Just another ModFarm Sites site
Very likely the entire planet has seen this already but on the slim chance that you have not, here’s something I found courtesy of the TSLIBRARIAN listserv, which pulled it from the Library Link of the Day website, which is now in the Library Resources TypeList to the left.
At any rate, here is More on What is Going on at the Library of Congress, by Thomas Mann.
Enjoy!
If you’re looking to renew your knowledge of Dewey Decimal classification–which can be a drag, but plenty of libraries continue to use it and it’s a good skill to retain over the long haul–then you might want to take a look at the WebDewey Tutorial over at OCLC’s web site. They cover Dewey in a fair amount of detail. From the web site description:
WebDewey offers easy-to-use, World Wide Web-based access to the Dewey
Decimal Classification (DDC) and related information, with searching
and browsing capabilities; Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
intellectually and statistically mapped to Dewey numbers; and links
from the mapped LCSH to the corresponding LCSH authority records. You
can also add your own notes to WebDewey and display them in context,
which allows you to both record valuable information about local
classification practices and have it available for ready reference.
The only problems that I can see is that the tutorial won’t work on any Macintosh or UNIX system and it’s selective as to which PC browsers it works with. You may have to tweak your preferences a bit.
Enjoy!
I’m downloading version 4.2 of DiMeMa’s contentDM Acquisition Station to match our update of the online database to the same version. It’s a sizable download and it’s taking a while. But in the mean time I notice that I got a quote in to Andy’s website. My quote is here–a story from my days as a software retailer– and the story I responded to ("The Hertz Lady") is here.
From George Ure over at the Independence Journal:
"Experts say this is the worst day of the whole year –
a sort of cosmic bummer when all the bills come in from the holidays
and more.
But not to fret – In the event you’re bummed, let me share this
short bit of poetry/advice from Poet of the Yukon,
Robert
Service – long one of my favorites – because it can really help:
The Quitter
When you’re lost in the Wild, and
you’re scared as a child,And Death looks you bang in the
eye,And you’re sore as a boil, it’s
according to HoyleTo cock your revolver and . . .
die.But the Code of a Man says:
"Fight all you can,"And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it’s easy
to blow . . .It’s the
hell-served-for-breakfast that’s hard.
"You’re sick of the game!" Well,
now, that’s a shame.You’re young and you’re brave and
you’re bright."You’ve had a raw deal!" I know
— but don’t squeal,Buck up, do your damnedest, and
fight.It’s the plugging away that will
win you the day,So don’t be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it’s so
easy to quit:It’s the keeping-your-chin-up
that’s hard.
It’s easy to cry that you’re
beaten — and die;It’s easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when
hope’s out of sight —Why, that’s the best game of them
all!And though you come out of each
gruelling bout,All broken and beaten and
scarred,Just have one more try — it’s
dead easy to die,It’s the keeping-on-living that’s
hard.
Source:
Gutenberg eText of
Service’s "Rhymes of a Rolling Stone" And, if you don’t know about all
the fine works at the Project Gutenberg site, and you haven’t flashed them into
your head with a Vortex Reader from the
www.HalfPastHuman.com folks (see the bottom of the page), you’re
missing a fine opportunity for self improvement."
I admire Richard Dawkins’ mind very much. His delivery, well, not as much. That said, this observation is sheer brilliance:
"We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are
never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The
potential people who could have been here in my place, but who will, in
fact, never see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.
…In the face of these stupefying odds, it is you and I, in our
ordinariness, that are here. Here’s another respect in which we are
lucky. The universe is older than a hundred million centuries. Within a
comparable time, the sun will swell to a red giant and engulf the
earth. Every century of hundreds of millions has been in its time, or
will be when its time comes, the present century. The present moves
from the past to the future like a tiny spotlight inching its way along
a gigantic ruler of time. Everything behind the spotlight is in
darkness, the darkness of the dead past. Everything ahead of the
spotlight is in the darkness of the unknown future. The odds of your
century being the one in the spotlight are the same as the odds that a
penny, tossed down at random, will land on a particular ant crawling
somewhere on the road from New York to San Francisco. You are lucky to
be alive and so am I."
