US NEWS DESCRIPTION OF LIBRARIANS

Librarian: Executive Summary
by Marty Nemko, USNews.com, Money & Business, 18 December 2006, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/
18librarian.summary.htm

Forget about that image of librarian as a mousy bookworm. Librarians these days must be high-tech information sleuths, helping researchers plumb the oceans of information available in books and digital records. It’s an underrated career. Most librarians love helping patrons dig up information and, in the process, learning new things. Librarians may also go on shopping sprees, deciding which books and online resources to buy. They even get to put on performances, like children’s puppet shows, and run other programs, like book discussion groups for elders. On top of it all, librarians’ work hours are reasonable, and the work environment, needless to say, is placid.

Median Salary: $49,708

Other Resources:
Department of Labor profile, http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos068.htm
American Library Association
Special Libraries Association
[Ms. OPL says, what about MLA, AALL, etc.?]
Shontz, Priscilla, The Librarian’s Career Guidebook, Methuen, NJ: Scarecrow, 2004, ISBN-10: 0810850346, ISBN-13: 978-0810850347, US$45.00
Kane, Laura Townsend, Straight from the Stacks: A First Hand Guide to Careers in Library and Information Science, Chicago: American Library Association, 2003, ISBN-10: 0838908659, ISBN-13: 978-0838908655, US$34.00

Related Content:
Brandon, Emily, Librarian: James Billington Sees a Bright Future Beyond Books, USNews.com, 18 December 2006, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/

18librarian.expert.htm
Nemko, Marty, Librarian: A Day in the Life, USNews.com, 18 December 2006, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/

18librarian.life.htm
(text of the article)

You work in a small municipal library, where you have to do a little of everything. You start your day by leafing through catalogs from online database publishers and book reviews in Library Journal to decide which titles to add to your collection. Next, it’s out to the reference desk, where visitors regularly ask how to find something. Sometimes it’s esoteric; often it’s the bathroom. Later, you teach a class: an advanced lesson in Googling.
Next, it’s back to the reference desk, but you’re soon interrupted by a group of boisterous kids, so you have to turn into schoolmarm: “You’ll have to be quiet, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
You end your day reading about “automated librarianship”: data storage systems that let the public get needed resources without the help of a live librarian. Tomorrow, you decide, you’ll start writing a grant proposal to develop a computer kiosk that will help patrons find health information.
Smart Specialty: Special Librarian.
All sorts of organizations need librarians, not just universities and local governments. They work for law firms, prisons, corporations, and nonprofit agencies. In fact, special librarianship is the field’s fastest-growing job market. Unlike public and university jobs, which require night and weekend hours, these jobs are mostly 9 to 5.

SAVE TIME WITH WEB 2.0 TOOLS

Aaron Schmidt [North Plains Public Library, North Plains, Oregon, USA] writes in a post on his blog, Walking Paper, that he is a very busy reference librarian in a small public library. He uses Web 2.0 tools to same time. You don’t have to be in a public library to follow his example.

The library’s website was created with WordPress; the library tour is powered by PictoBrowser and Flickr; and the librarians use Google Spreadsheet “to organize the collaboration of multiple employees that are infrequently in the same room.”

He concludes, “I hope this mini case study of a time strapped library helps expose the ‘I don’t have time for social software’ excuse to be just that: an excuse for not wanting to expand and learn.”

URLs:
Complete post: http://www.walkingpaper.org/402
NPPL website: http://nplibrary.org/
Library tour: http://nplibrary.org/tour-the-library/
WordPress: http://www.wordpress.com
PictoBrowser: http://www.db798.com/work/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com
Google Spreadsheet: http://docs.google.com

SUBJECT GUIDES TO WEB SOURCES IN THE UK

Booklets (in pdf format) with selected and annotated web sites (mostly in the UK) are available from Intute. Intute exists to help students, teachers, researchers and librarians make sense of the Web by providing access to the very best Internet resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources. The database contains 115948 records. It is funded by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee) with support from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It was formerly known as the RDN (Resource Discovery Network).

Subjects:
Science and Engineering: Chemistry, computing, environmental engineering, and physics
Arts and Humanities: archaeology, fashion and beauty, religion and theology, and visual arts
Social Sciences: business and tourism, law, social research, and social welfare
Health and Life Sciences: agriculture, food and forestry, animal health, healthcare and medicine, and physiotherapy and orthopaedics

Sample contents
Law: general law, legal information gateways, educational materials, organizations; UK law, EU law, other jurisdictions, international law, law by subject area.
Healthcare and medicine: online education and teaching materials, factual databases, bibliographic information, electronic journals, books and full-text documents, news and discussion, patient information, clinical resources, professional organisations

URL: http://www.intute.ac.uk/

ATTN: RECENT OR SOON-TO-BE RETIREES

If you are a solo and have retired recently or plan to do so in the next couple of years, please get in touch with me. I have an opportunity for you. You can email me at jsiess@ibi-opl.com.

DO YOU HAVE BOOKS YOU DON'T NEED?

Better World Books will take library discards and donations and use them to fund literacy initiatives locally, nationally, and around the world. They sell the books and donate some of the sales to non-profit literacy partners. And it costs you nothing. But, they will not take books from collections that have been "picked over" (offered to employees or the public). If they can't sell the books, they recycle them. The four major partners are: Books for Africa, Room to Read, National Center for Family Literacy, and World Education and Development Fund. They've given out over US$1.3 million since they started in 1994.

URL: http://betterworldbooks.com/

15 WAYS TO PROMOTE EFFECTIVE USE OF ONLINE RESOURCES

This article is the result of a study commissioned by Elsevier in 2002. It appears on their free librarian-outreach website, LibraryConnect. Here are some of the 15 tips.

“On the library homepage, offer links to digital resources and subject-specific content.” “Offer searchable lists of online resources and providers.” “List library staff titles and names with telephone numbers and email addresses.” AMEN! “Avoid generic email alerts to a wide audience in favor of tailored email messages.”

URL: http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/lcp/0102/lcp010201.html

MARKETING ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

A sad truth: “While we don’t charge monetarily for our services, the user incurs costs in terms of time and effort. For many users, libraries are simply not worth it.” “We’re no longer the only game in town.” “We know that many of our users are keen to have electronic access, but often they’re not aware that the library has the information that they need.”

To market effectively, “ define your market, decide what to promote, target an audience, decide on the venue and media, construct and appropriate message, [and] evaluate your efforts.”

Wisniewski, Jeff and Darlene Fichter, Electronic resources won’t sell themselves: marketing tips, Online 31(1):54-57, January/February 2007.

THE ENDANGERED JOY OF SERENDIPITY

William McKeen wrote eloquently on this subject in the St. Petersburg Times, 26 March 2006. Here is just a few quotes to give you the flavor of the article.

He requires students in his journalism class at the University of Florida (where he is chair of the department) to subscribe to the New York Times. When telling a student that no, he cannot just read it online, he said, “Because then you would only find what you’re looking for.”

“Serendipity is a historian’s best friend and the biggest part of the rush that is the daily magic of discovery.” “When you know what you want—or think you do—you lose the adventure of discovery, of finding something for yourself.” “We must allow ourselves to be surprised. We must relearn how to be human, to start again as we did as children—learning through awkward and bungling discovery.” At the end of your life, do you want to look back and say, “I could have missed this.”

