Monthly Archives: August 2006

OPAL, Virtual Reality, and Academic Libraries

Looking for free or inexpensive continuing education opportunities? Check out OPAL, which describes itself as “an international collaborative effort by libraries of all types to provide web-based programs and training for library users and library staff members.” Most events are … Continue reading

Posted in continuing ed, emerging tech, web presence | Leave a comment

Portable New Yorker

Emdashes reports that the New Yorker will soon sell the Complete New Yorker on portable hard drive in addition to the DVD set already on sale. For $299 you get an installation CD and a portable 3″x5″ drive. Since $59.99 … Continue reading

Posted in digitization, interesting ideas | Leave a comment

Social Networks and Portals

InfoWorld says, “Search satisfaction on the wane,” but happiness with web portals is increasing. Compete, a market research firm, asserts that traffic to social networking sites like MySpace is poised to overtake traffic to portal sites like Yahoo! Nielsen//NetRatings reports … Continue reading

Posted in web presence | Leave a comment

Does Your Browser Choice Reveal Your Personality?

For a Monday morning diversion with a grain of truth see What does your browser reveal about you? “You really don’t care if FF is faster, or safer than IE – you would use it even if it performed 10 … Continue reading

Posted in diversions | Leave a comment

NYT Site Search

At least library catalogs aren’t the only search tools with problems: When I search for “A Food Website Spiced with Attitude”, the NYT’s search engine should take a wild, off-the-wall guess about what article I might be looking for, and … Continue reading

Posted in catalogs, search | Leave a comment

Web Accessibility: Failure is Not an Option

I just visited Web Accessibility for All, which is maintained by the Center for Education and Work at the University of Wisconsin. The site’s tagline is, “Failure is Not an Option.” To gain some understanding of what people with impairments … Continue reading

Posted in accessibility | Leave a comment

if:book

Gosh darn it, one of my unwritten rules for this blog is not to reference other blogs too often. I often appreciate such referencing in the blogs I read, I just don’t want to do it too much myself. But … Continue reading

Posted in publishing | Leave a comment

Technophile at Work; Luddite at Home

if:book (I’ve been reading it a lot lately) has a post about the future of television. Today, radio listening habits have shifted, and I only hear the radio in cars and offices. Television viewing (if you can even call it … Continue reading

Posted in unclassed | Leave a comment

Dewey Decibel System

This American Life just repeated its episode from 8/5/05, which includes an act about rock concerts in Michigan public libraries. The theme of the episode? “Stories of people and institutions who are worried about what the world thinks of them, … Continue reading

Posted in diversions | Leave a comment

The Access Principle

John Willinsky of the University of British Columbia has written a book, The Access Priniciple, on open access, digital publishing, and scholarly communication and made the whole darn thing available for download at the MIT Press website. If you, like … Continue reading

Posted in open access | Leave a comment