Why doesn’t the library community band together to do some collaborative software development and free ourselves from vendor tyranny? If you just like to watch, keep an eye on the open-ils blog as they work through some of the decisions involved in creating a large library automation system.
Month: November 2004
free range librarian looks at Yahoo/OCLC toolbar
Karen gives her feedback about the YahoOCLC toolbar gadget.
I wouldn’t use Yahoo-see-el-see, based on this experience, because I don’t trust it. I’ll start with my local catalog and go from there. Still, in the realm of hot new cool tools, kinda fun. Though if users believe this is a trustworthy resource, but it’s not leading people to YOUR local catalog, beware, beware. “Yahoo says it’s not there!” Go ahead and talk yourself blue in the face about how your catalog works… it won’t matter.
feed envy?
I have to say, I’m as likely to brag about how many feeds I’m subscribed to as I am to crow about how many people I’ve slept with (my age, weight and salary are fair game, however). Both numbers are a little on the high side and may reveal a certain lack of discretion on my part. The correct answer to the question “How many feeds do you subscribe to?” should always be “Enough.”
Bookmarks Magazine – I liked it
This whole “review policy” thing from a few days ago came about because I had gotten yet another press release in my inbox. I wrote back with a short but polite reply and asked to not be the recipient of any more press releases but sure, go ahead and send me a copy of the magazine. Got a polite and friendly reply and then a few days later a few copies of Bookmarks Magazine showed up in my mailbox. I was almost embarassed to like it so much because I hate being marketed to and, worse yet, I hate being accurately marketed to. In any case, the magazine is a review magazine more in the vein of Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust — which I am also reading this week — than Booklist or Library Journal’s reviews.
Their tastes run more to the independent, their layout tends more towards the creative, and their scads and scads of reviews are interspersed with interesting articles that give you in-depth coverage of an author or two; the Brontes and George Orwell were features in two of mine. One of the issues I read had an absolutely ingenious mystery section which included a graphical “historical mystery series timeline” as well as a US map showing the locations of many well-known fictional detectives with, of course, some capsule reviews of the books they appear in. Many of Bookmarks Magazines’ reviews also come with pullquotes from other major review sources so you can balance their reviewers’ perspectives with other well known “experts.” Without blathering on, I have to say I was really pleasantly suprised at how much I enjoyed this magazine. I don’t like most magazines aimed towards readers — they’re too ad-heavy and seem to exist for pushing product, not for fostering reading — and this one was different. You’ve read my review policy, no one paid me to say this, go check it out if you’re looking for book lust-ish recommendations, delivered bi-monthly.
the USA PATRIOT Act and its effect on… Canadians?
Oddly, the small goverment folks and the big government folks tend to agree on the downsides to the invasiveness of the USA PATRIOT Act. An article from everyone’s favorite Libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute.
Thanks to excessiveness in some provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the United States is reversing its global orientation from a beacon of freedom to the paragon of a surveillance society. [thanks jack]