This past Friday beheld the start of the third National Conference over Media Reform in Memphis. Bill Moyers was one of the main speakers, and being Moyers, he let the media establishment have it point blank:
Veteran journalist Bill Moyers on Friday challenged
3,000 progressive activists and communicators to take back the telling
of America’s story at the National Conference of Media Reform in
Memphis. He put his finger squarely on the deep vein of discontent with
the way mainstream media is ill-serving American democracy.Moyers, who is president of the Schumann Center for Media and
Democracy, went through a sordid litany of corporate media malfeasance,
from the lackluster and largely non-skeptical reporting of the Bush
administration’s launch of the war in Iraq to the lack of attention
paid to a domestic landscape of increasing economic disparity and
racial segregation. Virtually uncontrolled media consolidation over the
past decade, he said, has meant a loss of independent journalism and
created “more narrowness and homogenization in content and perspective,
so that what we see on our couch is overwhelmingly the view from the
top.”It is in this environment that the Bush administration can, for
example, can “turn the escalation of a failed war and call it a surge,
as if it were a current of electricity through a wire instead of blood
spurting from the ruptured veins of a soldier,” Moyers said.On the domestic front, “the question of whether or not our economic
system is truly just is off the table for investigation and discussion,
so that alternative ideas, alternative critiques, alternative visions
never get a hearing,” he said.“It is clear what we have to do. We have to tell the story ourselves,” he said.
One thing I noticed much further down in the article (the last paragraph, in fact) was a reference to Sidney Lumet’s Network, possibly one of the best movies ever made about the broadcast television industry:
The intense interest in this conference is a reflection of the
thousands of Howard Beales on the left who are as mad as hell and are
not going to take dumbed-down, homogenized, corporatized,
power-subservient media any more.
Everyone remembers Howard Beale telling people to stick their heads out their windows and scream their ire at the world, possibly because that scene happens early in the movie. Nobody remembers that by the end of the film, Howard has become "the only prime time anchorman to ever have been killed over lousy ratings." So my meager advice to those who would defend the world from the main stream media might be this: the machine is plenty bigger than you, has no morals whatsoever and has an enormous head start. In other words, both strive for change and watch your back. Always.
From Variety, the most hopeful news I’ve heard all year (the whole 10 days):
Democrats push ‘Net neutrality
Internet Freedom Preservation Act is introduced
WASHINGTON — Democrats, who all but sank major communications reform
legislation in the previous congressional session over the issue of
so-called ‘Net neutrality, marked the first day of the new Congress by
introducing a bill that will mandate ‘Net neutrality, which is intended
to guarantee the equal accessibility and flow of content over the
Internet.The
Internet Freedom Preservation Act, sponsored by Sens. Byron Dorgan
(D-N.D.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), "would ensure that broadband
service providers do not discriminate against Internet content,
applications or services by offering preferential treatment," according
to a statement by Dorgan.Without a federal mandate for ‘Net
neutrality, Dorgan said, broadband providers could be "gatekeepers
capable of deciding which content can get through to consumers, and
which content providers could get special deals, faster speeds and
better access to the consumer."The bill "marks another step
toward ensuring the fate of the Internet lies in the hands of its users
and not the hands of a few gatekeepers," Snowe said in a statement.
"The tide has turned in the debate between those who seek to maintain
equality and those who would benefit from the creation of a toll road
on the Internet superhighway."Last year, the GOP-controlled
Senate tried to move a massive communications reform bill that included
changes to national video franchising rules. Democrats tried but failed
to attach a ‘Net neutrality amendment to the bill while still in
committee. While some Republicans supported their effort, Democrats
took the lead in threatening a filibuster should the bill come to a
floor vote without any provisions for ‘Net neutrality. As a result, the
bill never made it to the floor.Legislation requires broadband
service providers to operate networks in a nondiscriminatory manner,
while leaving them free to protect the security of the network or offer
different levels of broadband connection to users.Consumer
groups hailed the bill. "This bill will help ensure that consumers will
continue to enjoy the competitive and affordable services that
broadband has brought them and that big telecommunications companies
cannot use their networks to hinder consumers’ access to those
services," said Jeannine Kenney, senior policy analyst at Consumers
Union, in a statement.Opponents of ‘Net neutrality say a federal
mandate is a solution in search of a problem "that doesn’t exist," said
Peter Davidson, Verizon senior VP for federal government relations."Most
policymakers will focus on how to increase broadband deployment, and
wonder how ‘Net regulation advances that goal," Davidson added. "It’s
ironic that this bill is introduced at the same time the Consumer
Electronics Show is filling the news with broadband-enabled
innovations. There is a disconnect between consumers’ desires for new
products and services and the stifling effects of this bill."Both
the Motion Picture Assn. of American and the Recording Industry Assn.
of America declined to comment on the bill. Officials at the MPAA have
said that member companies are still split over whether ‘Net neutrality
will be good or bad for business.Co-sponsors of the bill include
Dem Sens. John Kerry (Mass.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Tom Harkin
(Iowa), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama
(Ill.).
A Very Big Deal indeed. Call/write/e-mail your congressfolk and let them know you want them to support this baby.