Practicing What I Preach

OK, so I started going through some of our older posts and tagging links to websites. You can access all of our tags at del.ico.us (/techview) and also keep up with our tags with the pad on the right.

Get More Out of del.icio.us

If you’ve not signed up yet, you seriously need to get over to del.icio.us and create an account to start tagging the web. If you’ve already started, you may enjoy Sean Tierney’s post on “6 ways to pimp your del.icio.us.” I’ll provide a brief summary:

Create a “toRead” tag that you can access offline (software like [...]

Skills for the 21st Century Librarian

I ran into this post on skills for the 21st century librarian over at librarian.net. One of the items they mention is a knowledge of PHP and MySQL. While I’m not a fan of PHP (C style languages confound the Java programmer in me), I think it would be useful for folks to take this [...]

Improving the OPAC – Fruits from the discussions

The discussions on the state and future of the OPAC have been quite interesting and from them I’ve been inspired to tweak our OPAC. One tweak is in production, the other I just put together as a proof of concept on our test server.
Tweak One – Simplifying search options
In a posting to the Next [...]

The Catalog Under Scrutiny Part 3

When I started this post, I thought a summary of the state of the library catalog would be a pleasant way to get started in blogging. Hah! NCSU’s new interface and Karen Schneider’s series on Why OPACs Suck had me thinking about the catalog in a new light so I started reading and [...]

Net Neutrality

I started writing this entry a few weeks ago. The deeper I delved into the topic, the more complex the entry became. Eventually I just kind of gave up since most of the arguments for and against net neutrality appear to be waged by special interest groups. However, I was watching the Daily Show last [...]

BiblioPage – New Search Service Afilliated with Amazon

In the book section of LIS News, Blake reported on BiblioPage.com, an interesting new search service afilliated with Amazon. UPDATE: A reader, Tim, points out that there is a similar service, isbndb.com. isbndb.com also gives price comparisons between various such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Abebooks, etc. Take a look at both. [...]

Free, Legal Music Sharing Ignored

I caught this one on Digg this morning…Cornell University is ending its efforts with Napster to provide students with free and legal downloads of music. Most students didn’t like the service as it only provided them with legal access until they graduated. You can read the entire story at the Wall Street Journal.

List of Blogs on the OPAC

From Life as I Know It: Thoughts from an MLS Student … comes OPAC Blog Posts – A list. I had planned to put together such a list myself but was daunted by the amount of blogging that has taken place on the state of the OPAC. Go down her list and [...]

Virtual Reference

I’ve never used a virtual reference product myself and I would be interested in hearing your reactions to this article appearing today on the Information Today web site – Virtual Reference in the Age of Pop-Up Blockers, Firewalls, and ServicePack 2. Apparently technology problems abound with the consensus among librarians that the available technology [...]