U.S. National Archives and Google to digitize historical films

Historical Films Set to Air Online

"The National Archives and Google have announced that they will work together to digitize historically important films from the archive's vaults. The videos -- which include newsreels from World War II and documentaries produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- will soon be available at no cost to scholars and students."

read original blog post here:
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1045

Sweet huh? Now, we can download DVD qualiy files to burn our own DVD-R's or will we be stuck simply watching low quality google video format on our desktops? If we want high quality reproductions, will be be able to get the for free or will we still have to pay for the discs? Whatever the case may br it is a step forward.

Using a USB drive at the reference desk

I got a free 128 MB usb drive at Office Depot when I bought 100 DVD-R discs. I am donating it to our reference desk since we so often have students who create huge searches with multiple files, but have no way of moving them to their laptops. An unintended technological hindrance to access is the wireless network client. In order to receive ANY network service to their laptops, students must have a client application on their machine which allows them to log in. Unfortunately, the students are missing the mobile media with which to download the client and load it on their machines. The computer center makes it available for download or gives it away on a cd IN ONE LOCATION on a big campus. We can alleviate this problem by using this donated usb drive to store and transport the client software to students who don't have it.

chicago and the library universe

Librarism has a list of Chicago area librarian websites/blogs here.
I hope he'll list meeven though this blog covers far more than the library-verse. Right now I'm totally diggin the itunes radio stream from http://www.hardrockin80s.com Hard rockin tunes from the late 80s and early 90s. OK, so I had already moved on from that phase by the 90s, but dang this stuff feeds a need every now and then.

snippets from a LITA-L post on technical skills for the librarian (a hobby horse of mine)

Thanks To Karen G. Schneider www.bluehighways.com and Leo Klein for their posts to the LITA-L listserv which prompted this blog post.



K.G. Schneider wrote:
I have experience in the library industry. Terminology, practices, and goals are really what matters for the head of library IT plus the ability to communicate effectively.

That works both ways, as well. One reason some organizations insist on an MLS is that there is the assumption that it will be easier to communicate with an MLS. (This isn't articulated in most cases, but I've definitely heard it implied in rationales for using someone with an MLS.) But this doesn't address the communication skills required by the MLS to communicate with the IT specialist, whether or not that person has an MLS. For that matter, it doesn't address the responsibilities of the MLS to understand how technology fits into the library's mission and goals and to stay abreast of the major... shall I say Top Tech Trends? :)
Karen G. Schneider
kg@bluehighways.com


Let me combine Leo's earlier statement with Karen's:


Leo said: "I'm sure requirements vary but having a 2nd Masters is par for the course in most academic places I've ever worked. I'd say far more horrifying is requiring a knowledge of "Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Javascript, HTML, CSS, Metadata, C++ and Java or Visual Basic". To which I generally reply, why not Greek and Latin as well? --LEO"


Is not this the elephant in the room?


Library education does not USUALLY include database design, scripting languages, or server administration as part of the curriculum, but any
IT employee in a library should have these skills (as a library student in 98, there was only one student who ran a linux server as extra credit. The other techy students were getting Masters of Information Science degrees). Karen's point is well taken. It is terminology, practices and goals which make a successful IT manager not a masters in computer science.


The model of the systems librarian or IT librarian has fundamentally changed. The skills for the front line worker are not taught in the library education, and the managerial skills only come from experience. Public service oriented librarians have gleaned just enough about Web services and Web 2.0 technologies to be hungry, and there is no one staffed in most libraries who has the time to help them. If there is someone who can implement open source or commercial software, it is usually because they just happen to have the skill because they are techy by nature. What libraries need now are skilled Web developers who either have the MLS or equivalent job experience, or librarians who have been properly trained in programming, networking and administration to successfully perform in house library software development.

Steve Brantley
brantles.blogspot.com

faculty status for librarians

Thanks to Will Owen and Bill Drew for their posts to the LITA-L Listserv which prompted my post.

Will Owen wrote:
Bill,

I'd like to suggest that a love of scholarship and learning, or even working as a librarian with scholars, just isn't the same as doing scholarly research yourself. Maybe even go further and suggest that most library research (or at least publishing) is quite different from academic scholarship. It's a different process, different, tools, different patterns of thought and use of resources. So a librarian with
some hands-on, first-person experience with the academic research culture /might/ be preferable in certain positions. Certainly true for the collection development position Dartmouth was advertising. And not a bad idea for the IT position, given that we are now finding ourselves in the business of supporting digitized library collections, and perhaps even participating in the creation of them. Good digital collections may add intellectual value to the materials digitized in them, and
someone with an appreciation for the scholarly apparatus again /might/
be a preferable candidate. This is not to imply as you said in an earlier post, that "This clearly shows that our own profession does not put any significant value on the MLS. " Our faculty put significant faith in our librarians' ability to manage information resources, to provide access to scholarly material, to design complex systems that aid them in their research. But they sure as heck don't think of us as their colleagues in the research process, or as scholarly researchers, and frankly, I'm inclined to agree with them. That's one of the reasons that I think that "faculty status" for librarians is a load of bollocks, but that's a whole different flame.

Will Owen
Chapel Hill

> --On February 20, 2006 11:43:10 AM -0500 "Drew, Bill"
drewwe@MORRISVILLE.EDU> wrote:

So unless one has a second masters or a doctorate one does not have a love for learning or scholarship? How about a lack of time, money or support?

&Wilfred (Bill) Drew
AOL Instant Messenger:BillDrew4
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Benjamin Franklin)

Preach it Brother Will!
I say this as a librarian at a university where librarians have faculty status and have publishing requirements. A handful of people (I can count the number on one hand) have achieved tenure in the past 14 years, whereas there have been 5 or more times as many bright dynamic young librarians who have either left before they had to deal with research and writing requirements, or been discuouraged from even applying because of the requirements. It is tragic how many good people we have lost because there is no incentive to fulfill tenure requirements. And another thing? How is it that a major university in a desireable metropolitan area cannot fill mid-level positions for lack of qualified candidates? I say the faculty requirements have a great deal to do with
it. Especially since other institutions in the same area whom offer similar salaries and benefits have applicants breaking down their doors for a manager of electronic resources position.

Steve Brantley

Critical theory and MMPORPG

The following is from the electronic journal CTHEORY. I suggested that it should be linked from the Game On blog run by Beth Gallaway

The Author is an NYU professor and a founder of the radical software group (RSG)

CTHEORY: THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 29, NOS 1-2
*** Visit CTHEORY Online: http://www.ctheory.net ***

1000 Days 033 16/02/2006 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker

~Warcraft~ and Utopia
======================
~Alexander R. Galloway~

The theme of "imagining life after capitalism" is once again the
topic of academic attention, renewed mostly through fresh interest in
certain messianic or predictive claims about the transformation of
the mode of production. Now, however, computers and the information
economy play a central role in the debate.[1] The theme of utopia, in
the work of Fredric Jameson for example, is closely tied to this
question, utopia being a site in which possible non-capitalist
scenarios are worked out, worked through, or otherwise proven not to
work at all. Here, I will examine some of the problems and challenges
for the task of imagining life after capitalism, then I will discuss
two interesting areas -- networks and play -- that have historically
represented threats to or departures from capitalism. Finally, I will
describe how networks and play have in recent decades become entirely
synonymous with the present mode of production and exchange.

Burks Oakley thoughts on "Web 2.0" transcript

Here is a url
http://www.online.uillinois.edu/oakley/podcasts/Web2.0_Transcript.html
and here is the Burks Oakley blog entry with names and urls for other "Web 2.0" software and or services