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North Carolina’s Triangle: Nature, Culture and Barbecue - New York Times

North Carolina’s Triangle: Nature, Culture and Barbecue - New York Times.

Weekend With the Kids
North Carolina’s Triangle: Nature, Culture and Barbecue
By JOANNA KAKISSIS, Published: April 27, 2007

THE Mayberry-meets-M.I.T. appeal of the Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill region of North Carolina blooms in spring and summer, when families can bask in the region's generous outdoor spaces, its culture and its barbecue.

Music and art festivals occupy river-cut parks and lush town squares, the Durham Bulls are running around the baseball diamond, hikers and cyclists fill the miles of greenway trails, and water skiers and paddle-boaters cleave the area's many lakes. Just don't forget the sunscreen; the sun smiles fiercely in these parts, even in May.

It's easy and cheap enough to get to Raleigh-Durham International Airport from New York, but beyond there, you will need a car; public transportation is inconvenient at best. A drive through rolling hills of tree-lined lanes, brightened by the color burst of blossoms, has been known to enchant even the most restless of young souls.

A special place.. "home" in so many ways still, for me.. "Blue Heaven" is the nickname for Chapel Hill, but the whole Triangle region is like a small slice of heaven, to me.. can you hear that twang of Southern boy when I say that? Or, a bit of homesickness? :) ...

36 Hours in Key West, Fla. - New York Times

36 Hours in Key West, Fla. - New York Times.

36 Hours in Key West, Fla.
By CINDY PRICE, Published: April 29, 2007

IT'S tough to slap an itinerary on Key West. The whole point of this two-by-four-mile island, after all, is to kick off your shoes and let it all hang out. But here's the rub: do Key West wrong and you might not relax. Witness lower Duval Street, that cacophony of sound, sunburn and daiquiris. (Hemingway used to drink there, but he might think twice today.)

So where is the strange, laid-back island that everyone fell in love with? It's still there, if you know where to look. It's found biking through Old Town at dusk, when the porches light up and jasmine fills the air. Or kayaking across the quiet, teal-blue ocean, or catching an old-timer's tale, drifting across a lonely bar. Done right, Key West is still a place where time stands still.

One special place.. changing, but everything changes.. part of what we enjoy when we travel is to discover what's been "before," the history of a place.. at Key West, you can still do that...

The Sydney Morning Herald: Scotty prepares for final frontier

Scotty prepares for final frontier.

Scotty prepares for final frontier
April 28, 2007 - 12:00PM

More than 100 people gathered in New Mexico to bid farewell to Star Trek star James Doohan, a day before the actor's ashes are blasted into space on a private rocket. Doohan, beloved for his role as the USS Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, died aged 85 in 2005, but plans for his posthumous rendezvous with the final frontier have been repeatedly delayed.

However today a symbolic portion of his ashes will be on board a SpaceLoft XL rocket that is scheduled to take off from a private launchpad near Las Cruces, in the southwestern state of New Mexico. Doohan's ashes will be accompanied by the remains of former US astronaut Gordon Cooper and those of 200 other people.

Way to go, aye, Captain.. Scotty be space-born.. 'tis a good thing.. You wouldn't believe how many *stars* you can see up here.. Live Long and Prosper, and oh, yes, Space, the Final Frontier...

NYT: New data on the problems of “multitasking” | 43 Folders

NYT: New data on the problems of “multitasking” | 43 Folders.

NYT: New data on the problems of “multitasking”
Slow Down, Multitaskers, and Don’t Read in Traffic

Yesterday’s New York Times front page ran an article pulling together the results of several recent studies looking at how interruptions and attempts to multitask can affect the quality of work as well as the length of recovery time. Here’s one bit that really grabbed me:    

In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.

“I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois, of a paper on the study that will be presented next month.

Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: Google authors

Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: Google authors.

