LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

I know, my absence of late has left a giant gaping hole in your hearts somewhere right below the left ventricle or something. It's hard to visualize on the ultrasound, because no one in the clinic knows really how to work one of these things...

We'll hold the medical stuff at the moment, at least, as it pertains to me, except to say that we've got a loose name of what has been keeping me from living a normal life for -- well, it's been at least 20 years, but it only got particularly nasty in the last eight, and horribly blood-curdling nasty in the last five. It's a sleep disorder, they can not cure it, and if the case proves to be beyond a moderate sort of manifestation, they really can't treat it terribly effectively. A lot of non-sleep/neurological doctors will tell you that they can... There's this new drug... Uh. No.

Long and the short is, the sleep-neuro-guy says that I function at about 20% capacity on a good day. It isn't going to get better than that at this point, or even in the mid-range future.

So I've come to terms with the fact I am not going back to work in a normal environment. I've come to terms that I will never be able to see a movie in a theater again. I'm trying to deal with the idea that if I can come home and mentally function (or at least not walk into solid objects) after a twenty minute trip to the grocery store, I am having a pretty damn good day.

I hate not doing stuff. You know that, right?

I wasn't sure if this was going to come to pass, but it does appear that my interview with Mark Shuttleworth is now available online. I knew they put some content up, but had no idea how exactly they determined what content went where.

So why do I keep belaboring that interview here? Because Mark Shuttleworth is cool, and I think that there are a few things in the interview that librarians (and educators) might find interesting. Hold on to your hats, non-techie types... Not only do we never talk directly about Ubuntu, but we don't talk a whole lot about really overtly horribly bloody tech stuff in general.

For those who do love the tech stuff (there have to be a few of you, still, right?), I've launched into a podcast adventure with Lisa Hoover (of various tech media outlets) that can be found here if you're interested. Please note that we're librarians and writers, we're located at different ends of the eastern seaboard, and between Skype, my way too sensitive mic, and our inexperience with manhandling audio (this being our first podcast), it's a little rougher sounding this week than it will be next. We hope.

Just wanted to let the world know I live... well, I mean, I have a pulse and brain electrical activity still, so they refuse to make the call.

Corrected url for the magazine with my interview with Mark Shuttleworth: http://www.linuxmagazine.com

Don't know if the interview will ever be on the site, but it is now available at some of the more major Barnes and Noble and Borders stores.

It's the June issue (thought it would be July... ack.)

Romanian public libraries can now use an Open Source library system for managing book loans and reservations, searching catalogues, managing library assets, maintaining a website and general administration.

The Open Source software for library automation IBLA, was developed over the last two years by a group of IT consultants working at the Military Technical Academy and Contact Net, a Romanian company. The developers Adina Riposan, Emil Mieilica and Iosif Biro hope the project will increase the use of Open Source software in the country.

The library project is financed by the Romanian and the Italian government, both countries wanting to develop an integrated public library system. The project was finished earlier this year.

Interesting Story on an attempt to get Linux into The Austin Public Library System: "The inventory, be they books, dvds, cd's magazines or computer software is selected in what would appear to be an arbitrary method. The process of actually getting something into the library inventory is daunting."

from Lifehacker The man at One Man's Blog explains how alarmingly easy it is to crack passwords and offers tips on choosing safer ones.

First, he breaks down the steps he'd take in cracking a password. That includes the simple act of guessing the top ten passwords (pet's name, "1234," date of birth, etc.) used by 20 percent of all users. If that doesn't work, he'll turn to a brute-force attack, which, as you can see in the table above, can get the job done in as little as 0.02 seconds.

This is eye-opening stuff, even for users who know better than to use "1234" as their password. Thankfully, the author goes on to provide seven great tips on choosing safer passwords, including using Microsoft's password strength tester. Required reading. When you're done, check out our other posts on

Linux.com: The Library of Congress, where thousands of rare public domain documents relating to America's history are stored and slowly decaying, is about to begin an ambitious project to digitize these fragile documents using Linux-based systems and publish the results online in multiple formats.

Thanks to a $2 million grant from the Sloan Foundation, "Digitizing American Imprints at the Library of Congress" will begin the task of digitizing these rare materials -- including Civil War and genealogical documents, technical and artistic works concerning photography, scores of books, and the 850 titles written, printed, edited, or published by Benjamin Franklin. According to Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, which developed the digitizing technology, open source software will play an "absolutely critical" role in getting the job done.

Over on the LibLime Developers' Blog they've just Announced that LibLime has been selected as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code program. Google Summer of Code offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects.

LibLime's ideas page lists several projects for students to work on, most are related to Koha. Student applications are being accepted now

...from the Malden Observer. Yes, the world has noticed our very own Kristin Shoemaker, a reference/systems librarian (the Linux Librarian), and author of Aurora Borealis (a tale of two sisters, murder, and a Fed Ex Man), a POD novel the author self-effacingly calls "a beach read." Later this summer, Shoe will be taking a bit of time off from the Malden Library to do an autographing tour. Shoes comments, "The biggest joy for me in this? I know that my library is preserving me for(nearly)ever in microfilm!"

Dorrie pointed the way to the latest issue of the State Library of Ohio News [PDF] and a couple of interesting open source articles. "Are We Open (Source) Yet?" and "Libraries are Opening Up To Open Source are a good intro to the topic.