August 2007

PC Magazine has published a list of The Top 100 Undiscovered Websites. Check out their list of undiscovered websites for Info, Reference, and Search.

Genie Tyburski writes “Strategies exist for finding confidential or proprietary information. The motives of researchers run the gamut from mild curiosity to winning at all costs. Companies and other organizations should learn to search dirty to safeguard information they don’t want to make public.”

Great little column from Brad Barker, aka “Mr. Library Man” (no guybrarian he). He answers readers questions, such as…

Q: Dear Library Man, I’m going to be a rock star. Why should I use the library? Want to know the answer? Check out his column here.

Barker is the librarian at Mark Twain Junior High School in Modesto. Write him at the Modesto Bee.

Here’s a thought…maybe you librarians out there should ask your local papers about the possibility of writing a column…could be a great way to recruit patrons and stir up interest!

Man arrested in Criss Library for possession of child pornography A man was arrested last Monday in the University of Nebraska library for allegedly viewing child pornography on one of the library’s computers, according to a police report and Campus Security crime log.

The man, is a level three registered sex offender and not affiliated with the university, said Paul Kosel, assistant manager of Campus Security.

ITI Reports The scientific community in particular seems to be embracing the new medium to enhance the dissemination and comprehension of science. SciVee (www.scivee.tv) is a new site that lets scientists communicate their works as multimedia presentations incorporated with the content of their published articles. SciVee is operated in partnership with the open access publisher the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). The so-called “YouTube for science” site has already garnered a great deal of interest and buzz in the blogosphere and media, even though it is still in “alpha†stage and its founders weren’t planning for a launch at this time.

Ball State University Libraries plans to utilize the online environment Second Life to make library and archival resources such as text, photographs, audio and videos available to users of the virtual world.

Arthur Hafner, dean of University Libraries, formed a working group in June to study the possibility of creating a library presence on Second Life. It is exploring library services that can be provided in Second Life, a product of Linden Labs, a San Francisco-based company. Second Life users, known as residents, create online personalities called avatars. Residents can interact with each other and buy virtual items and property using virtual currency.

Random House, Inc., announced Monday that it was donating $1 million to First Book, a nonprofit organization that has given millions of books to needy children since its founding in 1992.

“As publishing professionals who spend our days surrounded by and immersed in books, it is difficult to imagine a world without them,” Random House chairman Peter Olson said in a statement.

Marshall Breeding is conducting a survey on library automation trends. The survey aims to measure how well libraries are satisfied with their automation systems and the companies or other organizations that support them. It also attempts to get some indication of whether libraries are looking favorably on open source software for their automation system. The survey works through the lib-web-cats directory within the Library Technology Guides web site. This approach eliminates the need to retype any demographic information regarding your library.
You will just need to navigate to your library in lib-web-cats.

Here are the instructions on how to complete the survey:

Raz Godelnik sent over a link to his Eco-Libris, a new green biz he co-founded that lets book readers balance out the paper used for the books they read by planting trees. “About 20 Million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone. What we want to do is to raise awareness to the destructive environmental impacts of using paper for the production of books and provide people with an affordable and easy way to do something about it.”

If you wanted to read this book,

or have your library buy a copy,

you could go ahead and do it.

Beaufort Books is going to press with 125,000 copies of If I Did It. Beaufort publisher Eric Kampmann told Publishers Weekly that the indie house already has advance orders for 116,000 copies (even though it won’t be carried by Barnes & Noble) and the title, which is set to come off the press on September 10 or 11, is being planned for a release that will coincide with the September 13 Oprah show featuring the Goldmans and Denise Brown.