit culture are changing. Exactly where does reading fit into this new paradigm? For all Americans, the journey to literacy has taken a new turn.