I'm
not sure if I put Pace to sleep tonight or he put me to sleep but at
8pm, we were both in bed, crashed out. So that means I wake up now and
am going to be completely messed up tomorrow. Oh well - the same thing
we always say when he naps at an unusual time - "he's tired - he needs
it" applies to my little nap tonight as well!
Here's some
randomness...apologies if you were the person who sent me one or more
of these links. I've lost track of where I got them.
Neat New Stuff on the Internet - by librarian, Marylaine Block. "The sites I include are usually free sites of
substantial reference value, authoritative, browsable, searchable, and
packed with information, whether educational or aimed at answering
everday questions."
"Dealing With Book Clutter" - includes a list of questions that could be used with slight modification during weeding at your library
PaperbackSwap.com - a site that
the previous linked article led to which allows you to swap books (and
CD's and DVD's) with others. It appears to only be for US-based people
right now (or people with access to a US mailing address) but still
worth taking note of in case they expand to Canada in the future.
Housecleaning isn't just a physical activity anymore - now, I find I have to take the time to clear out my virtual detritus every once in awhile too. So here are some links and articles I've had kicking around for awhile waiting for a good time to post.
Amazon: New & Future Book Releases Librarians talk a lot about making our online services more like Amazon and Google but this is at least one place where (at least some) libraries have the online services beat. Amazon just announced an e-newsletter of new & future book releases but doesn't provide any additional customization at all.
So, unlike the NextReads subscriptions I still get from London Public Library which allows me to choose to receive news about Fiction books (or Pop Culture or Health & Body or Biography & Memoir or about a dozen or so other categories), it's all or nothing with the Amazon subscription. Still, that could be useful if you're doing collection development work and you don't have access to a niche list. But why not take advantage of their extensive categorization system and provide subscriptions right down to the micro-level? ("There is one new book published this month in the area of New Guinea architecture. Click here to buy from Amazon.com")
BabyCenter's Top 10 Baby Names for 2007 Sophia for girls, Aiden for boys and not a Pace to be found. Trends include multi-syllabic names and unique spellings - again, not a Pace to be found. (Whew!)
Genetic Social Networks? (via Julie M.) If the wife of one of Google co-founders is right, the next frontier in social networking could be based on your DNA. You do a swab (for a couple hundred bucks) then the sites link you to people who are genetically similar tot you (ie. distant relatives you never knew you had.)
How Breastfeeding Benefits Add Up I think everybody knows (okay, should know) the benefits of breastfeeding over formula. But I like how this article Shea sent me shows the benefits at different stages of a baby's development.
Amazon's New E-Book Reader, The Kindle, Discussed on MetaFilter I admit, I haven't even read the whole thread yet. But what I saw so far covers a lot of the debate - positive and negative - about both e-books and the future of publishing so it's worth reading if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Lakota Indians Declare Independence From USA I'm not sure how serious this is and how much is political grandstanding. But if it's real...wow...another country for Bush to invade...without even having to go overseas!
the
fact is, the record is a smash, but not using your traditional
measurement, i.e. sales and airplay. However, consider the new
measurement tools, i.e. those that actually track what people listen to
and play, and the radiohead album is by far the biggest release this
year.
On Last.fm, last week, Radiohead occupied slots One to
Ten on the Popular Track Top Ten! And we’re not talking small numbers -
this is a site that measures tens of thousands of music fans listening
preferences…. it may be sitting unplayed on your ipod, but evidently
there are millions of people playing it….I’m sorry, but how do you
define a ’smash’?????"
Viral Videos Similar to YouTube's Top Video charts but taking in other sources as well, a good way to see which clips are popular today, this week, this month and all-time.
Now that I've been blogging for a year (actually heading towards two years I think), I've started to think about some posts that may become recurring features.
For example, last year around this time, I posted a link to a site that collects all the end of year "best of" lists in movies, music, books and so on (although strangely, I titled that post about a "25 Food Hacks" site I found and threw in the "Best of" site link as an afterthought.)
So today, I'm correcting that mistake by linking to Fimoculous as my one and only site o' the day. Enjoy!
(I also fixed the broken link in yesterday's post if anybody wants to see my paper and presentation on e-branch services for public libraries. Thanks to John M. for (gently) pointing out the mistake! )
Reading History Backwards - a blogger decides to read history, one year at a time, starting with the current year and working his way back by reading the one defining book of each year's major news event. This column covers the 1990's.
On a related note, I've talked about RateMyProfessors.com on this blog before but have you seen RateMDs.com which is similar except when somebody gets a 0 rating, that usually means they've killed somebody or otherwise, majorly screwed up. Kinda puts FIMS in perspective, no?
