The following is from my first professional blog. Having found out that Bloglines is great for reading my RSS feeds, but doesn't allow comments in its blogs. Oh well. =)

Don't forget the WBER fundraiser... This publically supported Radio Station is doing a fundraiser where the goal is $1000 for each year they have been on the air. They started at 1985 this morning and have moved to playing only music from 1996. Listen here.

Find out what year are they up to NOW?


June 2, 2006
ALA Wireless Coverage

By HockeyLibrarian

URL: A Real 21st Century ALA Conference - At Last

Finally! A conference that will have a nice amount of WiFi. I spent a lot of time at the Sirsi Conference trying to find network connections in the conference rooms. I wonder how long it will be until they are able to have a contract that covers all the hotel meeting rooms as well?

* Source Blog

* Posted on: Fri, Jun 2 2006 2:24 PM

May 26, 2006
Discovering LibraryThing

By HockeyLibrarian

Thanks to jessamyn for the following post:
URL: an exercise in authority control

LibraryThing could easily begin to take over my life when I go home at night. Especially if I had bookshelves up in the (new) house! I had wondered when the average-joe would be able to start swiping info via Z-39 and creating their own library. I wonder... why only books? Is this what are students in 4 years will expect a library catalog to look like? Hmmmm...

* Source Blog

* Posted on: Fri, May 26 2006 9:11 AM

May 25, 2006
Do you know where your towel is?

By HockeyLibrarian

Today is Towel Day in rememberance of Douglas Adams. I have my towel with me (pictures will follow later).

More info is available:

Wikipedia
Towel Day Home

Drake's Holdings & More Holdings.




* Posted on: Thu, May 25 2006 10:43 AM

May 22, 2006
About time for OCLC and RLG to become one.

By HockeyLibrarian

Just recieved an e-mail from NYLINK regarding an OCLC press release.

RLG will be folded into OCLC.

Exerpt from the e-mail notification since I haven't found an online copy yet:

"

OCLC has just released the news below. Nylink will keep our membership aware of the latest developments. Thank you.

RLG to combine with OCLC
EDIT: See the link below for text.



This has been a long time coming IMHO. I'm glad to see it and hope that the RLG libraries do formally approve the measure.

Woo hoo!

EDIT: OCLC official press release http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/200618.htm

RLG press release http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20942

* Posted on: Mon, May 22 2006 4:04 PM

Comments in the Hennepin Library Catalog

By HockeyLibrarian

URL: Comments in the Hennepin Library Catalog

Michael has pointed out an excellent example of something I'd like to consider at the academic level. I'm sure others have also come up with the concept of allowing comments in the academic library catalog. Professors could give glowing or glaring comments for materials their students are likely to find. Students can let others know what helped, or that the (made up) title "Basic Economics" really isn't useful for the ECON 101 course. etc. etc. etc.

That being said, my goal for this week is to start getting into Brockport's Aleph based catalog and start looking around. Yay for getting the work computer tweaked to my specifications last week!

* Source Blog

* Posted on: Mon, May 22 2006 9:31 AM

April 20, 2006
Why aren't we talking about searching with cell phones?

By HockeyLibrarian

After a very busy and loud (yay!) reference lunch hour I have been hit with an epiphany. Why can't our students search the catalog on their ubiquitous cell phones?

Let's take the info seeking tools to where they are using them. Being that I am not the most plugged in librarian out there I figured I should look around for more info. This seems to me to be a marketing coup waiting to happen.

There isn't a lot of information out there. Pitifully small amounts have been written in the professional literature.

So far I have found (via EBSCO's freebie Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts) the best article to be:

Cell Phone Reference. By: McDermott, Irene E.. Searcher, Oct2003, Vol. 11 Issue 9, p8, 4p, 3c; (AN 11006899)

Mentions of the possibilities exist:

DIGITAL LIBRARIES AND MOBILITY By: Marshall, Catherine C.; Golovchinsky, Gene; Price, Margan N.. Communications of the ACM, May2001, Vol. 44 Issue 5, p55, 2p; (AN 11932982)

III Debuts Its MetaSource Suite. By: Rogers, Michael. Library Journal, 3/1/2002, Vol. 127 Issue 4, p27, 2p; (AN 6274468)

That being said there are also possibilities mentioned in the March 2006 Computers In Libraries.

Wi-Fi Versus Cell Phone Service. By: Roberts, Gary. Computers in Libraries, Mar2006, Vol. 26 Issue 3, p29-31, 3p; (AN 19984281)

It seems to me that we should have moved into the what-my-library-has-done stage on this one folks.

I have something to look into when I go into my new position at SUNY Brockport.



* Posted on: Thu, Apr 20 2006 5:59 PM

April 6, 2006
NYLA & B&N make love not war

By HockeyLibrarian

NYLA's Love Your Library Campaign has a partnership set up with Barnes & Noble. If you must buy books/music/dvds, rather than checking them out at your local library, considering printing a voucher from here and buy your stuff in New York State anytime during April 7-9, 2006.

* Posted on: Thu, Apr 6 2006 3:28 PM