RSS Digest: February 8, 2007

Thursday again! Here’s the hot links of the week on Librarianship, Productivity, and reference sites…

LIS Links

The Well Dressed Librarian: Way, Which On signage in libraries...

LibVibe: the library news podcast: LibVibe - 5 February 2007 Just thought I'd check to make sure everyone around here listens to LibVibe...right? if not, it's a great way to keep up on LIS-related headlines.

Free Range Librarian: March 8, 2007: Sisters, Sisters! An interesting call for postings by female librarians...

Diary of Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraq National Library and Archive Wow. Remind me not to grumble about not getting a flatscreen monitor with my new office computer.

Pew Internet: Tagging Interesting report from the Pew Internet and American Life project on tagging...

The Well Dressed Librarian: Lie, Statistics never We've come a long way, baby... (well, sorta)

ALA TechSource | Wooden Dominoes An um... interesting (disturbing?) editorial on google's library digitization efforts...

The Shifted Librarian: More than Just DDR for Fines Gaming in libraries...I'm still not completely convinced on their use as an library tool, but the articles Jenny links to make some intriguing arguments.

Top Ten Zero-tech Library 2.0 “no brainers” for Public Libraries « The Other Librarian Yeah, I know I mentioned this one on tuesday. It bears repeating.

Stephen's Lighthouse: Using the 23 Things in Special Libraries Ok, Forwarding this to my boss for a staff development project--staying updated with LIS-land on 15 minutes a day!

LibrarianInBlack: Pew report on online tagging So it's not just geeks like us who are addicted to tagging? Kewl! :-)

Free Range Librarian: Children of Men, Gender, and Library IT I'm not sure I completely agree with this discussion of Coder culture and gender, but it definitely bears reading...

http://acrlblog.org/2007/02/05/academic-libraries-unlikely-to-beat-search-engines-at-their-own-game/ I agree, lots of commenters don’t. why don’t you read for yourself?

Superpatron - Friends of the Library, for the net: selling books online on consignment with Books By Chance (Ann Arbor, MI) I wonder if we could try this next time we're ready to unload a stack of weeded books, instead of sending them to the auction...hmmm...

Gmail Locks Out User For Using Greasemonkey & Reports Of Gmail Contacts Disappearing Timely reminder about all these hosted web services that ulimately, we have chosen to play in THEIR playground, with their rules and their bugs...

Free Range Librarian: Dorothea on DSpace A rant on less than responsive OA software developers. no, we are not saying all OA packages/developers are like this--my hubby is a software developer for pete's sake!--but this is an issue that needs to be discussed.

David Lee King » Blog Archive » Change, Adaptation, and that 33 Reasons Why We’re Important Article From his post: "[librarians'] reason for existence in the new digital society … going where the customers are … and adapting to the the concept of “change is a given.”" Awesome. Read. NOW.

ALA | Developing a long-range and outreach plan for your academic library Just forwarded this one to the boss-developing a strategic plan and a marketing plan has been on the "after go-live" to-do list for some time...

LISNews.org | Good News for LOC Brittle Books I don't get enough time to indulge my deep interest in old/rare book collections, but I'm happy to hear of the Alfred P. Sloan foundation's grant to digitize and preserve LoC's brittle books.

woodyevans.com » EBSCO back talkSome interesting chatter on the recent changes to EBSCO's search interface--complete with responses from the borg's--erm, I mean the database provider's customer service department...

The Chronicle: Daily news: 02/01/2007 -- 01: U. of California Sues the Family of Jacques Derrida Over the Noted Philosopher's Papers An interesting lawsuit over the ultimate resting place of the papers of philosopher Jacques Derrida. I'd make some pithy comments here, but A: I try to be neutral in presenting news links, and B: Deconstruction gives me a headache.

Productivity Links

The GTD Mastery 100 so...how is your score? I'm at 50, which is better than I expected. I'm adding this to my bimonthly 30,000 foot & up review, and just working it has given me ideas for improvements and projects...

CollegeJournal | On the Job Interesting article on decluttering your career--and hits close to home for me. I've been so focused on accomplishing a lot of "stuff" that I haven't stopped to think it it's the right stuff for reaching my career goals. Hmm...

Productivity & Organizing Myth #3 – I don’t have time to prioritize - lifehack.org What she said. And it's amazing how much time I've found once I started "wasting time" in getting organized at the start of the day.

The Prepared Don’t Procrastinate - lifehack.org Are you procrastinating on a project because you haven't planned well enough?

Make phone calls from your browser - lifehack.org Well, this is an interesting development--and just when i've gotten around to fiddling with Skype! *sigh*

Where’s Your Motivation? - lifehack.org 11 common motivations to get stuff done--which ones move you?

Video: How to make those first impressions count - Lifehacker A great little presentation on how to handle introductions to VIPs (and isn't everyone a VIP?)--those first impressions count!

Nourish your dreams regularly with attention - lifehack.org "It’s one of the ironies of getting caught up in Getting Things Done: a lot of things, including your dreams, end up on your Someday/Maybe list. And that’s more than a shame; it’s a guaranteed way of slowly dying inside."

Productivity & Organizing Myth #2 – Can’t stop influx - lifehack.org Trying to figure out how to stop all that shi--I mean *stuff* you get in your various inboxes every day? Have no fear, Lifehack has the answer!

Ready Reference links of the week (I’ve totally given up on just picking 1)

Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory Why did it take so long for someone to come up with a directory of web 2.0 services? definitely gonna play with this puppy over the weekend.

super bowl commercials - Ask.com Web Search for those who aren't football fans but who wouldn't mind seeing the commercials...(aside from the $%^* Snickers one I’ve seen 80 gazillion times…)

Learn CPR and choking first-aid - Lifehacker These videos don't substitute for taking one of the many free red cross classes (and you have done that, RIGHT?), but this still seemed like a good public service to share. :-)

Archives Hub: Collections of the Month: Love letters This collection is just cool. Thanks to ResourceShelf for bringing it to our attention. :-)

How do they do that? - lifehack.org You remember those nifty videos of stuff being manufactured that they'd show sometimes on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood or other kid shows? Well, here's a whole site-full. Enjoy!

I won’t be posting again until next Tuesday, as the Coolest Mother-in-Law on Earth is coming up for a visit. :-) Next Tuesday is going to be a discussion of the productivity merits of training yourself to get up at an even more ungodly hour than you are already (complete with links to how-to guides!). Future Tuesday essays are going to cover the merits and drawbacks of distance learning, especially as related to DL library services, a review of a book I’ve been reading on networking, and some other topics I’ve got on the back burner. No more multi-part sagas/rants for a little bit though—The Dark Side posts wore me out! As always, Thursdays will remain my opportunity to declutter my Del.icio.us links (and clutter yours). See you soon!