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Jon Frater

COinS, Subject Indexes and Electricity (Oh My!)

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Two things worth investigating if you’re so inclined, today:

COinS in WorldCat: 

"OCLC has added COinS to its Open WorldCat Web pages. COinS, or
Context Objects in Spans, is a standardized way to invisibly embed
bibliographic metadata into a Web page’s HTML, using the OpenURL
metadata. This allows other tools, such as Web browsers, to identify
citation metadata in Web content and automatically generate links to
appropriate resources in a user’s own library."

There’s more to it than that, obviously, but I think you get a gist of it.

Next, this came in this morning:

The May 1, 2006 edition of the "Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information" is available at:

http://library.usask.ca/~dworacze/SUBJIN_A.HTM

The page-specific "Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information" and the accompanying "Electronic Sources of Information: A Bibliography" (listing all indexed items) deal with all aspects of electronic publishing and include print and non-print materials, periodical articles, monographs and individual chapters in collected works. This edition includes 2,300 indexed titles. Both the Index and the Bibliography are continuously updated.

Introduction, which includes sample search and instructions how to use the Subject Index and the Bibliography, is located at:

http://library.usask.ca/~dworacze/SUB_INT.HTM

Again, check it out if you are so inclined and have the time.

Finally, may I humbly point out the best website on the subject of electricity I’ve encountered in a long, long time. Read this for ten minutes and you’ll come away with more knowledge on the subject than you have ever wanted.  Remember, folks, lack of education is no shame; never allow yoursel to be intimidated by this stuff.

A Different Kind of Judas

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I’m not going to comment on the new Judas Gospels other than to say that I think this is the coolest historical find since they located the Dead Sea Scrolls. And, of course, to point people to what resources I found on the subject:

From the NY Times: Judas, minus the betrayal. Here, too. Also, yes, the document is genuine, but is the story true? And, of course, excerpts of the text itself (I have a copy of this on my iMac.)

Better stuff from National Geographic.

Enjoy!

Fighting the Web

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The Pentagon’s stated intention of gaining control of the internet and comprehensive control of the larger EM-spectrum, while perfectly logical and maybe desirable (in a Clausewitz sort of way,) is never going to work. This story is not exactly getting major air time in the U.S. as far as I can tell (which isn’t much) but I found a mention of it here and here’s an article from the Sunday Herald.

It’s incredibly ambitious to plan this sort of thing, which goes far, far beyond mere national security. And knowing the way the highest levels of the military make plans, they most likely will attempt to implement this in some fashion in the near future (next decade? before 2010?) I merely don’t think they realize the scope of what the job entails (if they did, they’d have allocated billions of dollars to it, not a lousy $300 million). The truth is that the world has more tech-savvy nerds, freaks, geeks, and weirdos than the U.S. military and all of them would be highly motivated to punch any holes they could find in this attempt to dominate the world’s communication routes. And as one fellow I know who has worked with the military pointed out to me, those guys can barely manage their budgets, and the only reason ARPANet is still alive is because it went public (arguable, perhaps, but the point is an excellent one.) Big ideas and big plans that are brilliant in scope and unworkable in real life is the hallmark of the current Pentagon staff.

[Read more…] about Fighting the Web

Interactive Maps are Yummy!

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If you like maps as much as I do (even if, like me, you can’t always draw them as well as you’d like) and you’re concerned about (or merely interested in) gas prices or coastal inundation (or both,) then check these out:

The first is a map that shows gasoline prices (no diesel prices that I can find, sorry) from county to county;

And this one is a nifty splice of Google maps to show where the high ground is and whether you need to flee to it if sea levels rise X meters.

Enjoy!

Medical Information Day

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Howdy, Librarians! Just a fast reminder that Tuesday, April 11, 2006 is Medical Information Day, and the Academy is celebrating thusly:

Tap into the 4-1-1 on medical information, on Tuesday, April 11, 2006, when the Medical Library Association (MLA) celebrates "Medical Information Day" in recognition of the invaluable information and vast range of services medical librarians provide for their institutions and local communities.

To celebrate information day and learn more about how medical librarians can help you, the staff at the New York Academy of Medicine Library invites you for a day of demos at 1216 5th Avenue on the third floor of the Library.  These mini-classes, designed to help you more effectively use the library’s various electronic resources, will be held every hour on the half hour from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm in the Hartwell Room.  In addition, a staff-only demo on the new features in Groupwise will be held at 12 noon. All demos are free and open to the staff as well as the general public unless otherwise noted.

9:30               e-Journals 
10:30             My NCBI (How to Save Your Searches in PubMed and More)
11:30            Genetics Home Reference
12:00          Groupwise (staff only)
12:30             New Features in the NYAM On-line Catalog
1:30               The Clipboard in PubMed
2:30               Grey Literature

For more information contact Winifred King x 7323.

(As a fast FYI, I’m teaching the 9.30 class on E-Journals. Hope to see you there.)

