Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

A recent study found that men and women spend similar amounts of time playing computer games online, are equally likely to own a handheld game system, and to send text messages on their phones.

Coolio animated paper models from Flying Pig for you to make. I think these would make swell gifts for office mates and friends. The witch model is a little suggestive–so, think before you give for Halloween 😉

Does half your mail consist of random credit card offers? Do you want them to stop? If you do, like I do (damn shameful waste of paper if you ask me), you can formally request that companies stop sending these to you. The best part is, all you do is make one phone call to stop getting these credit card offers.

Ooh, you people are naughty if you are thinking what I think you were thinking when you read that headline…So, Calvin & Hobbes now has an extensive strip search. Here’s LiB’s favorite strip regarding libraries.

TechTV (bless their little gamer hearts) took a long, hard look at four top of the line gaming laptops, including the new Inspiron XPS that Dell has been tooting their little horns about. They looked at gaming performance, overall laptop performance, size, battery life, and extra features. The winner? Alienware’s Area 51-m Extreme. Not only is it swanky looking, but it performs well too. Well, la de da. LiB’s wishlist just got one item longer.

The new Seattle Central Library (opening on May 23rd) has the following items which make me shiver with jealousy:

• free wireless access in every corner of the library
• sound domes that contain the music coming from speakers in the YA area from leaking into other parts of the library
• wireless “smart” necklaces that let library staff communicate and respond from anywhere in the building
• 400 public use computers
• software that will provide a floor map diagramming each book’s location, so the catalog will tell you a book’s call number and show you exactly where to find it (being developed by a library staffer)
• a book sorter that uses RFID chips to automatically take the items to the correct bin or branch truck

Thanks to Baa Baa Blog for the link.

Under e-FOIA (Electronic Freedom of Information Act), agencies are required to post frequently requested FOIA material on their websites. Funny, though–many agencies do not have any frequently requested materials linked on their websites, and those that do are slow to update their lists. As Scott Hodes asks in his LLRX article, “Can anything be done to enforce this aspect of the E-FOIA law?”

In response to George W. Bush’s gung-ho attitude toward adding an amendment to the Constitution to define marriage as only between a man and woman, an author at Kuro5hin has written a well-argued proposal for three additional amendments: The Right to Privacy, The Right to Self, and The Right to Companionship. I love the blog-world.

Check out this study of federated searching products commissioned by the National Library of New Zealand. They looked at every product I know about. The results are detailed and I think will serve to help those of us shopping around for federated search products in the upcoming fiscal year, like me for instance. Thank you New Zealand! Lots of good stuff is coming from there lately…

Wow. Weird toys. Very weird toys. The one that really gets me is BABOOCHI. The weird thing is, people will buy these things…