Blogging Librarians

One of the seductive things about having a blog is checking out who checks in with you. This one has a feature that allows me to see which of my posts people want to see, and the pattern is fascinating. Lately one of the favourites is one I did last September on the iconic photo by Robert Capa taken during the Spanish Civil War, and whether fiction and/or faking can inform us about the truth. This morning I took a look to see just what people were wanting to see, and discovered to my horror that the post had several typos. For someone who ... Read Full Story

Three things this week have started me thinking about the dangers involved in consecrating all our thoughts to electronic media. The first is the latest chapter in a philosophy text that Lukas has been translating for the last several months from French to English. He’s just about done, and I’ve agreed to give it quick look to see if I can suggest any changes to make the English more readable. So far what he’s given me chapters on the presocratics, Plato and Aristotle, which reminded me that how much of the thought of the Ancients has been lost, and how much we owe to ... Read Full Story

It’s enough to make a person of a certain age do a double take: a cigarette machine in the library. Wikipedia says that the machines were made illegal in the 1980s in Canada—I can’t confirm that independently, but certainly I have not seen one in ages.   Yet yesterday there one was, near the entrance of my neighborhood library. Only this Distroboto (that’s what they’re called, apparently) wasn’t selling cigarettes. It was stocked instead with little booklings put out by a couple of avant garde publishers here. The price for each was $2, and had I not been in a hurry I would have ... Read Full Story

Ms. Julie , the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s creation, has an amusing blog entry about The Walkable City this week. She is supposed to be a hip librarian who just loves Québooks, rating them with a kiss. She also loves shoes, and likes walkable cities because she can wear fancy ones “in the kind of dense cities Mary writes about like Toronto, Paris, New York and Singapore. The distances in walkable cities aren't all that great so you can indulge your passion for pretty shoes!” You'll have to scroll down past the announcement of the short list for the QWF awards, but if you persist ... Read Full Story

When asked how to improve the Google Librarian Newsletter, the cry was "Make it a blog!" or "Send more up-to-date information." Google has taken this feedback to heart, and starting on the 17th January, the Librarian Center made its home at http://librariancentral.blogspot.com , where you'll find the latest Google news, updates, and tips relevant to the librarian community. The blog includes links to the Newsletter Archive , the Your Stories page, and the Tools and Videos sections. Source: Google Librarian Newsletter Read Full Story