I-95
Some readers may recall that while I was in grad school, "notes from I-95" was part of the title of this blog. As it happens, I do take 95 to work, but I am on it for maybe 8 minutes: not enough time for little things observed to stew into a story. Even on that short stretch, I still see a vehicle or two with a DVD player, and I note plenty of roadside trash -- two of my old, favorite topics.
Not unlike trash in appearance, snow litters the sides of the highway right now. As predicted the snow that fell on the "northeast" began falling as snow somewhere north of here (Ashland? Fredericksburg?) and Capital City got rain. It did turn cold after our winter showers, lingering in the teens for a couple of nights in a row and maybe hitting 40 during the day. In the sun. You know how when you don't knock the snow off your car roof it can stick up there for a long time, only to slosh off at the slightest curve (or a quick stop)? The effect is much more impressive when the ice and snow fly off and 18-wheeler (or even an SUV: one stuck in south-bound rush hour yesterday had a hood full) onto the side of the road. And in the shady places, these fallen sheets of snow are lingering, like bizarre flat rocks or rounded partial packs of copier paper. The most snow cover we'll see this year, it seems.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Stylin'
Style's cover story for the February 7th issue is on the problems of aging suburbia.
Many post 1950 houses were built for speed, not longevity. Run-down and inexpensive homes attract a high number of people who don't give a damn, and what used to be thought of as "urban blight" sets in, in neighborhoods with 1/4 acre lots and curving roads and cul-de-sacs that make routine police patrolling more challenging.
Meanwhile, the cost of fairly sturdy, often attractive city homes goes up and up. Style cites a recent Brookings Institution study of 100 metropolitan areas. Of Richmond, one of the areas studied, a co-author of the study (Elizabeth Kneebone) noted "'it's the only metropolitan area in the study where the poverty trends in the city and the counties moved in opposite directions.'" The number of poor people in Richmond went down; the number living in poverty in the counties went up.
The rest of the article considers the service needs of poor people and the readiness of local governments to ensure that the health, safety, and education needs of all area residents are met.
Also in Style, an editorial about Second Life. I mentioned to a co-worker that I was already sick of hearing about SL, and she didn't know about it. The back page piece gives a pretty good idea of what it's all about, yet in a way, it is what I am tired of hearing or reading: someone explaining this Cool New Thing to me, the Clueless, and exclaiming that it will change (or that it has changed) The World We Live In.
Capital City weather: the big snow storm making an east coast appearance this evening is scheduled to be rain, here.
Style's cover story for the February 7th issue is on the problems of aging suburbia.
Many post 1950 houses were built for speed, not longevity. Run-down and inexpensive homes attract a high number of people who don't give a damn, and what used to be thought of as "urban blight" sets in, in neighborhoods with 1/4 acre lots and curving roads and cul-de-sacs that make routine police patrolling more challenging.
Meanwhile, the cost of fairly sturdy, often attractive city homes goes up and up. Style cites a recent Brookings Institution study of 100 metropolitan areas. Of Richmond, one of the areas studied, a co-author of the study (Elizabeth Kneebone) noted "'it's the only metropolitan area in the study where the poverty trends in the city and the counties moved in opposite directions.'" The number of poor people in Richmond went down; the number living in poverty in the counties went up.
The rest of the article considers the service needs of poor people and the readiness of local governments to ensure that the health, safety, and education needs of all area residents are met.
Also in Style, an editorial about Second Life. I mentioned to a co-worker that I was already sick of hearing about SL, and she didn't know about it. The back page piece gives a pretty good idea of what it's all about, yet in a way, it is what I am tired of hearing or reading: someone explaining this Cool New Thing to me, the Clueless, and exclaiming that it will change (or that it has changed) The World We Live In.
Capital City weather: the big snow storm making an east coast appearance this evening is scheduled to be rain, here.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Friday, February 09, 2007
Google Books
The New Yorker may not be the first thing you think of when you think about keeping up with professional reading. But think again: nice long book reviews give me a good idea of what the book is about (not that a work reassessing the impact of Robert Moses on New York is really a good collection fit for my branch anyway); brief book blurbs serve as a good reminder of literary fiction about to be released; and finally its occasional pieces on technology are quite approachable (if longer than something from, say Library Journal or Wired).
In his piece in the February 5th issue of the NYer, Jeffrey Toobin takes a look at Google Books, the project infamous for scanning library books. Copyright law includes protection for libraries buying print books to loan to many people. Libraries pay hefty subscriptions for electronic resources that many people can use at once. Fair use permits excerpting, quoting, etc., but many argue that scanning entire books for free posting on the internet violates copyright law. Librarians like to protect intellectual property; we respect copyright law.
Librarians also like for people to have easy access to information. Yet online catalogs are not as intuitive as they should be. So while Toobin notes that "the most volumes in any catalogue is thirty-two million, the number in WorldCat," you have to remember that to find what you want in WorldCat, you need an accurate title or a well-constructed subject search. To find what you want in Google Books, you can just try a sting of words: it's why people like Google. They want to look for "cookbooks" not "cookery." Users want to use a natural language search.
There's a possibility that Google Books could be a book selling tool: that publishers and authors could still get paid for works that people find with the search engine as they click elsewhere to purchase. In this way, Google can exploit the Long Tail. Toobin quotes book agent Laurence Kirshbaum: "'It makes perfect sense to use the specificity of a search engine as a tool for selling books.'" Because, as Google director of content partnerships Jim Gerber said, "'when there are a hundred and seventy-five thousand new books each year, you can't marked each one of those books in a mass market.'" It may be that writers win an audience this way, that intellectual property is not threatened.
