An admissions guy stopped me and two of my co-workers on the sidewalk today to tell us that he had recently read an application he thought we should know about. In this application the prospective freshman wrote about the librarian trading cards and their accompanying superpowers as one of her three reasons for applying to Carleton. Very cool. I say, admit that girl. She’s obviously a highly perceptive candidate.
2 CommentsToday was one of those days… But now, even though I’m finally all set to go home, I’m sitting here at my desk reveling in the sounds of a new CD.
I’ve been looking and looking for an old, out-of-print CD of Itzhak Perlman playing Mendelssohn and Prokofiev. It’s one from my short list of all-time favorite CDs, and I finally found a good copy. It arrived today, and right now I can hardly move from my seat as he plays my favorite piece from this CD, the Andante movement of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto #2 in G Minor, Op. 63 – 2. I don’t think there’s ever been a more beautiful piece of music composed, and it has certainly never been better performed.
This is the only piece that the director of my dance academy ever forbade me from choreographing to. The reason? She had already done it, and it was one of her favorites.
6 CommentsIt’s been a rough week, and it seems I’m not alone in feeling this way. (In fact, I’d say I had it a bit better than some people.) So I thought I’d point to some of my favorite posts to brighten things up a little in my corner of the world. These are posts that, in the middle of a warm summer afternoon, I might have the mental wherewithal to actually comment on… but at this point all I can say to the authors is, “Thank you for writing such thoughtful pieces. I’m not writing about them, but I am thinking about them.”
As the song says, “these are a few of my favorite things” this week. I hope next week brings peace and calm… but who am I kidding.
4 CommentsI just got an email from WorldCat saying that I could update my blog widget (see the bottom of my sidebar) so that it’s no longer a bright blue on my tan-ish/yellow-ish background. But the really cool part is what’s included in the rest of the email:
- Automatic geographic location by IP address
WorldCat.org library results for a particular item now determine the geographic location for a user based on IP address, even when the user has never before entered a postal code.
- Users can expand faceted browse results
The faceted browse feature of WorldCat.org search results now allows a user to expand the abbreviated results within each facet via a “Show More” link. Faceted browse allows a user to dynamically filter search results by categories, or facets, using the left-hand Refine Your Search panel, helping users narrow a large result set. Each facet in its initial state displays only the five most relevant results. The “Show More” link lets the user incrementally reveal 25 additional results at a time, up to 100 results within the facet.
- More visibility for evaluative content and Web resource links
Individual item records reached from WorldCat.org search results now include links to supplemental Web content at the record level. Previously displayed beneath the “Details” tab, these links can include publisher-provided item descriptions, author biographies and Web sites, tables of contents and content excerpts.Additional links may be provided with the heading “Web Resources,” which may give a user access to content related to the displayed item. If the displayed item is a digital object—such as an electronic book, or a digitally preserved photo, document or artifact—the link may provide direct viewing or retrieval of the object.
They’ve also added a Chinese language interface, and made it so that you can embed a keyword, subject, title, or author. That url will then lead to a result list as if you’d done a keyword search or a search on those common indices. A tutorial on that is here.
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