Jon Frater

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Archives for September 2005

Researching Urban Legends

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Shirl Kennedy lists several nifty research sites in today’s Resource Shelf post:

"Natural disasters, stratospheric gas prices, a messy war in Iraq that
goes on and on, two Supreme Court nominations on the line, evolution
versus "intelligent design," privacy-threatening security breaches,
and a whole raft of other social issues creating divisiveness in
society... Is it just me, or does it seem like the number of rumors
and hoaxes flying around the Internet is reaching critical mass? My
current personal favorite? Killer dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico,
freed from a Naval research facility by the wrath of Hurricane
Katrina. Not that I really have time to go to the beach anyhow...

It's probably a good time to review some of the sites on the Web where
you can go to check this stuff out before forwarding it along to 100
of your closest friends. (And don't we all have friends like this who
are eager to "share" with us?)"

Click here for the full post.

Library Thing

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I’m sure there’s a ton of librarians and library support folks out there who’ve known all about Library Thing for week, months, now. I admit I just found out about it by meand of this testimonial from Andy’s website:

‘Judy: “Have you already found Library Thing?  I think it’s pretty cool – a way to catalog
your library online. A while back I considered buying a cataloging program but
they seemed too expensive and/or too complex for my purposes but this is really
cool. It’s in BETA and you can list up
to 200 books free or pay a lifetime fee of ten bucks for unlimited listing. All sorts of neat features.’"

So I went, I signed in (anybody can sign in, all you need is a user name and a password and the app create a customizable profile for you), and I got permission to catalog  200 books (you’re given an empty work space to use as you like) according to title, author, date, XML tags, include comments or share records with others. (A paid account costs $10 for the priviledge of cataloging as many books as you want, and apparently never needs to be renewed.) All but the Comments fields are hyperlinkable to other records.

One tab link that stood out was "extras". That one leads to some pretty nifty stuff: there’s a javascript editor that lets you write and style "Widgets" which update in real time and you can paste into the HTML on your own blog. You can also export all your records to CSV files if you want to make Excel spreadsheets of your work, and design "Amazon bookmarklets" which lets you import records from Amazon.com once you’ve found a book to your liking.

Speaking of blogs, Library Thing has its own, also viewable on their website.

The Library Thing Zetgeist (another tab) has a collection of links leading to the 25 largest libraries, the most recent users and books added to the site, the top 25 books, and the top 25 tags that people have used (it look like they rank according to frequency of use), not to mention top 25 authors and books added in the last hour.

Searching is a little mimited for my taste but it works pretty well: search according to book title, tag, or user, and in each case you have the option of searching your little corner of Library Thing (your libraries or you tags) or the whole database.

From what little I’ve seen, it’s not a bad resource at all.

Back Up Data Early & Often

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I found this article from Robert Ringer in my mailbox this past weekend and it’s ajust a short reminder that accidents do happen, both in libraries and in our personal lives. The moral is both concise and bears repeating: back up your data. Often. In a number of different media. In a number of different locations.

Disasters Really Do Happen

If
I’ve learned anything at all in my life, it’s that disasters really do
occur. I’ve always been amazed at how most people live their lives on
the assumption that worst-case scenarios haven’t yet been invented.

[Read more…] about Back Up Data Early & Often

Stuff from Factcheck.org

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Factcheck.org, which is one of my five favorite research-oriented websites, has just composed a surprisingly complete timeline of what happened in the days preceding and following Katrina:

Katrina: What Happened When

They state right up front that it will take months to get past all the bluster and B.S., but it’s a pretty decent resource, and I trust these guys’ judgement quite a lot.

Katrina News Source Update

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This is from the NYAM Info Notes blog:

NIEHS Launches Website with global info system for assessing environmental hazards from Hurricane Katrina
   

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
NIH News
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, September 9, 2005
CONTACT: Christine Bruske, 919-541-3665, rmackar@niehs.nih.gov
NIEHS LAUNCHES WEBSITE WITH GLOBAL INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR ASSESSING
ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS FROM HURRICANE KATRINA

[Read more…] about Katrina News Source Update

Secrets of the Mummy’s Medicine Chest

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Secrets of the Mummy’s Medicine Chest

The link leads to an article about the NYAM’s 4,00 year old medical papyrus ( officially the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, the oldest surving medical document in the world) which is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of their exhibit "The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt". (this from yesterday’s New York Times.)  It’s a good artivle with photos and everything (very high-quality photos.) For those of you who don’t care for photos, I clipped the article text and hid it behind the cut below. (No photos, but that’s what the link is for.)

Good stuff, folks.

[Read more…] about Secrets of the Mummy’s Medicine Chest

N’Awlins vs. Katrina

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There’s already tons of material available on the web regarding  New Orleans vs. Katrina, so I won’t post it here.  Except for a few choice tidbits that I found:

SciGuy’s science blog had these immortal (and not a littl creepy considering how things turned out) words from Mark Twain words about Men Vs. The Mississippi River.

Dottie Hiebing recently posted this note from Ray LaFever of the New York State Archives  this message on METRO-L:

"The damage/destruction to cultural and
historical institutions in Louisiana pales next to the incredible human
suffering, but we worry about them none-the-less.   The American Association of
Museums is developing pages on its website to report on museums affected by
Hurricane Katrina and recovery efforts."

One thing I noticed over the weekend trying to locate resources on the library collections in the city is that 90% of their websites were simply not responding to queries. That’s starting to change now as servers come back online but it’ll probably be a while before they’re back in force. I did hear that the staff of Tulane U. moved most of the first floor collection onto upper floors in the building before the waters came, and Cornell U. has been helping them out. Inside Higher Ed News has a bit more on Katrina-displaced students.

Actually, most of the on-line articles I’ve found have to do with the hit the U.S. economy will take because of the wrecked oil rigs in the Gulf Region . . . they generally ignore the real point, though which is that New Orleans is the biggest port in the United States. I’ll say it again: New Orleans is the biggest port in the United States. George Friedman points out just what that implies for our active living lives even here on the east coast.