Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

I am so, so jealous. NYPL’s new website is not only pretty to look at, the navigation is intuitive! It gives all of us something to aspire to…

IBiz’s virtual laser keyboard has been released. At $99 a pop, it’s an expensive toy, but hey–it’s cool. Jenny Levine asks if buying this baby means you’re a gadget whore. LiB’s opinion is “no,” but I am not the world’s most objective person on gadgets

Go to The Breast Cancer Site and one click later you’ve funded free mammograms for women in need. A short simple way to earn some karma points this fine Tuesday…

I went through my Bloglines account today and weeded out RSS feeds that either didn’t give me any useful information on a regular basis or hadn’t been updated in over two months. I got rid of about 40 feeds, but when I looked at my total feed #, I found that I am still left with *drumroll please*

200 feeds!

I am afraid, very afraid. At what point do RSS feeds begin to control me, to become as mind-numbing and addictive as television?

A study done at the Health Sciences and Main Library University of Saskatchewan reveals that *gasp* user-based design (in this case for virtual reference) is a good thing. Who woulda thunk it? The biggest lesson to be learned is that you need to make it obvious what’s clickable, and where it’s going to take the user when (s)he clicks it. Simple enough, eh?

Thanks to Jessamyn for the link.

The Sasser worm is out to get you. The crap thing about this worm is that it doesn’t require opening an attachment to activate, and can strike even if no one is using the PC. When a machine is infected, error messages flash wildly and the computer may reboot repeatedly. Fun!

Got it? Get uninfected here.

Michael Gorman, dean of Library Services at the Henry Madden Library, California State University-Fresno (yay Californians!), has been elected president of ALA for ’05/’06. Congratulations Michael!

Wired News has an interesting article about RSS readers clogging up the web. And Library Web Chicwould like to hear from you if you’ve noticed RSS feeds increasing traffic on your site, or if the increase in traffic has become a hosting issue.

Librarians around the world once again voice their collective opposition to the militarism and imperialism of the US mission in Iraq. We also affirm that the Iraqi people’s fate is in the hands of the Iraqi people themselves and progress ultimately must mean a peaceful, democratic solution based on the national sovereignty of Iraq. Progressive-minded librarians everywhere will support reconstruction of Iraq only if and when occupation and war end.

Sign this petition at http://libr.org/peace/Iraq.Apr.2004.html

Marylaine Block highlighted this site in her Neat New Stuff list. LibraryInstruction.com has “library instruction lesson plans, articles about library instruction, a large library instruction bibliography, and links to library instruction resources.” Nice place to start for user education resources.