This Week in Library Blogland (Aug 22)

Owing to numerous personal distractions (babies, plugged sinuses, vacations), this week’s round-up will not be up to the excellent, jam-packed standard we’ve come to expect from bentley. Blake, Daniel, and I have come up with the following faves.

Owing to numerous personal distractions (babies, plugged sinuses, vacations), this week’s round-up will not be up to the excellent, jam-packed standard we’ve come to expect from bentley. Blake, Daniel, and I have come up with the following faves.Before taking off a few days to get his last unbroken rest for the several years, Blake saw fit to share his favorites:

Walt’s Top Blogs

The Law Librarian Blog gives us a Broadband Reality Check

Eric Schnell has a good look at Google.

The Difficulties of the Fiction Market Pt. II

One from The Reading Experience on two very good responses to Jason Cowley’s August 6 Observer essay on the current state of British fiction.

Over at Webjunction’s Blog…”Am I Supposed to Know What a Wiki Is?”

What I’ve Learned in Three Years of Being a Professional Librarian, Or, “Oh My God, You’re Alive!” Part One and Part 2.

From Digitization 101 http://hurstassociates.blogspot.com/2005/08/notes-from-workshop-on-digital.html
www.dcc.ac.uk/training/cm-2005/
The presentations and a five-page summary (report) of the DCC and DPC Joint Workshop on Digital Curation Cost Models are online.

blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050817-100412 Using Brackets To Illustrate Queries

How to write queries from Google software engineer Matt Cutts is a nice look at how Googlers internally represent queries, so that everyone knows what was actually entered in the search box.

What is a Library?

Wikis and scientific communication

Advertisers Switching from Google AdSense to Yahoo Publisher Network some interesting notes on web ads from Search Engine Journal. Yes, I know, not library related, tough luck.

A Librarian is Born continues to remind me that The Feel-good Librarian is a must read.

Conversational Reading Asks why read? In an apologia for Posh Spice, Noel Gallagher, and anyone else who doesn’t care to read.

lquilter.net follows the flow of the google / library discussion and asks what’s the essence of library?

Technorati hacks: AND, NOT: Library Clips notes that Technorati have enabled “OR� in search queries, what about using AND, or NOT.

A good long post, Grad School funding – for U.S. based students from the Professional Lurker. They say there is money out there…big money for those hardworking and lucky enough to be chosen.

Daniel’s nomination is Free Government Information’s “What the Copyright
Office / Internet Explorer rule tells us about government information” at freegovinfo.info/node/200.Librarian
Jim A. Jacobs of UCSD uses this entry to explain how technology driven
decisions can have important effects on how government information is made
available to citizens. He also provides a plausible explanation of how a
“policy-neutral” system such as the Government Printing Office’s Future
Digital System can wind up be technically good, but supporting poor
information policies. His key argument is that the government needs to
decide on policy first, and then design a system based on that policy.

I quite appreciated the dust-ups and discussion that popped up on various blogs, thanks to Alane’s pronouncement on It’s All Good that the Digital Divide is a “tired old cliche.” Among those who responded were Jessamyn, Karen, and even Alane’s colleague, George.

And, props to ‘Reeno Cohen for this catch at ClickZ about why libraries should care about cutting edge technology as it relates to marketing.