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Serialized Dramas - Television - Report - New York Times: Don't Touch That Dial

Serialized Dramas - Television - Report - New York Times: Don't Touch That Dial.

Don’t Touch That Dial
By BILL CARTER, Published: October 29, 2006

IN every television season some new lesson about the American audience is imparted. This season’s lesson was clear within the first weeks of the fall: you can ask people to commit only so many hours to intense, dark, intricately constructed serialized dramas, to sign huge chunks of their lives away to follow every minuscule plot development and character tic both on the air and on Internet sites crowded with similarly addicted fanatics.

Ask for more and you will get what happened to every network this fall. “The Nine” got low numbers. “Vanished” was banished. “Kidnapped” went unransomed. “Smith” was swift-kicked. “Runaway” sounded like a command.

“The message we received was that people have strains on their lives,” said Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment. “People are saying, ‘I’ve got my handful of shows like this, and I don’t want more.’ ”

A chance to shine | The San Diego Union-Tribune

A chance to shine | The San Diego Union-Tribune.

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
A chance to shine
Needed central library requires major donors
October 29, 2006

San Diegans are understandably dismayed by the chronic problems confronting their city government. But there is one urgent civic challenge that rests in the hands of private citizens – creation of a new central library to replace the threadbare embarrassment that is our current downtown library.

Because of San Diego's fiscal crisis, the $185 million library planned for the thriving ballpark district must be built without drawing on the city's strapped general fund. To date, $103 million has been raised from other sources: $80 million from the Centre City Redevelopment Corp.'s flourishing treasury of downtown property tax receipts; a $20 million state library grant; and $3 million in announced philanthropic contributions. The rest – $82 million – must come from other private donors.

Good editorial, and on point.. MPOW is caught in the fiscal mire, but if the citizens want a world class city, even back to America's finest, why not a major investment in libraries, knowledge, and the children of San Diego's future?

Week in review: Browser battles | CNET News.com

Week in review: Browser battles | CNET News.com.

Week in review: Browser battles

Hot on the heels of Microsoft's IE 7, Firefox 2 emerges with a new look and bulked-up security.
By Steven Musil                                

Staff Writer, CNET News.com, Published: October 27, 2006, 10:00 AM PDT  

TalkBack   E-mail   Print del.icio.us Digg this

Mozilla fired a new salvo in the browser battle this week by officially releasing Firefox 2, with upgraded security features and a new interface.

The revamped Firefox includes a new interface theme and security enhancements such as built-in phishing protection. It also has session memory, which, when the browser is re-opened, brings back the set of Web pages that were in use when it was last closed. Changes have also been made in the technology to import RSS feeds, producing a feed list view with title and first lines. (Click here for the CNET Review.)

The Firefox 2 launch comes just days after Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, the first update to its browser in almost five years.

Well, I feel like a test monkey somehow.. I have IE7 at home now (it's crashed at least 3 times since the upgrade), and FireFox 2.0 as well.. FireFox is my default browser, so I use it more.. so far, no problems except some of my favorite add-ons (extensions) are missing-in-action for FF 2.0 (Snapper, etc.) ...

SDSUniverse | Wordless in San Diego

SDSUniverse | Wordless in San Diego.

Monday, October 23, 2006

On Campus
Wordless in San Diego
By Nancy Worlie

Richard Lederer is returning his thesaurus to the shelf. Lederer, the founding co-host of KPBS-FM's popular weekly language program "A Way with Words," is retiring at the end of October. Lederer, who announced his retirement during "Morning Edition," has been a part of the program since its inception in 1998.

"After eight wonderful years with 'A Way with Words,' I have decided to retire as co-host," Lederer said. "My involvement since the start of the show in 1998 has been one of the best things I have ever done in my life. I am grateful beyond words to the KPBS family for its unstinting support of 'A Way with Words' and to our San Diego, Wisconsin, and podcast audiences for their enthusiastic response to our word-happy hour."

Richard cogent and collegial and comic style will never be duplicated, he's an original, and shall be missed.. enjoy that retirement...

Book Fairs: Reading Might Not Be Dead - New York Times

Book Fairs: Reading Might Not Be Dead - New York Times.

Ahead Book Fairs: Reading Might Not Be Dead
By BETH GREENFIELD, Published: October 20, 2006

LESS than half of the adult American population now read books that can be defined as literary, the Census Bureau reported after a 2002 survey. Yet the number of book fairs appears to be growing, so perhaps not everyone is eager to replace hard covers with hard drives after all.

“There are now 35 statewide celebrations, and that has gone up tremendously in recent years,” said John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. Mr. Cole arranges for authors to appear at the annual National Book Festival, which drew 100,000 literature lovers to the National Mall in Washington last month. The center also helps organizers put together local book fairs.