I just had it brought to my attention that Bloglines isn't reading my feed (and hasn't since July 18 - wow, my birthday post helped knock out part of the Internet!). If you subscribe to this blog via Bloglines, hopefully you've realised this and are checking in directly or reading this via another RSS reader (Google Reader is popular and I personally use NetVibes). I've started doing some investigating and hopefully I can get it figured out soon.
Also, I've updated the Spirit of Librarianship page as promised in a recent entry. I also created a Facebook group for former nominees and winners so if you search for Spirit of Librarianship, you should find it.
I've written before about my interest in Digital Footprints, the information about ourselves that is online, both intentionally and unintentionally. This is an interesting series on the same topic (though he calls it Digital Breadcrumbs.)
This letter is the very entertaining response from a smaller Australian book distributor when an Australian bookstore chain tries to charge them to make up for the "unacceptable profitability level" that stocking their books creates. (Wouldn't that be great in any business? If you're not making enough profit, charge your suppliers to make up the difference!)
A discussion of library fines at Librarian.net. I've mentioned in passing that the system I work for doesn't have overdue fines and I think that's about one of the most progressive ideas libraries can pursue. There are some who say that it's charges for losses and damages that are the real barriers for a lot of disadvantaged people but I think those two issues are intimately related. Put another issue on the list of "topics I wish I'd written about in library school but never did."
Spock is a new people-centered search engine. It's a good idea in concept but quite lacking otherwise, at least so far. For example, I'm definitely not going to give anyone my LinkedIn password just so I can "claim my profile" on your site. So for the time being, I think I'll continue to use Facebook to find people from my past.
(Speaking of, this is probably crossing that line between things I should keep for my personal journal and things that are appropriate for the blog but I feel compelled to mention that I stumbled across the Facebook profile of the charitable young woman to whom I lost my virginity to many moons ago. I wasn't stalking her (honest!) but she'd joined a Facebook group for a resort area near my hometown that we'd both grown up with and the only reason I recognized her while scrolling through the list of group members was because she listed her maiden name (or may be going by a hyphened name now - hard to tell.) To be honest, I haven't searched for any of the women who've been similarly charitable to me in my past - not sure why that is and I don't feel like doing the self-analysis needed to figure it out, thank-you very much. Still, it's yet another way that Facebook can re-unite you with your past in ways you least expect.)
Putting Things In Perspective - an interesting article espousing the idea that, no matter what you're doing and how mundane it may seem, you should envision yourself as an elderly person looking back on yourself doing it and no matter what the activity is, you'll appreciate it more.
TinyURL is a useful site that helps convert some of those mega-long URL's that some web sites give to their pages into something that's way more manageable.
The site doesn't re-use their shortened versions and doesn't delete them (although some you click on may be expired at the source) so naturally, somebody has come up with an algorithm to view random TinyURL pages
After five random tries (not counting expired pages), I got:
1. a Bible passage about adultery
2. a guide to shopping in Dallas, TX
3. an aerial photo of a beach in Spain
4. a job posting at Cornell University
5. an E-bay auction for a Dell laptop
It's a great time waster to see all of the pages that people are converting (often to e-mail to others). If you like looking in people's windows late at night, you'll enjoy this site!
So after saying a couple entries ago that I never do link dump posts, here I am doing another one. Maybe I should give in and make this a recurring feature on the blog, just like the Friday Fun Links? Heck, I could have a whole week's worth of features and never have to come up with an original thought again!
Sunday Photo of the Day (Flickr or From My Own Collection) MetaFilter Mondays YouTubesday Wikipedia Wednesday Thursday Download of the Day Friday Fun Link Saturday Link Dump o' The Week
Or maybe that would be incredibly dumb.
But anyhow, (seeing as it's Saturday) here's a few more link dumps for you...
"OMG! My mom joined Facebook" - NYTimes Facebook's recent facelift (ha!) is deeper than I initially realised. All those new widgets you can add to your profile are a big step in Facebook's attempt to become a "social operating system". They don't want to be bought out by Google or Microsoft - they apparently want to *be* Google or Microsoft. This could get interesting!
"More Advice College Graduates Don't Want To Hear" - NYTimes Lots of good tidbits here - I'm a big fan of "pay yourself first" along with "pay yourself 10% of everything you make" having read "The Wealthy Barber" while still in high school. The sooner you start saving, the better off you'll be in the long term. Chris Graves has a link to a site that explains compound interest in a very straight-forward manner. How do you save 10% when you're young and not making much or paying off student loans or whatever? It's hard but not impossible. Set up an arrangement with your RRSP company (you do have an RRSP, right?) to automatically withdraw 10% from each paycheque (or from your student loans even!) and adjust your spending accordingly. Don't buy Starbucks. Don't buy smokes. Don't buy booze, shoes or a CD of the blues if it means you won't be able to save that initial 10% every month.
