It is Carnival Time!

Ferris Wheel
(picture from josuab)

Welcome to the Carnival of the InfoSciences #75!

Ladies, Gentleman, boys, girls, dogs, and other species, today I have a treat for you. I present to you, ideas that are impacting librarians, some written by librarians and some not, but all have the ability to add meaning and merit our work.

First, I would like to start with a smile, because you just may need one today, The Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette explains why everyone needs a nemisis at work.

Are you having trouble searching through those hundreds of feeds you have yet to weed from your reader? John Tropea of Library Clips explains how you too can harness the power of the Google Custom Search Engine Feature to search your RSS feeds in Google Reader. It seems silly to actually need a hack for this, as he points out, but at least he solved the problem for us.

The new talk show that is taking the biblioblogosphere by storm is not a new left or right wing slamfest, but a library related call-in hosted by Greg Schwartz. Uncontrolled Vocabulary had their second show in which they discussed permissions for Facebook APIs, the BISAC Subject Headings, having wait times for new books, the intersection of teens, porn, and the internet, and much more. I love the egalitarian way this new medium allows everyone to participate. Simply follow the instructions in the sidebar of the blog for the next installment and you too can hear your voice on the Interwebs. To listen to the archives, which I recommend, simply follow the link above for multiple listening options.

Off and on, our thoughts go back to the education we did, or did not, receive from trudging through our MLS degrees. Jennifer Macaulay, Life as I Know It, brings together thoughts on what people learn in library school and if it is possible that some people never will learn certain things.

ALA and all the ways I love to hate it have been on my mind quite a bit for various reasons. ALA is like the old animal that can still perform perfunctorily but is not really connecting with the crowd anymore. No one wants to put the animal down and yet we can not really decide what exactly to do with our organization. Aaron Dobbs recounts what happened to him at Annual in a Council Meeting in this post. Aaron wants to make things better, from inside ALA. He has some ideas on how to create change as well and asks that everyone who wants to make a difference participate. It is an interesting idea and I think one to which we should give some thought and time.

If you are a geek and love the gadgets, you should be reading TG Daily. TG Daily used to be Tom’s Hardware Guide, but has recently expanded and up-scaled their marketing with a new look and a new name. This past week, TG Daily had a short article on a topic which should be in the minds of all librarians: the rise of broadband and the increasing digital divide.

Another non-library post, but also on the topic of digital divisions, Henry Jenkins uses danah boyd as a springboard to discuss the divide between MySpace and Facebook users. This was news to me, as a nonuser of either of these social networking sites, and I found the argument fascinating. Are we recreating class structures online simply by the kinds of tools we choose?

Library Revolution has a great tag line: The library status quo must go! I love it. Emily Clasper, author of that very wonderful tag line, proposed a list of technology competencies every librarian should posses. The things she chose to put on her list are simple things to most, cutting and pasting, creating folders, and connecting to a wireless network, but I am sure we all know librarians who can not perform these tasks. Now we have the list, how do we make these a reality?

Ultimately, we are all bibliophiles at heart no matter what our job description says. We love books and we want other people to read books, so we spend a large amount of time trying to find ways to connect people with the things that they want. Madstop Reading is written by someone who shares my taste in books, but can read a heck of a lot faster. As a reminder of why some of us love SciFi so very, very much, I give you a review of Old Man’s War.

Thanks for stopping by! If you want more information on the Carnival of the Infosciences or you want to know where it is going next, please visit the official wiki or email Chadwick, who is a very lovely gent at infosciphi at gmail dot com.

–Jane, skips off in search of a funnel cake

Pony with Monocle

Updated: Just a clarification: I do think ALA is worthwhile, otherwise I would not be spending so much time in LITA and ALA trying to make things better.