Month: December 2005

Categories
Sewanee

Sewanee in the news

Two stories that mention Sewanee, both in the New York press, and both in the same week?

WTF?

In any case, they are both great reads. The first is a scathing look at academic plagiarism from the New York Press, and the second is a New York Times story (first born child required, or you could bugmenot) revolving around the culture and traditions among southern universities. The New York Times article reminded me a great deal of this blog entry, and the accompanying discussion of the Sewanee Mace, that I thought I had mentioned previously. I also stumbled across this collection of stories/photos of the Mace, which is a subsection of the Sewanee Online History Museum. Yes, you heard me right…the Sewanee Online History Museum. (Aside: Boy, could they use some web design. Having a menu at the bottom of the page? WTF?) Here’s a great picture of the Mace from the NYT site:

Sewanee Mace

Categories
Library Issues

Why no coders?

Just a quick note that in trying desperately to keep up with the ton of phenomenal writing going on in the biblioblogosphere, I somehow missed this post by Meredith that sums up some of the thoughts I’ve had about library systems departments.

I’ve wondered this myself…having gotten my degree in a department that emphasized both LS and IS, and had a significant number of opportunities to learn code, why more people with those skills aren’t recruited.

The sad fact of the matter is that it’s largely salary based. If you know PHP/MySQL/Java/AJAX stuff these days, you can make much, much, much more than any library is going to be able to offer you. I dabble in PHP/MySQL stuff, and I’m certain it was a large part of my being hired in my current position, even though I don’t directly deal with it on a day-to-day basis. But I also know that if I wanted to market myself in that way, my stock would jump quite a bit. I’m happy being a librarian, but it’s hard for a new programmer to look at $30K vs $80K and choose the $30K.

With that said…if I were a library director, I’d be scrambling like crazy for funds to hire a full time programmer. The amount of benefit there would so far outweigh the salary needs that I can’t even describe it.

EDIT: Turns out Jenny said a little something about this the other day as well.

Categories
Digital Culture Media Music

Second verse, same as the first…

A phenomenal new service launched yesterday: Mp3Tunes.com…unfortunately, I’m not quite sure how long it will stick around. Seems a bit…like mp3.com, and the lawsuit that effectively bankrupted them.

* YOUR ENTIRE MUSIC COLLECTION ONLINE
o All functions of the MP3tunes Locker work inside iTunes!
o You can store your entire music collection online with a Premium MP3tunes Locker ? unlimited storage!
o Sync your entire collection to any of your computers or devices with a Premium MP3tunes Locker
o Play your music inside iTunes or anywhere you have an Internet connection with a Basic or Premium MP3tunes Locker
o Back-up your playlists and create new ones online with a Premium MP3tunes Locker
o Webload and Sideload free music on the net directly into your Basic or Premium MP3tunes Locker
o The MP3tunes Oboe Software Suite required for backing up, syncing and playing your music in iTunes free and compatible with Windows, Mac & Linux.
o The MP3tunes Locker works with any web browser on Microsoft Windows, Apple or Linux computers.
o MP3, MP4, M4A, M4P, AAC, WMA, OGG, AIF, AIFF and MIDI files are compatible with a MP3tunes Locker

It’s an AMAZING service, though. I’d pay $40 a year just to ensure a safe backup of my music (currently over 100 gigs or so…). The streaming to any computer is just gravy. I’m tempted to try it out, and just pray when the inevitable lawsuits occur.