BuyIndies.com

"BuyIndies.com is a community to buy and sell movies on VHS, DVD, 16mm film, etc. BuyIndies.com offers buyers a wide selection of over 45,000 independent, educational and hard-to-find titles in a central location and sellers the opportunity to promote and sell their films to a national audience. BuyIndies.com, Inc. is a privately held corporation which was incorporated in 1999." [Thanks, Silus!]

This site is interesting because it's like the EMusic.com of video. What's even more intriguing, though, is that they offer special logins for schools and libraries and a parallel site for educators:

"BuyIndies.com has created a special mode for educational buyers (called "edu mode") to weed out all the consumer-only titles. This allows you to view only titles which are available for educational purchase which includes public performance rights. All searches and browses you do after turning the edu mode on will only call up educational titles. You can always click the "edu" at the top of the page to return here and turn it off."

Definitely worth a look.

Salam Pax Has a Photoblog

"The aliased Iraqi warblogger responsible for 'Where is Raed' now has a photoblog, which contains some wonderful street scene images from Iraq. (Thanks, Emily!)" [Boing Boing Blog]

Last year I wondered what it would have been like to read bloggers in Afghanistan, and then this year we got to read an Iraqi blogger. I'm even more fascinated by global moblogging.

p.m. amusement...

"How to keep your parents off the internet (Flash)" [jenett.radio, via mini]

Gee, maybe libraries are being forced to filter the wrong terminals. Maybe it's the adults we should be aiming to protect....

"Mob Blog" to Cover Prez Election

"The founders of two popular weblogs plan to launch a "smart mob-style site" that promises to redefine news coverage of the presidential campaign. Matt Haughey (Metafilter) and Rusty Foster (Kuro5hin) say the site will post phonecam pics, video clips, audio and transcripts gathered from a host of contributors attending campaign events across the country. The site will also feature an hour-by-hour weblog of campaign events and news stories. How cool is THAT?" [Lost Remote]

"LII Tip of the Week - 'Weekly search tips, content hints, and general all-around good advice.' (RSS Feed)

Very Cool!! This weeks post:

'Say Cheeese! Yes, we meant "cheeese!" lii.org features a spell-checker that kicks in when it detects misspelled terms, and offers suggestions for the correct term. To see it in work, try a search for a misspelled term such as cheeese, bakon, or peenut. (Note: doesn't work in Advanced Search.)' [LIS Blogsource]

This is way cool! Now we need to add this type of functionality to our catalogs, digital libraries, etc.

bibliographic info and MTAmazon

"In response to my post on using MT plugins to include and display bibliographic information in my booklist, Dp writes to ask if I've tried using MTAmazon to automate the inclusion of most of that information that I currently add via manual entry. I haven't yet, though it's on my list to play with. The interesting thing is that with something like MTAmazon, I could also link outwards based on some of the information garnered. I do think it'd be pretty cool useful to be able to link out to a list of an author's other works, for example. My only problem, and don't get me wrong because I love it generally, is that I don't think Amazon's database is either complete enough or authoratative (or even with an authority file equivalent) to put to such a use. And so I'm wary of extending the booklist out with possibly misleading information.

But if someone ever put together an MTWorldCat, I would be so all over that." [rawbrick.net]

Paging OCLC, hee-uge opportunities awaiting you on line 1.

The next SLS Tech Summit is September 25, and we've had a few requests to do a session on open source software for libraries at the client workstation level, probably with a focus on public libraries. For example, how to deploy Open Office, Mozilla, Gimp, and anything else you think should be added to the list. We're looking for one or two persons who could speak to this issue, preferably from experience.

If you are such a person or know of one, please contact me. The caveat, of course, is that we can't really pay you with anything other than kindness, smiles, gratitude, and lunch. Thanks!

So you can go to conferences such as ASIST in order to present or attend such interesting sessions as Information Behavior in Everyday Life: Research on Street-Level Sex Workers, New Immigrants, and Hair Stylists

My Web Librarian: A Report on Patterns of System Use and User Satisfaction

"This report provides an overview of patterns of system use of the My Web Librarian (MWL) virtual reference service, and also attempts to gauge user perceptions of this service.

The report looks at user survey responses for two virtual reference services: the North Suburban Library System’s Answers Unlimited (AU), from January through March of 2003, and MWL, a service developed by the Alliance Library System and North Suburban Library System, from April through June of 2003.

Some summary findings:

• More than three out of four survey respondents reported having a positive experience with virtual reference services:
   
• 80.06% of respondents reported a positive experience with AU during January through March of 2003.
• 75.96% of respondents reported a positive experience with MWL during April through June of 2003.

This report also looks at user-supplied comments on the survey form:

• Nearly half (44.95%) of survey respondents also provided comments.
• There were 2.4 times as many positive comments as negative comments....

With 71.41% of respondents identifying the Internet/Web as their first choice for gathering information, there is a strong suggestion here that MWL is reaching an audience that does not readily think of libraries as a source of information. If that is the case, then virtual reference services might be considered to be a way for libraries to reach users who do not frequent the physical library. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that one out of five respondents think of libraries first as a source of information, which would suggest that perhaps some users of the physical library also embrace virtual library resources and services....

Some selected positive comments, by general category, follow:

• This was better than Google!
   
• I'm making this my home page! WOW!
   
• The librarian was able to answer my questions immediately. I've been making several attempts to get the information myself over the course of the last week, and I wasn't successful. In five minutes, I had everything I needed.
   
• I needed the name of an obscure journal article that was written in 1926. I spent 45 minutes trying to find it myself using ERIC, EBSCO and many, many others. After I gave up and turned to your service, (the librarian) found it in about 3 minutes. It worked like a miracle!
   
• I'm glad my tax dollars are being used so smartly. You all really deserve kudos for executing so well on such an excellent initiative. Bringing knowledge to the people, that makes for an informed electorate and a strong democratic country!
   
• This is great. I have a new found respect for Libraries and librarians. Thank you very much for taking the time to help out other people." [Bernie Sloan, via WEB4LIB]