A Look At Library Science Daily

Twitter can be a great way to find library people and resources. It just so happens that I discovered Matt Anderson's Library Science Daily, a look at what is going on in the world of librarianship and related topics.

You can search by article type, such as education, technology or society or you can just browse to find topics of interest that you might have missed.

Might be worth it to place it in your RSS/Reader of choice to keep up with the happenings around the globe.

Library of Congress Transition from Thomas.gov to Congress.gov

The Library of Congress is developing a new portal site for researching the data generated out of the U.S. Congress.

Beta version of Congress.gov web site

You still can use Thomas.gov to find information on a bill or piece of legislation. In about a year's time the new Congress.gov site will take over. The new site will make it easier to find bills, research legislation, and you will be able to access data over mobile devices.

One of the things that will be easier is getting a better understanding of how congress works. You should check out the legislative page that contains text and video that brings a bit of clarity about the process.

National Archives 1940 Census Site Is Live

I love it when history, technology and crowd sourcing come together. What do you do when you have 3 million plus pages of census documents that need to be entered into a database?

http://1940census.archives.gov

You ask for help. 160,000 people volunteered and within five months The 1940 Census is available for free from a number of partner web sites in addition to the National Archives.



This is a short video created by the National Archives explaining how they converted microfilm to a digital format and how to use the enumeration district numbers.  For those of you in the digital technician program pay close attention toward the end of the video.

At the National Archives site you can get a primer on how to do a census search, the vocabulary you need to understand and more. There is even a blank 1940 Census form for your perusal.

You can get much of the information from proprietary sites like Archive.com,  Family Search.org, or access to ProQuest.

This is a great opportunity to find that rascal of a relative or to get a better sense of how people functioned in the the time between the Great Depression and World War 2.

RDA Templates Demo Video - Library of Congress

The cataloging process is evolving. Once upon a time I spent my evenings trying to get a grip on MARC, Dewey and AACR2. To stay in the game you have to be willing to keep up to date with the changes in the field.

Resource Description and Access (RDA) is the next level of library cataloging. This is a video by the Library of Congress by Cataloging educator Deborah Fritz and library software developer Richard Fritz.

This is an opportunity to take a look at a prototype of RDA and to get a sense of where cataloging is going. 



For a transcript of this presentation or to view it in Real Media format, you can visit the Library of Congress RDA Templates web page.

If you would like to get your hands of the software mentioned in the video you can visit the RIMMF wiki and download the software. The software is under a Creative Commons license and is free to use for educational and non-commercial purposes only.

ALA Advocacy Excerpt - The High Ground

This is an small part of a presentation given on the Expo floor of the American Library Association 2012 conference. in Anaheim, CA.



This is an open caption version of the video. We all want to support libraries and part of that support is seeking funding. This is a look at the ways that libraries and those that love them go about getting financial or resource support.

In this excerpt, the speaker talks about one of the ways to gain support for libraries is to get the attention of decision makers. Surprisingly is not always about facts or figures; is about the ideological high ground.

For more information about learning about advocacy skills that support libraries visit the American Library Association Advocacy University web site. 

Opportunity to Brush Up on Google Search Skills

For those of you that want to do more with Google than to use quotation marks you might be interested in a free on-line class that Google is conducting in Power Searching.

Power Searching with Google Registration Page

Power Searching with Google is a free, short term class that Google is conducting. It is in the same spirit as the MIT classes on the Python programing language and Building a Search Engine.

Meaning that you could have classmates from all over the world. This specific class is being taught by Google. There will be opportunities to go deep via Google+, Google Hangouts and other social media pathways.

I would guess that you would be able to ask questions via Google Hangouts or a number of different ways. I'm half tempted to buy that Nexus 7 tablet just to try it out. Like I need an excuse to buy tech. 

Class starts on July 10, 2012 and runs for two weeks.  So, fire up that phone, tablet or desktop and register.

Addendum: Just got my confirmation; ixnay on the phone. You can use a tablet, notebook or desktop computer. I'm thinking they would prefer that you use Chrome. Just a hunch.

Fanzines From the ALA Expo Floor Part 2

Before blogs, before the Internet as we know it there were fanzines. The great news is that there are still fanzines being produced. On the ALA Expo floor was an exhibit of some of the publications.

Fanzines are small publications that focus in on a particular topic or niche subject area. They can be handwritten, assembled from found materials, photocopied or professionally produced.

The topics can range from surviving the workday after a bender to a catalog of every Tonka toy made. Whimsy or dead serious in content. Sometimes explicit. Sometime reveling in the mundane.

I remember finding fanzines on the floor of record stores next to the free alternative newspapers. That was one method of distribution. Another was mail sharing or trading. Fanzines could also be sold for subscription.

It was hit or miss. There could be one issue or seven or 130. It depended on the person. There are still a few folks producing fanzines in the U.S. but other countries are continuing the tradition.

 It was kinda cool to find this spot of creativity at the conference.