Pastafarianism.

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Worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Worship It! Now!

All right, fine, don’t worship it . . . but don’t dismiss it out of hand, either. Faith is one of those wacky  things of which only humans are capable, and it’s a delicate balance between making sense of the universe in which we live, and coming off as stark raving mad. That goes for all of us professing belief in God, Jesus Christ who was his son and died for our sins, except for Jews who don’t, and Muslims who do but believe in His Prophet Mohammed, more,  Evolution (note the capital E there), Quantum physics, General and Specific relativity, Buddha, Zen, various Hindu deities, Orishas, Lwas, Science, Satan, or what have you. I didn’t care for Hebrew school much (washed out after two and a half years) but I did come away with this notion: Faith is good, idolatry is bad. Questioning authority is good, blind obedience is bad.

Either we’re all crazy or we’re all sane.  If my observation is worth anything, then God’s Children,  we surely all are, but some of us are consistently more childish than others.

My point here is that religion is inherently funny.  Laughter is inherently spiritual. Spirituality is inherently mind-expanding.

Just my two cents. </sermon>

Emily Dunning Barringer, M.D.

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From Bowery to Hollywood: Emily Dunning Barringer, MD, Fellow of
the New York Academy of Medicine – an exhibit at the New York Academy of
Medicine Library
 
In 1903, Emily Dunning Barringer, MD became the first woman to serve as an
ambulance surgeon in New York City. She was also an advocate for women’s health,
with a particular interest in venereal diseases and the plight of female inmates
in New York prisons. With the coming of the second World War, she worked
tirelessly to allow women physicians to serve as commissioned officers in the
armed services.
In 1950, she wrote an autobiography, "From Bowery to
Bellevue", about her experiences as an ambulance surgeon in 1903. Two years
after the book’s publication, a movie version, "The Girl in White", was
released.
This exhibit explores Dr. Barringer’s real and reel lives; journal
and newspaper articles, photographs, and books explore her professional life,
while  posters, ads, and memorobilia provide insight into the marketing of the
film.
The exhibit is on display in the Library, 3rd Floor of the New York
Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue, New York NY. The display is available
for viewing Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, from 9am to 5pm and Wednesday
from 9am to 7pm.

Nicked From Andrew Tobias

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WORST ADVICE EVER

“I before E
except after C.” 

 

Oh, yeah?

 

The
feisty foreigner seized the beige reins in one vein-bulging hand and – weirdly
adorned in leis (a veil of distraction so no one would remember his face?)
feigned disinterest no more. The heist
of his neighbor’s heir’s freight had begun. 

 

What they
should have taught us: “I after C must follow E . . . but not literally.” (Not literally, because I’s
frequently follow C’s without an intervening E – city, cicada, scintillate – and sometimes even when an E follows – efficient.)

 

No wonder Johnnie can’t spell.

 

MORE FREE AUDIOBOOKS

Lynn Gongaware: “LibriVox – recorded by volunteers from the
public domain.”


New Projects

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For the record, I agree with the sentiment that children and pornography don’t mix.  Heck, adults and pornography don’t mix half the time.  Having said that, I’m convinced there has to be a better method of keeping the two away from each other (kids and porn) than this.  (Dare I suggest more involved parenting?)

While we’re on the subject of Google (again), take a look at this relationship chart of the biggest search engines. It’s an interesting way to think of the gestalt of who pushes data to whom and for what reason. Not a bad way of getting an instant reality check on why some results appear more or less frequently than others depending on who’s pushing and/or paying for what. I put this one in the Reference Resources TypeList for safe keeping, so if you can’t be bothered to bookmark it, it’s here if you need it.

New projects are making their needs felt: I’m working on an article about the Academy’s Grey Literature Report and I’ve got a deadline that isn’t approaching too quickly, but it’s sooner than I’d thought (thank God for desktop calendars) so that’s being dealt with.  I’m also expanding the list of E-journals (a whole bunch of BMC titles and plenty more) into our Serials Solutions account, but that’s not as pressing.  And, I just did the quarterly batch activation of XML targets for Link Finder Plus, which means I’m going to have to spot test a few of them early tomorrow. (I like to wait a day or so just to make sure everything has passed through the pipeline, which is probably a tiny bit paranoid on my part.)  This all while keeping up with 4-6 MARC records a day to keep from either getting rusty or falling too far behind in the Grey Lit.

I’m back to work.

The Google Side of Your Brain

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I’m not usually a USA Today reader, which is why I managed to miss this article by Elizabeth Weise from December 18, 2005.  I think the title says it all: "This is the Google Side of Your Brain."  On the tiny chance that I’m not the only person on the planet who hasn’t read this yet, her main question is whether we’re outsourcing some portion of our collective memory to entities such as Google, which has a reuptation of being able to hand you the knowledge tidbit were searching for.  It’s a great read.