LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Congratulations Andy!!!! From Library Journal:

Flavor of the Month Move over, Cherry Garcia. If Andy Woodworth has his way, the next hot Ben & Jerry's flavor could be Gooey Decimal System.

The 32-year-old adult services librarian at Bordentown Library, NJ, Woodworth is creator of “People for a Library Themed Ben & Jerry's Flavor” a Facebook group he started in June 2009 that's mushroomed to more than 8000 members and quickly gained international media and blogging attention. (It's been picked up by Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, The New Yorker's The Book Bench blog, Britain's The Guardian, and even the United Arab Emirates newspaper, The National.)

But don't be fooled. Woodworth's project has a hidden agenda—it's part of a multipronged advocacy effort to get libraries noticed, appreciated, and funded.

I don't care what the name of the winning flavor is...but it's GOT TO have chocolate.

This week's podcast took a different operational stance in recording. Instead of the usual cassette deck, we shifted instead to a reel-to-reel system:

If you click the picture above you can see a larger version of that snapshot. The computer pictured functioned essentially as an overgrown cart machine. This week's episode was recorded on a 1978 TEAC 3340S deck at 7.5 ips on normal bias. The other deck we were working with was intended to give more of a 1970's audio vibe but the recorded results sounded like chipmunks on a methamphetamine binge.

News was slow this week and budget constraints dictated that South by Southwest Interactive was not happening for the air staff. A miscellany is presented as well as a zeitgeist review.

Related Links:
National Bookmobile Day
Omeka in the Cloud
StatusNet Cloud Service Enters Public Beta
LISNews Pinger On Identica
LISFeeds Pinger on Identica
LISFeeds
John C. Dvorak on the media dead pool
Whitney Georgina Hess on learning leadership
The Register on the Ubuntu theme makeover
The Register on BBC cuts

This week's episode brings word of a developing story relative to the logistics back-end to interlibrary loans in the United States as well as discussion of the digital divide from a practical perspective. The BBC World Service is used as the example in the essay.

We received 22 essays last month in our librarian essay contest. I'll call this experiment a complete success. The most read essays show well over 2,000 hits (though we don't really know how many people read each essay). Our panel of expert judges will now begin the difficult task of picking the 3 winners. You can help by registering a vote on each essay you've read. I'll announce the winners within a week or two. Thanks to everyone who submitted their work!
Use the tracker page for a quick overview of all the essays:
http://lisnews.org/essaytracker/

This week Stephen moved away from the microphone as long-time engineer Mike Kellat took charge instead. This episode has a zeitgeist recap and talks briefly about the situation post-earthquake in Chile. Practical suggestions are offered as to worthwhile avenues of action by concerned library personnel.

In addition to the audio program an attempt was made to reformat one of the segments of LISTen 107 as an animation bit.

Budget cuts seem the order of the day, this article in the Thursday edition of the Columbia Spectator gives librarians another grim look of what is ahead. Unfortunately, with state budgets still taking losses it looks like we could have to get used to more cutbacks in services, materials and staff. http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/02/24/recession-forces-new-york-city-libraries-check-o...

Unfortuantely, there is more bad news, this story posted on the 24th and speaks again about the drastic cuts that most librarians will see this year and possibly over the next two years.
Recession forces New York City libraries to check out early
The New York Public Library announced in early February that it would reduce hours at two-thirds of its 87 locations, the most drastic change made since 2001 in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, according to NYPL administrators. Put into effect on Feb. 16, this reduction comes on the heels of a $5.9 million mid-year cut for Fiscal Year 2010.

As the LISNews Librarian Essay Contest winds down it seems like a good time to formally announce the LISNews Librian Joke Contest! We won't judge each joke, but anyone who submits a joke will be entered to win some cool prizes.

From www.funkandweber.com and www.StitchingForLiteracy.com ...a set of four Needle and ThREAD: Stitching for Literacy cross stitch bookmark patterns, including two designed from the old chicken-and-frog library joke. You know, a chicken walks into a library and says, "book, Book, BOOK!" (you gotta say it like a chicken), so the librarian gives her a book. The chicken takes the book outside and down to a pond where a frog sits on a lily pad and croaks, "read-it, read-it" (that's right, say it like a frog).

Book Marks from www.InMyBook.com
Web Hosting from www.LISHost.org

You'll want to submit your joke(s) HERE starting on MONDAY.

Follow along on the tracker page (http://lisnews.org/joketracker) or RSS feed (http://lisnews.org/jokes/rss)

Technical issues continue to plague us at Erie Looking Productions. LISTen #107 is a lost episode as there will be no recorded audio for this one. The unedited script that has none of the usual handwritten corrections or any ad-libs by the presenter is instead released for consideration. Links to matters referenced are shown as footnotes in the attached PDF file. This peculiar release is made under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

While we plan to release LISTen #108 on March 1st, this is dependent upon us chasing down electrical shorts and other complications. Thank you for your patience and cooperation in this difficult time.

(Mirrored at Internet Archive)

Notice

Due to circumstances beyond our control it appears that LISTen #107 is delayed until further notice. We are trying to excise gremlins from the system but having a tired crew decreases the value of any attempted efforts. Our target is to get the episode out later Monday after some sleeping hours can be had.

Thank you for your patience in this difficult hour.