I've been writing a lot about open source stuff lately, and I find my back getting up everytime I have to refer to Evergreen or Koha as an open source ILS.

Someone asked me recently for an example of good screencast. I came across this one when I was trying to find a good way to explain a) how RSS feeds work and b) why they are so dang handy.
Thought I should share my find!

If you haven't seen the new Amazon Windowshop site, you gotta click on over right away. This is where we are going. It's a complete experience. The user has complete control plus it has audio (music and spoken word) AND it includes great CD and book cover images as well as movie clips. Using space bar to get a bigger view of the items grouped together. Click the space bar again to zoom in. It's fun, it looks great and it walks and talks and sings!
Oh, and you can click on stuff to buy it or download it.

Rather than relying on filters (which we've established are far from perfect, even in the best cases), the Senate has finally come up with an approach that makes some sense: Broadband Data Improvement Act (S.1492).

I was just reading about the Defrag Conference and wringing my hands that not a single librarian was represented among the speakers. Here's what defrag says about their conference:
Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the tools and technologies that are leveraging the "social" aspect of software to accelerate the "aha" moment. Defrag is not a version number.

I've been using the expression "learned helplessness" a lot lately because that's how I see the situation libraries have found themselves in after a decade of integrated library systems.
I find it particularly disturbing because so much of the work I do seems to bump into roadblocks that point squarely at the ILS.

RFID technology for libraries still suffers from a lack of standards. Early adopters bought tags that aren't necessarily usable with today's RFID systems. RFID readers, security systems and materials handling systems are often purchased from a single vendor in order to ensure that all the components and tags work together. Tags that any library buys today will not necessarily work with all the circulation or security components a library might like to use in the future. One of the big standards hurdles is a data model standard.

I've been enjoying playing around with Facebook the last few weeks and one of the things I really like about it is the control I have over who I connect with, information I share with different groups of people, what applications I can install and how I organize them on my public site and my internal site.
And those applications - there are tons of them because anyone can write one. Facebook provides great tools for potential Facebook developers. And each app is a breeze to install.

I recently did a delivery evaluation for the North Suburban Library System and had the opportunity to meet Sarah Long, Director of NSLS.

This whole kerfuffle over Obama's "bitter" statement demonstrates what is so wrong with the so-called journalists of today and politics in general. Here's another situation where we can only say....thank god for bloggers. Here's how David Coleman (a Huffington Post blogger) described what Obama was doing at the time the statement was made. Evidently the statement was made in response to a campaign volunteer volunteer who was going to go out and talk to Pennsylvanians on Obama's behalf.