the pod bay door

:: The Guardian maintains a fascinating and detailed weblog site. In addition, check “Onlineblog.com, a weblog covering internet and technology news produced daily by the Guardian Online team.”

:: From the Boston Globe comes this report on the Iraq National Library: ” Contrary to widespread belief, the antique books of Iraq’s National Library were not stolen by thieves last month but were removed for safe keeping by self-appointed guardians of Iraq’s cultural heritage.” (Thanks, Derryl.)

:: An interesting column by Jon Iverson has appeared that (again) details the myth of downloading: that file trading of music via the ‘net has affected CD sales negatively. Iverson, writing in Stereophile, notes that annual sales remain ahead of 1998’s figures, and that when a number of other factors are taken into account, the sales figures should be much worse. Iverson points to a detailed account by Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, who argues that file trading actually leads to
more purchases, rather than the other way around.

:: Shareware Music Machine is a site that gathers links to >4,400 music software titles.

In my previous entry, I lamented cynically about the chances of the Province increasing funding to libraries in Alberta. I learned this morning, via a colleague, that this in fact is happening. At the recent Alberta Library Conference, the Minister of Community Development noted that this funding increase was just the start. This is good news, and is encouraging to know the government is seeing value in its investment in local libraries and library systems in Alberta.

:: In today’s Edmonton Journal comes a column by Scott McKeen, titled: Civilization’s safe after all. Libraries are cool again. Um, er, well…duh. Those of us in the profession have a news flash for Mr McKeen – our hallowed halls of employment were never uncool. Dude. McKeen observes that when All Things Pop Culture exploded (in the 90s, I presume), such as computers (read: Internet), home theatre, big box bookstores, instant gratification, and so on, the prediction was people would stop frequenting libraries, and by extension, their services. I’ve been a librarian for 25 years, and don’t recall any particular point in time when my colleagues and I thought the sky was falling on our vocation and the buildings in which we work(ed). Read McKeen’s column, and one might conclude that it’s a modern miracle libraries didn’t collapse from within when the Internet and Napster and stadium seat theatres and Digimon and all these fast food thrills took hold of Planet Earth. Well, public libraries at least. In academic and college libraries, we’ve spent the last 10 years doing our best to help students understand why the Internet isn’t the Answer to Everything, and why their research and studies will take them to the library and its resources. *Cough*. (BTW, am I the only person who thinks the Edmonton Journal’s web site really, really sucks? Like, badly? Unfortunately, the EJ website is the mirror image of all newspapers in Canada owned by the National Post.)

In fairness to McKeen, he does sing the praises of (public) libraries, and notes that Alberta municipalities are lobbying our provincial government for higher library grants. Um, I won’t lose sleep waiting for that to happen very soon – increased library funding in Alberta could lead to a better educated populace. God forbid that might happen here.

:: Speaking of public libraries, this is such a cool idea, I wish someone in Canada would do it, too: The Third Annual New York Times Librarian Awards for public librarians across the United States. This year the awards have gone national in the USA.
Read more »

:: The weekend is coming to a close, and it’s been a good one, my head and throat notwithstanding. On Friday night, I hung with some cool colleagues after work, at Martini’s on 109th, followed by some tunes at G&K’s pad. On Saturday I was lazy, did little other than see two films: The Lizzie McGuire Movie (don’t shoot me for that, I took a little one who wanted to see it and she had a great time), and Identity (which has a cool web site, check it out). Identity is a thriller with a great cast of character actors, including my man John Cusack, Clea DuVall, Amanda Peet, John C McGinley, Ray Liotta, Jake Busey, Alfred Molina and Pruitt Taylor Vince. The film wasn’t as edgy as I hoped, but was still a good watch.

I wrote a short review of TLMM for BlogCritics. BlogCritics, btw, now has links to groups of reviews of CDs, DVDs, and books.

Today I had dim sum, and then jammed with Deb. But I’m not feeling 100% – last night I went to bed with a sore throat, and today I feel like I’m on the edge of a cold. I hope it doesn’t get any worse. The good news is it’s warmed up in Edmonton considerably from five days ago, when we had snow-covered ground, and the temperature was hovering around OºC.

:: Steely Dan will be heading out on their next tour, beginning in July, in support of the new album, Everything Must Go. Three years earlier, Chris and I drove to The Gorge to see Steely Dan perform, in June 2000. This year they are playing The Gorge again on August 2nd, which is the long weekend in Alberta. So I went online and bought two tickets. I’ll worry about the details of the trip later in the summer.

:: Finally, mention of a column by Al Franken, one of my favorite comedians and political pundits. Franken writes about a conversation he had with Minnesota senator Norm Coleman, who replaced Senator Paul Wellstone after he was killed in a plane crash in 2002. The conversation happened after Coleman made some controversial remarks about him being a 99.9% improvement over Wellstone, who was much loved by his constituents and well-respected in the US Senate. (Thanks, Derryl.)