ebyblog students and information

nude

Big Ideas (don’t get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Vanishing Librarians

From Library Journal: Blatant Berry: The Vanishing Librarians

Our catalogers began to disappear with the takeover of that function by OCLC, the nonprofit that aspires to be a corporation in this brave new retail library world. The standardized result of the effort is bypassed by patron and librarian alike, as they turn to the more friendly [...]

SAFE Act

via jblyberg:

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including “obscene” cartoons and drawings–or face fines of up to $300,000.

That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. [...]

check outs

mine arrived the other day

Laptops and Meetings

A good article on meetings whether or not you agree with the use of laptops

All this focus on laptops as the problem is a red herring. Whether you’re running a meeting with a rampant laptop problem or sitting in a meeting where you have no role, the actual problem is that someone doesn’t understand the [...]

MeeboMe and Pidgin

If you were thinking of using MeeboMe for virtual reference there is a nice writeup of directions for using Pidgin (gaim) with it over at Library Voice that includes a plugin to automatically add and delete the guest users.

Things to consider when calling tech support

From the best of craigslist:

Note that this does not apply to anyone outside of our department. They are, in all reality, idiots who are out to fuck you.

cryptographic web of trust

Cryptographic Web of Trust at The Sun BabelFish Blog:

What is needed is some way to increase the methods people can have to trust information I state. Here I describe how one can use cryptography to increase that trust level. Starting from my creation of a PGP key, I show how I can describe my public [...]