Brian

The great thing about wikis is that anyone can contribute. The bad thing about wikis is that hardly anyone does. Part of the problem may be that people just don’t know where to start. And that’s where Wiki Wednesday comes in.

There are several library-centric wikis out there on the Internets, all with gaping holes in their content. Each week, Wiki Wednesday will highlight an article which needs to be added or fleshed out. LISNewsterz who know something about the week’s topic are encouraged to add content to the featured article. (Of course, you may contribute to others, too.)

This week’s feature article: Readers’ advisory on LISWiki. The article was first created in September 2005, and it is currently a 3-sentence stub with inconsistent punctuation. There’s certainly much more to be said about this important aspect of reference service.

So, go share your exptertise about readers’ advisory. Please follow the wiki’s rules, though. Wiki Wednesday will review your work, and assign another article, next week.

The folks at Gail Borden Public Library (Elgin, IL) have been posting videos on YouTube for a couple months. Now they’ve announced a video contest for patrons, called Storypalooza:

This January and February … we’re asking everybody in our library community to pick up their cameras and join the visual storytelling fun. People of all ages are invited to upload a 4-minute (or shorter) video to YouTube. Then send a link to us, for entry into one of two categories: “My Favorite Book” … or “Community Favorites” … . Videos can be funny, poignant, clever or cool, and they must be library-appropriate.

A bank is sponsoring prizes for Storypalooza. Local newspaper coverage here.

I just got this in my email …

Dear RedLightGreen user,

I am contacting you to let you know that on November 5th the RedLightGreen service will end. RLG, RedLightGreen’s parent not-for-profit company has combined forces with another organization that supports a similar service, WorldCat.org. We have decided to invest all of our efforts into developing and supporting a single
product rather than continuing to support two.

I just got this in my email …

Dear RedLightGreen user,

I am contacting you to let you know that on November 5th the RedLightGreen service will end. RLG, RedLightGreen’s parent not-for-profit company has combined forces with another organization that supports a similar service, WorldCat.org. We have decided to invest all of our efforts into developing and supporting a single
product rather than continuing to support two.

We’d like to encourage you to update your RedLightGreen bookmarks to point to WorldCat.org, and to try out this new service that will help you find books and other research resources provided by nearly 12,000 libraries worldwide. Like RedLightGreen, WorldCat.org will help you get access to research materials at your local library. WorldCat.org is easy to use, and supports many of the same features as RedLightGreen; the one service that WorldCat.org does not currently support is citation formatting, but we are working on implementing this feature in WorldCat.org in the near future.

If you saved citations in RedLightGreen, you can retrieve your citation list from RedLightGreen until November 4th by following these
steps:

– Connect to RedLightGreen Use the Sign In link (if you aren’t automatically signed in)
– Click the Your List link in the upper right
– You can then select the E-Mail link to send your citations to your e-mail account, or get a printer-friendly view to print or download

If you have questions or comments, use the Feedback link on any page in RedLightGreen to let us know.

We want to take this opportunity to thank you for using RedLightGreen. We wish you the best of luck in locating useful books and other research resources.

The RedLightGreen Team

I’m forwarding a call for nominations that was emailed to me …

The editors of Library Journal need your help identifying the emerging leaders in the library world. The sixth annual Movers & Shakers supplement will profile 50-plus up-and-coming individuals from across the United States and Canada who are innovative, creative, and making a difference. From librarians to vendors to others who work in the library field, Movers & Shakers 2007 will celebrate the new professionals who are moving our libraries ahead. The deadline for submissions is November 1, 2006.

To send a nomination, you can use the online form [warning: print out a copy before you submit, in case your submission fails and everything you
wrote vanishes] or print out the PDF and mail it to Ann Kim at LJ, 360 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010, or fax to 646-746-6734.

In his blog today, columnist James Lileks talks about his first visit to the new Minneapolis Central Library building. (Scroll about 55% of the way down the page to get to the library part.)

Great comment below a photo of the children’s wing: “Because nothing says lazy hours spent reading in a warm cozy library like a wall of concrete.” Looking at that picture almost makes me want to bang my head repeatedly against that wall.

Today’s Zits comic strip ought to make it onto hundreds of librarians’ bulletin boards and at least one presentation slide at PLA or CiL next week.

