There’s probably no connection here, but the association of title and description is compelling:

LIS - “freedom” (no feed)

Kudos to Steven for finally implementing TrackBack. The credit is mine, all mine. Let the pinging begin!

Congratulations. You have found the new (and hopefully semi-permanent) home of Open Stacks. With this post, I consider the transition to LISHost successful. I guess it’s time to pay up.

Jessamyn West, newly elected ALA Councilatrix, suggested a low-income/retired fee category for conferences. Good idea. I wonder how she envisions the implementation. Would the definition of low-income (and/or retired) be spelled out plainly by the ALA or would individuals petition on behalf of their own circumstances (and interpretation of the term), as on page 3 of this example (.pdf!)?

If I understand correctly, retired ALA members already get a conference discount, so I’ll suppose that Jessamyn is referring to non-members. Reaching out to non-members in this way would seem a small, positive step toward broadening the membership base in the long run. Low-income conference rates would definitely increase the feasibility of attendance for those who get no organizational support, particularly paraprofessionals. I’d like to see perhaps a sliding scale that can be applied on a petition by petition basis, but with some fairly specific guidelines to help people decide if they qualify.

I hope that Jessamyn plans to continue to circulate ideas into the community for us to consider and contemplate, as well as share tales from behind the Council doors. I’m not at all surprised that she was elected and hope her particularly strong showing (top 5!) reflects a high voter rate amongst the blogging community.

The sports world produces an astonishing amount of data in recording the nearly infinite minutia of athletic events. A new course called “Information in Sports” looks at athletics as a “perfect setting for probing information challenges, from research to competitive intelligence,” according to one of its instructors, Mike Eisenberg, Dean at the University of Washington Information School (co-taught with Joe Janes!). I bet they don’t get into the profound statistical realm of bowling though, which would be a shame.

Peter Scott reports that OCLC has given a name to the portal they have been developing. “WebJunction will be an online community where minds meet to share the ongoing successes and challenges of supporting public access computing.” When it launches sometime this month, it will be a forum for discussion related to providing open access and resources to support the cause. Looks like they did some good research (links available here).

At first glance, this seems like a great concept. A place to hash out the challenges of providing open access. But then one starts to consider OCLC’s motives in investing so heavily in such a community-building project. I smell a new service rising from the ashes of our collective wisdom. Perhaps OCLC is trying to get into the content management game. Imagine a portal or other form of content management system developed directly from the collaborative insight of unsuspecting, well-meaning librarians. Always be wary of the investor’s motives - what’s in it for them?

Update: After just a modicum of additional research, I learned that the true investors here are…who else, Bill and Melinda Gates, to the tune of $9 million. Here’s the original press release.

Apparently Blogger has done something that brings up a “Under Construction” error when you try to access pages using the www domain element. Not only can you not get to the page that way, the RSS feed built around the http://www.planetneutral.blogspot.com URL doesn’t work consistenly. A refresh or two or three seems to fix the problem, but it might be well-advised to change practices. So I’m changing the feed to reflect the functional http://planetneutral.blogspot.com URL. Please have all links point to this more stable and correct domain name. Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience.

It’s a true sign of the times when 7-11 decides to test-market Silk brand soy milk. PETA provides some contact info, in case you want to say thank you. And don’t forget to go buy some!

I really like to see blogs that are the collaborative work of a single library staff. The Oak Lawn Public Library (IL) has started a new blog called the OLPL Daily Hearsay. Right now, only two staffers appear to be contributing, but it’ll be interesting to watch and see if the rest of the personnel catches the fever. Strangely, I could find no evidence of the blog from the library web site. It is clearly hosted elsewhere, but there doesn’t appear to be any mention of it at all. The only reason I know of it is a message on Publib. Where’s the promotion people?.