Prior to today, it has rained very little this summer. So far we’ve had about a tenth of an inch 10 days ago, a quarter of an inch a month ago, a third of an inch 6 weeks ago, a third of an inch 2 months ago, and just over a third of an inch 10 weeks ago. Today we’ve had just over half an inch already! Yay!
p.s. This picture was taken at 9:45 in the morning!
1 CommentI’m so excited I could just about dance, but then I’d just end up scaring the teenagers that have come into the library to escape the rain. (Seriously, it’s raining here! This is a first in weeks and weeks… I wish I weren’t a librarian so I could have an excuse for not looking up exactly how many weeks, but I’m more excited about WorldCat than the rain, so I guess I am a librarian after all. Just a lazy one.)
Anyway, WorldCat is cool. It always has been, but now it just turned up the coolness factor to 11 (anyone seen “Spinal Tap”?). Here’s what’s been released on the Information Today site.
The new WorldCat.org site will be considered a beta release. Adjustments in design and function will be made as feedback is provided by end users and OCLC member libraries. Nilges detailed a long list of planned enhancements that he said would be introduced on an ongoing basis over the next 6-9 months. The enhancements include the following:
Post search support, such as “Did you mean?” Results sorting ““Get it” after a user finds it —this will focus on improving interoperability with circulation systems Identify public domain content and enable click-throughs Click through to Open URL resolvers Add article-level metadata Expand social networking capabilities Create custom views
Wow! Article-level metadata? Social networking? Custom views? Sounds like exactly what a bunch of others and I have been dreaming about for quite some time now. I just hope it doesn’t take them the whole 6-9 months to get these enhancements off the ground and onto my browser.
Comments closedEach year incoming freshmen are assigned a “Common Reading” book, and one afternoon and evening of orientation are devoted to a presentation and many small-group discussions about that book. Each small-group is lead by a faculty or staff facilitator as well as a current student co-facilitator, and this will be my second time participating as a facilitator. Last year was a blast, and I have high hopes for this year.
This year, for the first time, the common reading book is in graphic form. We’ll all be reading “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi, and I just got my copies, along with some starter discussion questions. Time to start gearing up for incoming freshmen!
Our college is hosting almost 50 high school students this week, all working on an intensive writing/thinking/debating/research project (the one my whole department taught yesterday afternoon). While shepherding them through exercises to give them practice with print and online resources, one of my coworkers overheard a student saying, “I hate books. They’re so dirty.”
Really? Wow. More dirty than the keyboards on which you’re all typing merrily away? Personally, I’d take a little dust over a bunch of microbes any day, but that’s just me.
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