Aaron

Former editor of Wired and all around Web cool guy Kevin Kelly has a great write up promoting the use of libraries’ remote access databases. He’s selected them as a cool tool.

This vast store of knowledge is found on the Invisible Web — that part of the WWW that hides behind passwords and subscription fees, and is beyond the grasp of Google (although Google Scholar is working on this). This part of the web holds the databases that professionals and librarians pay to search…

There are several ways to get to this stuff as an individual. 1) You can call a public librarian to do the occasional search. 2) You can purchase a subscription to a database vendor for personal access, or 3) You can use a digital library card for web access from your home via your local library system. For most of us, #3 is the way to go.

Here’s the full post, titled “Digital Library Cards”

David H. Rothman writes “If you like the Patriot Act, you’ll love a proposal to require Internet providers to keep their records on your Net use for a minimum period of time. Bizarre. I thought WE had won the Cold War. It’s as the Internet somehow got invented for the convenience of the KGB. (From CNet)

Anonymous Patron writes “The third edition of Sarick’s Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library was recently released and ricklibrarian interviewed her.”

HeidiL writes “Seen in Architecture magazine’s April issue: http://tinyurl.com/7abkg

The website only has one picture, so check out a hard copy for more. Isn’t it interesting to think about the use of color (or not) in library design?”

An Anonymous Patron writes “Dominican, CPS team up to recruit, train new librarians Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science is partnering with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the recipient of a $319,501 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to recruit and educate librarians for the 21st century.”

Update: 11/10 16:18 EST by R:Don’t botha. The deadline for this was Oct. 1, and the program was just for folks who already have teaching certs in the CPS system.

If you’re not familiar with Tame the Web you owe yourself a visit or a subscription to his feed. Michael has recently posted a call for front line library bloggers to answer a short survery. Why not help out?

Are you a blogger working in a library? Do write about the comings and goings of library users? Do you blog your interactions with other staff? If so, please take a minute or two and answer some questions for Aaron and I.

We’ll thank you for it!

Click Here!

Boing Boing had an interesting little blurb today about spyware.

Spyware sucks, sure, but if I can avoid it with Firefox and the occasional AdAware scan, I’d rather not pay taxes to protect luddites from it. Spyware is a disease in the Darwinian ecosystem of the Internet, and it keeps power users ahead of brain-deaders who click moving banner monkeys.

The full story

A story detailing distributer WhenU’s attempt to block the Spyware Control Act in Utah can be found here

In the beginning, www.microsoft.com was just one computer tucked under a table at the end of a long hallway. It was designed to test Microsoft’s first 32-bit Windows implementation of TCP/IP, the software plumbing in Windows that enables Internet communications.

The story has some great screen caps of www.microsoft.com throughout the years. Isn’t it interesting to see how far web design has come since 1995?

Read the full story [via Lockergnome Technology News]

I wasn’t quite aware how popular our wireless network was until ceased to operate correctly. The problem was simple enough, but it took about a week to correct. In this period of time I was called upon many times to help people connect their laptops to the network. To tell them that they wouldn’t be able to connect for a week was a gut wrenching experience. I was the driving force behind the implementation of the network at the library, and I knew having to turn people away wasn’t helping the success of the project. However, people seemed very understanding, especially when I offered them a wired connection with speed well beyond their DSLs at home. I recorded the phone numbers of the people I had to turn away, and called them once the network was again up and running. While statistics haven’t been formally kept yet, I think the estimate of 2-4 people per day using the wireless network is a very conservative one. I’m only at the library a portion of the time it is open, and only in the public areas a portion of that time. It is likely that more people are using it than I’ve seen.

I wasn’t quite aware how popular our wireless network was until ceased to operate correctly. The problem was simple enough, but it took about a week to correct. In this period of time I was called upon many times to help people connect their laptops to the network. To tell them that they wouldn’t be able to connect for a week was a gut wrenching experience. I was the driving force behind the implementation of the network at the library, and I knew having to turn people away wasn’t helping the success of the project. However, people seemed very understanding, especially when I offered them a wired connection with speed well beyond their DSLs at home. I recorded the phone numbers of the people I had to turn away, and called them once the network was again up and running. While statistics haven’t been formally kept yet, I think the estimate of 2-4 people per day using the wireless network is a very conservative one. I’m only at the library a portion of the time it is open, and only in the public areas a portion of that time. It is likely that more people are using it than I’ve seen.People have been using the wireless network for a variety of different reasons, and in a variety of different ways. Some people use it as a backup for when their connection at home is down, others are starting to depend on it. One patron decided to buy a laptop with 802.11g capability and cancel her home ISP upon hearing about the wireless network at the library. While she often used the wired connection in the library, it wasn’t until the wireless network was implemented that she decided to cancel her Internet service at home. Perhaps this is because of how convenient network can be. The patrons, as of now, use it on their terms, wherever they are comfortable in the library, and have all of their programs and files. Presently I’m working on pushing a page to the patron’s wireless devices upon connection so that we still get our AUP. This is more important to the board than it is the librarians.

One of the neatest things about the wireless network is that it is another excuse for me to talk to patrons. While there’s always an opportunity to great patrons and ask if they would like some assistance, their ears tend to perk up when I ask them if they are using the library’s wireless network. Only a few times has this lead to someone actually connecting that hadn’t, but talking about technology with patrons alerts them to the current state of libraries. “Hey, we’re here, we’re hip, we know what you need, so use us dammit!� Asking about people laptops has opened the door for me to talk about remote access to library databases, and books on MP3, among many other things.



There is one thing subtle but neat thing about the wireless network that any library with one can do: brand your network. In stead of having generic names for your SSIDs, or even ones that read “Circ,� “Reference,� etc…, brand them with your library’s name. Ours read, “Thomas Ford Youth Services,� “Thomas Ford Reference,� etc… Not only does this make it easier for patrons to choose an access point, it gets our library’s name associated with hip technology.

Implementing a wireless network was a relatively cheap way to provide another service to a demographic that might likely scoff at the idea of library.

I won’t weigh in with my opinion of Mozilla 1.6 vs. IE vs. Firefox and get everyone riled up, but I will say that Firefox has the best logo.

Read here about the designers of the logo, silverorange.

[via gadgetopia]