links for 2008-04-04

• RSS 2.0 Specification (version 2.0.10)
  (tags: blogging rss web)
• Making An RSS Feed
  From Search Engine Watch
  (tags: rss web blogging)

Update on BPL’s Flickr project

My friend Michael at BPL emailed this morning with an update on the BPL’s Flickr project. They’ve loaded a bunch more collections (including some awesome old New England postcards), and enabled tagging & commenting.

Jessamyn beat me to the punch* and posted the whole rundown (Michael emailed the two of us because we both posted it — Jessamyn originally picked it up from me, which is weird but cool) so I’ll just link to her post.

I just think this whole project is so cool, and I’m psyched that I know the librarian responsible! The images are just fantastic and it’s so exciting that the number of people who will see them is just going to explode because they’re up online in such an easily accessible way.

I’m already scheming about what sort of project I can make with the images of these postcards. I think it’d be cool to frame a little series of them or something. Go here to check them out.

* I was on the reference desk when I got Michael’s email, and just afterwards got three simultaneous questions through our virtual chat reference system. Three! At once! That kept me busy for a while.

Popline blocking searches for abortion resources

Popline, which I previously hadn’t heard of, bills itself as “Your connection to the world’s reproductive health literature.” The site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The gist of the current news, according to Wired, is that USAID currently has a policy to deny funding to non-governmental organizations that perform abortions or promote them as an option. JHU has apparently decided to stop returning results on searches for “abortion” since they are funded by USAID.

My friend Ellen has already put together some information & screen shots here, check them out. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out in the next couple of weeks.

3:17 PM — Edited to add:

ResourceShelf reports that “abortion” has been removed from Popline’s stop word list (words ignored when you search for them — typically things like a, and, the) and posts a response from the Dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Read more here.

Jumping for Joy @ Your Library

A coworker sent these links out today. Neat stuff, (though nightmare-inducing for library administrators who have to consider insurance & etc). The second one is a bit low-res.

Rappelling in UK Library:

Base jump from 21st floor of the Moscow University library:

links for 2008-04-02

• Missouri River Regional Library Policies
  Policies for MySpace & Facebook pages.
  (tags: web2.0 policies libraries)

Public Relations Librarians

We seem to be scarce — the listservs I’ve found appear to be all but dead, and I’m not coming up with much when I poke around online looking for us. I know there are more librarians out there whose primary duties (or a significant part of their job) are public relations and marketing at their library. Are you out there? I would love to be in touch with you, either informally or maybe setting up a Google Group or reviving one of the lists I’ve found.

Personally, I’m especially interested in talking to public relations librarians at academic libraries. Most of the literature I’ve found focuses on special and public libraries, and while some of the information and ideas might still work, I think there are additional opportunities and concerns in an academic library setting.

The month in books: March

Here’s what I completed in March. My take on each of these can be found on Goodreads.com (I can’t link directly to my review for a given book, so I haven’t bothered to link at all. But if you’re on Goodreads, friend me and you can see them.)

• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon
• Down & Dirty: 43 Fun & Funky First-time Projects & Activities to Get You Gardening, Ellen Zachos
• Everyday Pasta, Giada DeLaurentiis
• Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
• Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories, John Klima

A little less this month than the last three — I got bogged down in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union as I didn’t like it all that much. (Excuses, excuses.)

Boston Public Library on Flickr

I have a friend who works at the Boston Public Library, and he recently emailed several of us to let us know that a project he’d been working on has come to fruition. In his own words:

I’ve been working on a Flickr API application that will take a bunch of the items in the Boston Public Library Digital Collections (not yet online) and push them, with full metadata, to Flickr.

This is pretty cool, if you ask me. The collections that he’s gotten online so far include a bunch of cool WWII propaganda posters, some old posters from Boston Brewery, and a cool collection of early Boston baseball photos.

I know there are still some skeptics who don’t see the use in putting this kind of stuff on Flickr — why not put it in your own digital library, or just up on your website? — but I think it’s really neat. It gets these things out into a pre-existing community, and makes it super easy to link to them, blog them, and the like. In this case, the metadata is included, which means you can see all of the important information, like the accession numbers, description, subject headings, etc. Currently they haven’t enabled tagging & commenting, but once they do it’ll be really neat to see what other information the community can add to this.

For those who may have missed it, the Library of Congress is doing something similar.

Chuck Norris research tip

1. Go to Google
2. Type in: find chuck Norris
3. Click the “I’m feeling Lucky” button

Be sure to appropriately cite your sources.

links for 2008-03-18

• USC Libraries :: Leavey Library
  Auditorium use policy.
  (tags: policies libraries publicity)
• Georgia Tech Library :: Event Space Reservation
  Includes descriptions of rooms & setups, with photos.
  (tags: libraries publicity policies)
• USA Library Instructional Media Center
  Policies for use of auditorium.
  (tags: libraries policies publicity)
• Ekstrom Library
  Auditorium use policy.
  (tags: libraries publicity policies)