At the suggestion of the Department of Research Services, the Ryan-Matura Library has recently purchased a subscription to LibGuides, a platform for the delivery of our subject guides. Subject guides have traditionally been a great help to those students who find out about their existence. There are so many students, though, who never stumble across them. The LibGuides platform will not only allow us to make our guides more accessible (widgets can be dropped in Blackboard, facebook, and any web site), but it will also allow us to present these guides in a more user-friendly way, one that takes into consideration all of the benefits of the social web (ability for users to leave comments, rating system, social bookmarking tools, email updates, rss, fully-integrated virtual chat, ability to allow users to submit useful resources, etc., etc.).
Click the picture above to view a guide that I am currently working on, check back here for updates over the summer, and look for many more such guides this fall!
Okay. My apologies to anyone who has been checking this blog over the course of the past couple of months. I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus. This is to change, though, especially as the fall semester grows nigh. Each of the other research librarians are to be starting blogs soon and as the new semester begins, I hope we’ll have a more comprehensive online community going on here. Apologies now having been bestowed upon all of you faithful readers, I’ll move on to this post:
I’m finally nearing the end of John Banville’s Mann Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sea. The eventual moment that I first shut the back flap has been a long time in coming. I bought the book as soon as it reached American book stores (spring 2006), though I didn’t crack it until this past spring. It sat there on my shelf begging me to open it, but I was too busy. Even after having begun the book, the process of finishing it has been slow-going. I don’t quite know why it has taken me so long to read this; it’s not that it’s dull, especially dense, dreadful, or any other pejorative d-word. Actually it’s quite good and I not only recommend it to anyone who has an affinity for fine literature, but to historians, archaeologists, archivists, and anyone else who is interested in anything dealing with the concepts of memory, the past, death, the terminally ill, relationships, etc., etc. (the list could go on). Banville’s prose is beautiful and his multiple musings that touch on our understanding of memory and history are particularly perceptive. Be forewarned, though: If you’re used to reading mainstream American best-sellers, The Sea will be a different sort of read, as it’s not a plot-driven, page turner type of book. If you’re still reading this post and are interested, read on for a couple excerpts…
I’ve been running across this question all over the place recently. Stanly Fish (Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago) has blogged on the value/need for humanities education twice in the past month. His first post on the topic received 484 comments and his follow-up garnered 448 comments. I remember reading through every single one of those comments, cursing, jeering, cheering, muttering, and eventually drooling as my eyes twitched and spasomed (brain rot from reading too many comments…dangerous and painful infliction…curable, though…as long as you spend an adequate amount of time away from the computer screen).
Today I received my first newsletter from bigthink.com, the site billing itself as the youtube of ideas. The featured user question, from cuixotiq, was, “what purpose does forcing the study of the humanities (or the ‘lofty’ subjects) - be it literature, art history, philosophy et al - serve for the career-driven college student?” Oh, that nasty little bugger…what a way to word a question: “only you non career-driven students have the time for the lofty humanities…”
Anyway…you can read on for my quick, off-the-top-of-my-head, response…or you can go over to bigthink.com and pitch in with your own opinion.
Lawyer, former medievalist, American history buff saves the day! Mr. Joseph Romito, a lawyer in Virginia discovered someone selling on ebay an artifact (an obscure letter signed by John C. Calhoun) that he knew to be in the collection of the NY State Library. That someone turned out to be Daniel D. Lorello, a 29-year employee of the NY State Archives. Lorello has now admitted to taking 300-400 documents from the Archives in 2007 alone. Why was he doing this? He says to pay off his daughter’s credit card bill. See the NY Times reporting of the case here.
I’m not completely sure how to start this post. First, I guess with thanks to John Fudrow, else it would have been even longer before I found out about this development (how did I miss this?). My original title for this post was LOC + Flickr = Interesting, but then I saw that the LibrarianInBlack already used a similar approach (LoC + Flickr = happy land), so I decided to change.
