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Month: February 2008

Total Eclipse of the … Moon

Published by Iris on Thursday, February 21st, 2008

Last night it was my regular night on the desk and as the lunar eclipse became more and more complete, I joined the growing crowd standing out in front of the library and gazing skyward. Somebody kept a “T minus 4 minutes to total eclipse” countdown going. Somebody else kept making up new words to the tune of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Another little group was trying to explain the phenomenon to two of their friends (who were confused about whether we were moving or the moon was… I kid you not).

Little by little, most of the people in the library ended up gathered in front of it, hopping up and down to keep feeling in our legs and simultaneously cursing the sub-zero weather and blessing it for the clear view it gave us of the eclipse. Faculty, staff, and students laughed and talked to people they’d never met, and one student turned his camera away from the moon and onto the cluster of eclipse-watchers.

Of course, once I’d seen the total eclipse, I had to return to the desk. Some may think that it was because of my well-developed sense of duty and service… but they’d be wrong. It was because I’d lost feeling in my face and thought I’d better warm up before testing the length of time it takes skin to frost bite in -10 degree temperatures.

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Backing up Your Blog

Published by Iris on Sunday, February 17th, 2008

And while I’m in a blog maintenance kind of a mood, here’s something else you might find useful. Blog Backup Online is a free service that will back up your blog on a daily basis and save it on their servers. (You can also download an XML file to your computer, if you want.) The free version allows you 50MB of space on their servers, but that goes a long way. This entire blog only takes up 2.64MB.

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Forwarding Feeds through Feedburner

Published by Iris on Sunday, February 17th, 2008

Everyone else probably knows about this already since it was announced over a year ago, but I learned just yesterday that I could forward all of the feeds that come with my Blogger account through Feedburner. Here’s how:

1) Set up a feed with Feedburner. You’ll get a feed URL that looks like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlogTitle

2) Go into Blogger and click “Settings” and then “Site Feed.”

3) Paste your Feedburner feed URL into the box that says “Post Feed Redirect URL.”

4) Save your new settings, and you’re done!

There’s a complete and very detailed guide on getting started with Blogger and Feedburner here: Quick Start for Blogger. It includes everything from setting up a feed and redirecting Blogger feeds to adding the email subscription option and what to do if you’re a podcaster.

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Ridiculously Pleased With a Reference Book

Published by Iris on Saturday, February 16th, 2008

Well, I think this clinches it. I think this means I really am meant to be a librarian. Nobody, but nobody should be this pleased over an index to a periodical. Point me toward the nearest 12-step program, please!

So, here’s what happened. A professor on campus teaches a class every Winter Term on the Folk Music Revival. This class has been particularly challenging for me to support because I’m learning the subject little by little every winter as I work with her students on their research conundrums. (It’s not usually easy to find scholarship on popular music, and the popular press that could be a treasure-trove of information is pretty unevenly indexed for that time period.) It’s the kind of challenge I thrive on and enjoy, but it sure keeps humble!

This professor wrote and asked that the guide for that course* include tips on how to find articles from Broadside, a key periodical for the genre, since her students seemed to be having a difficult time with this task. Well, this was the first I’d heard of that periodical, which didn’t feel great, since I’ve been trying to educate myself on the sources for that class. But as I did some digging I realized why her students were having difficulty. There just aren’t indexes to this thing! It’s not included in any research databases, and even though it has an ISSN number, it’s not even included in Ulrich’s.

Enter Steve Lawson, who contacted the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County to ask about an index they have. Turns out, it’s a home-grown index, and they were willing to photocopy it for me! It arrived yesterday and I spent a very pleasant afternoon typing up a cover-page for it, creating a table of contents for it, and binding it so that all it’s glorious photocopied pages (typed in that nostalgic written-on-a-real-typewriter way) will stay in order. And beginning on Monday, my students will actually be able to consult a list of articles, music, and poetry published in one of the most important periodicals of the Folk Music Revival!! Oh Frabjous Day!!!!

Also yesterday, one of my co-workers got a reference work that made her all gushy and happy, so I’m in good company. (And we probably totally freaked out the poor IT guy who came over to move a photocopier and got to hear two librarians practically flirt with their new reference works.)

For the curious, here’s more information about Broadside.

  • ISSN 0740-7955
  • Wikipedia article on Broadside
  • Broadside.com (Includes an author and title index (both in PDF) which are prettier but not quite as useful as the Cincinnati index. The site also includes the tantalizing promise of free online access to digitized articles. Correspondence with the company revealed that this is a labor of love rather than a business venture, so here’s hoping the online version actually happens and that the site stays live!)
  • Microfiche available from CIS

*Live through March 2008. Archived off-line after that, but still around if you want it.

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