Talking about some of the most useful sites online during the past three months mixed with my ongoing interest in online broadcasting inspired me come up with the following list:
Five Things The Internet Is Killing
1. The Music Industry
- I saw a stat somewhere that 80% (!) of teens in the US hadn't bought a single CD in the last year. That's not a good sign if your (inflexible) business model is selling overpriced CD's!
2. The Movie Industry
- see above. It's a bit slower death since the file sizes are bigger and it's harder for the average user to get high quality video displayed in an enjoyable format compared to outputting high quality music to a stereo or even just decent speakers from a computer.
3. Real Estate Agents
- I keep hearing these commercials that slam "do it yourself" real estate sales sites while talking about all the expertise a realtor brings you. Frankly, they reek of desperation. Selling or buying a home yourself is a natural for the strengths of the Internet - many-to-many reach, incredible cost savings (realtors usually charge around 7% for their service), unlimited space for featuring photos and specifications. Plus, ultimately, who's going to care the most about selling a property - the person who sees it as a house or the person who sees it as a home?
4. Traditional Software
- increasingly, people are using online applications that they don't need to buy, install or update instead of their more traditional cousins. MS-Office is the most obvious example of software that Google and others are trying to replicate online but I don't think it'll be long before pretty much everything you do locally on your computer is available online and the only piece of software you'll need is a web browser.
5. Newspapers
- I think classified ad revenue is down something like 20%, subscribers are down 15% in the last few years (disclaimer: all stats quoted in this and any other post I do - are usually from memory. Don't quote them in your academic papers without verifying them!) Online competitors now provide news that is interactive, has alternative perspectives and is more timely. Some newspapers are migrating online but still use old school subscription models or pay-per-article (boo G&M after what, a week?) The New York Times gets it right - all their content is available as soon as it's published, its archived, searchable and free.
Bonus: One Thing The Internet Is Not Killing
Books
- outside of music, more ink (real and digital) is spilled proclaiming the death of the book than anything else. To paraphrase Twain, "the rumours of [the book's] death are greatly exaggerated." I'll always remember going to a national publishers' conference in 2000 where the e-book was all the talk and one presenter said that by 2005, more than half of readers would be using e-books over regular books. Really? Even most of the tech-types I know don't use e-books yet. I don't think e-books aren't without their merits and we're heading to more of a Movie-Television relationship. When TV first came out in the 1940's-50's, commentators warned about the death of the movie theatre. Instead, they developed a symbiotic relationship. I think that's what will happen with "real" books and e-books. E-books will continue to gain traction with users but also continue to co-exist with traditional books.
(Here's an article I found on this topic which discusses many of the same ideas I'm talking about.)
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Sunday, March 30
Five Things The Internet Is Killing (and One It Isn't)
by
Jason
on Sun 30 Mar 2008 09:13 PM CST
Saturday, March 29
Pace's First Phone Call
by
Jason
on Sat 29 Mar 2008 11:25 AM CST
Pace was babbling up a storm the other day while grandma was watching him. So she rather ingeniously decided to call our Regina number and leave a message of his babbling so we could hear it later. (I've got a neat feature enabled on my message manager that forwards all messages to us by e-mail so she knew I'd get it later that night.) The funniest part? At the end, how she has to clarify "That was Pace!" in case we didn't know.
 Friday, March 28
Friday Fun Link - 2008 LJ Movers and Shakers (March 28, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 28 Mar 2008 09:39 PM CST
A recent post on Librarian.net reminded me that this year's list of Library's Journal's 2008 Movers & Shakers is now out.
