Updating to WP 2.2 today…if there is weirdness, that’s why.
More, including a review of new features, after the upgrade.
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The most excellent Tim Spalding announced today that LibraryThing for Libraries officially went live with the Danbury Library in Danbury, CT.
I’m in awe of the results.
Seriously, I’m certain this is the future of the catalog. Not just the specific tools, but the idea of leveraging one set of data against another set using easily modified and extensible tools. It’s many-pieces-loosely-joined for the OPAC, and it’s brilliant.
I particularly love the tag browser, as well as the similar books links. Leveraging the LibraryThing data is a wonderful way to start this, but eventually libraries will need a way to share in a P2P system rather than having a central storehouse. We need to be sharing our data in a P2P format, with always-on trickle-and-compare running, updating the tag clouds and recommendations. If we just managed to collect the click-through data of our catalogs, we could manage to put together some pretty robust recommendations, all driven by scholarly activity.
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More on authority
I just had to laugh at one of the more recent posts on the ACRLblog about questioning the standard spiel of authority in Information Literacy instruction. Mark Meola says:
This is very simple advice yet I seldom see it recommended outright in the checklists. It’s a tricky balancing act, but in our drumbeat for students to “use authoritative sources†let’s not forget to recommend questioning authority.
I seem to remember someone talking about it at length over the course of the last few years.
Indeed, that is the focus of an entire class that I do, using the sources on this slide (also, up for many years).
Information evaluation without reliance on authority is being taught, and I maintain it is the way it should be taught. Authority is the thing we used to have to use as an explanation, back when actual verification wasn’t possible except for those willing to spend weeks/months/years doing so. We relied on the magical word “authority” in the same way we relied on phlogiston and ether. And just like those, authority is just an explanatory shortcut that is no longer needed.
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Jessamyn gets BoingBoing’d
Check it out! Our very own Jessamyn West gets on BoingBoing, and is called an “Internet Folk Hero” by Cory Doctorow…I’ve always been a huge fan of Jessamyn, and happy to call her a friend, but my “proud to know” radar just went ballistic!
Congrats, Jess! (and if you haven’t read her Ubuntu post, or seen the video, do it now!)
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Twitter from 2007-05-06
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Twitter from 2007-05-05
Thanks to Jessamyn for directing me to lolbrarians.
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Twitter from 2007-05-04
- finishing up some long-overdue work #
- WordPress Plugins | alexking.org : http://tinyurl.com/33o3f8 #
- @dwfree: I’m having the same issues…I’d love a bit more granularity from Twitter #
- fighting a virus/spyware infection on our main reference PC #
- finalizing a few details for next week, getting ready for the weekend #
- GAIM becomes Pidgin 2.0 : http://tinyurl.com/2gmj4t #
- heading to food with friends #
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Twitter from 2007-05-03
- @jessamyn: I followed the Digg riot as it happened…was surreal to see. I LOVE the new username on MeFi. 🙂 #
- frantically busy today, one meeting after the other, running. #
- WordPress Plugins | alexking.org : http://tinyurl.com/33o3f8 #
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I think I will regret this
Somehow, I feel like Steven Cohen will make me rue the day I point this out, but there’s an amazing new WordPress plugin for Twitter from Alex King called Twitter Tools. It has the ability to post to twitter from your WP blog, from twitter to your WP blog (not sure what happens if you turn BOTH options on, besides the eventual heat death of the universe), and even has an API hook built in to further allow for Twitterific integration. Also built in is the ability to Daily Digest your Tweets on your blog as a one-shot post. Brilliant!
Will work for both Widget and non-Widget loving WP types. I just installed it, and love the flexibility and control. Check the ReadMe for more info.