Librarian's Rant

I discovered this a bit ago, but forgot to post it. Flickr posts in 'real-time', linked to where in the world they're being posted from. Kinda cool, and rather distracting on a hot Monday afternoon. Here's a shot I grabbed, coming from NW Europe:

Well, of today anyways. From a column by Frank Rich (require NYTimesSelect account), discussing Monica Goodling's dubious educational background and probable criminal handling of the U.S. Attorney reviews:

"Though the Monica at the center of the last presidential scandal did enable a husband’s cheating on his wife, at least she wasn’t tasked with any governmental responsibility more weighty than divvying up pizza."

The victim in this story from KC was a former classmate of mine. Nice guy, married with three kids. I'd hoped to see him at our reunion in 2 weeks. Tragic and sad.

Forwarded to LU, blog post from The CarpetBagger Report on what one blog called "Ashcroft and the Night Visitors". I don't know about Ashcroft and 'integrity'. I agree with one of the commenters - Ashcroft was already up to his crucifix in crap and didn't need to get any further. He'd already signed off on it previously. I do know that AG Gonzales is a yes-man and, probably, a criminal. Too bad no one talked about this when he was getting soundly confirmed.

Wonderful tongue-in-cheek "public service announcement".



Thanks to Michael for this one.

Looks like YouTube has finally caught on to a basic function of what the 'social web' and added a Friends function to their website.

I'm weez42, in case you're interested

They've probably had it for a few days...but I've been buried in New Website Launch Hell for nigh on a week. Think good launch thoughts at me on Thursday! Bah.

Bill and Gene over at Unshelved made a free downloadable Unshelved comic book called What Would Dewey Do @ Book Expo America? (Warning: it's a PDF). Over 5000 downloads so far. They will also be raffling off a grab bag at BEA containing one of everything they sell. If you're going to Book Expo America, say hi for me!

The more I hear from Gov. Bill Richardson, the more impressed I am. And he has a sense of humor - check out this new ad showing here in Iowa (and online).

Via a post on the Library Underground page: a Map of Online Communities and Related Points of Interest.

I want to swim the Blogipeligo!

But I'm afraid I might simply be bobbing in the Bay of Angst.

We're having a weird problem related to our time/print management software (Comprise's SAM, for our sins). Basically when patrons open Internet Explorer, they don't see the address bar and can't pull it up (toolbars locked). Anyhoo... this is freaking out patrons way more than I would ever have expected. Here are some of my favorite freak out lines:

"The Internet is down!" or (a favorite) "The Internet is BROKEN!" This freaks US out until we realize that there are several dozen people happily surfing.

"All I get is a library page. I never got that before! What did you do?!" For the record, they got our home page EVERY TIME they sat at one of our computers for the last 10 years. They just didn't notice it on their way to Yahoo! and Hotmail. Yeah, that makes my hours and hours and hours of work on the website sooooo satisfying!

And my favorite, which just happened today:

"How do I get out to the REAL Internet?" Dude! Our website is on the InterTubes, I promise!

I am so sick of this problem.