Congrats to Amy Buckland for getting the nod! (<old man voice>I remember when Amy was just a wee lass, firing off e-mails to library school-focused blogs asking about the merits of various schools.</old man voice> Obviously I didn't do a good enough sales job for UWO and she landed at McGill. London's loss is Montreal's gain.) Looking at the list of recipients and seeing how many of those named have blogs (and/or are doing work focused on technology and Web 2.0 stuff), it made me wonder what sort of relationship there is between having a blog and the "real world" of libraries? Classmate John Miedema of the Slow Reading blog recently presented at Salt Lake City Public Library's "Thinking Ahead" conference. I'm not sure if his blog was how they found him and/or if it helped lend credibility to his application if he "cold called" them as a potential speaker but I'm sure it didn't hurt. Maybe that's part of it - you need to have a certain specialty or theme that you're "known" for? (See #4 here.) Amy runs Library Student Journal, John has become a leading proponent of the Slow Reading movement. I haven't won any awards or been invited to any conferences because of my blog (yet!  ) but as I recently blogged about, it's been an amazing way to become connected to a wider library community that I wouldn't otherwise have in the pre-Internet days. (Of course, I also have my days when I think bloggers are a lot like poets and professors - namely, a group of people who are mostly interested in what other people in the same area are doing while no one else gives a toss. I've organized enough poetry readings in my life to know that 99% of the people who come to them are other poets. And the citation count wars of academics trying to get their papers cited by other academics often seemed like more of an academic circle jerk than anything.  )Er, anyhow, ranty tangents aside, being a part of the conversation has been useful, even if it hasn't paid off in awards, conference invites or Google-buyout offers. Even something as simple as being able to post the full version of my essay that won second place in the CLA student essay contest last year since CLA didn't have room to print anything but the winner in Feliciter has generated the a couple hits from people who searched for it after the winners were announced last year. And who knows - it may do so into the future as well. And then? That CLA conference invite can't be far off! (How can you tell it's conference season? I'm hoping to go to SLA this year - and to maybe get a chance to meet the famous Jessamyn West of librarian.net and MetaFilter.com - but CLA looks like it's not going to happen, what with the price of diapers and whatnot.) Thursday, March 27
Read A Book For Your Health
by
Jason
on Thu 27 Mar 2008 11:56 PM CST
The Globe and Mail recently had an article on the benefits of reading and good literacy to your health (PDF). This is probably not a huge surprise but lines like "While we obsess about our weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the single best predictor of good health and longevity is probably literacy." are pretty big statements to make. (I'd have guessed that the single best predictor of longevity might have to do with healthy eating and exercise.)
(via one of our branch librarians who in turn, got it from a librarian at RPL) Wednesday, March 26
The Reason I'm A Librarian?
by
Jason
on Wed 26 Mar 2008 01:47 PM CST
Each year, our library system gives out four awards to our branches - one for Service, one for Programming, one for Branch Development and one for Branch of the Year which incorporates elements of all three plus more. Right now, I'm working through nearly 200 quarterly reports (48 branches x 4 reports per year) to come up with a shortlist for this year's nominees.
As part of the process, I did a tabulation of which branches have won awards since 1992. I knew my hometown of Indian Head had done okay, being one of only two branches in the whole system, to have won Branch of the Year twice. What I hadn't realised was how well Indian Head had done across all categories. Since 1992, we've they've won 6 awards. The next branches that come close are our two city branches, Estevan and Weyburn, which have won four awards each (and it's apparently a perennial argument around here whether city branches serving thousands of people should even compete with small towns serving hundreds or villages that literally serve dozens.) If you take away the two city branches, the next closest communities have won three awards over the same span. We haven't decided what to do about Indian Head this year - I've got a pretty big conflict of interest being from there so think I might get a colleague to look over their reports to see if they should be on the shortlist for any of the awards this time around. (But frankly, they can afford to wait for a year. Give everybody else a chance to catch up! )As I said, the awards only go back to 1992 and by that time, I was off at University. I haven't lived in Indian Head since (though my parents still do.) Even without the awards to "prove" it, I think Indian Head has always had a strong library with great boards and staff - even as I personally tend to think of Indian Head as more of a sports town in general. (On the prairies, my theory is that every small town basically falls into one of two categories - you're either a sports town or an arts & culture town.) I talked about it in my Statement of Intent to get into FIMS. Although I laid it on pretty thick (as I tend to do), I honestly think you can draw a pretty straight line from my formative experiences in that small town library to where I am today (er, supervising that small town library while trying not to let my biases show! ) Tuesday, March 25
LibraryThing Local
by
Jason
on Tue 25 Mar 2008 07:40 PM CST
LibraryThing is already a wicked cool service but it's getting better all the time.
