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

Weezer pays homage to the viral video.

Pork and Beans, from their forthcoming “red album” (out June 3).

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