A Bloy and his Blog

Crafting the User-Centered Library
presented by Cliff Landis

Why use emerging tech?

• It’s not enough to shove your bad services (such as our crappy OPACs) into new things.
• Don’t do it because everyone else is.
• For outreach.
• We don’t need things designed FOR the user, we need things designed BY the user.

Planning – it takes too long. Too man hoops to jump through, eventually good ideas can just fade away.

The committee approach – can take any good idea and destroy it. Exploits the negative aspects. To many times people ask “what if…” Cliff then showed us a funny YouTube video, Association Professionals Through the Ages, that illustrates how good ideas can be destroyed in such a manner.

read the rest of: Internet Librarian: day three

I recently discovered a wonderful website for anyone interested in astronomy and space: NASA Images.

In addition to the huge collection of images and multimedia of the universe, our solar system, the Earth, aeronautics and astronauts, it’s also got a nice time line from the late 1950′s until the present day.

High resolution versions of the images are available for download.

via: Librarians’ Internet Index

Rolling Stone was the first adult magazine I subscribed to. I’ve been getting it delivered to my home for over twenty years now. But I let my subscription expire this month, and I’m a little nostalgic about it.

Its musical focus was what first got me reading Rolling Stone — especially the music reviews. Over the years though, they’ve added more features on pop-culture things like fashion, television, and video games. Lately a good deal of their random notes section looks like it came from a sleazy tabloid. Often the music news in the bi-weekly magazine was not news to me. I had already heard about it online. I became less and less interested, and issues would pile up, unread. Over the past few years I wondered why I was paying for a subscription, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to stop.

read the rest of: No longer a Rolling Stone

I’ve got an account on Facebook. Although lately I’ve been seriously neglecting it. I do understand the appeal of Facebook, but there is a part of me that doesn’t quite see the point of the whole thing. Kind of like this…

Facebook in reality

I recently discovered an outstanding resource at T.U.B.E.: The Ultimate Bootleg Experience. Featuring both live and studio recordings (outtakes, rarities, etc.), T.U.B.E. is veritable goldmine. Some of the more interesting things I found there include:

• Joe Strummer – Solos, Soundtracks, & Rarities
• Van Morrison – Gypsy Soul (Studio Demos)
• Peter Tosh – Equal Rights Demos 1977
• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – 1969-08-26 – Los Angeles
  (the earliest completely recorded CSNY concert)
• Talking Heads – CBS Demos (1975)
• U2 – Pulled The Covers (1979-2006)

The one minor downside of T.U.B.E. is the slightly complicated downloading process.

read the rest of: The Ultimate Bootleg Experience

I really don’t like to write “complaint posts” but there is a good part to this story, so I’m going to indulge myself.

I’ve had this cold for three weeks now, and boy am I getting sick of it (pun intended). That’s three weeks of coughing, blocked up sinuses, and a runny nose. Several other people I know have had the same virus (they’ve been sick for a long time too). When it got to be three weeks for me I contacted my doctor’s office, to ask if I should come in and get it checked out. After the on-call nurse assessed me, she didn’t think I needed to come in (no fever or any disgusting symptoms I’d rather not mention here). But the good part of the story is I decided to go online and email my doctor about it.

read the rest of: Health Care 2.0 and the endless cold

I recently added some excellent photography websites to my links page, and I thought it would be worth mentioning them here as well. Most of the following sites have tips & techniques, and a few just show great pictures.

• Digital Photography School
• iDigital Photo
• Epic Edits Weblog
• Photojojo
• Andre Gunther Photography
• PhotoCritic
• Photodoto
• Visual~Voice
• JMG Galleries