Librarian of Fortune

the wheels of justice turn slowly

We were burglarized back in June. They didn't take much and the sheriff's office recovered the goods, along with the suspected perps. The problem? They have my nice new TV. It will sit in their evidence storage closet until the case is closed - that is, unless the perps plead guilty, we have to wait for trial and all appeals before we get the TV back. And the insurance company, of course, won't pay to replace it, since it's not LOST - just confiscated.

Bleeding-heart liberal that I am, I understand that we're all innocent until proven guilty, and it's the govt's job to prove guilt. However, I wish that we didn't have to have our stuff in storage for a year or more. A good lesson in letting go, eh?

review of Silobreaker

My latest  BatesInfoTip newsletter covers Silobreaker. But be careful... it's an attention sink!

Social Networking: a research tool

I just read an article from FUMSI, written by Amelia Kassel, on Social Networking: a Research Tool. She has some great tips for using tools - particularly LinkedIn - for finding information and contacts.

Lexis Web

AltSearchEngines just mentioned Lexis® Web, a legal-related search engine from Lexis, the Big Kahuna in online legal research. I appreciate that its search results page looks similar to the SRP on its subscription side. And interesting that they make this available to the public, unlike Factiva, which makes its business web sites searchable only within the fee-based service.

Google Audio Indexing

Marcy Phelps just pointed me to Google Audio Indexing, one of the latest tools in Google Labs. Like everyzing.com and podscope.com, it conducts audio-to-text conversion. Right now, it only looks at audio files pertaining to the US Presidential election; it'll be interesting to see how much Google opens this up to indexing/converting of other multimedia content.

Tips on not writing like a geek

Bob Berkman, whose newsletter Information Advisor, forwarded the New York Times article Circuits: Tech Terms to Avoid, which is a great rant against using tech terms, and even suggests better, non-tech terms. I don't agree with all his offenders, but he's got a good point.

Instead of "functionality", say "feature". Instead of "enable", say "turn on". Instead of "SMS", say "text message". Instead of "LCD", say "screen." etc.

Living Large in Lean Times

I recently submitted an article to Searcher magazine on how to not just survive but thrive in tight economic times. One of the things I suggested was using web-based software for specialized applications that you can't justify buying yourself. A nice list of web-based software that would be useful for info pros is here.

Yahoo! Search Builder - R.I.P.

I'm bummed! Just went to Yahoo! Search Builder to confirm something for a presentation I'm giving at the London Online show in December, and I see that

Yahoo! Search is shutting down Search Builder.  Beginning October 15, 2008, we will no longer support Search Builder.

Most of the functionality provided by SearchBuilder is available through two other Yahoo! Search services:

SearchMonkey Using a special query parameter, SearchMonkey allows you to restrict queries to your site. In addition, SearchMonkey allows you to control the appearance of your search results.

BOSS Provides API access to the Yahoo! Search index and includes the ability to restrict to up to 30 sites.

 

Too bad - I liked how Search Builder worked....

Learning with Greg Notess

I'm sitting in on a great workshop Greg Notess is giving for the Pacific NW chapter of the Medical Libraries Association. What a pleasure - I usually wind up doing a concurrent workshop when he's teaching. He is looking at embedding Web 2.0 content.

I'm playing with his examples below...

Here's a Youtube video on how to register to vote.

 

 

and even cooler - here's Kwout.com. This not only takes screen shots, but also embeds the links within the page. Wow.

MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Alzheimer’s - resources via kwout

And lots of ways to embed Flash versions of my Powerpoint presentations, with audio. Woo hoo!Can't try it right now, as I can't get web access on my own laptop.

And here's an embedded Flickr image, of my Librarian Trading Card:

And I'm having a great time playing around with Zoho's Show collaboration tool, which lets you create a Powerpoint presentation and save it in any of a bunch of formats - HTML, PPT, PDF, etc.

And I'm creating a pre-workshop questionnaire with Google Docs, that I'll use for my Searcher Academy workshop.I'll be able to see a spreadsheet of the results.

If you're attending the Searcher Academy, fill this out, OK?

Phil Bradley rocks

Greg Notess just pointed me to Phil Bradley's "I Want To" blog page, that collects together Web 2.0 resources to help collaborate, communicate, discover, email, laugh, generate images, podcast, use multimedia, store photographs, use RSS, internet search, shop, create start pages, store information, time management, train, teach and do things with webpages and websites. The format is similar to Open Directory Project.