Google authors
April 28, 2007 

I just came across Google Authors, a series of videos of guest speakers at Google. An interesting variety and different formats (lecture, interview, ...). Many are interviewed by Eric Schmidt. Some household names (if you live in a BoBo household, to use the term coined by David Brooks, one of the interviewees [on youtube]) and some that were unfamiliar to me.

Indeed, such is the variety that I am not sure who to link to as examples ;-) 

In addition, we've just added our most important location yet: an online home at google.com/talks/authors with a video archive of our events on YouTube. Just this year, we've hosted a great variety of authors, including Martin Amis, Strobe Talbott, Bob & Lee Woodruff, Jonathan Lethem, Don Tapscott, Senator Hillary Clinton, and Carly Fiorina. The subjects of their talks range from literary fiction to science fiction, sociology to technology, politics to business. [Official Google Blog: Authors@Google]

Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services

Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services.

Saturday, April 28, 2007
Launch of Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services

Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services, a blog devoted to application and use of online social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace for any and all types of library-related programs or services, was officially launched on April 28, 2007. Friends will include announcements, general news, as well as citations and links to significant articles, books, and other publications about online social networking in general and their use by libraries and librarians.

Posted by Gerry at 3:47:00 PM 0 comments     Links to this post Labels: Launch

Congrats to Gerry on the launch of his new blog.. I hope it will be a useful resource site about libraries and social networking...

Famous Librarians’ Favorite Books: Part 1 - Britannica Blog

Famous Librarians’ Favorite Books: Part 1 - Britannica Blog.

Famous Librarians’ Favorite Books: Part 1
George Eberhart - April 18th, 2007

What do prominent librarians have to say about their favorite books? For the new edition of my Whole Library Handbook 4: Current Data, Professional Advice, and Curiosa about Libraries and Library Services, I asked ten library leaders to identify the publications that have given them great enjoyment or significantly affected their professional or personal lives and philosophies. I defined the term “book” as loosely as possible, to allow them to select anything from incunabula to websites. Here are five librarians’ lists; another five will follow next week.

CAMILA A. ALIRE, former Dean of Library Services, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

1. Rudolfo A. Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima (1972). Considered a classic in Chicano literature, this novel renewed in me a sense of ethnic and cultural pride that continues to this day.
2. John Grisham, A Time to Kill (1989). Everyone should read this novel. It is full of moral dilemmas for any reader to suffer through in terms of “what would I do in this situation?”
3. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (1989). Anytime I can learn more about a culture, even superficially through a novel, I am appreciative. The story was timely for me because it was most helpful in my understanding and working with Chinese-American women.

Another gem from George.. recommended reading or browsing; I try and get a copy to keep at home...

Borders: Remembering Kurt Vonnegut

Borders: Remembering Kurt Vonnegut.

"Life Is No Way to Treat an Animal": Remembering Kurt Vonnegut
By Douglas Brinkley

"I'm Jeremiah and I'm not talking about God being mad at us," novelist Kurt Vonnegut says with a straight face, gazing out the windows of the parlor of his Manhattan brownstone. "I'm talking about us killing the planet as a life support system with gasoline. What's going to happen is, very soon, we're going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. And there goes the school buses. There goes the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This is the end of the world. We've become far too dependent on hydrocarbons, and it's going to suddenly dry up. You talk about the gluttonous Roaring Twenties. That was nothing. We're crazy, going crazy, about petroleum. It's a drug like crack cocaine. Of course the lunatic fringe of Christianity is welcoming the end of the world as the rapture. So I'm Jeremiah. It's going to have to stop. I'm sorry."

For the most part, this sort of apocalyptic outburst is to be expected from Vonnegut who, after all, in his futuristic novel Cat's Cradle (1963) created Ice-9, a lethal chemical which obliterates earth incrementally, like the "great door of heaven being closed softly." The naïve protagonist of the novel—a character named John/Jonah—actually struggles to write a book titled The Day the World Ended. (Cat's Cradle also includes a hilarious faux religion known as Bokonoism, whose religious text begins with the sentence, "All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.") In Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut—published by University Press of Mississippi—he even dismisses the notion that his 14 novels and dozens of short stories have a long shelf-life, saying, "Anybody with any sense knows the whole solar system will go up like a celluloid collar by-and-by." Add to that doomsday scenario Vonnegut's notorious bouts of chronic depression, daily doldrums, and suicidal longings, and you get a literary Cassandra of the first order.

