About Me
I am a librarian at Cal Poly Pomona. I have an M.S. in library and information science and an M.A. in English. This weblog reflects my interests in library & information science, literature, language, culture, and the arts. Click for my full profile.
Contact
julieshen (at) gmail (dot) com
My Tweets
Books I Like
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Also, I'm currently reading
Links
| www.flickr.com |
Archives
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Replace the word "newspaper" with the word "library" (4/15/2009) "Browsing a newspaper is rewarding and serendipitous, and doing it online should be even better. This will not by itself solve the newspapers' business problems, but our heritage suggests that creating a superior user experience is the best place to start." (Via Slate.) |
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A Netflix for books (4/04/2009) Booksfree.com offers 37 different membership options for many formats, from traditional print only to mp3 audiobooks only, with various combinations in between. |
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E-books poised for 'huge surge' in 2010 (4/04/2009) One factor is the increasing availability of titles across platforms, from smartphones such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and PalmPilot to dedicated devices such as Sony's e-readers and the Kindle. Fictionwise, the e-book purveyor acquired by Barnes & Noble for $15.7 million last month, makes titles available for 300 different devices. Another factor is increasing adoption by female customers. Fictionwise's current typical customer is "a woman, between 40 and 50 years old," whereas a typical customer just a few years ago would have been a male "gadget freak." This increasing acceptance by female readers, who constitute 55% of traditional book readers, is cited as "evidence that e-book sales have shifted away from the early-adopter stage" by Fictionwise's president and CTO, Steven Pendergrast. (Via CS Monitor via LIS News.) |
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University of Michigan Press goes digital (3/25/2009) "The shift by Michigan comes at a time that university presses are struggling. With libraries' budgets constrained, many presses have for years been struggling to sell significant numbers of monographs ... and those difficulties have only been exacerbated by the economic downturn." |
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Paperbackswap.com (3/23/2009) "Mail a book. Get a book. Any book you request is yours to keep, share or trade. No late fees. No processing charges. No hidden charges. Every time you mail a book to another member, you can request one for yourself from over 3 Million." Look! They even have an Ask the Librarian feature! |
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I joined Digg (3/22/2009) Visit my profile to see the latest articles I've dugg! |
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Are you happy where you live? (3/09/2009) If not, what are you doing about it? |
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Digital media and cultural change (3/07/2009) Fun article. I'm sure most people can relate to the change in photo printing habits, but what caught my eye was that the reporter's husband, who drove their family's digitization initiative, is a university librarian. |
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Amazon disables text-to-speech feature in Kindle 2 (3/05/2009) To placate publishers over concerns about infringement on audio rights, Amazon calls the whole thing off. What a huge loss for accessibility. |
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First World technology and Third World conflicts (3/04/2009) Did you know that columbite-tantalite (coltan), which is used in the manufacturing of mobile phones, laptops and video game consoles, is mined in Congo? Francesco Panigadi, of the Catholic Missionary Centre at Modena, said that profits from the coltan trade has fuelled one of the worst conflicts in modern African history. "About 80 per cent of coltan comes from Kiwu, the region of Congo where a civil war has cost four million lives in ten years," he said. The industrialised world's trade in coltan had financed "war and lawlessness", not only in eastern Congo but also in Rwanda and Uganda, becoming a major source of revenue for rival armed groups. |
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Abandoned school libraries (2/26/2009) Scroll about halfway down to see pictures of libraries at abandoned schools in Detroit. Very haunting, reminds me of a war zone. |
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Mendeley (2/23/2009) According to their About page, Mendeley is "free social software for managing and sharing research papers" and for "discovering research trends and connecting to like-minded academics." I think they mean business; they've signed on the former founding engineers of Skype and Last.fm's former chairman. Currently they're in Beta. |
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The Librarian Personality (2/22/2009) I took an online Myers-Briggs personality test just for fun and was amused when the test results linked to suggested careers, one of which was librarianship. Out of curiosity, I searched the site to see whether this career was suggested for any of the other personality types and discovered that indeed it was. The commonality was the fourth trait, Judging or Perceiving; for most of the librarian personalities, this was set to Judging. It doesn't mean that librarians or others with these personalities are judgmental; it means we are seen by others as preferring to have more structure in our lives. |
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Read your kids' favorite books Mad Libs-style (2/21/2009) Read the same old story but replace key words with their opposites or with silly words ... To really get hilarious, use any of the following words in place of any other word in the book: toilet, bottom, eyeball or burp! |