One of their latest features is LibraryThing Local which is "a new [LibraryThing] sub-site devoted to finding, mapping and describing the world's bookstore, library, book fair and festival—as well as all the readings, signings, lectures and other events they host." Here is a fascinating post from one of the LibraryThing blogs looking at the distribution of bookstores v. libraries in cities across North America. Monday, March 24
"Waffle House" - Bill Hicks
by
Jason
on Mon 24 Mar 2008 07:53 PM CST
That MetaFilter (which I inevitably type as "MetaFitler" everytime I type it) thread on libraries led to this piece of Bill Hicks gold.
I also found a blog post about embarrassing/humiliating encounters while reading alone in a public (which I inevitably look over twice to make sure I don't type "pubic") place. Sunday, March 23
Blog Survey Results
by
Jason
on Sun 23 Mar 2008 12:08 AM CST
I recently
posted the second annual "Head Tale Blog Survey" to find out a bit
about the visitors to this site - how they get here, what they like
about the site, what they want to see more of and so on.
Here are some of the results... - 75% of respondents read the site via RSS with 55% occasionally clicking through to the site and 20% never clicking through. 25% visit directly via a bookmark. - it was pretty evenly split between Google Reader and Bloglines with 60-40% for each respective service. Even though I love it and have raved about it on this blog multiple times, no one uses NetVibes.  - 30% of people read/visit the site when they see a new post, 12% visit multiple times per day, 20% visit daily, 20% visit every few days, 6% visit weekly and 12% visit "whenever the mood strikes me". Nobody answered "monthly or less frequently" but then again, I don't think I've had the post up for a month yet!  - Given that the blog started when I was in library school and is known mostly to people who are either professors, alumni, former colleagues from when I was attending FIMS or current students there now (and the same categories from other library schools to a lesser degree), it's no surprise that "Library related" and "Library school" are, by far, the most popular types of posts being picked by 87% and 73% of respondents. Other popular categories with more than 50% of people picking them were "Work-Related" (a new category I added to the survey this year) and "Miscellaneous Ramblings" (which sort of surprised me as I don't do a lot of these and tend to not like them as they often feel unfocused and random. But hey, didn't I just describe 90% of blogs in general?) - "Baby-related", "Pop Culture", "Technology" and "Humour" were all just under the 50% level in terms of popularity with survey respondents. - Everything else got at least a double-digit approval rating except "Hockey" which only got a 6% approval rating including one person who went so far as to write-in "I like everything you write about except hockey!"  - Sending a strong message to get back to the theme that this blog started with (a message which I may or may not hear!  ),
"Library-related" was not only the most popular category for posts I do
now but also, by far, the category people would like to see more posts
in with 67% of respondents citing it. "Work related" (which you can
probably view as a vote for "library related" in some ways) and
"Miscellaneous ramblings" were the other top vote getters in this
area. - "Comments" were by far the most popular widget with people indicating that they read them, even if they don't post them. Every other widget got at least a vote or two except for the LastFM "last song played" widget and the Regina/Calgary/London weather widget (but I use that one on a daily basis so it ain't going anywhere!) - Maybe surprisingly, 100% of respondents who answered the question liked that this blog has daily posts! (If I remember correctly, last year, it was only a slight majority who thought this was important.) Thanks for the vote of support folks. I'll try to keep it up (even if I have to occasionally "fudge" time stamps the following day to do so!). - the general comments were very supportive of what I do with this blog and it was nice to see that the respondents included a few former classmates/colleagues from FIMS because I didn't know if those folks were still "out there" reading now that we've all gone our separate ways. - Pace got lots of kudos as well and I'm sure he'll continue to be a regular feature on the blog. (Idea for a future post - the security/privacy issues around putting up pictures and updates about him - something I've thought about a lot while doing my computer/Internet training sessions the past three months. I didn't show Shea's Flickr account or our YouTube videos at every workshop but occasionally it would come up and then I often had to explain our choice to put this type of material on the Internet to people who still buy into that media-generated hysteria about pedophiles lurking around every URL and IP address.) - as for ideas for other future posts from the respondents, I can address this one right now: "Will a Large Hadron Collider experiment create a mini black hole that consumes the earth? Or, do aliens blog more than humans?" Answer: Uhm, no idea. And also, no idea. (Next time, I'm going to include a question about what you're smoking when you fill out the survey!  ) Saturday, March 22
"A cafe has taken the place of part of the fiction section and a computer learning zone has replaced the periodicals room"
by
Jason
on Sat 22 Mar 2008 10:24 PM CST
MetaFilter has a good discussion on the death of libraries, this time about a library in the UK.
"Hendon's library's opening hours have been cut, a cafe has taken the place of part of the fiction section, and a computer learning zone has replaced the periodicals room. When I complained, a local councillor wrote back to say that he did not feel that the cut in opening hours was a great hardship for anyone." The Guardian writes on the long slow death of libraries. The thread also led to the obituary for a groundbreaking children's librarian who started one of the first children's libraries in the UK at that branch, Eileen Colwell. Reading her obituary reminds me of why I love libraries, I love librarians and why I decided to get into this amazing world in the first place. Friday, March 21
IIPA Slam Canada For Not Fixing Copyright "Deficiencies", CBC to release program via BitTorrent DRM-free
by
Jason
on Fri 21 Mar 2008 07:22 PM CST
A couple copyright-related stories that warm the cockles of my Canadian heart...
While the inclusion of China and Russia on the "Priority Watch List" isn't surprising, the report also has strong words for a more surprising: Canada. ESA, IIPA slam Canada for not fixing copyright "deficiencies" Sources indicate that the CBC is set to become the first major North American broadcaster to freely release one of its programs without DRM using BitTorrent. This Sunday, CBC will air Canada Next Great Prime Minister. The following day, it plans to freely release a high-resolution version via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. This development is important not only because it shows that Canada's public broadcaster is increasingly willing to experiment with alternative forms of distribution, but also because it may help crystallize the net neutrality issue in Canada. (via Michael Geist)
Friday Fun Link - Atheists and Anger (March 21, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 21 Mar 2008 02:37 PM CST
Continuing my trend of posting contrarian viewpoints on major Christian holidays, here's a piece on why atheists get angry and frustrated with believers.
(But I am glad to have a long weekend so thanks for that and the chocolate eggs, Jeebus!  )Thursday, March 20
Why The Toronto Maple Laffs Will Not Make The Playoffs
by
Jason
on Thu 20 Mar 2008 08:19 PM CST
Chris Dixon Memorial Scholarship (and some thoughts on a random death in the oil patch)
by
Jason
on Thu 20 Mar 2008 07:22 PM CST
It was an incredible shock to hear of the passing of LIS PhD student, Chris Dixon, last summer. (In a freaky coincidence, this happened right in the middle of my posting the eulogies I've given for my grandparents over the years.) In my post about Chris' death, I wrote about how little I'd been exposed to the death of people close to me in my life, at least so far, but that I knew this would inevitably change as I grew older.
Then, last Sunday, my mother-in-law kept the weekend's paper specifically to show me the obituary of a woman who was a resident of my hometown of Indian Head. It turned out that I didn't know that woman but looking over the obituaries, a different name caught my eye. It took me a second to place her but it turns out it was the woman who wrote up our mortgage when we moved back to Regina from Calgary in 2004, dead at 49 of ovarian cancer. As I frequently do, I began composing a blog post in my head based on this chain of events. I thought about how I would talk about the way that we pass in and out of other people's lives - sometimes having a large impact, sometimes leaving a small reminder, sometimes only as a passing acquaintance, meant for some singular purpose before carrying on down our own paths. The core idea for that post shifted quite dramatically a couple hours later and not in a good way. When we arrived back in Weyburn last Sunday, I had noticed a bunch of cars parked outside the neighbour's house. The neighbours were a young couple who had just moved here from Alberta last fall so this gathering seemed a bit out of the ordinary since they didn't really know many people yet as far as we knew. He was busy in the oil patch and she was a stay-at-home mom with a young boy who was a year and a half old. When I arrived at my in-laws', I also couldn't help but notice that one person getting out of a vehicle appeared to be carrying in some food. It could be nothing but that's also a potentially ominous sign for people in rural Saskatchewan (does that happen elsewhere? When someone dies, the family is bombarded with visitors bearing food?) I thought to myself, "oh, it must be a dinner party." I mentioned it when I went inside and my in-laws had noticed the vehicles next door too - their theory was that the couple had joined a church and were being welcomed with a party. This explanation seemed as forced as mine was and reflecting now, I think we were all trying to avoid the most obvious explanation - something really bad had happened to one of the parents or worse, their son. A few hours later, I was downstairs when the doorbell rang. I heard my mother-in-law say "Oh no, oh my God". I raced upstairs to find the elderly lady that the couple were renting the house from had come to tell us that the father, Spencer, had been killed in an accident in the oil patch. His truck had been by an oil tanker that had failed to stop at a yield sign on a grid road. I stood there in shock as a jumble of thoughts cascaded through my head. Only in his mid-20's, he was so young...his wife alone now...their son without a father...the evil fucking stupidity of the oil patch...no family or friends nearby...how I'm complicit by owning oil stocks...Pace tugging at my leg, unaware of what's