the pod bay door

:: Deb and Steve Feisst are about to take a three-month trip to South America, leaving March 12, and returning June 12. Deb is a library colleague and kindred spirit. They will document their trip at aventura de suramérica.

Peter Binkley, colleague at the U of Alberta, has started writing at his new site, Quædam cuiusdam, aptly titled given his background as a medieval historian, in addition to being the Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian on campus. (Watch out, Peter! Michael Gorman just tossed a book at you!)

I met Diane de Rooy at the Steely Dan concert at The Gorge in Washington State, in 2000 and again at the SD concert there in 2003. Her blog is Big Thinker, Small Town: “My motivation behind this blog is to contribute something to the way people think, hoping they will become more aware of facts, and ultimately, they will become motivated to do one or two small things about issues that need attention.” Sounds good to me.

Stuart Bayens has created Last Link on the Left:”The aim of The Last Link on the Left is to provide entertainment, education and observations of modern culture as reflected on the internet and in other forms of communication.” Wow. Good luck sorting through that quagmire!

Meanwhile, Tony is writing up a storm at A Sea of Flowers. Good God, man, where are you finding the time? 😉

:: As my friend Tony Dalmyn noted, I didn’t include a link to Michael Gorman’s original column in the LA Times, Google and God’s Mind, in the previous post about his Library Journal column about blogs, so there it is. I mention this because I want to draw your attention to a new blog, Quædam cuiusdam by esteemed colleague Peter Binkley, Digital Initiatives Project Librarian at the University of Alberta, in which he offers an insightful, informed and educated response to Gorman’s take on the Google project. Peter works on Peel’s Prairie Provinces, a major digitization project to enhance and improve access to the history of the Canadian prairie provinces:

Peel’s Prairie Provinces is a resource dedicated to assisting scholars, students, and researchers of all types in their exploration of the history and culture of the Canadian Prairies. The site contains both an online bibliography of books, pamphlets, and other materials related to the development of the Prairies and a fully searchable collection of the full texts of many of these items. As of September 2004, the Peel bibliographic database holds some 7,200 titles, approximately 2,500 of which have already been rendered in digital form and mounted on the Web site. These materials are extremely varied in terms of their content and provide an extraordinarily diverse picture of the Prairie experience. These items date back to the earliest days of exploration in the region and include a vast range of material dealing with every aspect of the settlement and development of the Canadian West. These sources are also highly diverse in regard to the cultural experiences that they reflect. Although English-language titles predominate, the databases contain a very substantial body of materials in French, Ukrainian, and numerous other languages.

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