Google Librarian Center and Newsletter Survey

Google Librarian Center and Newsletter Survey.

[From an Oct 17, 2006 e-mail from Google Librarians' mailing list]

It's been an exciting year and a half since we first launched the Google Librarian Newsletter, the Librarian Center, and our general outreach initiative. We've traveled to countless conferences, delivered scores of presentations, and held many discussions, both with individual librarians and groups. We've learned that you're an exacting audience, quick to provide detailed feedback and, thankfully, welcoming to our small team. As we continue to grow this program and explore more ways that we can work together, we'd like to request some formal input from you.

The purpose of this survey is to help us identify how we can improve the Librarian Center and Newsletter to better fit your needs. We value your input, as well as your privacy, and your responses will remain anonymous unless you choose to provide contact information. If you do share your contact information, we won't share it with anyone else. We hope that you'll take the 10-15 minutes to complete this survey and let us know more about you and what you'd like to see from our program.

Click here to take the survey, or enter this URL into your browser: https://survey.google.com/wix/p0346970.aspx

Please note that the survey will close on October 31st, 2006.

Sincerely,
Pamela Saenger
Associate Product Marketing Manager

Take the survey, and give them some feedback.. this is one of the best ways for Google to have some input from information professionals...

Lamont Library Café open for business

Lamont Library Café open for business.

Lamont Library Café open for business

The long-awaited Lamont Library Café opened for business this past Tuesday (Oct. 17) with a ceremonial ribbon cutting. Located on the main level of the library, the café seats approximately 100 and features a light menu of prepackaged sandwiches, salads, baked goods, coffee drinks, teas, and other beverages. The café will provide library users with an alternative study space that fosters group work in a relaxed setting where food and conversation are welcome, and will also fulfill a need for social space on campus.

"I'm delighted that we shall now be providing sustenance in Lamont for the body as well as the intellect. The Lamont Library Café will surely become a cheerful locus for our students, both for their refreshment and for breaks from their solitary study," said Jeremy R. Knowles, interim dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Wave of the future present.. Library cafe at Harvard...

ALA | American Library Association releases national study of diversity in library workforce

ALA | American Library Association releases national study of diversity in library workforce.

For Immediate Release October 12, 2006
American Library Association releases national study of diversity in library workforce
Confirms need for continued recruitment of people of color

DALLAS - Today the American Library Association (ALA) released "Diversity Counts," a comprehensive study of gender, race and age in the library profession.

Using 1990 and 2000 Census data (the most current available), the study found that the nearly 110,000 credentialed librarians were predominantly ages 45 - 54, female and white. The number of racial and ethnic minorities receiving accredited library master's degrees (MLIS) grew 4 percent, up to about 13 percent in 2000 from 9 percent in 1990.
...
To review the study in its entirety, please visit www.ala.org/diversitycounts. For more information on the Spectrum scholarship program, please visit http://www.ala.org/spectrum.

RUSQ | Archives | Fair Use in the Digital Environment: A Research Guide

RUSQ | Archives | Fair Use in the Digital Environment: A Research Guide.

Fair Use in the Digital Environment: A Research Guide
Neal Wyatt, Column Editor
Melanie Schlosser, Guest Columnist

Print version (Adobe Reader required)
This is my first column as the new The Alert Collector editor. I have huge shoes to fill and am deeply aware of the quality and integrity that Diane Zabel established for this column during the past seven years. I am honored that she would entrust me with her column as she become the editor of this journal.

Fair use affects us all, be we public, academic, special, or school librarians. As part of my plans for this column are to include articles that appeal to a wide range of librarians and readers, I am delighted that Melanie Schlosser has taken on the task of collecting the resources we need when facing a copyright and fair-use question. Ms. Schlosser, an MLS candidate at Indiana University’s School of Library and Information Science and a Fellow in the Digital Libraries Education Program, has a special interest in access to information and digital rights, and works on the front line of these issues as she helps with Indiana University’s Digital Library Program (DLP). Her goal with this column is to provide a useful tool for the ever-increasing number of librarians and library students who work with digital collections or who want to take an active role in ensuring access to information in the digital age.

Thanks to Library Link of the Day for the pointer to this one.. For more about the journal, RUSQ, see the RUSQ about page...

Pulled Pork, Pulled Corks in North Carolina - New York Times

Pulled Pork, Pulled Corks in North Carolina - New York Times.

Pulled Pork, Pulled Corks in North Carolina
By DANA BOWEN, Published: October 13, 2006

THE Piedmont in North Carolina is holy ground for barbecue connoisseurs: a place where pork shoulders are still pit-cooked over smoldering hardwood, and men with names like Snook and Boney live on through their smoky legacy.

