Work Out Video for Librarians

I have had a blog post about this video saved in my reader for, well, a very long time. I finally watched it, and I recommend you do too. It's under 5 minutes in length and quite amusing.

And, of course, it's on YouTube.

I also need to work at Yale

Because there they have crazy drunken revelries complete with kettle corn, chants of "We love books!", streakers, and a midnight countdown for the opening of a new library. With over 1,000 students in attendance. And "several elbows were thrown as students tried to angle for best position in line to enter the library"!

Additionally, "Students around campus threw parties to celebrate the opening, including one in Swing Space that was publicized on an e-mail panlist."

A most excellent quote:

Said one visibly intoxicated girl as she arrived on Cross Campus, “I wish that our children were here to tell them that we were here, drunk as no other when the library opened. It’s too bad there’s no books, but we feel great.”

Talk about supporting your library.

I need to live in Australia

Because then I could watch The Librarians, a TV series (6 episodes) devoted to librarians and crazy library patrons. Of course, they are playing up the stereotype, but I bet it's funny! Read more about it here.

Update: Thank you to TB-) who has informed me that I can watch the episodes at ABC Australia's site for the show. Yay! I will have to do that soon!

Espresso Book Machine

Wow, this is pretty freaking cool! A NYT article discusses a machine that will print you out a book in less than 15 minutes. I really like that it's a way for people to get access to "those books that are out of print or for which there is so little demand that it would be too costly to print a few hundred copies, let alone one."

Library Arcade

Carnegie Mellon has created two games for research - one deals more with research questions, the other with organizing books by call number. I played the research game - not bad! Definitely worth a look! Read about the games here.

Fairfield Beach

I like this idea: using a movie to teach students some basics about the library. I also like that Fairfield Beach is a choose your own adventure type thing. Librarians wrote the script and had a student cast and film it.

I only wish I could see more of it. Watch a clip of Fairfield Beach on YouTube.

Political Wiki

Finally, just what I've been looking for: the Political Base wiki. Its aim is to collect all sorts of unbiased political information which anyone can add to. However, unlike Wikipedia, all submitted information must first go through a staff editor.

I've only taken a brief look so far, but I really like the fantastic chart for comparing the candidates. It makes it really easy to find out who supports which issues!

I have often felt I do not keep up with politics thoroughly enough to be a competent, well-informed voter. This web site looks like it will be quite helpful in that area.

Read the CNet review here.
Found in American Libraries Direct.

Search Engine for Free Full-text E-Journals

I have moved and started my new job! I didn't post for a while because, well, moving and starting a new job keeps one quite busy. But never fear, I'm back. :)

More about my new job later, but for now, I wanted to point out that I've been monkeying around with a new Google Custom Search Engine (see below in this post and also in the right-hand column of this blog). I'm now at a college that has access to far fewer electronic journals than I am used to in the wonderful land of Ohio Library Utopia. Therefore, I thought it would be a great idea to create a search engine that searches only those sites that contain full-text online journals.

I easily added all the Public Library of Science Journals. Google can search those without any problem. However, I'm having quite a bit of difficulty with Cornell's and the University of Michigan's Making of American Journals. I'm not sure if Google is just unable to search them because of the way the site is formatted, or if I'm just not picking the right URLs. With Cornell, I tried several to no avail.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Also, if you know of any online free full-text journals, send me an email and I'll add them to my search engine!

Search Free Full-Text E-Journals

Where DO short pencils come from?

I love this YouTube video (mentioned in the most recent ALA American Libraries Direct Newsletter) describing where short pencils come from.