URL: http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/26/Perspective/The_endangered_joy_of.shtml

MERGING THE REFERENCE AND CIRCULATION DESK

The Engineering Library at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, combined the reference and circulation desks. The main goals of the merge were: “provide a ‘one stop’ shopping environment for [their] users, extend at least basic reference services to all hours of library operation, respond to on-site service trends, provide an efficient and flexible staffing solution, [and] use the limited space more efficiently.” The paper presents a literature review and a description of the process and rationale. But I think that the most useful part of the paper is at the end—the two appendices that presents the perspective of the reference and circulation professionals’s perspectives on the process and outcome.

Powell, Jill, et al., Integrating an Engineering Library’s Public Services Desk: Multiple Perspectives, Issues in Science and Technology Leadership Winter 2007, http://www.istl.org/07-winter/article2.html

RESPONDING TO CHANGING USERS

The latest issue of the Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries has as its theme The Changing of the User Environment. There were two articles that I thought were especially good. Here is a bit of each.

Guus Van den Brekel [University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands]: “The awareness of our quality resources and ways to find them, is no longer present, or being pushed aside, even swept away by the simplicity of searches via Google and others. How did (we let) this happen?” A combination of the ease of searching Google and PubMed, sticking to traditional library systems too long, and the new attitudes of the net-generation and gamers. “How can we change this?” Move from being product-oriented to user oriented. “Shift from ‘This is what we offer to you. Come and get it if you want to use it!’ to ‘You choose the services you need, when and where you need them.’” Get out of the library. Over the long-term, rebuild library systems “with open standards focused on modular web-based services.”

Tuulevi Ovaska [Kuopio University Library, Finland]: Divides users into three groups: “1. those who want to be totally served, 2. those who want to do things themselves but need assistance, and 3. those who are able to do everything they need for themselves.” “How should we, and how can we, provide the services for each group in such a way that we do not give less than they require but also not more than they need, or , what is more important, wish from us.” Group 1: perceives the quality of service to be equal to the speed of delivery, is becoming smaller. Group 2: must do more than provide access and written instructions, especially if English is not their native language; need hands-on training; problem is lack of time—both for users and staff. Group 3: “It is enough to inform them about the new services and resources available….”

References:
Ovaska, Tuulevi, Coping with different user habits and the changing user environment, Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries 3(1):17-18, 2007.
Van den Brekel, Guus, Into the user environment now! how users have changed and how libraries can adjust, Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries 3(1):8-16, 2007.

INFORMATION LITERACY RESOURCES

I ran across the Information Literacy Website today. Here you will find a LOT of good information.
There is a link to the LIS-INFOLITERACY electronic list and its archives.
This is also the home of the brand-new Journal of Information Literacy, "an international, peer-reviewed, academic journal that aims to investigate Information Literacy (IL) within a wide range of settings." The first issue has two refereed articles: An evaluation of an information literacy training initiative at the University of Dar es Salaam and Using online collaborative learning to enhance information literacy delivery in a Level 1 module: an evaluation. There are also five "articles from practice" (one on online information literacy learning for nurses) and three book reviews.

URLs:
Information Literacy Website, http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/
Journal of Information Literacy, http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/JIL.aspx
LIS-INFOLITERACY electronic list, http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/LIS-INFOLITERACY.html

DATABASE OF FREE OFFICE 2.0 APPLICATIONS

The Office 2.0 Applications database has been developed by Ismael Chang Ghalimi [Intalio, Palo Alto, California], a writer on IT transformation. It is a great source of free online software.

The database includes the following (number of applications): 27 bookmark, 3 calculator, 13 calendar, 1 clipboard, 3 command prompt, 5 contact, 17 CRM, 9 database, 16 desktop, 1 desktop management, 10 development tool, 8 document manager, 7 drawing tool, 10 email, 9 expense tracker, 3 fax, 7 feed processor, 10 feed reader, 15 file manager, 8 file senders, 1 file server, 7 form designer, 14 group manager, 16 IM, 4 mind map, 6 music player, 21 notepad, 8 operating system, 6 outliner, 7 personal organizer, 7 photo editing, 10 photo manager, 7 polls, 17 presentation, 3 printer, 16 project, 2 scanner, 2 scheduler, 1 sound mixer,11 spreadsheet, 21 task manager, 9 time tracking, 11 utilities, 9 video editing, 9 voice mail, 3 web conferencing, 14 web publishing, 4 weblog, 10 word processor

URL: http://itredux.com/office-20/database/

NEW FORUM FOR OPLS IN AUSTRALIA (and soon, elsewhere)

Denise Cadman, coordinator of the Queensland OPAL (One-Person Australian Librarians) group (part of ALIA, the Australian Library and Information Association), has created a new facility for the OPALs community, The OPALs Forum. The forum will give you the possibility to share your knowledge and get support from OPALs in Australia and abroad. OPALs in Australia have the opportunity to be the "early adopters" for this new initiative. Based on your participation and feedback, this facility could be extended to library OPALs globally. Please note that the forum is for OPALs only and you are required to register with your real name and an email address that can be used to identify you as an OPAL.

The forum will be a learning experience for all of us—this is ther first use of this forum software.

If anything doesn’t work as you think it should, or you would like to see additional features enabled in the forum software please post in a new thread.

To register for the OPAL Forum, go to http://forums.softlinkint.com
Once registered, access the OPAL Forum at http://forums.softlinkint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10
If you need help to register, go to http://forums.softlinkint.com/video/registration.wmv to download the registration video.

I hope you will enjoy using the OPAL Forum!

NURSELINKUP: MYSPACE FOR NURSES?

David Rothman has an interesting post, NurseLinkUp: My Space for Nurses, on his blog. He raises two questions for medical librarians.

Should medical librararies and librarians be establishing accounts in social networking sites such as NurseLinkUp, Sermo, Healtheva, Facebook, MySpace, or even Second Life? If so, what should we do there? How will our actions differ from those of academic and public library folk?

Will these sites even allow medical libraries or librarians to have accounts, or will these sites behave as Facebook did and remove their entries? (Saying that it was for “individuals,” not “faceless entities” like libraries.)

URLs:
http://davidrothman.net/2007/03/05/nurselinkup-myspace-for-nurses/
NurseLinkUp, http://www.nurselinkup.com
Sermo, http://www.sermo.com
Healtheva, http://www.healtheva.com
Facebook, http://www.facebook.com
MySpace, http://www.myspace.com
Second Life, http://secondlife.com

WHY PEOPLE TRUST INTERNET HEALTH INFORMATION

Envision Solutions has published a new survey, Diving Deeper Into Online Health Search: Examining Why People Trust Internet Content & The Impact of User-Generated Media. There are some frightening findings here. Read it at http://www.envisionsolutionsnow.com/healthsearch.html

LAW LIBRARIAN NEWS FOR NEW ZEALAND

Law Librarian NewzDigest provides news from around the world on library issues, knowledge management, and records management. Its sources are GoogleNews, Yahoo! News, vendors, and a couple of blogs, Law Librarian Blog and BeSpacific. It's from PinHawk and there is a two-week free trial available. PinHawk also has other services: Law Firm NewzDigest, Securities NewzDigest, Corporate Legal NewzDigest, Court Opinions NewzDigest, Law Firm Press NewzDigest, and Banking NewzDigest. It's worth a try...

