I trust that the recent purchase of Anheuser-Busch by Belgium-based InBev had nothing to do with the collapse of the Belgian government yesterday.

Surely not.

The web is abuzz with news of Google’s new virtual reality, Lively.

Rumor is it aims to be an answer to Second Life, and iLibrarian reports that several libraries are already experimenting with the system. Librarians: bravely colonizing the new world! I love it.

From looking at the ‘about’ pages and the demo images, it looks maybe a little more cartoonish than Second Life, but with a lot of detail and customizability. It only runs on Windows XP, so my Mac is out in the cold and I can’t give it a try myself, but if anyone tries it and has thoughts, let me know!

 

Edited 7/12 because now Ellyssa at iLibrarian has a virtual faculty office in Lively, so you know it’s being investigated. And I can’t play; the envy is suffocating.

Thanks a lot for locking me out, Google! And here I thought we were friends.

I read this today. Courtesy of fark.com.

For all of my Gorgas Irregular colleagues, in light of finishing my degree requirements, I am now officially standing up (or down whichever way you look at it), to post on a more frequent basis here. It is relieving to have finished school, but as I mentioned to Dr. Aversa (the other night) it is bittersweet too because I really enjoyed attending class.

What can I say to the world about our program – it is great! I have mentioned it to several “would-be” librarians here in the Gateway city; someone may be interested in the future I hope!

That’s it! No complicated posts, no links, no comments but just the shear delight of getting on here to actually write about all things librariana (or other things sometimes

Here’s the latest on the Viacom copyright lawsuit against YouTube (and thus Google)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/07/03/youtubelawsuit.ap/index.html

Everyone’s writing about this: I want in!

I saw it first on LIS News, which notes that according to the law at the time, copyright for works published in the US between 1923 and 1963 had to be renewed 28 years after publication by the rights holder, or else the work entered the public domain.

Since a lot of rights-holders didn’t get around to submitting the form, a lot of books from those 40 years are presumably free for the usin’, but sadly, there has been no simple way to determine which ones are still under copyright since you’d have had to check with the US Copyright office, and we hate to bother them.

If only this information could be accessed right from this computer or internet-capable mobile device!

Now, thanks to the no doubt painstaking work of one of Google’s software engineers (a shout out to Jarkko Hietaniemi, everyone!), this dream that I only just realized I had is now a reality. Information about the copyright status of 1923-63 works is collected in a single downloadable file which you may access at will!

I think this is pretty cool, even though I’ve only needed this kind of information once and I was able to get it from the still-extant publisher at the time (but you never know!).

 

Anyone else seen Zoomii? Looks like a cool way to sell books. Think of what it would be like as an OPAC.

If any of you are looking to relocate to beautiful Wisconsin, there’s a vacancy in the youth services department at the local public library in Eau Claire.  It’s a great place to live, and the library here is large and well-used.

More info on the job here:

http://www.lisjobs.com/jobs/item.asp?ID=38778

I like the idea of this site, the result of a group writing project that aimed to work up 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn (courtesy of iLibrarian—which somehow makes me want to start a blog dedicated to ruling Rome, and call it iCaesar).

Riiiight…moving on, the site has pieces on using LinkedIn—which, for those not familiar, is a social networking site dedicated to professionals and designed to help them make connections, advertise accomplishments and so forth—to market a business, do research, connect with customers, polish your resume, and much more. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say there might be over a hundred smart ideas here! You know, just speculation.

I have a LinkedIn account, but admit I don’t check it that often. Sorry, everyone who’s linked to me there and whom I am blithely ignoring.

As a lean and hungry job-hunter, I should totally be all over that site right now, too, since it’s supposed to let me present myself as a gleamingly brilliant candidate bristling with achievement and potential whom no self-respecting library could wait to lure with promises of a salary composed largely of high-quality chocolate.

Don’t mind the fact that I just completely switched roles between the beginning of that sentence and the end, being first a gleaming and bristly hunter, and then a prize to be tempted with sweets: we creative, modern, brain 2.0, out-of-box-thinking types can do stuff like that.

Anyway, perhaps I shall make use of the site which is the purported subject of this post, and enhance my LinkedIn profile in some smart way.

Finally, and explanation of author order in scientific journals that even I can understand:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=562