"One way to see the difference between schoolbooks and real books like Moby Dick is to examine different procedures which separate librarians, the custodians of real books, from schoolteachers, the custodians of schoolbooks. To begin with, libraries are usually comfortable, clean, and quiet. They are orderly places where you can actually read instead of just…
Military Personnel RecordsSource: National Archives and Records Administration Opening of Military Personnel Records and Archival Research Room "Opening the Door" to the National Archives in St. Louis "At 11 AM on Saturday, June 11, 2005, the National Archives National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis will formally open the records of Charles Lindbergh, President…
I was turned on to a site named Why-US.org this morning. It’s not a proper library-oriented site (except maybe in the most abstract way) but regardless of the author’s lefty politics (and badly overusing his movie references), it’s not a bad little site which should probably be listed as a resource for those who do…
Call me a grand total nerd if you must (Lord knows others have–and they’ve been right) but I think that the fact that Voyager 1 is now approaching the heliosheath–the beginning of interstellar space for you non-nerds–is hands down the most amazing science story since Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel figured out that there really…
This week’s BusinessWeek magazine has an article that just firms up my belief that GoogleScholar can, in fact, deliver what it promises (eventually) but it’ll likely be a huge hole down which the company will have to pour more cash and energy than they anticipated. In essence: the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) sent…
There are so many great classics – so many books you’ve heard of that you wish you’d read. Fact is, a lot of them aren’t good… or at least they’re not good for you at this particular point in your life. Here are some tips from Steve Leveen, author of "The Little Guide to Your…
Things are someplace between late and never today. While not one to place blame on the tools of the trade, my PC at work was laid low by the RBot-I virus (I think), which worked its way through our branch of the internet this morning. Sophos caught it, but not before this thing had crawled…
I know, I know . . . I promised Civil Liberties . . . I’m typing the notes out as I write this in another window on my desktop, and if I don’t get to posting the whole thing tonight, I might poat par tonight and part tomorrow, where I’ve finally cleared my desk enough…
I know I promised to post a bunch of stuff on the Civil Liberties workshop run by METRO and Brooklyn College, and I will. Tomorrow. But it’s also MLA in San Antonio, Texas this week, which means that my bosses are all out of the office, which leaves me in charge of the Tech Services…
A coworker mentioned the Biblioblather Blog to me at lunch, and, being the inquisitive type of paranoiac that I am, I tuned in and found a really nifty string of links. Not the least ofwhich is one to WorldCat Lookup which the Biblioblatherblogger has already described in prose so exemplary, I could only chew my…