The old-school barbecue joints they’ve left behind would alone warrant a road trip through this patchwork quilt of old farms, small towns and distant mountain views that sprawl south and west of Winston-Salem. But they’re not the only reason for food-minded tourists to visit here.

Just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, in the Yadkin Valley, a fledgling wine scene has taken root, one that doesn’t feature just the sweet native muscadine, but also pork-friendly Old World varietals like cabernet franc, sangiovese and even nebbiolo.

ARL 247: The Changing Role of Intellectual Authority

ARL 247: The Changing Role of Intellectual Authority.

ARL Bimonthly Report 247, August 2006
The Changing Role of Intellectual Authority
Download a PDF of this article
by Peter J. Nicholson, President, Council of Canadian Academies

Remarks presented at the 148th ARL Membership Meeting held in collaboration with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries in Ottawa, Ontario, May 18, 2006.

Today I will argue that what qualifies as intellectual authority in contemporary societies—who and what to believe—is changing fundamentally. I will speculate as to the reasons, and I will draw out some of the implications for institutions of knowledge brokerage, among which research libraries are of course prominent.

The thesis in a nutshell is this. People today are much less prepared to defer to the experts. But at the same time, we are being swamped with data and information—a glut that cries out for analysis and summary. So there's a dilemma. Who to turn to? Increasingly the answer is—Well, to ourselves of course, as individuals empowered by a World Wide Web that has rapidly evolved into a social medium. More specifically, it is a medium that today supports massively distributed collaboration on a global scale that—we can only hope—will help us make sense of it all.

How does this deep social and cultural transformation relate to the particular concerns of those of us in this room? I can do no better than quote from an ARL Task Force on Collections and Access Issues to the effect that transformation in libraries mirrors the ongoing change of the research institution, just as the transformation of the institution reflects broader societal and cultural changes. The transformation of the research library cannot be understood apart from this larger context and the cultural changes that shape institutional growth.1

My purpose in these remarks is to offer one outsider's perspective on what seem to me to be the deepest and most pervasive changes that are shaping the transformation not only of the library, but of all forms of intellectual authority in today’s society.

Let me say at the outset that I am not particularly comfortable with the future I foresee. I am, after all, a charter member of the "old guard" and will never really belong to the new. But I am also an optimist and a realist. The world has changed—and so must we.

Recommended professional reading, for all librarians, not just those in the academy...

Race against time to save Papa's papers - The Boston Globe

Race against time to save Papa's papers - The Boston Globe.

Racing against time to preserve Hemingway
Rare US-Cuba alliance works to save Papa's papers
By Russell Contreras, Globe Staff  |  October 8, 2006

Some books are warped. The ink on notes is fading, and many pages are torn.

This is the state of a large portion of Ernest Hemingway's papers and books left at his home in Cuba, Finca Vigia . For about 46 years, this grand collection of Hemingway-scribed documents, books, letters, and manuscripts has sat quietly at his former retreat, weathering hurricanes, humidity, and time.

Now, a rare collaboration between American nonprofit groups and the Cuban government may preserve Papa's papers at Finca Vigia, which has been transformed into a museum. That collaboration even brought efforts closer to home.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google launches literacy portal

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google launches literacy portal.

Last Updated: Wednesday, 4 October 2006, 12:10 GMT 13:10 UK
Google launches literacy portal Google Literacy Project

Search engine Google has launched a portal to connect literacy organisations around the world.

The Literacy Project enables teachers, organisations, and those interested in literacy to use the internet to search for and share literacy information.

The new online service was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. Users can search for information in digitised books and academic articles, and share information through blogs, videos and groups.

Way cool effort.. check out the screenshot and the Google site...

YouTube - 1987 - Betty Glover Library Workout Tape Ad

YouTube - 1987 - Betty Glover Library Workout Tape Ad.

YouTube: 1987: Betty Glover Library Workout Tape Ad

Check it out.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k8BKX2eQ0Q .. And we'll see you at the gym :) ...

Running the Really Big Show: ‘Lost’ Inc. - New York Times

Running the Really Big Show: ‘Lost’ Inc. - New York Times.

TV
Running the Really Big Show: ‘Lost’ Inc.
By LORNE MANLY, Published: October 1, 2006

BURBANK, Calif.
ON the morning after the Emmy Awards, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the two men in charge of the ABC drama “Lost,” gathered, as is their weekday custom, in Mr. Cuse’s office on the Disney lot.

As pirates — costumed cast members for the third installment of “Pirates of the Caribbean” — strolled around the parking lot behind them, the two men ate breakfast burritos and fruit cups, kibitzed about the awards and mapped out their strategy for the long day ahead.