DP Mail co@o@@@@@ *KA2> )z4DDDDXTDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDAϵDDDDDDDDDDDDDZ'DDDDDDDDDDDDEDDDDDDDDDDDF0DDDDDDDDXDDDDDDDD4DDDXD: DDDDFLEDDDDDDDM D4DDDDDDLD4DC DDDDDI0 DDDIDDDDDDDDDD$DDD!DDDIDE DDJUTDDLD8KDD2ˬtRJ* Dm333,G0.MDJDDDDDD}DDD DDDD\i tDD~DDDD{L6DDDKDDDDD\JDDDDD0DDDDu DDDDDDDDDD&DDDDDDLDDDDDDDDDDDD0DDLDDDDDDDDDI0 DDDDDDDDDLDDDDDDDDDDDEн'DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDKDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDi SIZE4 7/31 :August 1 NeatNew and ExLibrisStatus: RO Return-Path: Received: from barman.freepint.com ([62.232.11.131]) by robin (EarthLink SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 19Ic0x3PQ3NZFjX0 for ; Thu, 31 Jul 2003 04:54:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from maillisterrors@localhost) by barman.freepint.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) id h6VBs8Y03302; Thu, 31 Jul 2003 12:54:08 +0100 Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 12:54:08 +0100 Message-Id: <200307311154.h6VBs8Y03302@barman.freepint.com> To: insidiousplot@earthlink.net Subject: August 1 NeatNew and ExLibris From: Marylaine Block Reply-To: Marylaine Block Errors-To: maillisterrors@freepint.com X-Mailer: Free Pint Service X-Freepint-Timestamp: 1059652448 X-Freepint-Group: marylaine X-Freepint-Identifier: 2735 NEAT NEW STUFF, AUGUST 1, 2003 AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety Senior Driver Website http://seniordrivers.org/home/toppage.cfm A.K.A. SeniorDrivers.org, this site offers tips to keep your driving skills sharp, as well as state by state listings of available transportation programs for seniors American Planning Association http://www.planning.org/ Resources for planners and anyone who cares about the future of their communities include a searchable index of articles from their library, legislation tracking and policy guides to such topics as smart growth, housing and surface transportation, and links to useful documents, statistics, and other resources. EFF: RIAA Subpoena Database http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaasubpoenas/ If you download a lot of music, you might want to check here to see if the RIAA has issued a subpoena for your file-sharing user name. Found Magazine http://www.foundmagazine.com/ "we collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles- anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. anything goes..." An intriguing way of understanding the everyday lives of ordinary people. Free Range Librarian http://frl.bluehighways.com/ Karen G. Schneider's recently restored soapbox. HEARTH: Home Economics Archive [Cornell] http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/index.html "a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Published between 1850 and 1950, these titles were selected by teams of scholars for the great historical importance they hold." Topics in the searchable database include applied arts and design, child care, parenting and human sexuality, clothing and textiles, food and nutrition, home management, etiquette, hygiene, consumer education, and more. LII Subject Guide for Mysteries http://lii.org/search/file/mysteries A guide to booklists and bibliographies, famous characters, history of the genre, author interviews, reviews, mystery reading groups, and more. National Portrait Gallery [UK] http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/ "The online database contains information on 45,199 works, 21,821 of which are illustrated; the National Portrait Gallery's collection includes over 310,000 works." Search by sitter, artist, or portrait. New York Times: First Chapters http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/chapters/index.html Allows you to sample selected works to see if you want to read the entire book. Opinion-Pages http://www.opinion-pages.org/ The Wall Street Journal allows you to search editorial and opinion pages from over 600 publications around the world, and over 200 Letters to the Editor pages. Religion & Ethics Newsweekly [PBS] http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/ Includes news stories, feature articles, video and audio archived features, and topical archives on bioethics issues, the church crisis, and September 11. Reporters Desktop http://www.reporter.org/desktop/ Has forms for directly searching a variety of search engines, databases, dictionaries, and free news archives. Especially check out his guide to public records searching, "Who Is John Doe and Where To Get the Paper on Him." State by State Report on Permanent Public Access to Electronic Information http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/aallwash/State_PPAreport.htm Check this out to see whether your state government is on top of this issue. Word Wizards: the Canadian Online Language Toolkit http://www.wordwizards.gc.ca/ Includes dictionaries, style guides, spell-check and grammar-check software, translation tools, glossaries, and more, designed for bilingual Canadians. You're welcome to copy and distribute this listing for non-commercial purposes as long as you retain this copyright statement: Neat New Stuff I Found This Week http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2003. [Publishers may license the content at reasonable rates.] Six months worth of Neat New Stuff is available on the web site. **** SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION The list is now being handled by the helpful folks at FreePint -- http://www.freepint.com/bulk TO SUBSCRIBE, fill in the form at http://marylaine.com/subscrib.html and click on SUBSCRIBE TO LEAVE THE LIST, fill out the form and click on UNSUBSCRIBE. TO CHANGE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ADDRESS, use the form to subscribe under your new address and unsubscribe the old. **** ExLibris #185 Permanent URL http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib185.html A complete archive is available at http://marylaine.com/exlibris/archive.html CREATING YOUR NICHE ON THE NET by Marylaine Block I always tell people that I'm an internet guru by default. I'm not the most knowledgeable, or the most technologically adept internet librarian; I was just one of the first, building Best Information on the Net back in 1995 when there were hardly any other selective annotated directories of quality web sites. And you know something? If you're first, you don't have to be the best possible. Hershey's didn't advertise for the first hundred years of its existence and it was still number one, because it was first. Being the first to perform a particular kind of service, or address a particular issue, gives you ownership of it, and makes you the person reporters put in their rolodex. Of course some of the first librarians