Wolfram Alpha is Hotter Than The Burning Sun!

If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re GONNA want it.

I found out about Wolfram Alpha from reading Joyce Valenza’s Neverending search blog on slj.com. You may want to hit that for a fuller review than the thumbnail I’ll try and paint below

www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334.html

Basically, Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine that, I think, has to be played with to fully understand its potentials. A useful tool across disciplines and age ranges, it’s like crack for info-geeks. I started playing with it last Friday and was really impressed doing things like distance calculation and geographical comparisons, biological taxonomy, currency conversion and stock analysis, calorie and nutrition calculation and lots more. I was so impressed, in fact, that I couldn’t wait to post a Wolfram Alpha search box on my school library’s QUICK REFERENCE page. I tossed it up there today.

www.idiotica.com/cranium/librarysite/content/quickref.html

Which is really why I’m writing. The search boxes for websites can be a bit tricky to find. They’re available at:

www.wolframalpha.com/addtoyoursite.html

There are also widgets for browser toolbars, iGoogle and more available in the easy to find DOWNLOADS portion of:

www.wolframalpha.com

I haven’t been this geeked about a tool in a while. While it failed on a couple pretty easy tasks I tried, lots of others worked much better than I expected. I can’t imagine what it might be capable of five years down the road. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it remains uncluttered and ad-free as well.

Librarians are Hip, Tech-Savvy and Generally Just Plain Cool.

Profession Once Seen as Hopelessly Dowdy and Dorky Rising Quickly on the Cool-o’-Meter of Public Perception

Sid Vicious: Cool? Sure. Librarian cool? Meh-Not so much.

While I’d be the first to admit I aint no frickin’ Elvis,  my chosen profession has been getting some favorable ink lately and I, for one, am perfectly happy to bask in the reflected rays of positive publicity since, as I’ve written before, the job I do has been getting dissed for years.

Here’s the Grand Rapids Press talking about how cool librarians are. Some of them, it reports, even have [gasp] tattoos! And here’s an article that was published last summer exposing the astounding coolness of librarians; it’s from none other than the New York Times Fashion & Style Section.

That’s right: fashion, style and librarians–all in the same sentence.

Both articles cite librarians as being “hip, tech-savvy and cool,” which is great, if you like that sort of thing. In the spirit of perpetually striving for a higher purpose, though, I’d like to propose that we librarians shoot for an even loftier mark. I think we should continue to sharpen our professional image until we can earn the ultimate tripartite accolade: the right to be labelled “Fab, Beat and Gear.” 

So, where are we going, lads?

“To the Toppermost of the Poppermost!!!”

Shhhhhhh! This is a library, people.

 

Generation Y: Internet Power-Users, Library Power-Users

New Pew Study Finds that Those Who Use the Internet Most Use Libraries Most, Too.

I’m a school librarian so, take it from me: this is welcome news.

Starting around the mid 1990’s, just as lots of folks were taking their first white-knuckled spins on the Information Superhighway, I began to dread telling people what I did for a living.  That’s ’cause I came to almost expect–though I never got used to–the following response:

“School Librarian, eh? Since everything’s on the Internet now, I’m surprised schools still have libraries.”

Ugh. I never quite figured out how to begin to rebut that lame-logic ball o’ wax…

Meanwhile, at about the same time–mid 1990’s–if anyone had cared to actually look, they would have found that my school library business was doing anything but drying up. In fact, driven by factors like the Harry Potter reading renaissance and–yes–ubiquitous access to the online resources we make available, my school library program was more robust than ever.

And, a decade or so later, that trend continues…

So it was gratifying to finally see a study that indicates what I knew intuitively: the Internet and libraries aren’t locked up in some sort of zero sum game struggle for survival. Instead, they complement one another nicely, and they attract the same sorts of users.

Here’s an Associated Press article on the study’s findings as republished on the PC World web site.

Since I’m both a school librarian and a technology columnist, I’ve always been particularly uncomfortable knowing that there’s a specious assumption floating around out there that personal digital technology will eventually supplant “brick and mortar” libraries. I mean, can’t the public, like me, love them both? 

Plus, discussions of libraries and technology tend to focus on information delivery, but libraries are about so much more than just information. How can people, in framing comparisons, entirely miss the enrichment, teaching and learning, economics of sharing and sense of community libraries deliver? 

I hope that this Pew study is the first sign that my profession has turned a corner in terms of public awareness.  I hope it’s a bell-weather indicating that people are beginning to understand that there’s a synergy and not a rivalry between libraries and technology.

As a footnote, coincidently, I write this having just tested the Kindle, Amazon’s e-book reader, for an upcoming column. It’s the best e-book reader I’ve tested thus far and, if it catches on, it could precipitate another big shift in the media that libraries deliver. If that does happen, and e-books and the Amazon model of delivery really do take off,  I hope that the public will be a bit more circumspect this time around and not assume that video automatically kills the radio star.

