Category Archives: random thoughts

15 Things About Me And Books

By Iris | Published: Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
A while back, some other librarians revived an old meme. Way back then, I started this list. Today, I found it in my drafts. I was a late reader. I don’t remember exactly how late (being home schooled at that point was probably a blessing). I do remember being a little mortified when my younger sister [...]
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Close Reading Data Visualizations

By Iris | Published: Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
As is often the case with such TED talks, I watched Gary Flake’s demonstration of Pivot with a mixture of awe and jealousy. I want that kind of thing for the deep web as well as the free web! Go watch it, then come back. … No, really. I’m about to reference a specific visualization, so you should [...]
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How Big Is My Library?

By Iris | Published: Monday, March 8th, 2010
I’ve been mulling over Steve’s latest post about some of the ways in which knowing the number of books in your library is either impossible or not very meaningful. And I imagine that for most of the parents on these college tours this number really isn’t very meaningful at all. For it to be meaningful [...]
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Budgets, Databases, and Trust

By Iris | Published: Thursday, March 4th, 2010
It’s been an interesting week. We learned that the Bibliography of the History of Art will die at the end of the month due to lack of funding (Carleton’s news item on the topic), and we learned that back in January, CSA/ProQuest stopped providing Biology Digest because it was a free database and therefore not [...]
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Argh! Serial Review! Literary Journals! Tough Choices!

By Iris | Published: Thursday, February 25th, 2010
It’s time for our biennial serial review. This one feels kind of like being kicked when down because we did a big review to sync up Carleton and St. Olaf last winter, and then we did a voluntary cut last spring when the stock market decided to have a bigger say than usual in our [...]
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