happened...how this young couple had moved here to create a life for their family...that all gone in an instant...the greed that makes men work 16 and 20 hour days every day for weeks on end...the warning I got from a branch librarian before coming home on the grid road right near where the accident happened..."Be careful at any crossroads - the oil trucks don't stop"...hearing last summer that Shea's uncle was calling in any semi-truck that whipped past his farm, sometimes even chasing them down...how I'm complicit because I hope that they find oil on Shea's parents farm only a few miles from that uncle (and maybe twenty miles from where the accident happened)...the controversy about our premier admitting that he lets his 14-year-old daughter drive on grid roads, something we've all done growing up in Saskatchewan but something I would never let Pace do on the grid roads in this area now. I thought back regretfully on the fact that I'd only had a couple interactions with Spencer and his family. Soon after he moved in (he came out first to get settled before his wife and son joined him a few months later) I stopped by one day when he happened to be outside just as I was getting off work. We had a brief chat, talking about our respective backgrounds and how we came to be where we were. We compared notes on being new parents. At one point, I mentioned that I was a librarian and he asked where he could buy books in town (blowing all my "rig pig" stereotypes to hell in one brief sentence.) We went our separate ways promising to get together with our wives and sons for supper or drinks sometime. Then, last Christmas, knowing they were going to be in Weyburn alone, my in-laws invited them over for Christmas Eve. They came over and we had another nice visit, comparing notes on living in Alberta v. Saskatchewan, holiday memories, tips on raising an active boy and the usual mundane chit-chat that happens as strangers get to know each other. Shea and I could've and should've made more of an effort to spend time with them and now, of course, never having done so, is when we realise that. Getting wrapped up in your own lives, your own worries, your own lack of time to make that effort seems so petty and stupid in retrospect. And so, as the reality that you're still here sinks in at a moment like this, you make the resolutions - I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to make an effort to reach out to people. I'm going to spend more time with my own family. I'm going to live healthier, eat healthier, do more, be more. I'm going to live. And you say all that with the knowledge that it's all smoke and that feeling will disappear in hours or days, like the feeling that you have when you leave a theatre after an inspiring movie like "Stand By Me" or "Dead Poet's Society" or whatever. Then you're back to worrying about the stupid shit like what mark you got on that assignment that's worth 5% of your final grade. Or some off-hand comment a co-worker made that you keep replaying in your head. Or that you didn't get a full eight hours of sleep because your son is teething. So yeah, life goes on except when it doesn't and the single most brutal kicker for me in this whole situation is a line that Spencer said during our first conversation on his driveway. Pace was still small, maybe only a month or two old and his son was around the age that Pace is now. He said, "You know what? I love being a dad and there's not a day that my little guy doesn't make me laugh." That's all a VERY long tangent to say that recent events have made it hit home *very* hard that no matter how long you live, life is very short. The blog that Chris Dixon's wife has set-up is called "Carpe Diem Chris" and as I mentioned above, it depends on my daily cynicism level as to whether I believe I truly am seizing the day or not. But no matter how I feel, I do believe that the memorial fund for Chris is the perfect way to celebrate the life of a great person and whether you knew him or not, I hope you decide to make a donation. Every dollar counts whether you give $5 or $50 or $500. I'm going to make a donation and I don't want to take anything away from Chris but I'm going to think of at least part of it as being in memory of Spencer who during that first conversation asked me "Where do you go to get books in this town?" and laughed because he hadn't already thought of it when I replied, "How about the library?" If you've read this blog long, you know that I like to see connections in everything and also to see things come full circle. While I was at FIMS, Chris gave me a couple of his old textbooks and, no matter how I pushed, would accept nothing more than a cup of coffee for them. He told me to pass the favour along to someone someday. I like to think that, indirectly, by helping make this scholarship a reality, someday a future FIMS graduate will be able to convince a rig worker or someone else you might not normally think of as a reader to visit the library for their own books. Mission accomplished. Here's the announcement about Chris' Memorial Scholarship:
(I knew the scholarship was in the works but thanks to the Canuck Librarian for being the first to let me know it was officially a go!) Wednesday, March 19
Home For Dinner: A Saskatchewan Shopping List
by
Jason
on Wed 19 Mar 2008 09:11 PM CST
Amy Jo Ehman and her husband recently spent a whole year eating nothing but Saskatchewan-produced foods. Her year-long experiment is over but she's continued to buy (mostly) from local suppliers. She recently posted a list of where she gets her food from these days.
