Awful Library Books

A relatively new library humor blog that I stumbled upon today. I am pretty sure that the Duggan doesn’t own any of these titles, and I’m grateful for that, no matter how curious I may be about “Dee Snider’s Teenage Survival Guide.”

Welcome, Summer Academy-ers!

The Library sends its greetings to the Summer Academy folks on campus! We want to remind you that we’re open 7:30-4, M-F. Come see us if you want some scholarly journal goodness, a field guide, a look at today’s newspapers, or just a cool spot to check email and hang out between fieldwork and lab time!

Library haiku

Do you understand
what the reference desk does?
You should ask, buddy.

From Librarygrrl blog. Find more reference desk haiku there. And if you’re inspired, send us yours: we’d love some of our own!

Career Connections + LibGuides = one-stop shopping

In an effort to more closely knit the services of the Career Center and the Library, we’ve begun adding links to the Career Center and, specifically, to related Career Connections booklets to a number of our LibGuides. So, for instance, if you’re an Education major, you can visit the Education LibGuide for all things Education: news, research, job and internship advice, etc.

To date, the following LibGuides have a “Careers and Field Experience” tab with a list of suggested Career Connections, as well as a link to the main list of Career Connections, in case none of those featured on the LibGuide page pique your interest:

More to come!

Of course, if you prefer the paper to digital version, you can still get those in all the usual places – Career Center, mailroom, and library copy room come to mind.

County Courthouse Goes Up in Flames

For the second time in almost as many years, a devastating fire gutted one of the great old buildings of Madison. Yesterday I stood and watched as firefighters battled a blaze at the Jefferson County Courthouse for hours. Assured that no one was hurt, my mind turned to all of the irreplaceable records that literally went up in smoke. My heart is just sick. Michelle’s take on the event may be found at: http://feast4thought.wordpress.com.

Library Hours

Friday, May 22 7:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Saturday, May 23 CLOSED
Sunday, May 24 CLOSED
Monday, May 25 CLOSED FOR MEMORIAL DAY

SUMMER HOURS: May 26 - August 14
Monday - Friday 7:30 AM - 4:00 PM
Satuday & Sunday CLOSED

Wolfram Alpha tackles the really tough questions: how much wood could a woodchuck chuck?

Guys, guys, Wolfram Alpha went live on Friday! I can already hear you thinking: Wow, Wolfram Alpha…what the heck is that?

The answer, gentle readers, is that Wolfram Alpha is a new search engine, and arguably a new breed of search engine – a semantic search engine, if you must know.

Consider: You ask it a series of musical note names, and it shows them to you on the staff and on a keyboard, gives you an audio recording, and gives you the tone distances. Ask it Jefferson County IN income per capita? and you get the data (in dollars, yen, pesos, euros, and various other currencies), as well as info on the median county income and the county’s poverty rate. It’s strong suit is mathematics and conversions, but it knows about history and geography and other things, too.

And it has a sense of humor. Ask it the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. Ask it why the chicken crossed the road. These Easter eggs are fun, and presumably there are more to be discovered, and of course, Wolfram Alpha will probably learn some new ones as time goes on.

It’s pretty darn impressive. And it is smart. Go ahead. Ask it where you are. IT KNOWS.

Will you be my friend? Check YES or NO

A mystery chalker poses a question: Is the library your friend?

A mystery chalker poses a question: Is the library your friend?






Librarians want to be friends!

Librarians want to be friends!



So the photos kind of speak for themselves, but given the weather forecast, we wanted to record in more rain-resistant form that the library wants to be friends! But if you don’t feel like the library is doing its share in maintaining the relationship, please talk with us! We promise not to shush you!

Finally, I would like to close by pointing out that dinosaurs think librarians are awesome, which, I submit, is an irrefutable argument to the effect that librarians make great, albeit sometimes nerdy, friends. QED.

2 Links we could all use about now…

It’s been tough these last couple of weeks. Bad news on TV, stress about the coming end of the semester and, for some of you, the end of your college career. Questions abound and few answers appear.

Here are 2 links I recently came across that I really enjoyed. The first helps with motivation Just a couple of small things you can do to get yourself back on track.

The second one is focused on happiness and is filled with tips, quizzes and polls. Find ways to make yourself happier - it doesn’t depend on circumstances, it depends on you and how you choose to look at the world. Some of the tips contained on the left side of her blog were really useful. Included are 5 tips when you feel underappreciated, dealing wtih a “happiness emergency” and how to handle criticism. The author has taken it upon herself to examine every theory on happiness “from Aristotle to Oprah” and test-driving them to see what actually works. What’s more is that she even wants *you* to start your very own happiness project. C’mon - don’t we all need a little more joy in the world?

Both are absolutely worth a read and a bookmark. Let me know what you think!

- Kelly

R.I.P.

Sony Clie Palm Pilot PEG S-320

Sony Clie Palm Pilot PEG S-320

It had to happen sooner or later. I have officially become a victim of electronic obsolescence.  For the past six years I have faithfully relied on my Sony Clie Palm Pilot for addresses, calendar schedule, memos, and important documents.    I purchased the Palm Pilot from a Hanover student who had received another one as a gift (proof that E-Classifieds on the intranet really works).

It was the iPhone of its day (minus the phone, of course, and, come to think of it, the camera, the apps, et al, but you get the point).  Fitting inside my pocket, it was a perfect travel companion.  The Clie has gone with me to Europe, New York, Las Vegas, and other fun destinations.

I first noticed trouble in paradise when I couldn’t install it on my new HP laptop running Vista.  That was disappointing but I could still use it in conjunction with my work desktop (running Windows XP) until…suddenly the hot synch function quit working.  Scouring the web (in reality just a quick Google search) I found a Sony site with downloadable drivers and migration tools in zip format.  Tantalizing, yes.  Sensible, no.

It is time for me to face the facts — it is the end of an era.  I finally realized this is a classic example of the perils of skipping too many (OS) generations.   It makes sense to use devices as long as they are working fine, especially in these difficult economic times, but this approach may come back to haunt you if you wait too long between upgrading your hardware/software (don’t even get me started on my home desktop running Windows 98).  At its worst, data may be lost; at its best you may have a lot of re-keying to do.

It’s like going from driving a car where a cassette player is state of the art to one that has an mp3 port in which case the only song you may hear is the Sound of Silence (funny that you ask why I chose this metaphor…I am starting to see a pattern in my life).   But hey, congrats on the new wheels, right?