URL: http://www.pinhawk.com

DATA ON (U.S.) CORPORATE LIBRARIES

(from a press release from Primary Research Group)

Here are some tidbits from Corporate Library Benchmarks (New York: Primary Research Group, 2007, ISBN 1-57440-084-3.

Online and other electronic information accounts for more than 65 percent of the materials budgets of corporate libraries, and more than 80 percent of the library content expenditures of companies with greater than US$5 billion in annual sales.

The median number of patron visitors to the physical location of the library was only 13.5.

The ratio of librarians to other service personnel was almost two to one.

Only one library in the sample outsourced research functions to researchers or librarians based in developing countries such as India, Russia or China.

Overall, more libraries lost FTE [full-time equivalent] positions over the past two years than gained FTE positions. More than 30 percent of the libraries in the sample lost full time equivalent positions over the past three years, while 11.63 percent gained positions.

In 2006, the libraries in the sample estimated that their budgets had increased a mean of 7.38 percent, and a median of 5 percent.

Close to 40 percent of the libraries in the sample believed that the library accounted for 80 percent or more of company spending on electronic information typically associated with the library, such as spending on journals, databases, newsletters, e-books and directories.

62.16 percent of the libraries in the sample keep a written log of the reference questions received from library patrons.

Competitor profiling was of dramatic importance to the librarians in the sample. It was a primary theme more in more than 15 percent of research assignments for about 53 percent of organizations in the sample, and it was a primary theme in more than 30 percent of assignments for more than 29 percent of survey participants. Competitor profiling was particularly important in heavy industry and finance.

The librarians in the sample spent a mean of 3.47 hours per week reading blogs or [electronic lists].

The librarians in the sample traveled more than 35 miles away on library business a mean of 5.52 times in the past year, and a median of three times.

In 2005, the libraries in the sample maintained a mean of 6.00 workstations primarily for librarian use, with companies in the information services or informatics sector maintaining the greatest number of workstations for librarians. This figure rose slightly to 6.1 in 2006.

More than 71 percent of the libraries that use subscription agents pay their agents in one lump sum, while 28.6 percent paid them in increments throughout the year. Incremental pay was somewhat more common among the smaller organizations, as it was among companies in industry and information services/informatics.

The study presents a broad range of data, broken out by size of parent organization, type of industry, and also between organizations that have decreased the physical size of their library in recent years vs. those that have maintained or increased it. The report includes data on salaries, budgets, spending for books, directories, magazines and newspapers, journals, online databases, CD-ROM and other information vehicles. The benchmarking report is based on data from 48 major corporate and other business libraries of organizations with mean revenues of approximately US$3.6 billion.

The 130-page report has more than 250 tables and charts. The cost of the report is US$189 and can be ordered at http://www.primaryresearch.com./publications-
Information-Science.html. It is available in either PDF or print format.

"FREE" FORM BUILDER

Wufoo is an HTML form builder and looks like it should be very easy to use once you figure it out from the scant documents. (Sorry about the pun—I couldn’t resist.) There’s a free version that allows you 3 forms, 3 reports, 10 fields, and 100 entries a month; other options go from $9-199 per month. The site gives lots of examples (a customer satisfaction survey, workshop registration, job applications, wedding invitation, exercise and diet tracker, address book, “catalog” for a music or DVD collection, diet log, household inventory, event planner, to do list, time sheet, and contact form), but it would be nice to have templates that you could just copy and use.

URL: http://www.wufoo.com/

GOOGLE READER VS. BLOGLINES

A non-librarian, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag (“a comic book fan living in the Seattle area”) compares Google Reader with Bloglines. It’s an interesting article. MY favorite, Google Reader, wins by a hair.

URL: http://realtegan.blogspot.com/2007/02/tegans-tech-talk.html

COMMUNICATION 2.0 FROM ALA

Part of their wiki, Read Write Connect provides links to the most popular resources from the American Library Association. Included are blogs, discussion forums, Flickr pictures, gadgets (custom search engines), mailing lists, Member Newsletter, podcasts, RSS feeds, videos, virtual worlds, and wikis. There’s also a sidebar with “hot” links such as conferences, YALSA on MySpace, and other wonders. ALA may not be completely 2.0 yet, but it’s sure working at it.

URL: http://wikis.ala.org/readwriteconnect

ALA ON COPYRIGHT

Copyright Advisory Network

The American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy intends this site to serve as “a way for librarians to learn about copyright,” “to get help when they have copyright troubles,” “to encourage librarians to discuss copyright concerns, and seek feedback and advice from fellow librarians and copyright specialists.” It includes network forums (bulletin boards), a blog, lists of copyright resources, Copyright 101 Educational Materials (presentations from the ALA 2006 Conference poster session), and links to the US copyright code and the fair use checklist. This looks to be a very useful and authoritative site.

URL: http://librarycopyright.net/

USER 2.0: INNOVATIVE LIBRARY SITES

Marie Radford [Rutgers University, Morristown, New Jersey, USA] has posted a selective list of libraries that “are the most ‘innovative’ in terms of integrating Web 2.0 or social software applications.” She invites readers to suggest others that should be included, so be sure to read the comments for each post.

URLs:
Part 1: Academic Libraries,
http://librarygarden.blogspot.com/2007/02/user-20-
innovative-library-sites-part-1.html
Part 2: Public Libraries,
http://librarygarden.blogspot.com/2007/02/user-20-
innovative-library-sites-part-2.html

CHECK OUT SOME GOOD WEB SITES

Site of the Month

“Leo [Klein] is writer, designer and webdeveloper living in Chicago. He is also a librarian and an academic” but not working in a library right now. I had expected someone from the Chicago Public Library. The best thing on his site is the Site of the Month, featuring a library website and his commentary on it. The current one is Queens Borough (New York City) Public Library.

URL: http://www.chicagolibrarian.com/

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION

To quote Stephen Abram in his post, Absurd Self Promotion, “I am always preaching that we have to tell the world more about librarians and libraries... so here goes:Our book, Out Front With Stephen Abram is out. It was released at ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle and was, I am told, the bestselling book in the ALA Store!” It is currently #5 on the ALA Editions Website.

Stephen continued,“I was helped by (indeed it was actually all done by) Judith Siess and Jonathan Lorig. I am eternally grateful to them for their work. I am especially thrilled that Judith persisted in talking me into allowing this work to be created.”

Stephen will be signing copies at most SirsiDynix events and signings are planned at CLA (Canadian Library Association), SLA (Special Libraries Association) and perhaps the ALA (American Library Association) conferences this spring/summer. See you there.

If you're interested in purchasing a copy try any of the following URLs. The cost is US$40.00 (ALA members US$34), CA$46.62.

URLs:

Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Out-Front-Stephen-Abram-Information/dp/0838909329

Amazon.ca, http://www.amazon.ca/Out-Front-Stephen-Abram-Information/dp/0838909329/sr=1-10/qid=1170640970/ref=sr_1_10/701-9704798-6226736?ie=UTF8&s=books

ALA Editions, http://alastore.ala.org/SiteSolution.taf?_sn=catalog2&_pn=product_detail&_op=2238

From me (autograph included)—email me at jsiess@ibi-opl.com for details

HOW LONG WILL YOUR DATA BE READABLE?