Get it today, because it looks like it’ll be behind a paywall tomorrow.

Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? 91 min. Directed by Vicki Hunter and Heather Whinna. $20 from Blank Stare Films. Sample clips online at RightRightRight Films. No MPAA rating.

I highly recommend this recently-released indie DVD for libraries that collect documentaries. (WorldCat currently shows 7 holding libraries.) Through interviews and snippets of performances, Why Should the Devil … ? peeks into the world of evangelical Christian rock music — encompassing punk, metal, ska, rap, and other styles. This disc will especially appeal to aficionados of slice-of-a-subculture films like Word Wars and Trekkies. It should also be of interest to fans of the featured acts, but anyone watching for the music is bound to get frustrated by the brevity of the concert clips.

Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? 91 min. Directed by Vicki Hunter and Heather Whinna. $20 from Blank Stare Films. Sample clips online at RightRightRight Films. No MPAA rating.

I highly recommend this recently-released indie DVD for libraries that collect documentaries. (WorldCat currently shows 7 holding libraries.) Through interviews and snippets of performances, Why Should the Devil … ? peeks into the world of evangelical Christian rock music — encompassing punk, metal, ska, rap, and other styles. This disc will especially appeal to aficionados of slice-of-a-subculture films like Word Wars and Trekkies. It should also be of interest to fans of the featured acts, but anyone watching for the music is bound to get frustrated by the brevity of the concert clips.

Although somewhat disjointed at times, Why Should the Devil … ? does carry some running themes: tension between God-fearing humility and rock-and-roll ego, the involvement (ranging from rebellion to immersion) of various musicians with the Christian fundamentalist establishment, and broader religious issues. Interviewees discuss intriguing topics like the condemnation from some quarters of performers who do songs that aren’t explicitly Christian and “backward masking” of hidden demonic messages in records. (Honestly, though, I’m puzzled why Satan would resort to this ultra-subliminal method to say that it’s fun to smoke marijuana, considering the number of rock, rap, blues and reggae lyrics which deliver that message upfront.)

Much of the film was shot at the 2001 and 2003 Cornerstone Christian Music Festival in Illinois; other footage was taken in clubs and other locations. Many of the featured performers are on the younger side, but a couple old-timers also make appearances. Best interview line is from the singer of a metal band called Living Sacrifice: “There’s a lot of cool things that are dark that aren’t necessarily evil.”

In addition to the Christian musicians and fans, interview subjects include other representatives of the independent music scene, including producer Steve Albini, Punk Planet magazine publisher Dan Sinker, and members of the band Pansy Division. Although the non-Christians are generally unimpressed with the quality of Christian music and are put off by that subculture (or at least by their conception of it), some of the Christians interviewed are equally, if not more, critical. These are evangelicals who think Pat Robertson would cause their lord and savior to vomit.

DVD extras include an insightful and humorous directors’ commentary track (the banter about a metal singer’s socks is especially funny) and extended interview footage. Highlights of those clips include a conversation between Albini and a musician named Daniel Smith, and a fairly long interview with members of a quirky band called The Detholz! The DVD case gives the impression that extra performance footage is also included, and that would’ve been nice, but longer concert scenes are unfortunately not on the disc.

Inspired by The Llama Song (or at least by the need to drive it out of my head), I’ve created an incredibly stupid Flash video about the biblioblogosphere: The Blogga Song, sung by Lloyd, the Llibrary Llama.

The only reason I’m posting this is it’s the first long-overdue-book-gets-returned story of 2006. That, and a lede which says there was a JFK Library in Vallejo, California in 1938. (They must’ve known he’d be President some day!)

Gail Borden Public Library (Elgin, IL) hosts Giants: African Dinosaurs, starting after Labor Day. The exhibit, created by paleontologist Paul Sereno’s Project Exploration and presented with financial support from the local casino, runs from September 6 through December 30. It includes full-size fossil casts of several species and other displays. I saw an expanded version of “Giants” at Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory in 2003. Pretty cool.

This will be at least the third time that Afrovenator, a largish carnivore, has been in a library: A replica was on display at University of Chicago’s Crerar Library and at CPL’s Harold Washington Library Center in the early or mid 1990s.