This is a few months old now, but exciting nevertheless: the cell phone company Nokia along with the University of Cambridge (UK) have come up with a pliable cell phone. The Nokia Morph nanotechnology model is still in the concept stage, and, according to the LetsGoDigital article, it shows that nanotechnology might be able to bring us: flexible materials, transparent electronics, and self-cleaning surfaces. The Wired has even come up with a slew of hilarous uses for this swanky device.

On the surface, this phone has nothing to do with libraries. However, it’s an established device in a new, unexpected package, flexible, and transparent. Now change the word device with service. Not a bad model for libraries of the future.

Julie Andrews served as this year’s National Library Week poster lady. I was tickled to notice that the book she’s holding is illustrated by my countryman Anna-Liisa Hakkarainen. I would guess the inclusion of a Finn in a poster promoting reading is not intentional, but it’s fitting, considering the incredible results Finnish children scored in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Arrived in the mail today:

Wo-hoo!

ALA has uploaded a series of humorous National Library Week videos to YouTube.

My favorite is the National Library Week: College Reference Desk

[video ca. 2 min]

It’s not too late to enjoy!

According to Businesswire.com, ebrary offers free access to library science e-books in honor of National Library Week. There is a caveat: you have to be a student or faculty member at a library science or related program.

Via American Libraries Direct 4/9/2008.

My life lately has been a whirlwind. After been out with a nasty cold for a week and a half, I’m wrapping up two internships, with multiple projects each. My husband got the tenure track job of his dreams, and we’re preparing to move. For the first time in my life, I’m contemplating setting down in an area permanently – or as permanently as you can in this fast-changing day and age. The thought stopped me for a moment. Up till now every time I’ve moved, I’ve known from the start that it’s only temporary.

Our future home is a new area for both of us. I have no job lined up yet, but the area has a lot of libraries. Even competing with the recent library school grads there, I’m confident that I will be employed soon enough. I look forward to finding a home and new favorite places to go, settling in, exploring the neighborhood.

We’ve been haunting our favorite restaurants, knowing that we won’t be able to enjoy them for much longer. We’ll also be leaving behind wonderful teachers, colleagues, and friends.

As if that’s not enough, there has been life and death, quite literally. The month-old niece is balanced by an all-too recent death in my extended family.

Now please excuse me while I go cry over the bittersweetness of it all.

A few links on how to improve ur Internets:

• 14 “Other” Ways to Use RSS Feeds from makeuseof.com lists less talked about services like sending any RSS updates to your email and converting news feeds to speech.
• 10 Smart Hacks for Google Reader from Lifehack. Via LibrarianInBlack. According to her, these tips also work with other RSS readers, not just Google’s.
• 63 WordPress Hacks, Tutorials, Help Files and Cheats by Speckyboy:

“This is a fairly comprehensive list of the Best WordPress Tutorials, Hacks, Help Files and Cheat Sheets (call it what you like).They are written to make life easier, to help us expand WordPresses functionality, to give us a better understanding of WordPress and how powerful a tool it is.”

Take a moment to scroll through the comments as well for additional tips.

• Cory Doctorow gives his 17 Tips For Getting Bloggers To Write About You. Quite a few tips aim at improved web fluency and linkability, but he also talks about the bloggers’ (which I take to mean heavy net users) perception of web use, and touches on copyright.

‘Tis the time when bugs of all sorts are doing their rounds… This little video reveals the secret behind all those “decorated” library books: Doodlebug by Nick Baker.

[video ca. 30 sec]

EuropaWorld publishes articles about develeopment issues from a European perspective. They are divided into 21 categories, including Arms control, Climate, Debt relief and development, Drugs and terrorism, and Education. According to their About us page,

“[t]he target audience is opinion, policy and decision makers , NGOs, Government Organisations, Educational Institutions, Media and Commercial Organisations and the general interested public in the English speaking world.

It consists of a website updated weekly .The website may be accessed free of charge.”

The category pages have ads and a search box by Google. The latest articles appear at the top of the page, and, below, past articles are merely arranged in reverse chronological order. This makes scrolling through the page and browsing difficult. There are also some minor editing and convention issues, but on the whole the site provides another useful window to Europe.

Steven Bell has posted the results of his Academic Librarian Journal Readership Survey at ACRLog. Most of the respondents seem to be ACRL members and read 1-2 articles from their personal copies of magazines, on paper, within one month of receiving it. Steven’s conclusion from the one open-ended question are that

* the articles in these journals provide strong evidence that tenure for librarians leads to a glut of unnecessary or pointless scholarly articles (our discipline isn’t the only one)
* the respondents depend on their rss feeds and blogs for news and readable content - not these journals
* librarians open the journals quickly to see who published and to look at job ads - and it’s downhill after that
* despite all of the above it’s still important to read these journals

How different is this kind of journal reading from two or three decades ago, I wonder? My impression is that there was never a golden time when librarians – or academics in general – had all the time in the world.

I tend to at least look at everything, because I’m new in the field and I want to know more. I’m sure my reading habits will change in time.