You know it’s April 1 when the folks over at teevee.org do their April Fools issue. Last year’s was a Wikipedia spoof; this time around we’ve got a TV-centric New York Times issue. Complete with ads, editorials, a premium section, and even a few wedding announcements.
The Cheney article is priceless (Morgan dismissed concerns regarding the precarious state of Cheney’s health. “Given our standard contract,” she said, “that shouldn’t really be an issue.”) . Here are some other must-reads:
If you have a few minutes, stop by the House Judiciary website and check out the 4 PDF collections of e-mails and memos, mostly between Supreme Court Justice Harriet Miers, one her deputies, and the just-resigned D. Kyle Sampson (chief of staff to Atty General Gonzales). It’s a timeline of the events leading up to and following the dismissal of the seven/eight US Attorneys–including candid comments to contingency plans for dealing with fallout and criticism over the firings. The first big money quotes pop up around page 20 of the 1st PDF (dated Jan 11, 2006).
Regardless of your political leanings, it makes for some fascinating and disturbing reading.
I’d take Viacom’s lawsuit more seriously if they had filed it before Google bought YouTube–just saying. But I guess they didn’t want to go through the trouble of suing a “dot-com” unless they were sure it actually had some money.
At the social software/media-sharing (library staff development) workshop I taught 2 weeks ago, I mentioned that one of the “Big Media” would file against Google/YouTube sooner rather than later.
I’m not the swiftest when it comes to using my iPod (Instructions? huh?), as I only recently discovered that I can shuffle songs for a single artist.
This morning’s “First Ten”
- Shambala (Bodhisattva Vow chanting + 70’s whacka-chicka beats)
- So What’cha Want (always think of Beavis & Butthead watching the video and asking if it’s the Weather Channel)
- Brass Monkey
- Ch-Check It Out
- Get It Together
- Car Thief
- Flute Loop
- Root Down
- Jimmy James
- Fight For Your Right
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Now you can create your own Colbertesque (Colbertian?) “On Notice” board.
If there was room: the kid next door who doesn’t clean up after their sharpei, drivers who cut me off when I have the right-of-way to cross the street, Tom Cruise, Ann Coulter, and everyone claiming to be the father of Anna Nicole’s baby.
Circuit, the shared library service for the large SD libraries, just got a lot cooler with the addition of the San Diego County Library in the mix. UCSD users can now request books (not media) from the SDCL and pick them up at the UCSD library branch of your choice. For my reading, it’s great for 2 reasons:
- Recent and semi-recent fiction, mysteries and sci-fi that didn’t make it to the CLICS Browsing Collection or any of the other UC’s, but I don’t want to have these ILL’ed. Here’s one example, which I just got yesterday via Circuit.
- Comic Books and Graphic Novels. There are a few series that I am committed to buying when new volumes come out: Queen & Country, Strangers in Paradise, Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Powers, The Walking Dead… However, there’s a lot out there that I just cannot afford to buy–mostly on the superhero and manga sides of the comic-verse. The SSHL and AAL get some good titles, and some great stuff has come in at CLICS like Guy Delisle’s Pyongtang, but if I want to start reading Ultimate Spiderman or Whedon’s new X-Men series I’m outta luck.
And so yesterday my first one arrived: Volume 1 of Runaways, which I finished this morning on the bus. Teens finding out their parents are a team of supervillains–outstanding!! I’ve already requested Volumes 2-5, plus a few others.
Brian Unger (NPR’s The Unger Report) waxed poetic about the yet-to-be-released iPhone and the myriad of features that will undoubtedly dazzle and astound us. You can listen to the 5-minute report, and it’s also available as a podcast.
Heck with mashing potatoes, I’ll wait for the next generation iPhone that’ll walk our new dog at 11pm.
I normally avoid these web quizzes, I couldn’t resist this one.
Your results:
You are Spider-Man
| Spider-Man |
|
75% |
| Hulk |
|
60% |
| Superman |
|
55% |
| Robin |
|
48% |
| Iron Man |
|
45% |
| Batman |
|
45% |
| The Flash |
|
40% |
| Green Lantern |
|
35% |
| Supergirl |
|
33% |
| Catwoman |
|
30% |
| Wonder Woman |
|
8% |
|
You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.
 |
Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz…
Where are the journals?
This is one of my favorite reference questions, because it’s a fantastic example of why the reference interview (that exchange between reference provider and patron) still matters. I like it because often, it’s not the question that the patron’s really asking . Your job is to ask them the questions to get to their real question.
This afternoon, a student comes up to the circ desk asking where the journals are located. The student assistant helping her tells her the current journals are on this floor, the bound journals are downstairs, and she can look them up in Roger to get the call numbers. As the student heads for the stairs, I get her attention and ask if she’s looking for a particular journal.
And it turns out she didn’t need journals at all. She’s in the first-quarter organic chem laboratory course and needed to find the IR for 2-methylbenzamide. We searched some print and online resources, found the IR in two locations (Sadtler and the NIST Chemistry WebBook), and she left a happy patron.
The experience also reinforces how cool it is to share a service desk with the circ/reserves people. Few months ago, I would’ve never even heard the question being asked.
The SSH Library just received the 16-volume set of 05/06 salaries for UC employees, which are available for 3-hour checkouts. It’ll be interesting to see how much use they get.
We had a similar set at Georgia State, and every reference librarian knew where those beige books sat on the shevles because we had so many patrons ask for them. The first time I looked through the book, I checked out some of my old UGA professors, and then-Athletic Director Vince Dooley (who only received $300 from the University System of Georgia that year). And it was weird to be able to compare salaries among the GSU librarians. Since our faculty rank had no real bearing on salaries, you’d see serious fluctuations among the librarian-instructors. It added a level of transparency that was illuminating to say the least.
Having the salary books here will be a little different. First, salaries are tied to a more structured (asst/assoc) librarian ranking system. Second, the listings aren’t online. Yet.
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