Brad Reagan wrote the following in an article title The Digital Age, Popular Mechanics, December 2006 (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4201645.html). I have been saying this for at least 15 years, but I was a voice crying in the wilderness until about 5 years ago when I first saw others worrying not about the life of storage media, but of storage technology. Perhaps if this issue is raised in such a well-respected scientific magazine, someone will pay attention.

“The documents of our time are being recorded as bits and bytes with no guarantee of future readability. As technologies change, we may find our files frozen in forgotten formats. Will an entire era of human history be lost?

“One irony of the Digital Age is that archiving has become a more complex process than it was in the past. You not only have to save the physical discs, tapes and drives that hold your data, but you also need to make sure those media are compatible with the hardware and software of the future. ‘Most people haven't recognized that digital stuff is encoded in some format that requires software to render it in a form that humans can perceive,’ Rothenberg says. ‘Software that knows how to render those bits becomes obsolete. And it runs on computers that become obsolete.’

“In 1986, for example, the British Broadcasting Corp. compiled a modern, interactive version of William the Conqueror's Domesday Book, a survey of life in medieval England. More than a million people submitted photographs, written descriptions and video clips for this new ‘book.’ It was stored on laser discs—considered indestructible at the time—so future generations of students and scholars could learn about life in the 20th century.

“But 15 years later, British officials found the information on the discs was practically inaccessible—not because the discs were corrupted, but because they were no longer compatible with modern computer systems. By contrast, the original Domesday Book, written on parchment in 1086, is still in readable condition in England's National Archives in Kew. (The multimedia version was ultimately salvaged.)”

SCARY SCENARIO

John Blyberg proposed an interesting and very scary idea in a recent post on his blog.

"What if our users decided that the $80-$100 allocated to the library from their property taxes would personally serve them better if it were spent on a Netflix subscription? After all, DVDs constitute the largest percentage of circulated items at our library. Yet, compared to Netflix, our selection is lousy, availability is a joke, and distribution methods? Ha. That’s just one example of many instances where our users are not getting the ROI they may be looking for. The reality is that public libraries are not in a position to compete with power houses like Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes. We’re even getting our hat handed to us by the pirate movie and MP3 scene."

Get's you to thinking, huh?

URL:

http://www.blyberg.net/2007/02/16/strategery/

TOP 25 WEB 2.0 SEARCH ENGINES

The people at Online Education Database have put this list together. “Some offer functionality that's slowly making its way into traditional search engines. Others further the attempt to traverse the invisible Web and index other previously unsearchable research sources. It is definitely worth trying them out.

URL: http://oedb.org/library/features/top-25-web20-search-engines

HANDBOOK ON COPYRIGHT AND RELATED ISSUES FOR LIBRARIES

This is a practical guide to topical legal questions affecting the information work of libraries in the fast moving digital environment. Each topic is described briefly, the main policy aspects for libraries are outlined, and there are links to library policy statements for further reading. It is sponsored by the UNESCO Information for All Programme. You can download each chapter in html or pdf format. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License.

The chapter titles are: The Relationship between Copyright and Contract Law: Electronic, Resources and Library Consortia, Technological Protection Measures—the “Triple Lock,” Copyright, the Duration of Protection and the Public Domain, Orphaned Works, Collective Rights Management, Public Lending Right, The Database Right—Europe’s Experimental, Creative Commons: an “Open Content,” Open Access to Scholarly Communications, Copyright and Trade Agreements, International Policy Making: a Development Agenda for WIPO, and National Policy Making: Advocating for Fair Copyright Laws.

URL: http://www.eifl.net/services/handbook.htm

SCIENCE.GOV VERSION 4.0

Science.gov has announced version 4.0 which adds deep ranking, refining of searches, sorting of results, and the option of having the results emailed to you or your customer (with comments).

Science.gov is a search engine for government science information and research results. Currently in its fourth generation, Science.gov provides search of more than 50 million pages of science information with just one query, and is a gateway to over 1,800 scientific Web sites. The content for this project is contributed by participating agencies. The Web page search function is provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, and the “explore by subject” search of selected federal scientific and technical Web sites is maintained by NTIS (the National Technical Information Service).

URL: http://www.science.gov

KMLE MEDICAL DICTIONARY

King’s Medical Library Engine provides a medical dictionary, terminology, and abbreviation search; a medical link directory directed at medical professionals; a web search engine to search through sites in the medical link directory, and searching of medical journals and drug. The site administrator is an MD and there is a Korean version.

URLs: http://www.kmle.com (Korean version: http://www.kmle.co.kr/)

ARTS & LETTERS DAILY

This is a service of The Chronicle of Higher Education and covers “philosophy, aesthetics, literature, language, trends, breakthroughs, ideas, criticism, culture, history, music, art, disputes and gossip.” It is set up like a newspaper, with 4 columns: links, Articles of Note, New Books, and Essays and Opinions.New material is added six days a week. New links are added at or near the tops of sections, with older ones sliding down the columns accordingly. Most items will continue to be available for five or more days before being transferred to the archives (which date back to 1998). The links column categorizes its many links into newspapers, nota bene, magazines, book reviews, columnists, favorites, weblogs, radio news and music, diversions, classics, and Google/Refdesk.

I love their motto, Veritas odit moras, from Seneca’s version of Oedipus—it “Truth hates delay.” It would be a good motto for a library.

URL: http://aldaily.com/

QUICK LOOKS AT USEFUL WEB SITES

EU RSS Feeds Available
http://europa.eu/rapid/syndication/setLanguage.do?language=en
For now this list includes press releases and commissioners’ speeches, but more are to come.

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_
search_engines.php
Worth taking a look at to augment your regular Google or Yahoo! searches.

A Blog Just for YA Librarians
http://www.yalibrarian.com/
Alternative Teen Services is a new blog from a group of librarians at the Kansas City, Missouri Public Library.

Strange Maps
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
Includes such wonders as “The World as Seen from New York’s 9th Avenue” (a New Yorker cover), Oz, and a diagram of the US Interstate system.

The Phrase Finder
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/index.html
Find the origins and meanings of phrases, sayings, and idioms in categories such as from the sea, Shakespeare, the Bible, proverbs, euphemisms, and the body.

The Law in Plain English
http://www.nolocast.com/
Podcasts from publisher Nolo.

Inventor’s Handbook
http://web.mit.edu/invent/h-main.html
Eleven chapters covering intellectual property, how to conduct a patent search, applying or a patent, licensing, and other practical matters. Also at the site: inventor of the week, games and trivia, and other links and resources. From Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Engineering.

Help for Teaching Statistics
http://exploringdata.cqu.edu.au/
Exploring Data has activities, worksheets, slides, datasets, articles, and resources “designed to enhance the statistics knowledge of the [secondary school] teacher.” From Central Queensland University, Melbourne, Australia.

MORE GOOD RESOURCES TO CHECK OUT

Foreign Relations of the United States
“The official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publications” beginning with Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Browsable and searchable; some full-text (produced by OCR). Produced by the State Department’s Office of the Historian, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, and the University of Illinois at Chicago Libraries. (Over 67,000 sessions recorded from July 2006-mid February 2007.)

URL: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS

MEDLINE®/PubMed® Resources Guide
Links to resources providing detailed information about searching these great medical databases. Divided into News, Overviews, Journals, Data Structure and Variables, Data Policies, Searching, Tools and Utilities, Statistics, Help and Training Resources.

