Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I am YOUR Librarian

Show Your Faculty Some Love #3: I am YOUR Librarian

It's interesting what sticks with people. I made of point of telling the faculty in my liaison areas that I am their librarian. This is not my original idea. I read it somewhere, and I'd give credit, but I've long since forgotten where I read it.

These faculty now repeat this to newcomers - "She is our librarian." Perhaps they find it humorous, perhaps they really like the idea, the reason doesn't matter. The important part is they remember it, they repeat it, and they appear to believe it.

Works for me. :)

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To read other articles in the Show Your Faculty Some Love series, click here.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Way Sweet

To use lingo picked up from a library school friend, this is definitely "way sweet". The CONSORT Libraries (Denison University, Kenyon College, Ohio Wesleyan University, and the College of Wooster) catalog has the option to send yourself the location information of an item via a text message. For an example, see here. Click on the "?" for the disclaimer (i.e., based on your cell phone plan, you may get billed for the text message).

Don't want to write it down? Have it sent to your phone!

Is it a new feature from the catalog providers? Is it a hack? I don't know, but it sure is way sweet.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

News in 100 words or less

About a week ago, someone sent an email about Brijit to a listserv I am on.

What Brijit does: Every time a new article is published in certain magazines or newspapers, it's offered up for summarization. The number of summarizers is fixed - to about 3. These summarizers then read the article and write a long description of the article that is 100 words or less. Only one summary is chosen for inclusion on Brijit. The writer of the chosen summary receives $5.

So basically, you can pop over to Brijit and get the news in a lot less time. No longer do you have to read lengthy articles. Brijit provides the short summaries for you.

An interesting concept. Read more about it in this National Post article.

Monday, March 03, 2008