Man, I have lots more to say on this - this should be a full post sometime (why do I have a memory that I already linked to Chris Graves' post on compound interest? It's taken a year but more and more, I feel like I'm repeating myself on this blog.)
LIS757 Delicious Links Page This semester's social networking class at FIMS has a page where students are required to submit links to stories about various aspects of Web 2.0. Lots of good browsing here! (Bonus to the person who can identify which submission here is a link back to my blog. Since Delicious only shows titles, not URL's, I'd have to scan through all of them to find out which person linked back to me - which is how I found this page initially.)
The Loneliness of the Conservative Librarian "When David Brooks did some research into political donations by profession for his September 11, 2004, column in The New York Times,
he found that for librarians "the ratio of Kerry to Bush donations was
a whopping 223 to 1." By contrast, the corresponding ratio for
academics was 11 to 1. As one of those rarest of beasts, a conservative
librarian, I can attest firsthand to the stifling left-wing orthodoxy
of modern American librarianship."
Another anecdote which I think I've told before... I was walking out of our first day orientation and ended up walking beside Quinn (though I didn't know he was Quinn just yet!) and he noted that he'd recently read an article about how librarianship was the most left-wing, progressive profession by far. I was like "yeah, and..." Anyhow, that's a thought that's been going through my head lately - looking at Facebook profiles of colleagues who are brave (stupid?) enough to note their political and religious beliefs (not that these two are linked - I know there are progressive religious people and there are conservative ones.)
Anybody looking for an RQ challenge? Do a search for any studies of the political leanings of librarians. Or use the Political Compass quiz and Survey Monkey to do an informal study on your blog. (I'd do these things but time does not actually exist for me right now!) Or do a full-fledged independent study at FIMS next term and send me the results!
Here's my results by the way:
Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -8.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.74
This is a subject that's been on my mind as a possible topic for a post since probably before I started this blog and came back to the forefront of my thoughts after getting some very nice compliments about the eulogy I did for my grandfather last week.
I'm not a presentation expert by any stretch but, without a lot of formal training, I do think that I've developed the ability to give a decent talk when required (although I've also had a few clunkers in my life too!)
So, what are my personal tips for giving a good presentation?
1. Be original. I always like to attack my topics from a unique angle if possible. This was especially useful in a library school classroom where often many individuals or groups are presenting on the same or similar topics but also applies in other settings as well. It can be as small as asking to present on public library collection policies in my "Collection Development for Academic Libraries" course to taking on the persona of a young adult who is in a coma for my book talk in Children's Lit to trying to write eulogies that break out of the "The deceased was born here, lived here, got married when, had this many kids, this many grandkids, enjoyed pastimes such as and passed away then" template that so many people use mixed with glittering generalities ("He was a wonderful person." "She had a great sense of humour.") It can be risky - someday I'll post the obituary I wrote for my grandma where I talked about how she pretended to be an alien from another planet - but it can work. Not only did a lady come up to me after my grandfather's funeral to tell me they still had clipped and saved my grandma's obituary from nearly a decade ago but at the time, that unique obituary got my Grandma written up in the National Post.
2. Use humour. It's tough to do this effectively and again, I've told some clunker-jokes that aren't much better than the crap you find in "1001 Jokes for Toastmasters". But in my opinion, effective use of humour is vital to keep your audience interested (or even just awake!)
3. Be prepared. Try to know your material inside and out. I'm not always the best at doing this (and it was hard to do in library school just because of how busy we were) but when I do know my stuff well, it really helps the confidence and reduces the public speaking stress we all feel. For example, I did ten drafts of the eulogy I was going to do for my grandfather all building on the previous one and so that was like an ongoing rehearsal. Then, when it was finalized, I read it over, both silently and aloud, probably another dozen times. At the funeral, I read the eulogy from a script but was comfortable ad-libbing a few comments and probably could've done it in a completely ad-libbed fashion if I had a cue card with a few main keyword reminders on it.
4. Don't Just Talk It can be gimmicky but I'm a big fan of props, games or other elements beyond that which are spoken to make the presentation more engaging. One example - I started a presentation on digitization by taking a digital photo of the audience in front of me. Another eulogy example - my grandma was famous for enjoying mints and candies so before I got up to speak, I handed out a bag of wrapped candies to be passed around each section of the church. This also gave me an opportunity to add some humour as my first comment once I got to the podium was a joke about the punishment awaiting anyone who chose to litter in church!
5. Be Concise I stole this idea from Elisabeth Davies who taught us Cataloguing and Research Methods but if you use Powerpoint, I'm a big fan of very plain, simple slides without a lot of text on them. In the MetaTalk thread below, someone suggests you shouldn't have more than six words on a slide and that's a guideline I try to follow myself.
)
Kinda puts FIMS in perspective, no?
