Now the story comes full-circle. Wired publishes a story by my friend Mat who I paid $10 to blog about how awesome libraries are. You may recall I mentioned this before. I even made the article!
Tag: hacks
metacommentary – librarians are awesome, and clever
My web friend Mat Honan does a lot of neat stuff. He does triathalons, he writes for Wired, he goes traveling to interesting places. I follow him virtually via Vox and Flickr and other random places, not in a stalker-y way but just in a “hey this person is interesting” way. I think we have friends in common, but I don’t know him in person. So, when he started doing pay-per-post posts to his blog, I wasn’t sure if he was making a big joke or earnestly trying to make some money. His posts were definitely interesting and amusing, not taking themselves too seriously it seemed. However, I was and still am a little skeptical about this whole pay-for-placement thing. I keep an eagle eye out for it in libraryland, and I think many of us do. While I don’t think we’re perfect at this game by any stretch I like to think that you go to the library, and your librarian, to get objective information not filtered through shopping incentives, advertising and viral marketing.
I thought this was a worthwhile point to make, so I decided to pay Mat Honan to make it for me. Ten dollars well spent, I think. Don’t you?
a few things to read
I have seen a few things that are only tangentially related to what I normally do here, but I thought you might like them.
- The New York Times does a photo essay on people and their avatars.
- Sethf does the research (yes with GOOGLE) to track down some of the facts behind Michael Gorman’s possible misquote of Jimmy Wales and who was behind it.
- Oh check me out, I’m in the BIGWIG social software showcase. I’m sorry to also be in the program, theoretically on a panel on Saturday. I said okay sometime in 2006, and had to say no sometime in March. That was apparently not enough time to not be in the program. So 1.0!
- LifeHacker does “book hacks” for the library using crowd.
- Alison Bechdel’s library card.
library hacking, social engineering style
The secret to getting into the lovely Elmer Holmes Bobst Library and Study Center at NYU? Tell the guard you’re going to the Tamiment Labor Library on the tenth floor, the only part of the library that’s open to the public. [del.ico.us]