I can’t take another decade of dreading being asked what it is I do for a living.

Addendum: Kurt Vonnegut Virtual Family.

I’d almost forgotten that I once participated in a Vonnegut-inspired social networking experiment.

 

 

I have one thing to add to the little homage to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. that I posted last night, upon learning of his death.

I remembered this morning that, gosh, some ten plus years ago, in the early days of the web, I was part of what must have been one of the very first experiments in social networking: a Kurt Vonnegut Virtual Family.

The idea came directly from Vonnegut, and it was simple. You signed up and were assigned randomly to a family. What you chose to do with that familial membership was up to you. Vonnegut knew life was a lot like that.

I wound up a member of the Daphnia family. All the families were named after arthropod species, it seems to me. We may have had a number, too: like Daphnia-36.

And we were a pretty good family, warts and all; the grandest of grandfalloons. People arose, made themselves known, found a niche and took over. Lots of strong women in the group, I recall. It basically became a matriarchy. There were some great exchanges, and also lots of squabbling, mothering, angry outbursts, sulking and apologies.

Just like a “real family.”

It lasted a few years before we all dropped off and moved on, but not before I got to meet at least one Daphnia in person. It was a profound experience. So, what did we choose to do when finally meeting face to face?

We went bowling. Vonnegut would’ve liked that, don’tcha think?

If any Daphnias happen across this post, please leave a note. I’d love to catch up.

Streaming Music for Your School Library

I’ve finally found the perfect background music to enhance the atmosphere in my school library. Problem is, it’s an endangered species…

I have a few layers of reasons for wanting to share this topic with other librarians:

1) To tell you about something I think is pretty cool.

2) To check to see if you agree that it’s cool or, instead, maybe, think it’s a bit naughty.

3) To urge you, if you think it’s cool, to take action to help insure that it will be able to remain being cool.

Here’s what I’m talking about. I’ve been experimenting with various kinds of background music in my school library, well, basically since I’ve been a librarian.

I’ve done the NPR classical thing, the recorded ambient loop thing–everything you’d expect from a geek like me. Nothing really clicked, though.

Recently, I was trying to find a streaming webcast that was suitable to listen to in our facility. I was looking for something upbeat and urban this time around, but something predominately instrumental; something that would give the facility a coffee-house like vibe, without drawing attention to itself.

It took a couple days of sometimes painful trial and error–I almost gave up at one point–but I finally discovered an excellent service that offers an entire menu of super cool audio streams, SomaFM.

On a typical library day I stream Soma’s Groove Salad stream into the facility, and turn it up just loud enough to let the beats, grooves and samples dance atop the facility’s ambient air handling noise.

The sound reaches the casual reading areas of the library, but can’t really be heard in the areas where the focus in on research. Students seem to enjoy it and I certainly do. It’s simultaneously energizing, calming, interesting, and focusing.

I invite you try it out in your facility.

Here’s the problem, though. Just as I was thanking the audio gods for finally delivering this perfect, commercial free, music service into my facility, I became aware that SomaFM and all so-called “Internet Radio” sites are in danger of being shut down by a recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling that would charge small webcast operations per-performance royalty fees for the music they stream.

The fees, according to some sources, could add up to well over one million dollars per year–enough to shut down just about every commercial free streaming operation in existence.

What do you think about that?

I’m kinda pissed. For a bunch of reasons.

Now: I know I’m gonna hear opinions to the contrary because we librarians have traditionally been all about respecting intellectual property. I welcome those arguments. I want to hear them.

I would opine, though, that this isn’t about artistic property or artist’s profits–I think it’s about the Recording Industry Association of America and their obsessive need to control every penny of musical commerce.

What bums me about this impending situation is this question:

WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE ABOUT MONEY!!!

Can’t we let hobbyists and enthusiasts be free to do their thing, anymore?

Try this: Fire up your media player right now and dial up SomaFM and select Groove Salad. Enjoy the music for a few minutes and then ask yourself this key question:

“How much money in sales is being denied from the artists because of what Soma is playing right now?”

I defy anyone to not answer “NONE.”

For one thing, most of what they play you’re not going to run out and buy anyway, unless you happen to moonlight from your school librarian gig as an after-hours club DJ.

Secondly, the exposure they provide these artists, most of whom are pretty obscure, can only help them.

So who’s the villian here?

And who’s the extortionist?

In any case, digital rights issues continue to be an incredibly interesting unfolding story. I’d like to hear what you think.

To read more about the situation currently threatening Internet Radio, visit savethestreams.org

They’ll fill you in and hook you up with information you can use, if so inclined, to implore your elected representatives to put the brakes on the Copyright Royalty Board’s scheme.

Finally, I’d like to publicly pledge that, should SomaFM survive, and there’s any spare change left in the tin book-fine till come June, I’m mailing it all to them.