Monday, March 17
Sunday, March 16
Road Stats
by
Jason
on Sun 16 Mar 2008 02:36 PM CST
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've been on the road for the past two months doing computer and Internet training at our various branches around SE Saskatchewan (for anyone who doesn't know about our territory, if you draw a straight line from Regina east to the Manitoba border and south to the US border, that's pretty much us. Here's a map but I just realised that it doesn't render in Firefox very well so you might have to look at it in Internet Explorer - sorry about that!)
Anyhow, I thought I'd sum up the last couple months in numbers...  Branches Visited - 45 (out of 48)Number of kilometres put on the company car - 10 000+Cancellations Due To Illness (mine) - 1Cancellations Due To Illness/Family Emergency (the branch librarian) - 2 (and it was the same person both times which makes me wonder if she was just really nervous about the training as happens with some people)Cancellations Due To Cold and/or Blizzards - 1.5 days (the half day is because I went out for my daytime sessions but had the evening one canceled by the local librarian)Number of blizzards I drove through when travel wasn't recommended - 1Number of -30 degree or colder days - too many to countNumber of 0 degree days where, the mix of melting/half-frozen snow and massive wind gusts made it feel like you were driving on a combo curling rink/jet engine turbine simulator scarier than any blizzard - 1Number of members of the general public who attended my sessions overall - 150-200? (sounds impressive until you realise that averages out to 3-4 people per library)Number of communities that had not one person show up for either of my two public sessions - a drop-in Q&A and a one-hour "guided tour" of the Internet - 3Not having done the math, what I think my average rating would be for all training sessions (2 with general public, 1 with branch librarians) based on the feedback forms (out of 5) - 4.0What it would be if you discounted the people who obviously filled out the form wrong - 4.5 (some examples - a few people gave all 1's - our lowest mark - but wrote nothing but favourable comments, some put lower marks in the "Length of Session" field meaning they enjoyed it and wish the session could've been longer but which comes across as a negative when you include it in the average rating. Who said survey design in 504 was useless?)Two reasons I probably got higher marks than I deserved. 1) I often mentioned I was from Indian Head and had grown up in SRL which immediately sets a "you're one of us" vibe and 2) people filled out the feedback form before actually going home to see if my advice actually would help with their problem!Number of our branches still on dial-up - 5Question I should've expected but which caught me off-guard with how much it was asked - "how do I get satellite Internet on my farm? What does it cost? What are the advantages/disadvantages?" In my opinion, the single biggest problem for people who at least have the skills to get online but are otherwise total beginners? They don't recognize ads on pages or know how to tell when they've surfed away from a site. The amount of people I'd show a site to and have them miles away as soon as I looked away because they just started clicking on the page randomly boggled my mind.Number of people I helped figure out how to use a mouse - 4Number of people I (may have ) instructed in the use of BitTorrent - 6 Number of members of the general public who brought me fresh-baked cookies when they came to the second session after attending the first one - 1Number of 80+ year old ladies I helped sign up for Facebook accounts - 2  Saturday, March 15
Link Dump (and Blog Survey Reminder)
by
Jason
on Sat 15 Mar 2008 01:42 AM CST
Just clearing up some things I've come across recently. I sometimes forget to make a note of where I found stuff so if I got this from you or your site, apologies in advance - feel free to post a comment or drop me a line to let me know (although admittedly 90% of my stuff tends to come from Reddit these days so you can usually find the discussion for these sites there by doing a search on the relevant topic.)
