LISNews: Librarian News

BookLamp offers an interesting and (ahem) novel idea when it comes to finding books.

Those familiar with Pandora know that it works by analyzing a musician or song that you like and making choices for new songs based on the artist, style, beat, and other musical elements. BookLamp seeks to do that, but with books. Through the analysis of things like writing style, word use, and the like, BookLamp tries to make recommendations for further based on similarities between the book you selected and other books within its database.

A video on their site explains everything in greater detail.

They've only got a few items in the database, but they're looking to grow... and hopefully have their idea purchased by Google.

From Downloadsquad:

Ever wonder if the website is really down or if its just your computer? We've all had it happen when we need to know if maybe its really just that our computer has decided to @#$ up at the worst possible moment. Well know there's a new website to check out that will tell you...if the website is really down or if it's just you. Could prove really useful when everything else works except that one site that the patron standing in front of you needs.

Meredith Farkas:

So, I think the problem is so much bigger than library schools still teaching students that this tech stuff is optional (which is not to say that isn’t a huge problem too). It’s also the way organizations are structured. So many libraries have a 1.0 org chart for a 2.0 world. They’re not structured to support public services technologies like blogs, wikis, etc. They’re not set up to allow for the sort of experimentation and agile decision-making that is required to meet the changing needs and wants of our users. So I don’t know that in an environment like that, hiring an emerging technologies librarian or a 2.0 librarian or whatever is the answer. You’re just putting a band-aid on a problem that goes to the heart of how your organization is structured and how decisions are made.

The Library 2.0 community on Ning is now one year old. You can find it at http://library20.ning.com/. There are now over 2700 members. I am amazed at its growth. I started it as a place to play with the new technology, never expecting it to take on a life of its own. It is now self sustaining with little work needed from me as its creator. As Frankenstein said," It's alive!"