April 2002

Library helps the blind enjoy graphics

Bob Cox sent over This One on a new device installed earlier this month at the Osaka Prefectural Central Library allows blind PC users to read graphic information via a tactile display that can approximate an image on a Windows screen using 3,072 pop-up plastic pins, each 1.6 mm in diameter. At a cost of 5 million yen (That\’s about $40,000 USD) I\’m not sure we\’ll be seeing them very often.

\”\”By using the (tactile) display, the blind can understand the visual information contained in books and Web sites, which was impossible before,\” said librarian Masayuki Sugita, who is blind.\”

April 27, 2002 by Librarians Libraries

Astrology and Library Job Correlation

\”Have you ever wondered about the stars and their influence on one’s career path? More specifically, is there a correlation between a person’s astrological sign and his/her job duties? In libraries, are Virgos attracted to technical services? Are Taureans more likely to be library directors?


Dean Dylan Hendrix & Michelle Wilde are contributing a chapter in the upcoming book, Revolting Librarians Redux, in which they will study the job duty/astrological sign phenomenon. They want to include all library professional and paraprofessional staff in this survey, so please take five minutes to fill out the survey. \”

April 27, 2002 by Librarians Libraries

A story of monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare

Lee Hadden writes: \”There is An Article in the April 26 issue of the Times about the
original of the concept \”If a million monkeys pounded away on a million
typewriters for a million years, would Shakespeare\’s works be reproduced?\”


They say Folklore ascribes the vision of a typing pool of monkeys to T(homas) H(enry) Huxley, But the notion is older than Huxley, and may go back to Cicero:

“If anybody believes that this is possible, I do not see why he should not think that if an infinite number of examples of the 21 letters of the alphabet, made of gold or what you will, were shaken together and poured out on the ground it would be possible for them to fall so as to spell out, say, the whole text of the Annals of Ennius. In fact I doubt whether chance would permit them to spell out a single verse!”

April 27, 2002 by Uncategorized

News Search Engines: AllTheWeb, Daypop, Google, Altavista, RocketNews, Moreover.

News
Search Engines:  Single point search
box access to six of the top search engines focusing on news searches.
HavenWorks.com/news/search

Compare
their strengths and weaknesses by searching ~library~
in:

~RocketNews~
\’wins\’, ~AllTheWeb~
a contender, ~Daypop~
Cohen @ top when I searched, ~Altavista~
included thumbnails (cool:-), ~Google~
\’sort by date\’ button in top right corner,  ~Moreover~
the technology behind Altavista (and a lot of other news \’portals\’).

RocketNews.com
\’won\’ with the most results returned, though that can be \’set\’ by choosing
the number of \’days\’ back it searches.

! Updated:  
Initially I had Google down as last — That was my error, I was using the
code for the general search engine and not the news subsection.

>Update
2: RocketNews search link fixed.

LISNews
Keyword:
search
engine

News
Search Engines:  Single point search
box access to six of the top search engines focusing on news searches.
HavenWorks.com/news/search

Compare
their strengths and weaknesses by searching ~library~
in:

~RocketNews~
\’wins\’, ~AllTheWeb~
a contender, ~Daypop~
Cohen @ top when I searched, ~Altavista~
included thumbnails (cool:-), ~Google~
\’sort by date\’ button in top right corner,  ~Moreover~
the technology behind Altavista (and a lot of other news \’portals\’).

RocketNews.com
\’won\’ with the most results returned, though that can be \’set\’ by choosing
the number of \’days\’ back it searches.

! Updated:  
Initially I had Google down as last — That was my error, I was using the
code for the general search engine and not the news subsection.

>Update
2: RocketNews search link fixed.

LISNews
Keyword:
search
engine

April 27, 2002 by Google Internet Libraries

Want privacy? Take action

SiliconValley.com Has An Editorial by Dan Gillmore that says the businesses building the next generation of digital services are indifferent, if not hostile, to everything but their immediate bottom lines.
I\’d say you can easily add some businesses providing services like databases, opacs and ejournals to this list. He also says legislative agendas frequently run counter to public wishes that conflict with business demands.
Our rights, and money, are being legislated away.

April 26, 2002 by Privacy

Drunk on trivia: Notes from Atlanta’s trivia-mad beer-bar underground

Lee Hadden writes: \” I always said the public library budget could be achieved if we only
charged 10% of all the bar bets we settled, or charged a buck for each
McDonald\’s trivia contest answer we supplied. Now, a new round of bar
trivia is sweeping the southeast- public librarians be warned!
An article
in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution mentions a company\’s use of trivia in
regional bars.\”

So could we apply such a model to libraries, or would lack of beer make it lame?

April 26, 2002 by Libraries

Censorship debate drags on in VA school system

From the Washington Times:

Destiny Burns wants her daughter, a ninth-grader at Fairfax County\’s Westfield High, to check out Ken Follett\’s \”The Pillars of the Earth\” — a book set in the Middle Ages — from the school\’s library for her history reading.

There is one problem, though. Last year, the school board restricted access to the book to students in grades 10 and higher because some parents complained about what they said were violent and obscene passages . . .

Parents are aligned on either side of the issue. At one end is Parents Against Bad Books in Schools (PABBIS), a group formed last year that wants certain books dropped from school reading lists and libraries. The group has a long list of such books on its Web site and even has challenged some, including \”Pillars of the Earth,\” under a formal process available to parents in the county . . .

More.

April 26, 2002 by Censorship Libraries School Libraries

The filter war rages

The Advocate has A Story on The filter war that says It\’s just not nice to pick a fight with a librarian.


They also say libraries aren\’t the sorts of places where folks are going to go looking for smut, and you can find nudity in National Geographic if you try, and this doesn\’t mean we should banish such things from our public libraries.

\”The world is a blend of that which we like and find comfortable, and that which makes us cringe. Eliminate the squirmy parts, and what you are left with isn\’t the world. It\’s a reflection of yourself, your strengths, and your weaknesses. A filtered world is not true. Librarians, it seems, have more interest in truth than politicians. Not that we\’ve ever thought our politicians capable of obscuring the truth, of course.\”

April 26, 2002 by Libraries Web Filters

How Many Lies Make A Right

I\’m not sure what to make of this.

The article, Do libraries need lie detectors? said \”Arming America\” is a lie, and now, thanks to the \”collapse of scholarship\”, and poor collection development, people everywhere will be reading this bad book. She also says Librarians need to keep a sharp eye out for frauds, and should develop collection acordingly.


Genie Tyburski passed along Sometimes Articles Lie Too, from over at The Virtual Chase
by Milt Shook, as a follow up, that says The Independence Institute (The place that was responsible for that first article) is a conservative think tank, and is also pro-gun. He thinks this entire controversy was created by the NRA and its ilk, in an attempt to discredit a fine historical work.

Read them both, and make up your own mind.

April 26, 2002 by Google Libraries

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