Also, this is a good place to remind you that my annual blog survey is open right now. If you haven't already, please take a quick moment to fill out the 10 questions (most of which are checkboxes - can it get any easier?) Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to respond so far. I can only make educated guesses as to who's reading this blog from the various programs I have tracking traffic to this site. So it's especially nice to see responses from former classmates and colleagues at FIMS when I wasn't sure if they were still "tuning in". On to the links... Bookshelf Blog BookShelves By Colour R.E.M. to debut new album on the social networking application, iLike The World's 50 Most Powerful Blogs And for the survey respondent who said "Pace rocks - more Pace!", here you go...   Friday, March 14
Regina - The City That Rhymes With Fun (and Cold and Casino)
by
Jason
on Fri 14 Mar 2008 10:48 PM CST
Friday Fun Link - Google Sky (March 14, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 14 Mar 2008 10:37 PM CST
Previously available as part of Google Earth, Google has just launched a web-based version of Google Sky which allows you to explore the universe from the comfort of your own home. More information about this product is available from TechCrunch.
In semi-related news, Google gained the most advertising dollars of any media company - new or traditional such as TV/radio/print/etc. - in the last year and by a long shot...which is why they can put so much money into projects like this that aren't immediately seen as potential profit centres. (via Reddit) Thursday, March 13
Collegial Connections in a Digital Age
by
Jason
on Thu 13 Mar 2008 11:06 PM CST
It's fascinating to think about the relationships we have with our colleagues in this digital age compared to how it was in pre-Internet (or at least the Jurassic era of the Internet - the years around 1995 or so).
Back then, you would become colleagues at University but then, it took an extra special effort to stay in touch with people once you convocated. Now, because of the Internet and tools like Google, Facebook, blogs, RSS and more, I'm able to keep up with friends who move across oceans (very happy to see Renee back blogging after a move from China to Amsterdam!) and across continents. I've connected with current students at FIMS and alumni who I never would've known had our digital paths not crossed (okay, slight fib as I met the Canuck Librarian at OLA in 2006 but all the other alumni I know via online connections tend to be via Facebook and don't have blogs I can easily link to.) I've also "met" LIS students in schools across Canada and the US that I likely also never would've met unless we crossed paths in the physical world somewhere somehow. And I've even become "friends" with Internet-celebrity librarians who are kind enough to reply to my messages and treat me like a normal human being when I write them with ideas, comments or questions. So what's my point? I think it's no secret that the dynamic for interpersonal relations has vastly changed in the last five years because of online tools and it's only going to change more in the years to come. Before, you might know of a job opening and say "Tim would be perfect for that - too bad we lost touch after grad school." Now, it's a quick Facebook message to let Tim know about the opportunity. Before, you might chat over beers about the latest issues in librarianship with colleagues who work in the same city, attend the same conferences and belong to the same organizations. Now, you can do the same with librarians across the continent and around the world. Before, if you wanted to meet a librarian who had specific expertise in an area, it took a lot of digging. Now it often takes no more than a Google search or a message on a listserv to find someone with that specific knowledge. Wednesday, March 12
Tuesday, March 11
2008 Head Tale Blog Survey
by
Jason
on Tue 11 Mar 2008 09:49 PM CST
I did a blog survey last year which was very informative about who's reading my blog, how they get here and how often they visit, what they like once they get here and what they'd like to see more of. For that reason, I've decided to repeat the survey again this year.
I thank-you in advance for taking a few short minutes to fill out the survey. I don't think I posted the results last year but I think I'll do so this year (mainly because I'm always desperate for content!  )Monday, March 10
Flow Chart of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" Novel
by
Jason
on Mon 10 Mar 2008 10:45 PM CST
Sunday, March 9
CLA's 2nd Annual Survey of Challenged Materials in Canadian Libraries
by
Jason
on Sun 09 Mar 2008 07:08 PM CST
Continuing yesterday's trend of posting items long after their "best before" date, here's a press release from the Canadian Library Association | |||