Ink and Vellum

Clearly, there was not enough alcohol involved in this debate. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the following Oxford-style debate about the usefulness of libraries. Personally, I recommend skipping to 37 minutes in to watch David Lankes and John Palfrey.

Conferencing can take a lot out of a person. Thankfully, the internet does not lack for pleasant distractions. Case in point, a mashup of Moby Dick, Orson Welles, and Led Zeppelin, via Open Culture:

But if that doesn’t float your boat, perhaps you would enjoy pointing your mental harpoons toward creating data visualizations. Information if Beautiful is sponsoring “the world’s first global awards, celebrating excellence in data visualizations, infographics and information art.” Not only could you win up to $5000, but Brian Eno will be on the panel of judges. Closing data for submissions in May 31st. Go forth and compute!

Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Magic Search: Getting the best results from your catalog and beyond by Kornegay, Buchanan, & Morgan (my apologies to whichever colleague I recalled this from!). The tagline on the title page reads “subdivide and conquer with LC subdivisions!” The book is essentially a list of search terms and templates, arranged by topic and based on LC subject headings, that librarians and researchers can use to improve search within the library catalog.

Some choice examples include:

[research interest or person/group] AND quotations
to find words of wisdom on any topic

[research interest] AND (sources OR archives)
to locate primary sources on any topic

[topic] AND (anecdotes OR cartoons OR humor)
to find not-so-serious treatments of any topic

[ailment] AND (treatment OR therapy)
to find a cure for what ails you

Honorable mention:

[research interest or person] AND (sexual behavior)
because the world is full of interesting characters and traditions

Go forth, and multiply [your search results]! Happy Friday!

It’s Friday and that means nothing too serious here at Ink and Vellum. Except maybe a revelry concerning the transformative power of books. The 2012 Academy Award for Best Animated Short went to a film by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg entitled, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin the story for you, but I would like to note a few things:

1. There are two bow ties in the film. See if you can spot them.
2. Scotch tape!?
3. Morris is a great name.

Have a lovely weekend!

In case you missed it (though I’m not sure how you could have), The Oatmeal posted a succinct and brilliant comic detailing why many of us many people resort to downloading media via “non-traditional” channels. The dynamics of media production and retail are more complex than “the networks are greedy old-fogies” (at least, so my wife, who’s in the entertainment industry, tells me): there are other key players involved including investors, distributors, theaters, ISPs, advertisers, and a boat-load of other third-parties. Still, if you can’t remove barriers between consumers and a desired product, someone else will remove it for you.

The same could be said of libraries as well. But it’s Friday; we’ll have none of that today. Just read the comic and start dreaming about your weekend!

The wrong address? Or a letter from the future! I’m not sure which part of this mistake excites me the most: being in a position of leadership or having an office in Doheny. Happy Friday!