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Welcome to the August 20, 2007 edition of Carnival of the Infosciences. Thanks to everyone who submitted stuff and all the others who asked me what the heck I was talking about. We got a huge response and I think allowing submissions via del.icio.us has helped participation somewhat (thought I think of carninfo being for information about meat!) go social software! Speacial thanks to Chad who really did most of the heavy lifting this time around as I tried to figure out how it all worked.

WoodyE presents Tragedy of the Library posted at What You Already Know, saying, “Public libraries lining up for a ‘tragedy of commons’?”

Katie Dunneback sent us Open letter to incoming LIS students posted at Young Librarian.

Chris Zammarelli, a long time friend and supporter of the Carnival, presents Good blogs, bad blogs posted at Walt at Random, saying, “While writing about research he’s performing for his next book, Walt outlines what makes for good and bad library blogs.”

Chris submits Keeping up posted at Blisspix.net, saying, “Some advice from Fiona Bradley about keeping up with the library literature.”

Chris also shares This Just In: ILL is Important! posted at Circ and Serve, saying, “Mary Carmen Chimato reviews an Association of Research Libraries about ILL.”

Holly directs Carnival readers to And did we tell you the name of the game, boy? We call it riding the gravy train posted at The Gap, saying, “A neat story about a patron who did a display of his videogames and consoles at the Joplin (MO) Public Library. Blurb from the library’s website”

Jeanne Kramer-Smyth shares Preserving Virtual Worlds - TinyMUD to SecondLife posted at SpellboundBlog.com, saying, “Thanks for taking a look and considering this for the Carnival of InfoSciences!”

Ellyssa Kroski invites us to peruse A Guide to Twitter in Libraries posted at iLibrarian, saying, “I recently started blogging over at iLibrarian and I thought you and your readers might find this post useful.”

Connie Crosby, another strong supporter of the Carnival of the Infosciences, presents The King, the Babe and the Books posted at Slaw, saying, “Post by Mark Lewis, Reference/Information Technology Librarian, Sir James Dunn Law Library, Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He marks the anniversary of a fire at the Dunn Law Library with a post including some spectacular (or rather, disturbing) photos from the fire 22 years ago. SLAW is a co-operative blog discussing Canadian law and technology.”

Additionally, Connie suggests Law Firms & Content Strategy posted at Law Firm Web Strategy, saying, “Steve Matthews, recently Information Director at law firm Clark Wilson, has just started his own consulting firm and with it a new blog called Law Firm Web Strategy. His posts to date are quite smart, so it is difficult to choose just one. I have selected this one because he discusses an analysis he did of the websites of the top 100 U.S. law firms, and lessons learned from this analysis. Steve’s blog is one to watch for anyone interested in search engine optimization (SEO), marketing, and law firm management.”

Connie also recommends Thoughts After Library Camp NYC posted at YALSA, saying, “I like Linda Braun’s summary of Library Camp NYC earlier this week.”

Burning the Library posted at Providentia, saying, “Book-burning, the Nazi way”. We are very happy to have this submission from someone outside the LIS field, but who cares enough about libraries to write about them. Way to go Doc!

And now for the submissions we received through del.icio.us. We had a good number tagged with “carninfo” this week. Don’t forget to add a note when you tag so we can share why you thought the post was worth including.

Emily Alling (bibliomonstra) tagged “The New Librarians”, an article from T.H.E. Journal on the changing roles of school librarians, and suggested that this piece would be “great to share with administrators, board members, teachers, parents, and anyone who might not be up to speed on the new face of school libraries”.

RoseFireRising suggested that we read “The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds” (abstract), published in Science 27 July 2007: 472-476., saying “”virtual worlds may foster scientific habits of mind better than traditional schools can, because they constantly require inhabitants to experiment with unfamiliar alternatives, rationally calculate probable outcomes, and develop complex theoretical …”. This article requires a subscription.

Also tagged by Rose, we have “Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders”, and she says, “This intriguing report focuses on similarities in the psychology of World of Warcraft and other virtual worlds in building corporate leadership skills. Changes are recommended in corporate management to make it more like successful games.”

Jenna Freedman tagged “Return of the Zine Yearbook” and tells us that this post is a, “Discussion of a zine anthology and amassing of power by Microcosm, a zine distro and publisher and how this affects (should affect?!?) libraries. Recommendations of other zine distros. Includes one snarky comment by a fellow librarian and zine publisher.” Hooray for snarky comments.

Martha Hardy (grasshopperlibr) submitted “We Asked for 2.0 Libraries and We Got 2.0 Librarians” and asks, “Is the collective Library 2.0 venture a raging success, a waste of time, or a successful work in progress? What does it mean to be a Librarian 2.0? Ryan Deschamps aptly sums it up for us on The Other Librarian”.

