So what happens when they run completely out of ideas for slot machines?
You get this.
My absolute favorite machine in Vegas…just seeing it makes me chuckle.
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WANTED: TWO LIBRARIANS
Below you’ll find the formal announcement of two tenure-track librarian positions at UTC, but I wanted to just add a note about the Web Technologies librarian position. This is a position in my department, and I am looking for someone willing to push the boundaries of library services…I am serious in the long description when I say that I want someone willing to push UTC into the future of services. The hiring committee may disagree, of course, but my goal is to build a team that can move forward with innovative patron focused technology.
WANTED: TWO LIBRARIANS COMMITTED TO THE USER-FOCUSED LIBRARY
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Lupton Library invites applications from energetic, collaborative and forward-thinking professionals to fill two tenure-track vacancies on our team.
Reference and Instruction Librarian
The Reference and Instruction Department is seeking a creative and student-centered librarian to join an engaged and progressive 7-person team with a strong customer service focus. The position reports to the Head of Reference and Instruction Services. The position’s responsibilities will include: regular reference desk shifts, user instruction both in the classroom and one-on-one settings, active participation in the development of teaching materials and research guides, creation and maintenance of website content, subject-specific collection development responsibilities, and participation in faculty liaison and outreach activities.
Web Technologies Librarian
The Information Technology Department is seeking an innovative and web-savvy librarian to join its growing technology services team. The position reports to the Head of Library Information Technology. The position’s responsibilities will include exploring, testing, and implementing new and existing web based services in the Lupton Library such as: a new dynamic PHP/MySQL based library web site, blogs, wikis, hacking the library OPAC to better serve our patrons, web-based media for podcasting/vodcasting, developing digital repositories, and using browser based technologies to improve our patron experience and push Lupton Library to be a leader in library technology.
A review of applications will begin March 15, 2007 and will continue until the positions are filled. Interested applicants should submit a letter of application including the position of interest, vita, and the contact information for three references including the professional relationship of applicant to reference. Send materials to: Anna Lane, Lupton Library, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 615 McCallie Ave, Chattanooga, TN 37403; fax materials to 423-425-4775 attention Anna Lane; or email to anna-lane@utc.edu.
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A week between posts
It’s been a week since I last got up the gumption to post here, mostly due to the ongoing issues with WP2.1. I’m a HUGE WordPress fan, and have been using it for this very blog since 1.3 or so. The additions to 2.1, for the most part, are welcome and needed, especially the auto-save feature. But it required far too much of my time figuring out how to get my links back into shape (they killed certain php calls in the code), and I still haven’t gotten my byline happy.
The byline on my site was being ran by having a random named link called from the links function of WP…things like “where no one notices the contrast of white on white” and “it’s the one that says Bad Motherfucker on it” were randomly inserted below my title. But now, because they’ve broken the title_li php function in their code, I can’t surpress the “Byline” heading of the category when I try and place the links there.
In all, it’s been very frustrating.
But, good things are coming. I’m on the way (tomorrow!) to Vegas, Baby!, for a much-needed vacation. So expect some pics and stories (well…some stories). Also, I’m working on an interesting analysis of the first foray into Podcasting by myself and my buds over at LITABlog…some cool stuff there as well.
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What does a BoingBoing look like?
Just a few days ago, a post showed up on BoingBoing. For those of you who haven’t had this happen, it can be great (lots of people reading my stuff!) and terrible (the /. effect, aka: melty servers). I just looked back over my raw hits to see how much of a difference BoingBoing made. Here it is, in all its naked glory:
So I went from around 3000 hits a day to about 65,000 hits in a day. If your server isn’t ready for that, it can come as quite a shock. Luckily for me, Blake Carver and LISHost are amazing, and kept my blog up for the entire process.
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WordPress 2.1
Well, I upgraded to the latest WordPress release, and it brought with it broken. I had used the php function get_links for a TON of customizations on my blog…my sidebar, my random byline in the header, a couple of pages…and what did they do? They killed it. The call is now wp_list_bookmarks, and the options are less straightforward and I’m still not sure I can do what I want with them.
Just as a warning to anyone else who might be upgrading, if you’ve done a lot of customization with the links, beware the upgrade. And if anyone has any thoughts on getting the new system to behave like the old, let me know.
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Prior art
As many people in the comments of my State of the Union Tag Cloud post pointed out, there’s a FAR better example of this over at chir.ag, with his slider-based interface of all of the presidential addresses since 1789.
I don’t think I’d seen this before, but it’s entirely possible. So props to chir.ag for coming up with the idea way before I did…and with a better interface. sigh
Lately I’m really digging Tag Clouds as information sources of their own, and not just a reflection of a source. For instance, check out the tag cloud for the President’s State of the Union from last night, and see what’s important at a glance…note the difference in frequency of “war” and “security” or “terrorists”.
Welcome to the BoingBoing crowd…thanks for stopping by!
against al america americans better border business care children citizens congress continue country duty east economy enemy extremists face federal fight five forces free future given goal government health hope house insurance iran iraq iraqi kill law leaders life lives local middle million nation oil opportunity others people plan protect pursuing qaeda reform requires safe security senate share shia states step struggle supply support tax terror terrorists tonight united vote war work world years yet
created at TagCrowd.com
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Seattle, ALA MidWinter 2007
I’m in the pacific Northwest, at the ALA Midwinter meeting! Had a good conference so far, but yesterday the jet lag got to me. It’s only two hours, but it’s the two hours that made me wake up at 5am, and wouldn’t let me go back to sleep.
Took some great shots of the city yesterday, and of Pike St. Market (you know, the famous one where they throw the fish around). Here’s a few of my favorites:
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Collaborative Genealogy
Web 2.0 has now brought us a collaborative genealogy site in Geni.com. It popped up in my del.icio.us search today, and I thought I’d take a look.
That’s the interface screen, which begins with you signing up for the site. Doing so begins your tree, and allows you to branch off by clicking the yellow arrows for different relationships (up for parent, down for child, sideways for spouse or sibling). The bit of brilliance is that the field for names includes email, and the recipient can automatically sign up and become part of your tree. It’s a combination of viral and collaborative, and a brilliant way to do genealogy.
There’s also a “background” profile where you can give more info, contact information, etc, so that anyone in your tree can contact you. You can also add photos to your profile, so the entire thing can become a sort of name prompt for those family reunions.
Problems? Well, some families are a lot more complicated than this. My biggest complaint, and I can’t honestly believe they did this, is that the sideways arrow doesn’t prompt for “spouse”, it reads the sex of the selected person and prompts for “husband” or “wife”. Sexism ahoy! They should really change the prompt to Spouse, and allow a radio button for the sex of the spouse. As well, for complex child relationships, it kind of falls apart…step-children aren’t part of the tree either.
The technology and concept is amazing, and if they tweak a few interface issues, I think this is a huge Web 2.0 winner in the making. It’s a social network limited to your family, and a collaborative content creation system all in one. They need to add abilities to export the data, or import from existing genealogy services and much more detailed noted fields (not up front in the tree, just behind the scenes) this might become a huge draw. The best thing they could do is publish an API, and allow for other tools to leverage the information…imagine being able to crawl the tree with an API and generate other bits of info from it.
All in all, a great Beta product, but needs work before hitting the bigtime.
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The Jesus Phone
My favorite iPhone reaction:
