(I completely deleted this content unintentionally. Duh!)
BugGuide.net is a great spot to find information about a variety of critters. The site contains images, complete taxonomy, wors cited and other references. This could be a
great tool in the classroom or at the library. Those libraries with social bookmark sharing should add it to their science, grade school or whatever lists!
The site is hosted by Iowa State University Entymology and carries the following disclaimer pertaining to authority:
Disclaimer: Dedicated naturalists volunteer their time and resources here to provide this service. We strive to provide accurate information, but we are mostly just amateurs attempting to make sense of a diverse natural world. If you need expert professional advice, contact your local extension office.
Anyhow, I really like this site!
From everywhere in the IS blogosphere, but for me, from LibrariesDirect:
OCLC has announced that it will launch a new destination website that will allow users to search the holdings of libraries participating in the WorldCat database directly rather than finding the records as part of search-engine results.
The firm says the aim of WorldCat.org,to be released in beta form in August, is “to make library resources more visible to Web users, and to increase awareness of libraries.” Unlike the Open WorldCat program, which inserts “Find in a Library” pages into the results from Google and other search engines, the new site will give library holdings greater visibility by providing a permanent destination page with a search box to access all 70-million-plus records in the WorldCat database, not just the 3.4-to-4.4-million-record subset harvested by Open WorldCat’s search-engine partners.
As in Open WorldCat, each linked search result leads to a “Find in a Library” information page for an individual item. By entering geographic information, users get a list of nearby WorldCat libraries that own the item and links to the libraries’ online catalog records.
OCLC will also offer a free modularized version of the WorldCat.org search box that users or organizations can install on their websites, as well as free web toolbars and other plug-ins and a variety of open-source software and web services such as RSS feeds.
Chip Nilges, vice president of OCLC New Services, said in Information Today online July 17 that WorldCat.org is designed to complement the syndication model of Open WorldCat rather than to replace it. “There’s a symbiosis,” he said. “There’s value in having a place to go to search the world’s largest library catalog and there’s also value in capturing users who may not know about libraries.”
When I was in library school, WorldCat was one of my favorite tools. Well, that and ISI Web of Science. I think this is really exciting. Formerly you’d have to have a w3 to use WorldCat (unless you knew how direct to it through google). But now it will be coming with all kinds of bells and whistles like toolbars and RSS feeds. I can’t wait to play!
Busy weekend full of free tickets to shows/parties. Didn’t really go to all of them. First place prize goes to Diplo and CSS at the Mummers Museum for being the most shockingly awesome show ever. Second place goes to Peaches for being Peaches.
I didn’t take pictures at either, but I really wish that I had at Diplo. It was so much fun. And the Mummers Museum is both very interesting and full of rich cultural artifacts, but also really crazy to be at at night for a show with all of the concert lighting and stuff.
Filed under: Food & Dining, New Jersey, Nicole, Pine Barrens, Sea Isle City, vacation
This doesn’t have much to do with the information world, but I wanted to tell a little bit about my little mini vacation this past weekend. I’ll even give away my secret favorite Jersey shore beach location! After the jump! Continue reading
Filed under: Uncategorized
I have a billion things to post, but It is going to be awhile to get everything up. I have a review of Peter Jones’ Nailed to write, along with some goodies on imigrant library services, gaming and the New Jersey Pine Barrens!
I went camping at beautiful Belleplain State Forest in New Jersey this weekend. New Jersey sure does have the very best parks!
Filed under: higher education
This probably isn’t my business to talk about, but I am concerned nonetheless. Grade inflation is when a really bizarre number of students are receiving top grades in courses. I have definitly seen this in my academic experience. This article asserts tha, among other effects, grade inflation may release graduates into the workforce who are not equipped to function as one would expect a graduate to. I am sure that this refers to both knowledge based performance as well as skills-based performance. I for one realy needed the kick in the but from a Professor if I handed something in late or didn’t quite live up to what the Prof knew that I could do. It has prepared me tremendously for the workplace!
“Rojstaczer, who operates a Web site on grade inflation and writes about higher-education issues, attributes grade inflation to a cultural shift.
“Students are now consumers of a product rather than acolytes trying to obtain knowledge,” he said. “We now view them as customers. The customer is always right.”
I’m not saying that this is universally true, but there is definitly truth to this statement. I said that at a point in my academic education I felt as though I had gone shopping at the mall for my degree (important note: this was only during a period of time where I was very frustrated! So don’t batter me!).
Anyhow, I think we can all thik about the implications of this. I don’t need to lay it out, thats for certain.
Tipped off from The Kept Up Academic Librarian
From Research Buzz:
UNEP’s Production and Consumption Branch has published on the web its Creative Gallery on Sustainability Communications or you know, its gallery on funny and thoughtful ads on the subject. Love it. Might be a really nice addition to your Furl or de.licio.us
Here’s a screenshot of a particularly excellent Philadelphia Eagles one:
And here’s a favorite of mine that I’ve seen on tv about the “clean locomotive”
This looks so good, I can’t wait to read/watch it when I get home from work tonight.:
Reference 2010: the Librarian 2.0 in Your Future presented by Stephen Abram, Vice President, Innovation, for SirsiDynix and immediate past president of the Canadian Library Association, at the May 15, 2006, Reference Symposium, Library as Place: Physical Realms, Virtual Possibilities.
I always throw around the term “Web 2.0” without much explanation. To be honest it makes the term sound like a new installation of software or some cheesy news letter. I kind of wish there were a better term for what Web 2.0 actually refers to. Which is?
Web 2.0 is the direction that the web is taking where information is being used in everyday life and not as a cool novelty (technological fetishism). We can see evidence of Web 2.0 in blogs, wikis, podcasts etc. There’s a lot of talk about it (see my previous post about Tom Stites). But nonetheless Web 2.0 is exciting and really important in libraries.
Filed under: advertising, American values, civic engagement, democracy, journalism, media, media & society, Science
I’m looking back on just about the past week and thinking of several meaningful conversations that took place about, more or less, the topic of democracy. Over our Thursday night pre-quizo dinner the topic traveled from enviromentalism (which is brought upon by talking about Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth), to science in the media. I was recalling a lecture in a class during my undergrad where we talked about several potential trends in the portrayal of science in the media:
- Science was once covered in significant sections of some major national newspapers. In whole sections and of a higher quality. Meaning the coverage was not just about pop-science and food science, but was broader in depth and breadth.
I wouldn’t know how true this is because I haven’t seen (well, also haven’t looked) for any studies supporting this. But I have personally noticed the lack of good science in the newspapers. Another point:
- The public image of science and scientists is tarnished. This begins with scientists on television and film being portrayed as these individuals with intelligence and quirks far beyond that of everyday people. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ idea makes scientific knoweldge seem so unaccessible that most folks would rather just leave it to science to understand.
Personally, looking at the way that librarians are thought of in public opinion – we can clearly see this. We’re seen as tightly wound, strict, quiet maintainers of quiet who work in the dustiest and quiestest (can I say quiest again?) places. People don’t even understand what it is that we do. I have close friends who still think that I scan books for checkout! Right! My point being that the image of scientists and professionals that work in these fields needs to change so that people aren’t so put off by it.
In my opinion certain conversations that are huge in the public discourse could be a bit more fruitful if everyone had stronger science backgrounds or not even that a greater interest in science and science education. The conversation on stem-cell research might not have to be led by the moral police – maybe people would be able to allow for a more open attitude if they already understood science more. The same goes for the important and vital issue of the environment.
I’ve gotten a little bit sidetracked, but we were having a conversation that ended with mutual agreement that something about public opinion and the media. Plenty of evidence is accessible to support the fact that the media is out of the public’s hands and is in no way a reflection of events or opinion. No system and obviously no objectivity exist in so much as to allow the reader confidence in the media that he or she is consuming. By that I mean that the proccesses that we assume facilitate a democratic media are indeed nonexistent and in their fragile existence nothing but flawed and troublesome.
So I mentioned how I think that Web 2.0 technology is brilliantly promising in its potential to communicate ideas and make that communication accessible with greater ease than the owned-media. I sort of take it back, or reconsider it after looking at Tom Stites guest posting/address entitled “Is Media Performance Democracy’s Issue? ” over at Citemedia.org. Stites asks if the web movement, web authoring and publishing doesn’t also take away from a larger and more relevent issue involving mass-market journalism?
I thought to myself, of course not! (dummy). I use an aggregator and read a ton of blogs everyday, I read several newspapers and listen to NPR about three times a day and podcast my favorite programs that I miss while at work. I switch between favorite columnists in the weeklies that I read and which ones I go to first on a regular basis. I feel like I am engaged in the media that I consume since I get it from multiple sources, Anyhow, how silly am I? I’m a well-educated, somewhat gainfully employed twenty-something in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. This is certainly not a reason for high and mightiness, and Im not making it out to be that way. Its just facts are facts and that is who I am. Tom Stites points out: Continue reading
Nicole\'s got a library blog (again) 