Martha also tagged “The Book-ish-ness of Books” and says, “What is a book? And how much does the format matter? The Pegasus Librarian says, in part: “The point is that “containers” are not entirely benign. If they were entirely benign, people wouldn’t pour ginger ale from the can to the glass.”

And speaking of the Pegasus Librarian,Iris Jastram submits “A Study of Scanning Habits”, where the future of books, ebooks, and the format in general are discussed.

Thar’s it for this week! Tara E. Murray will be hosting the next edition of the Carnival at DIYLibrarian. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of the infosciences using our carnival submission form. You can also use the del.icio.us tag carninfo to submit your favorites. Make sure to use the “Notes” field to state why you tagged it and sign your name so we know who shared it with us. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Regarding my "Born to Choose" post, a friend gently suggested the whole discussion gets more complex, thorny, and controversial if you include discussion of transgender issues. This is very true, and though I had considered adding something about the controversy over Gender Identity Disorder (GID), my knowledge of that subject is superficial, and I figured I was going out on enough of a limb already that I probably shouldn't risk inadvertently simplifying a subject so vital to people's lives and livelihoods.

My friend made the useful distinction (which she says may have come from Julia Serano) between de-pathologization of transgenderism and de-medicalization of it, with the former being desirable and the latter not so much, given how much distress trans people can be in before they can get support or therapy, or before they are able to transition.

Though I can't offer an informed opinion on this topic, what I can do is provide some links to discussions of GID by people more knowledgeable than I. Please add others in the comments if you know of any.

• A short answer to the question, "Is transgenderism a disability?" from the LGBT Resource Center at Northwestern University.
• "Is Transgender Pain a Disorder -- or a Symptom", an article from the NC Independent Weekly
• The American Psychological Association's "Answers to Your Questions about Transgender Individuals and Gender Identity"
• "The Medicalization of Transgenderism" from Trans-Health.com
  
• Wikipedia's LGBT portal, Gender Studies category, list of transgender-related topics, and entries on GID and Intersexuality.
• GID Reform Advocates
  
• "Transgender Identity Affirmation and Mental Health" from The International Journal of Transgenderism
• Some articles and essays about GID and transgenderism by a trans psychologist
• Information on differences between transsexuality and intersexuality from the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) Support Group of Australia
• An academic essay from 1997, "The Challenge of 'Gender Identification Disorder'" by Debra Shogan

I've just returned from a bit of travelling, and having not had much internet time during my travels, I probably owe you an email. In fact, if you've tried to contact me at all for the past couple months, I probably owe you an email. Please forgive me. I hope to get caught up with all correspondence and correspondents sometime before the heat death of the universe.

Some odds and ends...

• I inadvertently left a big box of Asimov's magazines back in New Hampshire, so I'm not sure how well my project of meditating on the archives will work out, as I've only got various scattered issues with me now, and don't expect to be able to get the others until sometime this fall, which is probably not causing anybody any great angst, but still...

• While I was away, a new issue of Strange Horizons was posted, including a new column of mine and the news that the 2007 Fund Drive has been extended. (Please don't hold the continued publication of my columns against them.) Also that day, the World Fantasy Award nominations were announced, and editor-in-chief superbeing Susan Marie Groppi was nominated in the "Special Award, Non-professional" category (because she does great work and doesn't get paid for it, though the writers get paid professional rates). I don't want to pretend to have favorites for the awards, because many people I'm very fond of are nominated, and I want them all to win, but I do think it's particularly nice that Susan and the whole Strange Horizons crew are getting a lot of much-deserved good attention these days.

• It's been a long road, but Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek: The Movie is now live on the internet. I was involved with the project in its early days, but hadn't been able to continue, and it's great fun now to see what all those crazy nascent ideas metamorphosed into. It's also exciting to see the extraordinary and beautiful novel now in paperback.

• Speaking of paperback and extraordinary books, Peter Turchi just let me know that he's got a new website and his marvelous book Maps of the Imagination will be released in paperback in a couple of weeks. The hardcover is beautifully designed and produced, and I look forward to seeing how the book translates to the new format.

• Paul Witcover's post about the New Yorker's article on Philip K. Dick by Adam Gopnik garnered a lot of interesting comments, both from lovers and loathers of PKD. I'm definitely on the lovers side, but I try to keep myself from being too illusioned about Dick's weaknesses, and I'm wary of a lot of the claims made for his work over the past decade or so. Though I've tried at times to write about his works and legacy, I can't claim to have a sure understanding of my own attraction to Dick's writings, and so I usually just end up responding to somebody else's attempt to articulate (or criticize) such attraction, and saying, "Well, no..." or "Sort of, but...", which isn't really very helpful.

• World Fantasy Award nominee John Klima has put Jeffrey Ford's World Fantasy Award-nominated story "The Way He Does It" online. I know a lot of people were all googly-eyed over Mr. Ford's "The Night Whiskey" (from the World Fantasy Award-nominated Salon Fantastique), but I, ever addicted to being in the minority, much preferred "The Way He Does It". Although now it's up for an award, maybe that means I'm no longer in the minority. No, that thought is too unsettling for me to continue contemplating it...