What Can Schools Do? | TIME

What Can Schools Do? | TIME.

What Can Schools Do?
Thursday, Apr. 19, 2007
By JULIE RAWE

In the fall of 2005, some 17 months before Cho Seung-Hui went on his killing spree at Virginia Tech, his behavior was so disturbing that his creative-writing professor had him removed from her class. Later that semester, two female students complained separately about what one called his "annoying" advances, and after an acquaintance warned that Cho might be suicidal, he was detained for several hours, evaluated at a local mental-health facility and released. "Everyone who is hospitalized isn't going to be banned from campus," Dr. Christopher Flynn, head of Virginia Tech's counseling center, told TIME.

When it comes to the complex intersection of campus safety and mental health, the questions of what counts as sufficient warning signs and how universities should respond to them often end up in court. Move too quickly by, say, suspending a depressed student for posing a threat to himself or others, and schools can — and do — get sued for discriminating against the disabled. But parents of students who committed suicide have also wrangled settlements out of colleges for not doing enough to intervene. And, of course, there can be hell to pay for failing to protect other students when the red flags — at least in hindsight — seem clear. At large campuses like Virginia Tech's, which has 26,000 students, there can be hundreds who are in psychological distress or long-term counseling. Says Kevin Kruger, associate executive director of a national association of student-affairs administrators: "Making decisions about when to have those students leave and when to have them stay is very, very tricky."

Va. Tech baseball squad aims to uplift grieving campus - More Sports - NY Daily News

Va. Tech baseball squad aims to uplift grieving campus - More Sports - NY Daily News.

Hokies heal at home
Va. Tech baseball squad aims to uplift grieving campus
By CHRISTIAN RED, DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Thursday, April 19th 2007, 11:11 AM

BLACKSBURG, Va. - As Virginia Tech baseball coach Peter Hughes slaved over his grill last night in the backyard of his suburban Blacksburg home, three of his four sons - ages 6, 8 and 10 - took turns on the mound whizzing Wiffle balls to any of the 29 Hokies players who stepped up to the plate.

With the smell of bay seasoning and boiled shrimp wafting around the patio, batters ripped line drives off the side of the house, into the cranky old neighbor's yard and over the massive woodpile in the makeshift center field. Laughter filled the air. Hughes' wife, Debby, prepared the couple's kitchen for the onslaught of diners.

"We're going to do this every night this week," Hughes said, referring to the nightly barbecues at his home. "I just want to see my players and want us to be around each other."

Like every other faculty member, administrator or coach at Virginia Tech, Hughes has been trying to make sense of the past three days, ever since 23-year-old Tech student Cho Seung-Hui shot and killed 32 people on campus Monday before taking his own life in the nation's deadliest mass shooting. Hughes said he felt the best thing to do in the wake of killings was to bring his coaches and players together "as family."

I've been away for a few days, taking care of my son, who turns 16 this Saturday.. back now, and it was good - very good - to be with my "family" in this tragic time.. the above says what I can now about this, healing, listening to the vibe of what this means, the introspection.. more later, for now, baseball team eating shrimp in a backyard is about "healing," and that is the important thing now...

Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist, Dies - New York Times

Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist, Dies - New York Times.

Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist, Dies
By DINITIA SMITH, Published: April 12, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

So it goes.. R.I.P. Mr. Vonnegut, you will be missed.. thanks for the funny, insightful, hard-hitting, and literate writings.. yours was a singular voice in the wind much of the time, as you marched to your own drumbeat...

Copyright Renewal Database

Copyright Renewal Database.