URL: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/pmresources.html

Online Spanish Dictionary
Finally, a “definitive” Spanish dictionary from our friends at Merriam-Webster.

URL: http://www.m-w.com/ (check the Spanish-English button)

Other Spanish dictionaries:
SpanishDICT.com, http://spanishdict.com/index.cfm
WordReference.com, http://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=welcome
Yahoo! Education’s dictionary, http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dict_en_es/
Ultralingua Online Dictionary, http://www.ultralingua.com/onlinedictionary/
OR, find a long list of general and specialized Spanish dictionaries at http://www.alphadictionary.com/directory/Languages/Romance/Spanish/

Next Generation Librarianship: Where Do We Go from Here?
The College of DuPage (Illinois) Press has a great list of resources on this important issue. You might also check out my new book, Out Front with Stephen Abram: A Guide for Information Leaders, compiled by Judith A. Siess and Jonathan Lorig, ALA Editions, 2007, ISBN 0-8389-0932-9. It has a lot on this subject (and other good stuff, too).

URLs:
List: http://www.dupagepress.com/COD/index.php?id=1183
My book: http://alastore.ala.org/SiteSolution.taf?_sn=catalog2&_pn=product_detail&_op=2238

DOWNLOAD A PSYCHIATRY TEXT

The Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatrists in Training has put a psychiatry text on the Web for free downloading. (For some reason the chapters on Antidepressant Drugs and Suicide are not available.) I think it might have limited interest to librarians and physicians, but it may be useful for students.

URL: http://www.anzapt.org/content/view/645/348/

NEW GOVERNMENT RESOURCES from Australia, Tonga, and Canada

The Australian Parliamentary Library has a new RSS feed for their new documents and one for This Week in Parliament.
URLs:
New Documents: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/rsspubs_feed.xml
This Week in Parliament: http://www.aph.gov.au/rss.htm

Tongan Legislation Online is now available and searchable. It is funded by New Zealand's International Aid & Development Agency.
URL: http://legislation.to/cms/home.html

The Maps, Data, and Government Information Centre of Carleton University [Ottawa, Ontario, Canada] has made available a Google Custom Search for Federal, Provincial, Territorial, and Municipal Canadian Government Documents on the Web. Thanks folks.
URL: http://www.library.carleton.ca/madgic/

LEADERSHIP AWARD FOR SLA LMD MEMBER

Karen J. Switt Leadership Award

Do You Know a Leader? How about a Dynamic Information Entrepreneur?

Or Maybe You are One Yourself!

We need your help.

Who are the visionary leaders and dynamic innovators in our profession?

Don’t be shy! Don’t keep it to yourself! Don’t put it off until you have more “time”—tthat’s a “time” that never comes, right?

Help the LMD Awards Committee identify candidates for LMD’s prestigious Karen J. Switt Leadership Award.

Each year since 1988, at the Annual SLA Conference in June, LMD has honored one of our division’s members in recognition of significant leadership in the information management profession during the previous five years.

Accomplishments may be in any aspect of library and information management, for example:

Visionary leadership Marketing and public relations

Planning and strategy Human resources

Information policy Finance

Technology Ethics

Communication

The accomplishments (s) must be documented by professional talks, forums, articles and/or other written communications.

The award consists of a $750 check, sponsored by C. Berger Group, Inc., and a commemorative plaque, as well as significant peer recognition.

Please submit nomination and supporting documentation (i.e., published papers, letters of support from colleagues, etc.) to the LMD Awards Chair before the deadline of March 1, 2007.

Submit a nomination to the Awards Committee

OR send via postal mail to:

Judith Siess, LMD Awards Chair

Information Bridges International, Inc.

477 Harris Rd., Cleveland, OH 44143-2537

1-216-486-7443

jsiess@ibi-opl.com

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S NEW IN CONSUMER TRENDS?

“Trendwatching.com is an independent and opinionated consumer trends firm, relying on a global network of 8,000 spotters (business savvy people, fast-moving urbanites, slow-moving thinkers, frequent flyers: individuals who recognize a new business idea or initiative when they come across one, at home or abroad, Whether it's a new kind of male grooming lounge in Dubai or a new affordable book publishing service for aspiring writers in Canada.) working hard to deliver inspiration and pangs of anxiety to business professionals in 120+ countries worldwide.” You can read their latest findings in their free, monthly Trend Briefing.

URL: http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/

USABILITY RESOURCES

The University of Michigan Library has put together a good list of Resources for General, Library, and Digital Library Related Usability. It includes websites, articles, books, and podcasts. (Usability suggestion for them: yellow type on white is not easy to read!)

URL: http://www.lib.umich.edu/usability/resources.html

A GREAT WEB 2.0 VIDEO

Web 2.0... the Machine is Us/ing Us is a wonderful (if dizzying) video produced by Michael Wesch, a professor of Cultural Anthropology (Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, USA]. It is a part of his digital ethnography project. (I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as digital ethnography—and I have a B.A. and M.A. in anthropology!) You have to see this!

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

DATABASE OF CANADIAN CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS

"The National Class Action Database is designed to give lawyers and the public easy access to court documents submitted with regard to class action lawsuits currently underway across the country" (Canada). It is a service of the Canadian Bar Association and covers 2003-present.
It does not claim to be comprehensive, however.

Is there anything like this for the USA? or other countries?

URL: http://www.cba.org/ClassActions/

ON LIBRARIAN 2.0

McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, advertised for four (!) new librarians. “These positions are new and offer the future incumbent an opportunity to be the first in a newly defined position for our organization, and in one case what may be a truly unique position! The McMaster Library is going through a very exciting transformation and we’re looking for creative, innovative risk-takers who are eager contribute to our process and to the transformation of our profession.”

Two of the positions are especially interesting.

Teaching and Learning Librarian (emphasis mine): “to lead the growth and development of its dynamic instruction and information literacy program.”

Immersive Learning Librarian (aka “Gaming Librarian”): “a creative, innovative and experienced librarian to provide leadership in establishing McMaster University Library as the premier North American academic library in the implementation of innovative, highly engaging, habitable environments for teaching and learning. This includes the development and support of educationally sound virtual worlds, simulations and games. While the position will be based at the Science and Engineering Library, the successful candidate will serve as a link between the libraries and the academic faculties involved in immersive learning environments (Engineering and Humanities). The successful candidate will play a key role in supporting ongoing research of faculty, staff and students; in collaboration with the Teaching and Learning Librarian, in facilitating the integration of library instruction into the curriculum; and in collaboration with the Digital Strategies Librarian, in providing leadership to the campus community with respect to providing access to, promoting, archiving and preserving locally produced instructional resources. The successful candidate will be responsible for conceiving, designing, implementing, operating, and evaluating innovative teaching and learning environments relevant to the campus community.”

Another good take on Librarian 2.0 is this statement by recent LIS graduate Michael Habib (School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), quoted in ALA Techsource.

“I plan to develop online communities and services that promote the idea of digital library as place. Like physical libraries, digital libraries need to be community centers, collaborative study spaces, meeting spaces, etc. In addition, I plan to train library users to use new technologies and information resources.” At the time of this writing, Habib did not yet have a job—someone should snap him up.

BEHIND THE MEDICAL HEADLINES

This new site from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Scotland, “aims to provide the public and health professionals with equitable access to authoritative and independent commentaries from leading medical experts on articles or news items which appear in the media (nationally and internationally) in an attempt to reduce the confusion which can often arise from conflicting, incomplete, or misleading media reports of medical areas.”

URL: http://www.behindthemedicalheadlines.com/

LIBRARY USE VALUE CALCULATOR

Jackson County (Oregon) Library Services has a wonderful marketing tool on its website. What is your library worth to you? Allows you to calculate the value you receive from using various library services. If you want to use it, you’d better hurry, because the county government is closing all of the libraries in the county due to budget constraints. In case you miss it, the values used are:
Books borrowed, $15 each; magazines borrowed, $2; movies borrowed, $4; audio books borrowed, $10; magazine use in library, $2; interlibrary loan, $25; meeting room use per hour, $50; auditorium use per hour, $250; adult programs and classes attended, $10; children’s programs attended, $6; hours of computer use (i.e., Internet, MS Word, etc.), $12; newspapers viewed online, $1; use of other database searching (like EBSCO), $20; and reference questions asked, $7.

I have a few quibbles with the above. The cost for adult programs seems low and the cost for reference questions should is very low (and should be phrased as “reference questions answered,” anyway. However, creating a calculator like this for your library would be a great marketing tool.

URL: http://www.jcls.org/caculator.html (you have to misspell “calculator” to find the site—not great PR)

THINGS I’VE BEEN READING RECENTLY

Arnold, Jennifer, The Other Academic Library: Librarianship at the Community College, LIScareer.com, January 2007, http://www.liscareer.com/arnold_commcoll.htm

Law Library Lights 50(2), Winter 2007, Law Librarians’ Society of Washington DC, Inc., Theme: A Day in the Life of a Law Librarian, http://www.llsdc.org/lights/pdf/50_2.pdf

Martin Akel & Associates, A Study of Correlation: The Effect of R&D Information Tools on Research Success, http://www.ei.org/correlationstudy/Correlation.pdf

HLABC Forum 30(1), Winter 2006-2007, Health Libraries Association of British Columbia (Canada), Theme: It’s All About You! 21st Century Resource Sharing, http://hlabc.bc.ca/fileadmin/fe-downloads/2006_301.pdf

A FEW QUICK LINKS

No real details, just links to some good resources.

Homeschooling and Libraries, http://homeschoolingandlibraries.wordpress.com/

National Postal Museum (USA), http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods, http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html
(Move your cursor over a square to find out more about each method.)

Public Library Toolkit, http://www.aallnet.org/sis/lisp/toolkit.htm, “meant to help public librarians understand the process of legal research, effectively develop and use the information located within their libraries, utilize information outside their libraries, with the end goal of helping the patron locate the legal information they need.”

To create a map, you might try one of these sites:
MapBuilder, http://www.mapbuilder.net
Quikmaps, http://www.quikmaps.com
Wayfaring, http://www.wayfaring.com/

The Canadian Atlas Online, http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/atlas/
Available in English or French, also in a children’s version.

BLOG ON THE UN

UN Pulse, blog from the Dag Hammarskjold Library at the United Nations. Categories (in order of most posts) economic and social development, peace and security, Specialized agencies, In the News, human rights; plus conferences, appointments, committee activities, headquarters announcements, international law, and research tips. With archives back to March 2005.

URL: http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/unpulse/

CURRENT AWARENESS FOR LAW LIBRARIANS

Current Law Journal Content, Washington & Lee Law School, http://law.wlu.edu/library/CLJC/

Covers 1283 law journals, includes scanned journal contents pages. Searchable by date, country, or words. Free.

RESOURCES ON ROI

Articles and Studies Related to Library Value (Return on Investment), from ALA.
http://www.ala.org/ala/ors/reports/roi.htm. Really good stuff, mostly for public libraries, but some for schools and specials. There’s even a nice group of articles from out of the USA. Some have links to the articles.

HOW TO DO BETTER POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

Powerful Pointers for Presenters, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, Law Practice Today, January 2007, http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/slc08051.html.

Links to resources on creating PowerPoint presentations, how to avoid “really bad PowerPoint” presentations, and presentation resources like Projector Central and plug-ins.

BOOK ON MARKETING FOR COLLEGE LIBRARIES

Petruzzelli, Barbara, ed, Real-Life Marketing and Promotion Strategies in College Libraries: Connecting with Campus and Community, Haworth Press, 2005, ISBN-10: 0-7890-3157-4, $42.95, ISBN-10: 0-7890-3158-2 (paper), $22.95.

Recommended by Chris Olson (http://www.chrisolson.com/marketingtreasures/vol15/Vol15N3JULY06.html) and that’s good enough for me.

For more information or to order, go to http://tinyurl.com/jsb9z

POSTS YOU SHOULD LOOK AT

A long-overdue update on the special library 2.0 survey
http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/?p=251
The most used 2.0 tools are RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social book marking, and IM, in that order. Post has many great ideas for uses of the above. Also, problems with implementation that you may encounter.

Service with a smile
http://circandserve.wordpress.com/2007/01/16/service-with-a-smile
Excerpt: “I think we often forget the positive experiences with patrons and only tend to remember the negative ones…I can honestly state that the patron interactions are the main reason I love working in access services.” Me, too.

Conference Speaking: I Have a Little List
http://citesandinsights.info/v7i2c.htm
Walt Crawford summarizes and comments on recent posts on the responsibilities and expectations of conference organizers and speakers. If you are planning on being either, read this post!

The endangered joy of serendipity
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/26/news_pf/Perspective/The_endangered_joy_of.shtml
One of the worst things about electronic information is that we see only what we were looking for—and not the things we didn’t even know we would find interesting. Well worth a read.

Books Mapped
http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/01/books-mapped.html
The folks at Google Book Search are now creating maps of locations found in books. When they have done this for a specific book, there will be a note on the “About this book” page. Some of the ones already done are: Around the World in Eighty Days and The 9/11 Commission Report. Absolutely fascinating.

THREE GOOD ARTICLES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

The January issue of Information World Review has three great articles. Here are some excerpts from them. I hope they intrigue you and make you read the entire article.

Why You Should Always Deliver the Punchline First

by David Tebbutt [media coach and trainer, Eastcote, Middlesex, UK], Information World Review, 12 January 2007, http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/features/2172448/why-should-always-deliver

How many times have you heard the phrase “sell the sizzle, not the sausage”? And how often do you resolve to do so to capture interest and commitment for your latest initiative? And do you succeed?
If you’re after money or commitment from a manager, your life will be a whole lot easier if you talk their language and go for something they hold dear.
Unless you find out what drives your audience, you can’t hope to interest them in your latest proposal. Once they’re hooked, you can build commitment through supporting evidence and conversation.
For example, someone figured out that internet telephony would save their company a bundle and improve productivity. That was the place to start. What they actually started with was: “I think we should introduce IP telephony.” Better to have asked: “Would you like to increase staff productivity?” Who could say “no”?

Breathing New Life into KM
by David Tebbutt [media coach and trainer, Eastcote, Middlesex, UK], Information World Review, 12 January 2007, http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/features/2172573/breathing-life-km

KM promises so much more than information management that it’s little wonder it has become so popular with suppliers and others.

The advent of social software has brought a new culture of sharing and, this time around, people are willing to give up some of their knowledge – providing it can be expressed reasonably easily. So can social software deliver the dream of knowledge management? Well, it could ensure that the term survives.