Why do I mention this? I’m not sure. Perhaps I’m still procrastinating, as I’m not sure how to proceed with this post. Do I simply sit back, grin, and celebrate the wonder and joy of seeing such an established institution, the Library of Congress, make a bold leap into the Library 2.0 realm…or do I perhaps analyze the benefits/drawbacks of such a move.
How about this: I’m smiling right now and just enjoying it. You too can smile, go read about the pilot project, view the photos, contribute tags, and forget all about my post….or, you can come back and read on for my analysis:
Today was the first day of the Spring, 2008 semester. This marks my second semester here at SHU and the first semester that I will be teaching IL 302 (Information Literacy for History Students). I am excited about this course, as I think the History Thesis project that each of the history students is required to complete provides great context for the content of an Information Literacy course.
There is more news to report: today also marked the unveiling of the new library web site. I have been working so feverishly on the site that it has become difficult for me to objectively judge its intuitiveness/findability/appearance/etc. I must say though that I do enjoy it. Cindy Li did a marvelous job on the CSS and I loved working with her on this project.
What else does today mark? In 1506, January 22 was the day the Swiss Guard first arrived at the Vatican to serve as permanent guards, in 1788 Lord Byron was born, and in 2008 (today) I pledge to update this blog on a regular basis. I will post at least once a week by 5:00pm on Mondays. This coming Monday will count!
Welcome back students and best of luck in the coming semester. (If you’re one of my students, Come to Class!!).
main entry: knol
pronunciation: \ˈnōl\
function: noun
etymology: 12/13/2007 Udi Manber in Encouraging People to Contribute Knowledge, “Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling ‘knol’…”
definition: A unit of knowledge.
By the end of 2008, the above definition might seem silly. Should the good people over at Google (yes, even though it has become trendy in some circles to lambaste, criticize, or at least remain skeptical about them and/or their motives, I still believe the people at Google are good and are doing good things for online information retrieval/evaluation/dissemination) pay as much attention to this project as they have to their other ones (web-based email, online mapping, office productivity, video sharing, need i go on?), knol should be firmly planted in our collective vocabulary.
So, what is a knol and what is the knol project? If you’d like it straight from the horse’s mouth, visit the link provided above (in the etymology portion of the definition I’ve created for the term knol). If you’d like my take, read on: Continue Reading »
Larry Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford University, the founder of its Center for Internet and Society (CIS), the founder and CEO of Creative Commons, and the author of several books calling for a reworking of the copyright law to better mesh with contemporary culture/technologies. Why am I on about him today? Well, last night I watched (and was impressed with) the video of Lessig getting all the TEDsters to their feet earlier this month with his talk entitled, How Creativity is Being Strangled By the Law.
If you have a few minutes and are interested in contemporary culture, copyright law, or the world online, the following video is well worth your time:
If you want to see it on TED’s web site, click here.
Does anyone care about Library 2.0 aside from librarians? (We librarians know they should…but do they?)
Why do successful uses of Library 2.0 applications/technologies seem more difficult to find than Web 2.0 applications/technologies?
What good is participatory service if nobody is participating…or, if only a few people are participating?
How much do comments, tagging, and user reviews help, if nobody is commenting, tagging, or writing reviews?
Thoughts:
Today’s entry is not going to be as well-thought-out as I typically would like. I would rather prefer to present much more of a finished thought for people to comment on, but the questions above have been running through my head over and over and over for months, and I really need to get them down and look at their implications.
It’s because there are going to be two marvelous storytellers in one auditorium. Essayist David Rakoff and historical travel writer Sarah Vowell (unfair title, I know…more like journalist, humorist, lover of history, social observer, etc.) will be on hand to dispense their wonderful and witty words of wisdom and I surely will be there to soak them up. For those of you who can attend, I highly suggest that you do so. Both Vowell and Rakoff, regular contributors to NPR’s This American Life, are rumored to be captivating and the event is sure to delight. Bellow, I have provided an excerpt from Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. It’s a piece that I found particularly interesting. Enjoy, and I hope to see you there!
Next Friday (Nov 9th) I’ll be hanging out at the 