Copyright Renewal Database
Stanford University, Libraries & Academic Information Resources

Welcome to the initial release of Stanford's Copyright Renewal Database. This database makes searchable the copyright renewal records received by the US Copyright Office between 1950 and 1993 for books published in the US between 1923 and 1963. Note that the database includes ONLY US Class A (book) renewals.

The period from 1923-1963 is of special interest for US copyrights, as works published after January 1, 1964 had their copyrights automatically renewed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and works published before 1923 have generally fallen into the public domain. Between those dates, a renewal registration was required to prevent the expiration of copyright, however determining whether a work's registration has been renewed is a challenge. Renewals received by the Copyright Office after 1977 are searchable in an online database, but renewals received between 1950 and 1977 were announced and distributed only in a semi-annual print publication. The Copyright Office does not have a machine-searchable source for this renewal information, and the only public access is through the card catalog in their DC offices.

In order to make these renewal records more accessible, Stanford has created this searchable database. Building on the work done by Project Gutenberg to transcribe the 1950-1977 renewals, and on early conversion efforts by Michael Lesk, we have converted the published renewal announcements to machine-readable form, and combined them with the renewals for later years made available on the Copyright Office's website. Note that this database covers only renewals, not original registrations, and is limited to books (Class A registrations) published in the US.

We welcome and encourage comments on the database. Please send comments to Mimi Calter at mcalter@stanford.edu.

Introducing the Michaels: Transparent Library - 4/1/2007 - Library Journal

Introducing the Michaels: Transparent Library - 4/1/2007 - Library Journal.

Introducing the Michaels (Transparent Library)
By Michael Casey & Michael Stephens — April 1, 2007

What prevents a library from being transparent? Barriers. Roadblocks. Inability to change. The culture of perfect. The transparent library contains three key elements: open communication, adapting to change, and scanning the horizon. We'll explore these ideas and offer solutions for those struggling with new models of service, technology, and a decidedly opaque climate.

Library Journal: Whither Reference? At ACRL, Skepticism Persists

Library Journal: Whither Reference? At ACRL, Skepticism Persists.

Whither Reference? At ACRL, Skepticism Persists
Academic Newswire, April 10, 2007

If there is reference service in a decade, Miller warned, "it's going to look like the Avis desk at 3 a.m." in an airport.

The future of reference service in academic libraries has been a hot topic at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) national conferences for some time now, and this year's conference was no different, with librarian panelists at one session expressing skepticism over its future. "We've tried chat, roaming, deskless, and walkie-talkie reference, all with modest success," said Bill Miller, director of libraries at Florida Atlantic University. "Now we're IM, MySpace, Friendster, Second Life," all "laudable efforts." but reference service still faces an inevitable decline. If there is reference service in a decade, Miller warned, "it's going to look like the Avis desk at 3 a.m." in an airport.

Google Book Search Libraries and Their Digital Copies

Google Book Search Libraries and Their Digital Copies.

Google Book Search Libraries and Their Digital Copies
by Jill E. Grogg, Electronic Resources Librarian, The University of Alabama Libraries and Beth Ashmore, Cataloging Librarian, Samford University
Searcher, Vol. 15, No. 4 - April 2007

Few things in the past decade, other than the PATRIOT Act, have brought libraries and subsequent controversy into the mainstream media as much as the Google Book Search Library Project. For some — both inside and outside the profession — the mass digitization of library-owned books by Google sounded like yet another death knell for physical libraries and their custodial librarians alike. For others, it appeared to launch the mother of all copyright cases.

However, in nearly every instance of media hype, the focus sat squarely on what Google planned to do with all those digitized books. While Google’s intentions are always a good topic for conversation and as everyone waits for the courts to decide on important copyright issues, one can’t help but wonder: How will the librarians at participating Google Book Search libraries use their copies of the digitized books, commonly referred to as the library digital copy, the copy that Google gave to them in return for their participation in the Book Search project?

Long but good article.. recommended professional reading.. it's a whole brave new world of digital books, and we in libraries need to know more about these projects.. thanks to Library Link of the Day for the pointer to this Searcher article...