• Nonsense.
  

Some random notes, observations, and links:

• First, welcome to readers who are reading this blog via the Asimov's and Analog magazine websites, where we have been chosen as a blog of the month. (And no, we don't make it a habit of referring to ourselves in the second-person plural, except when we're being particularly ironic or feeling immensely self-important, but sometimes it slips out.) I'm particularly happy that this site was chosen this month, because it's the month Best American Fantasy hits the stores, and the book contains a story first published in Analog, Geoffrey Landis's marvelous robot fairy tale "Lazy Taekos". And as for Asimov's, well, unfortunately there aren't any Asimov's stories in the book, but I've been reading the magazine since the late 1980s, and hope to do some things here in honor of its current 30th anniversary, including write about at least a few of the stories included in the fine anniversary anthology Sheila Williams put together for Tachyon.
  


• When I was in Kenya, a number of people sang the praises of Uganda's Femrite, the Uganda Women Writers' Association. Via the Literary Saloon I discovered a new article about Femrite by Glenna Gordon at Uganda's Daily Monitor newspaper, titled, "Ugandan women writers shine but where are men?"


• There's an inside view of Femrite available from one of those people who sang its praises to me, Beverley Nambozo, at the new African Writing Online. Beverley got married last month, so this gives me a fine opportunity to slip in a public congratulations to her!


• African Writing Online deserves its own note, actually. If you're looking for contemporary African writers to read, you could do worse than to seek out the writers on their list of 50. Or just start reading some fiction. Or poetry. Or reviews. And lots more. Go see.


• Lost cities! Via a blog I recently discovered and am already addicted to, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Sitting Here Listening to This Recording.


• Okkervil River has a new album coming out in a couple days. This alone is enough to make the month of August one of the best of the year. In preparation, I have been listening to "The President's Dead" (mp3) pretty obsessively, because I missed it whenever the MP3 was posted from last year's EP. (Here at Mumpsimus Central, the entire staff, which is composed of me, agrees that 2005's Black Sheep Boy is second only to Bach's Mass in B Minor as a great musical accomplishment. Even more oddly, there are some weird, coincidental connections between me and the band, so much so that I'm convinced if I ever encounter any of the members, particularly Will Sheff, in person the entire universe will explode. Or contract. Or something. Yes, this is what I spend my time thinking about these days. No, I don't need to get out more. I don't. I like it inside. It's nice and peaceful and ... who'm I talking to? Huh? Why are you asking?)
  


• If you're anywhere near southwestern New Hampshire this week, go to the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen's annual craft fair. Buy things from Rick and Beth Elkin, Paulette Werger, and Dan Dustin at the very least. What, you need to buy food? Don't. Buy beautiful hand-made objects -- they last longer.


• Please know that I am trying to use fewer semi-colons in things I write. I am failing, but I am trying. Alas, when witty and politically astute writers such as James J. Kilpatrick call the semi-colon "sissified" and "girly", it not only makes me realize I am congenitally inclined to identify with the pretty little things, but also makes me want to use; semi-colons; again; and again; and; again!

A few links:

• It's Alan DeNiro Week at the LBC!
• The Long List for the Frank O'Connor Award for short story collections has been announced.
• Also announced: The List of Notable Stories for the Million Writers Award for best online fiction.
• I desperately need to revise and update the sidebar links on this site; with luck, I'll do so soon. When I do, I'll definitely add a bunch of blogs that are new to me, including my most recent discovery: Biology in Science Fiction.

Here in the frozen north Friday nights can often be a time to cook a big meal and curl up with a book and/or laptop while people in more populated areas do whatever people in more populated areas do. Here are a few of the things I have been reading this evening.

• Testing the THOMAS Beta by Peggy Garvin - no RSS feeds, but the beta does seem to have some new useful features and an improved search.
• Help for Librarians Receiving Law Enforcement Requests Revisited by Don Wood, ALAOIF whose blog is really worth reading
• Surveying non-users, Sarah Houghton-Jan points to a library who is trying to figure out who is NOT using their library. I did a little bit of this during National Library week. I set up a library card sign-up table outside of Wal-Mart and met a LOT of non-library users. The main reason people didn’t go back to the library? Fines, especially for younger patrons.
• ALA Read Write Connect. Not sure why this is a wiki, exactly, but it’s a great starting opint for all of ALA’s newish bloggish and social content. There is a lot more than you would think!
• Library Director Quits - Cites WiFi Dangers - I have mixed feelings about this. I’m not sure how you accept a job if you are extremely sensitive to electromagnetic radiation and don’t think to inquire whether there is an active WiFi network. I’m also not convinced by the downloadable Word documents that are provided on the Council on Wireless Technology Impacts’ science page