My colleague Kate isn't at work today, but she just instant messaged me with a great story. Her daughter Clare is a college freshman who just started her first statistics class. On the first day, the professor announced they would be taking a basic math test, just to see where everyone was at, but that they could use their calculators.

Apparently every student whipped out a cell phone - not a calculator in sight....

Hello. My name is Sarah and I'm an RSS-addict.

"OK, so the # of feeds I'm getting just went over 100. I officially cannot live without RSS now...." [LibrarianInBlack]

In response to yesterday's criticism of Illinois Governor Blagojevich's plan to spend money on 12 books per child per year rather than on libraries, Ernest Miller comes up with a most interesting proposal.

Book Publishing in Every School and Library

"Why not split the difference?

What if Illinois spent at least part of the $26 million for the book give away program to install book publishing equipment in every library in Illinois? Then, just like the Internet Bookmobile, children would be able to walk into a library and walk out with a book they could keep. Frankly, I think every school and library should have book publishing equipment. Given enough scale it is probably cheaper to print out most public domain books and give them away then deal with the costs of checking them out and restocking. Heck, you could have an option: check the book out and be subject to possible late fees, or pay $1 or so and keep the book. Might work out pretty well."

Now there's a vision! I'm smelling a grant on the horizon (because I don't see the Governor compromising). Any SLS library want to be my guinea pig?!  :-)

Senate Begins RSS Rollout

"Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) is the first Senator with a RSS news feed for press releases on his official site. Feeds for other senators will soon follow according to Jason Blum in Enterprise Systems Support of the office of the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms. Plans call for what Blum refers to as 'RSS relay agents.' These are local customized feeds for hometown constituents for NOAA weather alerts and state news." [RSS in Government]

Biden's feed is here. This is really thrilling news, and maybe it will even prompt legislators to post more substantial news more often to their sites!

In addition, if your library runs a community or news site, don't forget that you'll be able to re-post these feeds on that site. After all, they can't be copyrighted or licensed since they're funded by taxpayer money and they come from our government, right? (At least for the moment....)