Amphigouri: varnished nonsense

So, screw all the things I had queued up that I wanted to post before this; this is a 30-second post, those ain’t.

For the record, I’d be one of the librarians peeing myself. Well, maybe not peeing, but definitely giggling.

Today & tomorrow are designated by the ALA as National Library Legislative Day(s?) 2007:

On May 1 & 2, 2007, librarians of all kinds are invited to Washington, DC, for an event like no other: National Library Legislative Day (NLLD).

NLLD is a two-day event in which people who care about libraries participate in advocacy and issue training sessions, interact with Capitol Hill insiders, and visit congressional member offices to ask Congress to pass legislation that supports libraries.

For more information about library legislative day and to register or make a contribution please click on the links below.

National Library Legislative Day is sponsored by the American Library Association, Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, District of Columbia Library Association, and Special Libraries Association.

Have a look at some of the Issue Briefs to see the topics about which library advocates are talking to members of Congress, such as Privacy and Surveillance (pdf), Copyright Issues (pdf), and No Child Left Behind (pdf).

Nifty. The Library of Congress has started a blog. From the inaugural post:

The Library has in its care more than 134 million items, with 22 million items online. That’s a lot of content, by any measure. More and more people online are looking to blogs to help them navigate and make sense of the content that’s “out there,” to say nothing of the world around them. With some 71 million blogs at last count (or so says Technorati), it’s a conversation an institution like the Library should be a part of.

The Library of Congress was producing electronic content long before the Web even existed, so it’s fitting today that we become one of a (surprisingly) small handful of federal agencies with a bona fide blog.

It’s probably a bit early to come up with some sort of grand “mission statement” for this blog, but it will be in keeping with the spirit of the Library’s mission as a whole: “to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.”

Cool!

Update: and how fitting, to have their blog open on Library of Congress Day !

(via LibraryStuff [via Steven's tweet, yay!])

Via the Maine Libraries Discussion list (MELIBS), I see there’s an opening for a Children’s Librarian at the Camden Public Library. From the email:

This full-time position is critical to fulfilling the library’s mission of
excellent service to the children of the communities we serve. Duties
include: designing, implementing and evaluating library services for
children and young adults, planning and conducting children’s and YA
programs, and development of the children’s and young adult materials
collections.

This successful candidate will possess a broad knowledge of children’s
literature and children’s programming. A college degree is required and
library experience is preferred.

The CPL is one of the loveliest libraries I’ve visited, and has an absolutely stunning view of Camden Harbor. I don’t know a lot about the workings of the library, but as a midcoast native, I heartily recommend the area and the communities - there’s a lot of neat stuff going on - check out the Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville chamber of commerce site as well as the one for Rockland-Thomaston.

I read today about MyCyberTwin, “a website that allows you to create virtual personalities that can chat for you online.” At first blush, it looks like it’s a system where you can set up what makes me think of a personalized Eliza (tho not necessarily with the therapist angle)…. an IM ‘bot of sorts that you can train to give canned answers to questions. From LifeHacker:

Web site MyCyberTwin lets you create your own personal IM chatbot that you can customize and teach to mimic your personality.

[snip]

After you create your CyberTwin, you can answer a series of questions to make it more like you through the MyClassroom section … A tool like this could come in really handy if it filtered the important questions to you and took care of the rest itself. I know, it’d be weird-ish, but as a site somewhat obsessed with chatbots, this idea has potential!

And from TechCrunch:

The company, which is based in Australia, creates an online “clone” of users based on a 79 question personality quiz and hundreds of additional training questions. Once it’s complete, a chat bot is created for that user, which has it’s own web page, can be embedded into MySpace or another website, or can log into Microsoft Messenger on your behalf and pretend to be you.

I wonder if this could be an option (and fun one) for libraries that want to offer IM services but don’t have staffing to cover all hours (how do they handle that sort of thing now?)….

The Shifted Librarian writes of a librarian who uses DDR as a means for settling fines as well as disputes between teenagers:

For example, if a teen has overdue books, she will dance-off against the person, and if the teen wins, the librarian will waive the fines.

How cool. We got one of the DDR games & mats at home this Christmas; kudos to the librarian for keeping up with this (I’ve got a looooong way to go before I’m ever able to pit DDR skillz against /anyone/, let alone a teen!).