You know how there are people who like to act like they know what they’re talking about, but sometimes don’t really know what they are talking about? This happens with technology issues a lot. I have students who will report to me “And then I clicked on the Microsoft and the Internet turned off and I got an error saying ‘Can not find it’ but then it started to go again.” They sincerely believe they are communicating their tech support issues to me, but to my ear they are speaking gibberish. I can usually untangle the meaning with a few well-placed questions however. This is also the case with the ALA press release hyping the 2006 election and the electronic voting procedure they are forever refining. I am concerned that neither the person who wrote this press release, nor anyone else who read it before it was sent out and posted on the web site, knows the difference between an email address and a domain name.
Month: November 2005
taggytastic sums it up – tag cloud 4 your OPAC?
How great is it to be able to see the tag cloud of the materials in your library catalog? How many ways can you slice this and it comes out interesting? This is based on a mock-up that Jenny did, only Davey took it one step further and, um, did it. Words fail me. Wow.
wiseass librarians, somewhere in California
Don’t judge a book by its movie. A tagless Flickr image that I might have missed if not for the eagle eyes of rteeter.
jail library group at UW
Speaking of library activism and useful results, I was recently made aware of the Jail Library Group of the University of Wisconsin’s School of Library and Information Science. You can view their slideshow [with its familiar presentation format] to learn more about what they do, from a talk they gave at the WI Library Association conference last month.
skin books in libraries
A book term I somehow missed in library school “anthropodermic bibliopegy” another word for books bound in human skin. Apparently they’re not as rare as you might think.