LISNews: Librarian News

Here's probably more than you'll ever want to know about feline hairballs. Hair balls - or trichobezoars, to the veterinarily inclined - rank among the most common ailments suffered by cats and, subsequently, by their owners.

"Usually you find them in the morning, with your bare feet," says Ed Zigon Jr., a lab technician who lives with six cats in Morrisville. For people who own cats - a third of all American households, half of those with two or more - hair balls are an issue that keeps coming up.

Since all librarians love books, there's not doubt in my mind you would love to make your own books! Here's a couple of interesting little How-To sites that will help you along the way: Fun and Easy How to Guide to Binding Your Own Paperback Books At Home...FAST and one from PBWiki,
DIY Bookbinding, which is part of an article that appears in heavily edited (in a good way) form in Make magazine, Volume 5.

A good way to kill some time this Friday (assuming you're not going to the St. Patricks Day parade) might be LISWiki.com. Have a look at What's Been Added, or maybe start with The Index, add onto a Stub, or browse the LISWiki Categories.
The LISWiki:Community Portal has some good Article Ideas: Stumped on what to write about? See if you can fill out the Categories some more, develop the shorter entries (some are blank) and stubs, or help fill the needed entries (titles linked to twice or more), or just browse the Recent Changes or help finish up the categorization scheme, it could use some ontological overhaul.

Entries and categories targeted for enhancements include:

• FRBR
• Laptop check-out
• RFID
• Library funding
• Open stacks movement
• Library 2.0. Did we miss 1.5?

LISWiki is a free and open publishing system. Everyone is encouraged to share information in your areas of interest or expertise. Anyone can edit existing articles or create new ones. New articles are welcome! If it doesn't already exist, a "create an article with this title" link will appear in a search for your article title.

I'm going to stick with my cats theme for my Friday Time Killer this week because as you kow, Everyone knows all librarians have cats. If you're reading this you're probably a librarian, so chances are good you have a cat! I spotted this Reuters Article Wednesday on Russian clown Yuri Kuklachev. Yuri has a troupe of cats who do handstands, crawl along high wires and balance on balls and he says the secret to training them is realizing that you can't force cats to do anything. The Village Voice interviewed him last year, The Christian Science Monitor did the same several years ago as well. Sharing his secrets over caviar and blintzes in Brighton Beach, a New York neighborhood known as Little Russia, Kuklachev said he plans to write a book about how to train cats since so many people are asking him.

Kuklachev, 56, said his cat-training method also can be applied to children.