Vast Active Library and Information Science blog. From a recent library science graduate in Wellington, New Zealand. A focus on reference and current awareness tools and issues, especially free, web-based resources.

 
Mamamusings is spreading an interesting meme.

Type each letter of the alphabet into the address bar of your browser. See what link is suggested.

Mine:

A = All Music Guide
B = Blogger
C = CricInfo (number 1 information site for the sport of cricket)
D = The Prison Dictionary (discussed on MeFi a while ago)
E = Erowid (drug information website)
F = Football365 (that's football as in soccer)
G = Google
H = The Beastles (mash-up album of the Beatles vs the Beastie Boys)
I = Internet Movie Database
J = Jihad Unspun (I have no idea, either)
K = Keenspace (a website for web comics)
L = LISNews.com
M = Metafilter
N = Newsnow feed for Manchester United Football Club
O = Office Museum - the history of paper clips (another MeFi link)
P = Google Print
Q = There is no Q
R = Reinvigorate.net (blog traffic site)
S = the address of a private board I post on, which I'm not going to post here because it's private
T = The Onion
U = United Rant (a Manchester United weblog)
V = The database page of my university's library
W = Woosh (my ISP)
X, Y and Z are all absent.

| posted by Simon at 8:17 pm

 
Members of Parliament are tiring of the email bombardments they get from supporters and opponents of issues such as civil unions and prostitution law reform....Cabinet ministers and MPs are saying they now give more credence to letters and faxes than to emails on some major issues.

One of the negative aspects of the internet is that it sometimes makes communication too easy. In this case, supporters or opponents of particular causes create websites that allow visitors to email every member of Parliament. Which is really barely distinguishable from spam. It's hardly any wonder that these emails get ignored.

From the New Zealand Futures Trust, via The Dominion Post. A similar point about electronic activism, aka slacktivism, is made on Snopes.

(The article also has some unkind words for the NZ Government portal).

| posted by Simon at 8:25 pm

 
Walking Paper has these suggestions, probably most suitable for public libraries. Good, common sense, and using the same technologies that patrons are already using themselves.

| posted by Simon at 5:34 pm

 
And he isn't very complementary about it - citing it for shallow coverage and for failing to provide information about what sources it actually searches.

Peter's right that (at least at present) Google Scholar is clearly not sufficient for the needs of professional researchers, though he acknowledges it could be 'good enough' for a casual user wanting 'a few good hits'. Let's remember, too that not every professional has access to every database - as a former special librarian in a small organisation, GS would have been useful to me in picking up reasonably useful material in subject areas outside our specific area of interest.

| posted by Simon at 2:41 pm

 
ALIA can do it, what chance LIANZA? After all, they already have a wiki.

| posted by Simon at 1:08 pm

 
A rather nifty post on BoingBoing about Xeni Jardin's experimentation with the automatic filter on Microsoft's blogging tool. While seemingly innocuous titles like 'pornography and the law' were banned, other, far more scatological ones made it through.

This is the reason I oppose automatic filters - they make too many mistakes, denying access to legitimate content, and failing to block some objectionable content.

The original contains some words that may be offensive. It's here.

| posted by Simon at 7:08 pm