I keep things unread in my newsreader when I want to refer to them later. Unfortuntely the “Mark as Unread” option in the menu of NetNewsWire is right next to “Mark All as Read” so I’d like to share these with you, before disaster strikes.
- Andrea Mercado’s post Hacking Firefox: customizations for my library tells you all you need to know about why Firefox is such an excellent choice for a library browser. She discusses how to make the browser on their public access machines versatile yet secure. Very nice.
- Laura Crosset taks about how to keep it real in small town American libraries. “We don’t beat Google by trying to best Google. We beat Google by being the thing–the things, really–that Google can never be.”
- Fiona Bradley and Karen Schenider and Meredith Farkas all talk about ALAs obtuseness regarding “virtual participation” It’s a bit of a misnomer since people can, in some ways, participate virtually. However, they just can’t vote, attend Council meetings or do a lot of the other things that woud hve an impact. So they can participate virtually, sort of, just not significantly. I wish I didn’t have this icky feeling that this resistance to virtual participation was not just plain old technophobia on ALAs part but the actual desire to get more money into ALAs coffers via the Midwinter meeting. When that money is coming from librarians like Meredith and Laura and Karen and maybe even myself who would love to participate more, just at a somewhat lower cost, it rankles. I have really enjoyed my ALA vacation.
- I explain the word “default” to my sudents often. To people new with computers, the ideas of the comptuers default settings is a little perplexing. Fred Stutzman highlights part of David Weinberger’s post about Facebook where he discusses how Facebook’s default privacy settings are all wrong. Completely and totally wrong. Don’t miss one of Fred’s earlier posts where he discusses how to turn the Facebook Beacon off to stop it from telling marketers more about you than you may be aware of.
3 Comments on a few remaindered links on a variety of topics, last added: 11/19/2007
Display Comments
Add a Comment
[…] You can read the full story here […]
[…] a few remaindered links on a variety of topics » This Summary is from an article posted at librarian.net on Sunday, November 18, 2007 a few […]
I don’t think it’s just a case of wanting to put money in coffers. ALA, as an organization, seeks ways to survive. That’s perfectly understandable. Of its three revenue streams, one, membership dues, is not even break-even; the next, publishing, is moribund; so that leaves conferences (which are not the bonanzas everyone thinks, in part because our registration fees are so low).
ALA’s existence revolves around the two-conferences-per-year paradigm, and to sustain that, ALA believes it must retain practices that compel people to attend meetings in order to participate in the work of the association. I think the key is to do what Jason Griffey and Michele Boule are doing and find strategies for ALA’s fiscal survival that don’t depend on the old conference model.
Finally, it’s not just that virtual members can’t vote. They aren’t counted when quorums are established, they can be only a certain percentage of every committee… the message is clear that these are the candystripers of ALA-land.