Just another WordPress site
I’m not going to comment on this. I don’t think I need to comment, except to quote:
"I really didn’t realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. They are subversive. You think they are just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They’re, like, plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn’t mess with them."
Thank you, Michael Moore.
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 department at the Academy. If that’s not enough to frighten you, I’m not sure what is.
In any case, it means my lunch hour doesn’t stretch as far as once it did, so I have to compose and post everything that gets sent here from my apartment. Which, I want to point out, I was perfectly willing to do, except that my notes from the conference inevitably found their ways into my desk at work which means that I waltzed out of the building to my weekly tutoring job without taking them out of the desk.
Details. Bah!
In the meantime, I just got done reading how Ex Libris is going to mate SFX with Google Scholar . . . but I’m no further toward understanding how they’re going to do this now than I was when Google made the announcement. I have no doubt that Google can do what they say the intend to do, but I still wonder if they haven’t seriously underestimated just how much work and money they’ll have to invest to make it happen. Time, as they say, will tell.
Anyway, tomorrow, I write about last week’s conference. I promise.
A Public Service Announcement
First of all, click here to print Form 4868, which is the extension to file for 2004.
I met Joanne from the Regional Medical Library group on line for coffee this morning; we’re both dressed in black to remember the victims of April 15 2005. Today is kind of weird—on the one hand it’s Friday (Yaaaaaaaaay!) but on the other hand it’s also Tax Day (Uuuuuuuggghhh!), so equal parts of joy and horror loom large for most of the country.
At any rate, I was told that if you have some time tonight on the way home from work and are so inclined (and most especially if you have sent in your forms some time ago, like before you read this) you can talk a stroll past Madison Square Garden along 34th Street and take a gander at the poor bastards who are willing to stand in line for hours waiting to get their forms, signed, sealed, and mailed before midnight. Apparently it’s a big event (Joanne called it “a hoot”) . . . people swap war stories, hand out candy, and generally make whatever merry they can under the circumstances. Heck, apparently you can see people filling the damn forms out while on line.
The bastard in me hears this and has a bit of a schadenfreude moment that I got my forms and estimated payments sent in a week ago, but the humanitarian says, “You know, you really should have a bit of compassion for these guys.”
Well, okay. I have compassion. A bit.
The quasi-political rant below the link is something I posted on my Livejournal account earlier. I hadn’t really planned to talk about Terri Schiavo . . . I’d intended to write about Google (and I did . . . sort of), because Google Scholar is a big deal to me, mostly because I can’t imagine how they’ll bring it online on time and on budget. The copyright issues alone are staggering, and the XML is no less daunting to think about. At any rate, I started writing and it went somewhere I hadn’t planned on. I know this is a library blog (or it’s supposed to be) but there’s no rule against being a librarian and having an opinion about something. The trick is not for us to never have opinions, but to not let our opinions interfere with our willingness or ability to find an answer to someone’s question. Even if we don’t agree with their politics. I suspect that’s a hard beam to balance on, and since I don’t work the reference desk at the Academy I don’t have to worry about it often. Still, it remains something to think about.
It’s difficult to know exactly what to post here. I see a lot of stuff come across my desk as I check in journals every day and sometimes an article title grabs my attention. Sadly, that hasn’t happened today (not yet anyway). Part of the problem is that I have this compulsive need to read absolutely everything I find during my lunch hour web surfing but that’s partly genetic . . . my mother has the same problem, except with her it’s newspapers (she keeps them for weeks at a time because she can’t get rid of one without reading every damn article in there, and she subscribes to several). I set up a bunch of links to websites that I like to read consistently (if not religiously) on the left margin . . . take a good look through those and you’ll notice that there’s a wacky variety of subjects and points of view. That’s another part of the problem—I rarely can bring myself to dismiss the other guy’s perspective out of hand. I mean, come on, I’m not that smart. Few are. How do I know that the guy I’m arguing with doesn’t have a good point to make? The answer is simple: I don’t. So, I read the political stuff on the left and right, and pick and choose what arguments and evidence makes sense to me. Call me a coward if you wish (others have) but that’s how I do things.
I like to read, I like to know how things work, I like to think about whether an event or an idea comes from the process or is some kind of fundamental truth, or something in between. And I like to argue, especially with folks who know how to argue (few do . . . I blame the colleges). So that puts me here, back to square one, wondering what I’m going to post here today. Right now. Right . . . NOW!
Now for a new experiment: moblogging! I’m e-mailing you from my cell phone! Buwahaha!
Okay, the XML feed on Livejournal seems to be working now . . . it lists entries in a wacky way, however. But the posts are clearly described by title, post date and time posted, and nothing appears to have been randomly clipped, so I’m in no shape to complain.
Huzzah!
At any rate, if you’re reading this and want to add it to your LJ account, click on the link above, and add the feed to your friends list. If you’re not on LJ, and these instructions are gibberish, then don’t worry about it.
Here’s an experimental post . . . testing the syndication code.
Edit: Hmm. The feed doesn’t seem to be working . . . I think I have a new project on my hands. I’ll let y’all know.
Someone on Livejournal.com wanted me to set up an RSS feed for this site so I went ahead and did it, and I think I got it down. I imagine I’ll hear about whether I succeeded or not soon enough.
Scanning Google for library blogs and here’s what I came up with:
Now to figure out how to make this a permanent link in the left sidebar . . .
Edit: It worked . . . check out the link list on the left sidebar.
Hi. I’ve been meaning to get this silly thing off the ground since January and since today is the NYTSL reception at NYPL I figured it’s as good a day as any to begin. So, having figured out how to post to this blog, I now need to figure out how to create link lists and sidebars to start providing anyone who ends up here with whatever supplemental material that makes sense to add. I’m going to try to stick to library-oriented topics but the occasional political rant might sneak in from time to time.
More after the reception.
TTFN