The 1st floor entrance doors recently received a much needed upgrade. The old, noisy door hardware was replaced with new “panic bars” and outside handles that operate in a smooth and significantly quieter manner. The doors were also repainted inside and out to additionally enhance the library entrance.
This week Walker Management Library welcomes our newest staff member, Jeff Carrillo. Jeff will be filling the position of Weekend Supervisor and will work a Wednesday through Sunday schedule. Jeff has just recently moved to Nashville from Chicago where he worked in the Circulation Department of the Ryerson & Burnham Library of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Google recently announced it would make two new services available to the higher education research community under the title University Research Programs. Basically, Google has built an elaborate set of systems for collecting, organizing, and analyzing information about the web.
The University Research Programs will give researchers access to Web search and machine translations. Here is more info:
The program for Google Search, as described on the Google site, “is designed to give university faculty and their research teams high-volume programmatic access to Google Search, whose huge repository of data constitutes a valuable resource for understanding the structure and contents of the web.”
The program for Google Translate “provides researchers, in the field of automatic machine translation, tools to help compare and contrast with, and build on top of, Google’s statistical machine translation system. Participation in the program will allow researchers programmatic access to Google’s translation service.”
Are you interested in where the future of virtual business is headed? Are you familiar with Second Life? If so, then go to Info Island I at the Open Air Auditorium for “Meet Me in My Avatar’s Office: Doing Business In Second Life” on Friday August 10 @ 5 pm sl. The speaker is Doug Mandelbrot (Doug McDavid in real life) and the executive consultant with IBM’s Global Business Services and the Almaden Research Lab. Doug is a firm believer that the 3D Internet, as exemplified by Second Life, is the future environment for all forms of remote collaboration within and among teams of people. He will discuss a convergence of historical economic and technological trends that make a move into the virtual world simply inevitable. He will introduce the audience to the range of virtual world activities that IBM is currently involved in, including their relationship with the New Media Consortium.
In Doug’s work he specializes in bridging the gap between business people and technologists. In Second Life he is exploring the potential for rehearsing services techniques in virtual environments. He has led and worked on numerous successful engagements with clients in insurance, utilities, telecommunications, manufacturing, travel, aerospace, and defense. He has numerous patents, publications and conference talks to his credit. In 2000 he was elected to the prestigious IBM Academy of Technology, and he is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the New Media Consortium (NMC) in the role of Visionary Director.
According to a recent article on CNN.com, many colleges are using student blogs to recruit new students. “Colleges seeking a competitive edge are increasingly enlisting and sometimes paying student bloggers to chronicle their lives online. The results run the gamut from insightful to boring, but the goal is the same: to find a new way to win the attention of the MySpace generation.”
We in the library think it’s wonderful that the Owen students created OwenBloggers, a lively and often entertaining blog which both interests prospective students as well as current faculty, staff, and students. It’s an honest view of what’s happening in the school, the library, clubs, classes, and portrays what the students are really like. And no one is paying them to do it, either.
We look forward to reading more next year!
Thomson Gale, a major provider of databases, is celebrating America’s libraries during National Library Week by providing FREE access to ALL their online resources from April 15th to April 21st.
Out of the hundreds of databases they offer, here are some that may be of interest. Please remember that these are free THIS WEEK ONLY!
To gain one week access to these resources, visit http://access.gale.com/nlw2007/ and just fill out the info. Be sure to uncheck the box for for information about special offers and products and services. You’ll then be taken to all available Thomson Gale databases.
Also, Tuesday, April 17th is National Library Worker’s Day. Have you hugged a librarian lately?
The publicity bloggers (including OwenBloggers) get for putting their voice out there can help them land a great job or could derail any possible opportunities for successful employment. You know you are going to be Googled before being hired, so be careful what you say. Sarah E. Needleman, author of a recent WSJ article says “corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they are also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can’t get from résumés and interviews.” Check out the full Wall Street Journal article.
TimesSelect is an extra service of the New York Times that normally you would subscribe to. It provides online access to the NYT Op-Ed columnists, the Archive dating back to 1851, and many other Web tools. It is now free for all university students, faculty, and staff who register with an email address ending in a .edu domain.
Here is a neat article from the folks at Search Engine Watch that compares the market share between several popular News and Financial News sites.
Of course not! More than likely, librarians will still be around in the future, but the library profession will be redefined. Read the article “33 Reasons Why Libraries and Librarians are Still Extremely Important” and decide for yourself.
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