For us compulsive list-makers

My friend Joyce recently wrote about some cool Web 2.0 tools, including one called Ta Da List which allows you to make lists of all sorts. You can make the lists public (hmm), you can share them with selected others, or you can just keep them private. I'm thinking that my book club could share a list that we can each add to as we think of titles between meetings. That strategy might help us with our "What should we read next?" discussions.

This is a really simple tool. You can't import or export to other devices or applications (though you can e-mail lists). But sometimes simple is best. Ta Da List does what it does and does it well. If you want to get fancy, you can embed html tags in your lists. So we could link our book titles to Amazon or Library Thing or a library online catalog.

It's fun to think of the kinds of lists you can make. A list of birthday presents you want. A list of birthday presents you need to get. A list of Star Trek episodes you've seen. A list of things to do before you die. What lists would you make?

It's NOT NICE to mess with the library display

Culprits, we know who you are and where you live...

Book Chat is back!

After being attacked by spam bots this summer, we had to shut down the Book Chat, our online book discussion forum. It is now open for business again, this time using different software that is easier to to secure. So, here's the deal on using the new book discussion forum:

1. Click on Book Chat from the Library web page.
2. When the forum page appears, click on "Register."
3. Use MUST use your NetID as your user name (use any password you wish). Note that you only have to fill in the blanks that are marked with a * . If you add optional items like your screen name(s), they will be publicly visible to the world -- which you may not want. I'd also suggest going with the default settings for the preferences. These will protect your privacy by not showing your e-mail address.
4. Your registration triggers an e-mail message to Mr. Smith, who will authenticate you. Then you're good to go!

Note that if you were enrolled in Computer Literacy 1 last year, you are already registered to use this software. It's the same software we used for the ethical scenario discussions.

As usual, please respect the topic areas and, yes, keep it clean. I am also totally open to suggestions for adding new topic threads. Any questions or problems with registration, please e-mail me or Mr. Smith.

Have fun!

Songs about librarians...and glass toasters and your spleen and sleepovers and puffins and...

Aaron alerted me to Songs to Wear Pants To, where a guy named Andrew writes songs based on users' instructions. He'll do this for free or for a fee, whenever he can (or wants to) get around to it. For example, the request for song #0301 (August 24, 2006) reads: "I would like Andrew to write a song about: Hasselhoff: Insurance broker, Grocer, Ninja." Now there's a guy I'd like to meet. Of interest to me, of course, is song #0133, called "Librarians Rule the World." You have to scroll down, because Andrew doesn't permalink his entries.

Andrew also uses his site to collect feedback from listeners about his own albums and seems to post feedback forms for others. But he's waaaaaaay behind on his requests. I'm thinking he could use some help. Any takers?

Ready for Banned Books Week?

We are! It's wonderful to come back to another great display by Corinne and Jenny. It's been hard for students to resist peeking in the paper bags (with little take-a-peek cutouts) that contain some of the contraband books. The bags have labels that describe why the books have been challenged in schools or libraries. The usual reasons: "promotes alternative lifestyles," "explicit language," "sexual content," "negativism harmful to students"...



Find out more at the ALA Banned Books Week website.

We surrender to Harry Potter

Today, during RifRaf's (book club) second meeting of the year, we will discuss Harry Potter. Last week it was decided that -- since the conversation seems to always come around to Harry Potter, no matter what the actual topic du jour is -- we'll try devoting one meeting a month to the topic. Maybe then there won't be so much Harry Potter bottled up in everyone and the rest of the time and other topics will have a chance.

Here's the display of all present-and-accounted-for Harry Potter books. In English, Spanish, French, German, and... Latin!



This blog will be quiet for about a week while I attend a meeting of the chapter authors for the MacArthur book series on digital media and learning. Never been to Newark, but I'm thinking I won't see much but the inside of the hotel. Despite that, I'm looking forward to some good conversations.

Aaron has a fight with the typewriter

Let me tell you, a bad typewriter day can feel much worse than a bad hair day.



Why are we still using manual check-in cards for magazines? Don't ask...

On your mark, get set, INDEX!

I wrote last March about competitive indexing in the form of a game called Fastr, in which you try to guess the tag (subject) that's been assigned to a photo on Flickr, a photo sharing service. Well, now some folks at Carnegie Mellon University have developed something similar, but with several big differences. On The ESP Game, you are randomly paired with another player whose identity you don't know. As each image comes up, the goal is to guess the same tag as your partner. You have two and a half minutes to agree on 15 images. The cool part about this is that players are actually helping label images, which means images will eventually be easier to search for. As I post, 18,340,292 images have been labeled since October 5, 2003.

"Computer programs can't yet determine the contents of arbitrary images, but the ESP game provides a novel method of labeling them: players get to have fun as they help us determine their contents. If the ESP game is played as much as other popular online games, we estimate that all the images on the Web can be labeled in a matter of weeks!"

Actually, I'm thinking they were a little optimistic about that last bit... Thanks for telling me about this game, Robert!

Technology-enabled nostalgia

If you are one of those folks who misses card catalogs, help has arrived. With the Catalog Card Generator, you too can create a beauty like this one:



Go ahead, try it. See if you can spot the difference when you click on audio or video. Wow, so exact. Memories.

Priceless

Yesterday I wrote about Google's new News Archive Search. Then I read a blog posting by school librarian Jacquie that made me want to emphasize another spin on the topic. Yes, much of the content on the news archive is free, but a whole lot of the articles cost money. And many folks who use the archive will not realize that they can access exactly the same content online by using the subscription databases provided by their libraries -- and not have to pay one dime! As Jacquie says:

Price of 1 article from the New York Times? $4.95.
Price of the 30 articles needed this year for your classroom or your grad course? $148.50.
The value of no charge access from libraries?
Priceless!

Meantime, take a look at the rainbow Jeremy and Corinne made:

Just in time

I love it when the world changes just in time for work that's going on in the classroom. Mr. Rayburn's students, who need to know what was going on in the world the year they were born, will be pleased to find out that Time Magazine just put most of its archive online. Though we can get to these articles through one of our database subscriptions, it's cool to see the color covers on the Time website. I got great results by typing "news" in the subject line and then specifying a year.

But that's not all. Ever-evolving Google now has a news archive search. Mr. Rayb's students are best off to go straight to the advanced search, where they can specify a date or year (note that you MUST enter a search term). Select "no price" for a best shot at finding the free stuff.

And, of course, there's always the class project page for more helpful hints.

Do it YOUR way

Courtesy my friend Linda, who posts on the Young Adult Library Services Association blog, I've learned about MySpace Hacks, a blog devoted to tips on customizing and totally tricking out your MySpace page.The possibilities seem endless. Now you can soup up your page with widgets, animated avatars, a clock, games, polls, voice comments, podcasts -- you get the idea. My hands down favorite, though, is the Zombie speller, which is built with images stored on Flickr. Halloween is just around the corner...