dipping their toes into the net WERE the best possible. In 1997, no librarian had done a systematic study of the different content filter systems, so Karen Schneider started TIFAP, the Internet Filter Assessment Project, and became the person everybody went to for expert advice on library filters. Gary Price, with all his web sites and the book he wrote with Chris Sherman, became the acknowledged expert on The Invisible Web. Charles Bailey is the recognized authority on scholarly publishing online because he started the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography back in the days of telnet, and is still publishing it, along with the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog . Bernie Sloan has cornered the market for research on digital reference , Eric Sisler has became the best-known expert on Linux in Libraries , and Bill Drew has become the guru of Wireless Librarianship . Rory Litwin staked a claim on progressive librarianship at Library Juice , as did Jessamyn West at . And those are just a few. I could name lots more. The moral is, get in on the ground floor. If there's an issue you care a lot about and nobody else is addressing it, start a weblog or a web site, and get me and Jessamyn and Blake Carver of LISNews.com to announce it. Bingo, you're now the expert on it, unless you fall on your face in public. It's a great career move, because you can use it, as I have, as a platform from which to build a career writing books and articles and speaking at conferences. On the basis of her web work, Jessamyn became a very logical choice to edit Revolting Librarians Redux [see http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib180.html]. Genie Tyburski and Gary Price have also become regular and welcome speakers at professional conferences. But let's take this a step farther and think about what internet niches our LIBRARIES could fill, what unique services we could render that would make librarians the go-to people for our bosses and for our local community. Yes, of course, we're already performing a number of those, what with the databases we license and offer for free to our users, and our web pages of business resources and health information and reader information and such. But we don't OWN those services, since many other people provide similar ones, and the information is not clearly vital to our entire community. Think about what we did right after September 11: we put up web pages that consolidated many different kinds of information, including some that most people wouldn't have even thought to look for. We linked in news stories (both from the US and abroad), contact information for charities, schedules of local memorials, maps, articles, and backgrounders on terrorism and Islam and the middle East. We could do the same for other pressing local issues for our community or company or school. Finance is a tough issue for everybody right now, and we have access to a wider variety of information and news than anybody else has, about state and federal funding, grant and training opportunities, and good ideas others in our situation have implemented. We could bring that all together on one web page, or blog or e-mail newsletter, and update it daily. If there's a major local controversy, we could post background information and links to news stories, position papers and interviews by the people involved, a discussion board where citizens could post their questions and opinions, maybe even a library-sponsored webcast. (In fact I assume at least some California libraries are already providing extensive information on their web sites to help voters make decisions about the recall petition.) In my town, whether or not it's in flood stage, the Mississippi River affects every aspect of our community -- its economy, transportation, water supply, recreation, and more -- and yet no one source consolidates all the information we need about it. News, statistics, flood prevention and relief information, documents, maps, and laws and regulations, are generated by Congress, the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, the Department of Transportation, FEMA, equivalent agencies from the surrounding states and their legislatures, newspapers, magazines, journals, and professional associations, and other sources. If my local library put together a page that guided people to ALL the information about the river, that would be an utterly unique, personalized service for the Quad Cities, providing value to business owners, the military, planners, utility providers, and the entire power structure of local government on both sides of the river. Librarians could add an FAQ file, and even a weblog and e-mail service with frequent news updates. The library would OWN that information niche. Similarly, any library in California could assemble an equally complete data file on earthquake information, with the community and state disaster plans, geologic maps, contact information for relief agencies and insurance companies, etc. Given that communication lines could be severed in an earthquake, librarians could even post a map of wi-fi hot spots where people could connect for information. The web is too useful a tool to waste. And being first to provide an important service is too valuable an opportunity to waste. By all means, we should use the web to stake our claim on a particular information niche and make ourselves known to our peers. But more importantly, we should use it to stake our library's claim to the right to exist, by providing information that is absolutely critical to our community, right now, and then promoting it like crazy. Because once they see us as the indispensable source for THAT information, they might just stick around to see what else we have to offer. * * * COOL QUOTE: Whats in old libraries? You dont know until you find it. But in order for that to happen, you have to preserve the old holdings and original documents. You also have to keep the library from being burnt. Until last week, the holdings of the National Library in Baghdad were part of the common inheritance of human civilization. We know some of what was lost. Well never know all of it. Teresa Nielsen Hayden. from Making Light, April 21, 2003. **** You are welcome to copy and forward any of my own articles for noncommercial purposes (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement: Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies. http://marylaine.com/exlibris/ Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2003. [Publishers may license the content for a reasonable fee.] Please do NOT copy and post my articles to your own web sites, however. Instead, please copy a brief excerpt and link to my site for the remainder of the article.