Look at the main elements: blogs, wikis, RSS and tagging. And, behind the scenes, some network analysis. When people are socialising, even in a work context, they are much happier to share their thoughts and their experiences. For the first time, the motivations of both organisations and their staff are moving into alignment.

So is knowledge management dead? Only if we want it to be. It might be better to widen the definition to embrace social computing and bring it closer to the object of its ambitions. Knowledge will never be managed but the environment in which it flourishes certainly can be.

Are Career Prospects All Doom and Gloom or a Land of Hope and Glory?

by Bobby Pickering, Information World Review, 15 January 2007,

http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/comment/2172576/training-continuing

Pickering interviewed UK recruitment and training professionals. Here are some of their comments.

The problem(s)?

Richard Pinder [TFPL]: “The continued blurring of roles in the information world means that there are more stakeholders in the information world and increasing competition for roles with others from non-information backgrounds.”

Sue Hill: “The influx of other professions and skills into information-handling roles; the continuing change of view of ‘information’ by those at board-level; the inability of many information professionals to forge strategic alliances with the business drivers; and the increased outsourcing and offshoring of information functions”.

Richard Beveridge [Tribal]: The profession is in danger of being considered irrelevant.

City Information Group: “Outsourcing/offshoring of information services and teams; the shortage of experienced and qualified graduates and staff; and the lack of management understanding of how information services can deliver return on investment, and add value.”

Kathy Ennis [CILIP] “Information services are often perceived as an overhead rather than an intrinsic part of the organisation, and therefore easier to cut” and “There is little sense of the add-on skills that a trained information professional can provide – not only skilled research, but information analysis, collation, retention and organisation.”

Hill says the legal market may have peaked. “Much restructuring is going on, but at the same time smaller firms are hiring.”

What can we do?

Beveridge: “Learn to sell to new markets within your organisation and manage existing relationships,” “Project the value or contribution of information services within the organisation and add a cash value of services where possible.”

Hill: “Out of sight and out of mind is certainly not the way to be valued.”

Pinder:“Diversify! Employers are looking for a good mix of information, IT and business skills and experience.”

Ennis:“Information professionals must market themselves and their abilities.If information professionals don’t evangelise about the service they provide, they will foster the stereotype, not get credit where it’s due, and not become involved in projects and plans to which they could easily contribute.”

CIG: Do value-added research, become a “skills chameleon,” embed yourself within the business, embrace and drive change.

The future?

Pinder: “The continued convergence of disciplines; off-shoring and outsourcing; and the opportunities available to information professionals”.

Ennis: A lot of change within formal library information services education, which will affect the number and type of graduates

SOURCES OF NON-OFFICIAL UK STATISTICS

I haven’t actually seen this book, but it looks to be very useful. It lists over 900 statistical sources from trade and professional associations, journals, banks, consultants, and magazines. One-third of the sources are free (usually on the web).

Mort, David, Sources of Non-Official UK Statistics, London: Gower, 2006, ISBN 0-566-08715-4, £75 (US$147).

NEW BLOG FROM MARY ELLEN BATES AND A NEW UK UNDERGROUND MAP

In her first post, Bates, a well-known speaker on library issues, wrote, “Primarily upon the urging of a few people I've subjected to my amusing anecdotes of life on the road, I'm starting to share my own peculiar perspective of the world with the world. I'm not sure where it will lead.” There are some very interesting observations here, including the next item.

THE REAL UNDERGROUND
The London Underground’s stylized map may distort distances. This neat tool morphs it into an accurate map. You can even superimpose a street map on the tube map. From Transport for London, a functional body of the Greater London Authority, whose mission is to implement the Mayor of London's Transport Strategy and manage transport services across the Capital.

URLs:
Bates’ blog: http://maryellenbates.typepad.com/librarian_of_fortune/
Real Underground: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/maps/realunderground/realunderground.html

E-CYCLING

“Find reuse, recycling, and donation programs across the [USA] for your electronic products. If you aren't sure what to look for in a recycler, take a look at a series of questions we suggest to ask. Want to recycle your batteries or mercury containing lamps? Take a look at our Links to other recycling and green purchasing resources. From the Environmental Issues Council, Arlington, Virginia.

URL: http://www.eiae.org/

CONSUMER REPORTS BEST BUY DRUGS

Reports on the effectiveness and relative prices for most brand-name and generic drugs. Summaries online with downloadable complete reports. And all of this is FREE!

Currently available: Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder; Overactive Bladder; Sleeping Pills for Insomnia; High Cholesterol, Heart Disease (the Statins); Asthma and Lung Disease (Inhaled Steroids); Alzheimer’s Disease Drugs; Drugs for Heartburn, Acid Reflux Disease; Migraine Headache Drugs (the Triptans); Menopause (Female Hormones); Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Drugs; Allergies, Hay Fever, and Hives (Antihistamines); Angina, High Blood Pressure (Calcium Channel Blockers); Osteoarthritis, Pain (the NSAIDs); High Blood Pressure, Heart Failure (the ACE Inhibitors); Heart Disease and High Blood Pressure (Beta Blockers); Antidepressants.
Upcoming are reports on: Drugs to treat diabetes; Blood thinners to prevent and treat heart disease; Drugs to treat severe pain; Drugs to treat osteoporosis; and Drugs to treat prostate enlargement.

URL: http://www.crbestbuydrugs.org/

NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK RESOURCES

Ideas from the Public Relations Committee, Private Law Libraries Special Interest Group, American Association of Law Libraries.

URL: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/pllsis/commgrp/LibWeek.asp

OTHER NEW RESOURCES I’VE FOUND

Top Ten Marketing Podcasts
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/top_ten_marketi.html
Although these are not aimed specifically at libraries, there’s a lot that you can learn here.

The Kept-Up Academic Librarian
http://keptup.typepad.com/
This blog from Steven Bell [Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] is subtitled “Helping Academic Librarians ‘Keep Up’ With News and Developments In Higher Education” and that’s just what it does. Very interesting and almost a must if you work in a college or university.

Circ and Serve: Service with a Smile
http://circandserve.wordpress.com
From Mary Carmen Chimato [Stony Brook (New York) University], this is a great blog or anyone in reference, circulation or ILL, academic library or not.

Online Historical Population Reports for the UK
http://www.histpop.org
Online access to the complete British population report (similar to the US Census) for Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1937—over 200,000 pages. There’s not much here for genealogists, but there’s a link on the site to some better resources.

New Online Music Repository
http://www.musopen.com
MusOpen is a “community driven, online music repository started by a music and economics college student named Aaron Dunn.” It provides free, unlimited access to music in the public domain, as well as allowing “anyone” to upload their own music. My only qualm is that Dunn will lose interest and MusOpen will fade away.

Wikiseek
http://www.wikiseek.com/
“A better way to search Wikipedia” is just that. Very useful.

WEB-BASED RESOURCES FOR MEDICAL LIBRARIANS

Health Promotion Board Information Centre, Singapore
http://hic.hpb.gov.sg
Now online is the catalog of this library specializing in health education, health promotion and disease prevention. You can search the 20,000 books for free, but need to join to borrow them (free for most, charge for corporate entities).

Norwegian Electronic Health Library (Helsebilioteket)
http://www.helsebiblioteket.no/
If you speak or read Norwegian, this could be very useful.

