And so it begins. It gives me great pleasure to roll out the cotton candy machine, crank up the ferris wheel and present the inaugural Carnival of the Infosciences. We had a short stack of great submissions this week and they are presented below, along with my commentary. I have fleshed out the selection with a few choices of my own, which are presented at the bottom. My sincerest thanks to everyone who participated.

This past week’s submissions are an auspicious beginning, but I hope we can get the Carnival to grow. From the excellent Carnival of Education:

“A successful carnival is a team effort. Please consider helping to spread the word. The more folks that know about this collection of exhibits, the more that will “drop-in” and visit the midway. Trackbacks, links, and mentions all help.” So tell your friends. Know someone in LIS who just started blogging? Let them know that we’re here and ready to shine the spotlight their way.

The Carnival will spend another week here at Open Stacks, so I hereby invite your submissions for Carnival of the Infosciences #2. Please send posts via the contact form by Sunday, August 14, no later than 6 PM Eastern time. Submission guidelines are here as are the hosting guidelines. I am always looking for more hosts! In fact, I can’t wait for the Carnival to go on the road, so I can see more creative presentations than my own. Here’s a link to the current hosting lineup.

And without further ado, let the carnival begin.

Our first post comes from Dave Hook, The Industrial Librarian, who tells us Why blogs & RSS feeds will help drive open-access journal publishing. He presents complementary scenarios that illustrate the potential impact of online access to journal articles on the readership of said work. Will this drive print journals to change their ways? I’d like to think so.

Joy Weese Moll over at Wanderings of a Student Librarian submits Part 1 of her MLS Success series entitled Learn to Learn. I only wish I had realized earlier that I, like Joy, have a high music intelligence. Better still if I had realized that I am not a visual learner prior to selecting Art History as an undergraduate course of study.

We then have a wonderful post from Meredith Farkas of Information Wants To Be Free entitled Online communities in a “locked down” society. The post’s purpose is two-fold: first, to note the disconnect between the preponderance of online communities for librarians versus the total absence of librarian-facilitated online communities for the patrons we serve; second, to introduce the notion of the “community wiki” with the library playing the logical role of host and shepherd.

At Christina’s LIS Rant, Christina Pikas asks the question Is blogging for personal information management generalizeable or just for some? That is, does blogging as PIM work uniquely well for information professionals or would the approach function equally as well for scientists or engineers? Interesting. I suspect that it is more inherent to the individual learning style than to the profession, such that there are both info pros and scientists for whom blogging wouldn’t quite do it.

Rebecca Hedreen submits a slightly older post to the Carnival, but I’ve decided to be less restrictive in this first go-round. So I present for your consumption her comments on Wikipedia over at the Frequently Answered Questions blog. I wonder if the possible changes at Wikipedia will impact her opinion and that of so many others.

Building on the Wikipedia theme, Laura Crossett at lis.dom invites us to select resources by asking the tough question “What for and for what?” Where does appropriateness rank in the criteria for resource selection? Pretty high, I reckon.

Over at …the thoughts are broken…, Mark describes the shock of discovering that his own neophyte cataloging work is now part of our collective bibliographic universe.

In her post The Digital Audiobook Divide, Jenny Levine gives a thoughtful explanation as to the importance of providing not only audiobooks, but the hardware needed to play them. It’s all about access, as well it should be.

And finally, the Feel-good librarian shares the power of What books do. Also a powerful reminder of what librarians do.

Editor’s Choices

On the LITA Blog, Eric Lease Morgan provides a useful list of the technical skills of librarianship for those looking to develop their technology skill sets.

Eric’s post is nicely complemented by Karen Schneider, the Free Range Librarian, who wants all you technology instructors out there to remember that We’re All Newbies Some of the Time.

George over at It’s all good draws parallels between the problems facing the movie industry and those facing libraries in his post entitled “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small…”.

Keeping with the theme of parallels, Stephen Abram asks you to consider the similarities between The Store Window and Your Portal. Are there lessons to be learned from retail? Both in the digital and physical spaces?

Library Dust’s Michael McGrorty, in his post Relics and Libraries, observes that the textbooks of his youth were conservative and weak when compared to the revolution awaiting him on the library’s bookshelves.

Thanks for visiting the inaugural Carnival of the Infosciences. Please, please, send your comments and suggestions my way.