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Street Lit (2/06/2009) An extremely popular genre, Street Lit features young adults trying to survive in a gritty urban environment. According to a recent survey conducted by the Young Adult Library Services Association, the few respondents who chose not to purchase Street Lit for their libraries cited "no patron interest," found it "too controversial," or didn't like the "negative stereotypes." Scroll down to the bottom of the article for the 7 titles that the School Library Journal calls the Street Lit canon. |
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Google unusable for an hour Saturday (2/01/2009) Don't underestimate the importance of an hour of downtime. Last week, when my campus lost its connection to the world for a few hours, I had students panicking about how they were supposed to finish their homework for their next class. In one case I helped a student find the nearest business with an Internet-enabled computer by using the phonebook. |
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More female superhero movies, please (1/22/2009) Yes, I would watch them. |
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Reading on the rise (1/18/2009) Good news! A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts shows that for the first time in over 25 years, reading among adults is on the rise. |
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How to stretch a school library budget (12/22/2008) Space out the books so the shelves don't look too empty. Create themed sections. Ask for donations. Apply for grants. |
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Stuff found in books (12/20/2008) Bacon. Money. Insects. Real photos. Fake diary entries. |
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Blogging from My Kindle (12/09/2008) I'm using the experimental web browser in my new Amazon Kindle to access Blogger and type this entry. Fun! |
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Europeana digital library still down after November 20 launch and crash (12/04/2008) Martin Selmayr, a spokesman for Viviane Reding, the European commissioner responsible for the project, [said] that Europeana was a "victim of its success." Selmayr said the crash was caused by "thousands of users' searching simultaneously for famous cultural works like the Mona Lisa or manuscripts of literature by Kafka, Cervantes or James Joyce." A notice on the website states it will return mid-December. |
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Researchers in Virtual World Pay Subjects in Virtual Money (12/04/2008) Richard L. Gilbert, professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount, asked Second Lifers how much they'd want for an hour of their time. The average was 1,000 Linden dollars, or about $4.00. |
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More people checking out the library to save money (12/02/2008) Libraries are seeing increased circulation due to the tanking economy. No surprise there. Here are some numbers: Los Angeles Public Library - 10% increase San Francisco Public Library - 12% increase Chicago's public library system - 35% increase They're also seeing increased gate counts from job hunters who need to fill out applications online. According to Camila Alire, ALA president-elect, only 44 of the top 100 U.S. retailers accepted paper applications last year. The flip side is that libraries are also being threatened with possible closure. |
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My head exploded in October (11/22/2008) Now I know why. |
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Women and Blogging (11/17/2008) I'm saddened by the reactions to this female blogger. It seems the world really hasn't changed all that much in the last couple of centuries. |
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Check out a "book" from the Living Library! (11/15/2008) Here are the rules. Borrowing period is 45 minutes. You must return the "book" in the same mental and physical condition as borrowed. Do not hurt her or his dignity in any way. At the first Living Library in Denmark back in 2000, one of the most popular "books" was a young Arabic Muslim. The Oct. 18 event at the Santa Monica Library included a Buddhist, a nudist, a raw foodist, a fat activist, a feminist, a Oaxacan American, a celebrity publicist, a formerly homeless person, and two teenagers. (Via Library Stuff.) |
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YouTube now allows deep linking (11/05/2008) You can now link to a specific point within a video by appending additional information on to the end of the URL! To create a deep link, append the following to the end of a YouTube video URL: #t=1m15s. This says to link to the time 1:15 - you can replace the numbers before the 'm' and the 's' with anything you like. |
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"Study Abroad" in Los Angeles (10/30/2008) A growing number of U.S. colleges and universities, mostly from the East Coast and the South, are making something close to that pitch for what are in effect study-abroad programs in the Los Angeles area. And while programs in Italy often emphasize art and those in England literature, the focus here is squarely on the entertainment industry and on internships that might jump-start a Hollywood career. The only other U.S. city with so many out-of-town college programs is Washington, D.C., where political science and government are emphasized. I found the description of culture shock amusing. |
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Google Moderator (9/27/2008) According to the New York Times, Google Moderator is "free Web-based service ... that organizations can use to improve question-and-answer sessions during heavily attended meetings." After clicking around a bit, here's how I believe it works. The presenter creates a series, then sends the URL for the series to meeting attendees. Those with questions can then post them under the topic "Questions" or under topics set by the presenter. Other audience members can then vote on which questions they'd like to see get answered. The interface could be more intuitive. I especially don't like the really long URLs, and where is the delete button to get rid of excess topics? But overall it's a cool idea. |
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Copyright 2003-2008 Julie Shen