Course Presentations on Medical Librarianship
http://www.slideshare.net/smaccall
Dr. Steven MacCall [University of Alabama, USA] has uploaded some of his course slide presentations to Slideshare. It’s almost like being there, some say. He is a highly regarded member of the School of Library and Information Studies. Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net) also seems to have some great possibilities for resource-sharing.

Web-based Radiology Tools
http://davidrothman.net/2007/01/15/more-web-based-radiology-tools/
This post from David Rothman has links to seven online radiology resources. Point it out to your radiology department.

THE MOST IMPORTANT MEDICAL MILESTONES

The British Medical Journal has published a list of fifteen medical milestones. Readers were asked to vote on which is the most important. Here is the list, in alphabetical order.
Anaesthesia, Antibiotics, Chlorpromazine (thorazine), Computers, Discovery of DNA structure, Evidence-based medicine, Germ theory, Immunology, Medical imaging (x-rays, etc.), Oral contraceptive pill, Oral rehydration therapy, Risks of smoking, Sanitation (clean water and sewage disposal), Tissue culture, and Vaccines.

And the winner was, Sanitation, with 15.8 percent of the vote. Second place went to Antibiotics, and third was Anaesthesia.

Over 11,000 readers participated in the poll. Physicians made up nearly 29 percent of the voters; almost 22 percent were members of the public; students and researchers were also well represented; only 1.7 percent of the voters were librarians. Not surprisingly, most of the readers voting were from the UK (37.7 percent) and the USA (20.0 percent).

MINIMUM WAGE RESOLUTION FROM ALA

On 22 January 2007, the following non-binding resolution was passed unanimously:
“Resolved, that the American Library Association-Allied Professionals endorses a minimum salary for professional librarians of not less than $40,000 per year.”

You can see the entire resolution and supporting documentation at http://librarydust.typepad.com/library_dust/files/ala-aparesolution.doc

I doubt if it will do any good in the real world, however. What do YOU think?

GREAT PUBLICITY PIECE

The St. Joseph County Public Library, South Bend, Indiana has posted a wonderful list on its website and blog. It lists the “Top 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know Your Library Offered.”

10. Museum passes!
9. Art for your walls!
8. Books!
7. Movies!
6. Magazines!
5. Children’s toys and games!
4. Your family!
3. Gaming!
2. iPods! (And audiobooks to go with them.)
And the number one thing you probably didn’t know your library had:
1. Delivery! (Homebound Service, Readmobile, drive-through window)

Their list is appropriate for public libraries, but I am sure you can come up with a similar one for your own library. Take a look at it and be inspired!

URL: http://libraryforlife.org/blogs/lifeline/?p=2651

GETTING PUBLISHED 101

Rachel Singer Gordon has written a nice "step-by-step approach to professional writing for students, faculty, researchers, practising librarians and information professionals" for Emerald's librarylink program. It's not exhaustive, but pretty good.

URL: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/librarylink

GREAT ARTICLES ON LIBRARY 2.0

The latest (January 2007) issue of Computers in Libraries is wonderful! The magazine is now subtitled "The New Face of Libraries" and this issue is on Library 2.0. Here is a list of the articles:

Transformative Shaping with Instant Messaging, Wikis, Interactive Maps, and Flickr, by Darren Chase

Get a (Second) Life! Prospecting for Gold in a 3-D World, by Lori Bell, Tom Peters, and Kitty Pope

Building a Library Web Site on the Pillars of Web 2.0, by Karen Coombs

Mission IM-possible: Starting an Instant Message Reference Service Using Trillian, by Ronalee Ciocco and Alice Hull

Spam Wars: The Battle of the Formbots, by Marshall Breeding

Surfing the Library 2.0 Wave, by Terence Huwe

eLearning about Library 2.0, by Janet Balas

Introducing Libraries in Computers (a new column) by Daniel Chudnov

Get Online, Get Found, Get in the Know! by Rachel Singer Gordon

The Coombs article is available in free full-text at http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jan07/index.shtml

EUROPEAN NEWS FOR MEDICAL LIBRARIANS

I have just come across two neat resources for European medical librarians.

PubMed Central UK is now available. This free archive of life sciences journals has the searches run at the US site, but the results have links back to the UK version for the full-text of the articles. A guide to its use is also available.

URL: http://ukpmc.ac.uk

There is also a relatively new blog, european medical librarians. Its mission is stated as: “There is a strong desire for networking among European medical librarians. This blog serves as a starting point for what is at the heart of EAHIL [European Association for Health Information and Libraries, http://www.eahil.net]. Check out the post of 11 January with a link to the combined output of eight European blogs. Good stuff.

URL: http://euromedlib.blogspot.com

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO THE INVISIBLE WEB

The good people at Online Education Database (http://oedb.org) have posted The Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web. It has Background of the Invisible Web (definition and history), 9 Reasons a Web Page is Invisible, 10 Ways to Make Invisible Content Visible, How to Access and Search for Invisible Content, 15 Invisible Web Search Tools, and References and Resources.
This is a good overview.

URL: http://oedb.org/library/college-basics/invisible-web

RESUME HELP

The University of Texas at Austin, School of Information, has a wonderful site for job hunters. It has links to the presentations and handouts of the workshops on "Developing Effective Resumes, Cover Letters, and Interview Skills" and links to many other resume and career resources.

URL: http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/careers/resume_assistance.php

THREE "LIGHT" SITES

I found three humorous or just interesting sites today.

MeL Internet Humor and Culture in Libraries has links to a comic strip, funny articles on weeding, and value, books and movies about libraries, and humor from IFLA.

URL: http://web.mel.org/viewtopic.jsp?id=1164&pathid=1780

The Marginal is an e-zine from the McGill Library and Information Studies Student Association, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. There are some serious articles, some humor, and some in between.

URL: http://www.gslis.mcgill.ca/marginal/index.htm

Love the Liberry is on of several blogs from reference desk staff. Its subtitle says it all: "Stranger than fiction...we couldn't possibly make these things up."

URL: http://lovetheliberry.blogspot.com/

YOU KNOW YOU’RE A LIBRARIAN WHEN...

Michael Heileman, a “computer geek” in Copenhagen, Denmark, posted this list on his blog, Blue Magnolia. How many describe you? (I match nine of the 14.)

you worry about punctuation.
you tell people to be quiet in bookshops.
you use acronyms more than you use real words.
you know what all the acronyms you use stand for.
people are amazed that you need two degrees to stamp books all day.
you read dictionaries for fun.
you know when you’re breaking copyright law.
you’ve left your friends in the pub to go and look something up.
you can tell what someone is going to ask you by the look on their face.
245 00 $a makes perfect sense.
you have dreams/nightmares about Dewey.
you know what the last digit of an ISBN is for.
you pride yourself on not conforming to stereotypes.
you smiled at at least two of the above.

URL: http://bluenettle.blogspot.com/2005/05/you-know-youre-librarian-when.html

US STATISTICS, ANYONE?

The Statistical Abstract of the United States is available from the US Bureau of the Census, full-text, on the web. It is in the form of PDF or Excel spreadsheet files. Some of the are: population, health and nutrition, education, courts and prisons, prices, natural resources, energy and utilities, manufactures, transportation, information and communications, foreign commerce and aid, and comparative international statistics. There are also appendices or sources, state and foreign statistical abstracts, weights and measures, new tales, and index, and telephone and Internet contact numbers.

URL: http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract.html