LISNews: Librarian News

Interviews!

Yes, there are interviews this week. We rarely are able to fit in three but we did this week. First up was author David Michael Slater who discussed his writing career. Following Slater was the CEO of search engine Mahalo, Jason Calacanis. Calacanis talked about his company as well as the search engine field. Rounding out our session of interviews was Tim Darlington, Digital Services Manager at the library of Massey University. Darlington spoke about Massey University being the first of the academic institutions in New Zealand to have its library adopt a discovery layer such as Encore from Innovative Interfaces.

The close to the podcast notes that further answers to the question about choosing librarianship are no being sought. The answers received will be presented by the program's engineer next week. The new question posed was: "Why do you stick with Twitter?" Replies are needed by 0700 UTC on Sunday, August 10, 2008. Folks outside the United States wishing to provide an MP3 recorded answer can use the drop.io powered tool below:

Folks within the United States can also use that tool in addition to being able to call 646-495-9201 and entering when prompted extension 61340. Materials can also be sent as an attachment via e-mail to erielookingproductions@drop.io. A link to Blake's post about how the process of replying to the question is shown below.

Referenced links:
Blake's HOWTO
Mahalo, the human-powered search engine
The personal website of Jason Calacanis
The new Encore interface to the catalog at Massey University
A sampling of books by David Michael Slater shown in Worldcat.org
Website of David Michael Slater -- Read More

(Posting this again for those who missed it)

Over the next week or so I’d like to try and assemble audio answers from as many people as possible to our favorite question: "Why did you choose librarianship?" Stephen will stitch them all together and release a podcast at some point in the next few weeks.

I’d very much like to make this an audio project. To leave an answer to be included in the podcast, there are a few ways you can go.

If you are in the US, you can call 646-495-9201, enter extension 61340, and leave your answer.

If you are outside the US, or just want to use your computer, you can upload an MP3 file using the upload tool located on the podcast page http://lisnews.org/podcast/.

Be sure to tell us who you are and where you're calling from. You need not provide us with your entire bio, just something simple is fine if you’d like to remain private: "Hi, this is Blake calling from western New York and I chose librarianship because..."

Over the next week or so I’d like to try and assemble audio answers from as many people as possible to our favorite question: "Why did you choose librarianship?" Stephen will stitch them all together and release a podcast at some point in the next few weeks.

I’d very much like to make this an audio project. To leave an answer to be included in the podcast, there are a few ways you can go.

If you are in the US, you can call 646-495-9201, enter extension 61340, and leave your answer.

If you are outside the US, or just want to use your computer, you can upload an MP3 file using the upload tool located on the podcast page http://lisnews.org/podcast/.

Be sure to tell us who you are and where you're calling from. You need not provide us with your entire bio, just something simple is fine if you’d like to remain private: "Hi, this is Blake calling from western New York and I chose librarianship because..."

This week's episode is different from the usual fare. The thread holding this together is: "Authors You Didn't Hear at ALA Annual 2008". Authors David Weber and Piers Anthony were interviewed this week. Interviews ranged from talking about their works to how they view libraries to the future of books. The interview with David Weber is being presented in two parts with the remaining portion to air on a future episode. Both authors raised unique points when it comes to determining authorial intent relative to exposing children to their own works that might be otherwise objectionable.

A link is presented below for the Baen Free Library. That site is one where there are complete works available for reading without digital rights management software issues. Works by David Weber and others appear in that collection.

Related Links:
Home page of Piers Anthony
A book by Piers Anthony not for kids
A second book by Piers Anthony not for kids
The Baen Free Library featuring items by David Weber and others
Works by David Weber published by Baen Books
The Honor Harrington Series
US Transition to Digital Television Broadcasting Info Site
Home page of Erie Looking Productions
An interesting tweet on Twitter -- Read More