Probably what is threatened is librarian-as-gatekeeper and old-fashioned circulation statistics. Gatekeepers aren't cool anyway: don't just make the information or item appear: teach the use so she can try herself, next time. But if a student can get all of Moby-Dick from Google books (pertinent quotations, correct citations), there's no need to check one out, and the library board measuring achivemement by those stats is going to be disappointed.
The New Yorker may not be the first thing you think of when you think about keeping up with professional reading. But think again: nice long book reviews give me a good idea of what the book is about (not that a work reassessing the impact of Robert Moses on New York is really a good collection fit for my branch anyway); brief book blurbs serve as a good reminder of literary fiction about to be released; and finally its occasional pieces on technology are quite approachable (if longer than something from, say Library Journal or Wired).
In his piece in the February 5th issue of the NYer, Jeffrey Toobin takes a look at Google Books, the project infamous for scanning library books. Copyright law includes protection for libraries buying print books to loan to many people. Libraries pay hefty subscriptions for electronic resources that many people can use at once. Fair use permits excerpting, quoting, etc., but many argue that scanning entire books for free posting on the internet violates copyright law. Librarians like to protect intellectual property; we respect copyright law.
Librarians also like for people to have easy access to information. Yet online catalogs are not as intuitive as they should be. So while Toobin notes that "the most volumes in any catalogue is thirty-two million, the number in WorldCat," you have to remember that to find what you want in WorldCat, you need an accurate title or a well-constructed subject search. To find what you want in Google Books, you can just try a sting of words: it's why people like Google. They want to look for "cookbooks" not "cookery." Users want to use a natural language search.
There's a possibility that Google Books could be a book selling tool: that publishers and authors could still get paid for works that people find with the search engine as they click elsewhere to purchase. In this way, Google can exploit the Long Tail. Toobin quotes book agent Laurence Kirshbaum: "'It makes perfect sense to use the specificity of a search engine as a tool for selling books.'" Because, as Google director of content partnerships Jim Gerber said, "'when there are a hundred and seventy-five thousand new books each year, you can't marked each one of those books in a mass market.'" It may be that writers win an audience this way, that intellectual property is not threatened.
Probably what is threatened is librarian-as-gatekeeper and old-fashioned circulation statistics. Gatekeepers aren't cool anyway: don't just make the information or item appear: teach the use so she can try herself, next time. But if a student can get all of Moby-Dick from Google books (pertinent quotations, correct citations), there's no need to check one out, and the library board measuring achivemement by those stats is going to be disappointed.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Valentine's Day
Some links to get you geared up for Valentine's Day:
"This Day in History" from the Library of Congress.
This Valentine Exhibition from the American Antiquarian Society features MHC grad Esther Howland.
NEW! Victorian comic Valentines.
For the past couple of weeks, notmartha has posted great DIY St. Val. links.
And from Steph S., a gift idea of library tattoos (Mongrel has/has had them, too, if you are reading from Capital City) for your sweetie.
Some links to get you geared up for Valentine's Day:
"This Day in History" from the Library of Congress.
This Valentine Exhibition from the American Antiquarian Society features MHC grad Esther Howland.
NEW! Victorian comic Valentines.
For the past couple of weeks, notmartha has posted great DIY St. Val. links.
And from Steph S., a gift idea of library tattoos (Mongrel has/has had them, too, if you are reading from Capital City) for your sweetie.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Birdfeeder
Ha. I was begining to compose an elegant response (er, rambling memoir about books used) to Spunky Primate's question about field guides, when I said to myself, What the heck is all that comotion out there? Oh, I see! The fishpond's little circulating pump keeps enough water liquid to appeal to:
cedar waxwings
robins
starlings.
They're all flitting and chortling and shooing each other out of the way. The yellow on the waxwings' tails is awesome in the bright sunshine, as they fly from the pond to the rose-of-sharon bush or power lines. It's hard to count them, though, because of peering around porch rails. If I go to the window over the pond, I'll scare them all, and the kitchen door screen is not much good for seeing through.
The mourning doves are hunched in the sun on my window ledge; the juncos are eating spilled seed on the ground. Some songsparrows and a pair of cardinals will eat at the feeder, but that's about it.
Ha. I was begining to compose an elegant response (er, rambling memoir about books used) to Spunky Primate's question about field guides, when I said to myself, What the heck is all that comotion out there? Oh, I see! The fishpond's little circulating pump keeps enough water liquid to appeal to:
cedar waxwings
robins
starlings.
They're all flitting and chortling and shooing each other out of the way. The yellow on the waxwings' tails is awesome in the bright sunshine, as they fly from the pond to the rose-of-sharon bush or power lines. It's hard to count them, though, because of peering around porch rails. If I go to the window over the pond, I'll scare them all, and the kitchen door screen is not much good for seeing through.
The mourning doves are hunched in the sun on my window ledge; the juncos are eating spilled seed on the ground. Some songsparrows and a pair of cardinals will eat at the feeder, but that's about it.
Birding at Dutch Gap on Saturday
wood duck
mallard
black duck
american wigeon
northern shoveler
ring-necked duck
canada goose
great blue heron
lesser scaup
turkey vulture
yellow-bellied sapsucker
red-bellied woodpecker
hairy woodpecker
pileated woodpecker
eastern phoebe *
blue jay
carolina chickadee
brown creeper
carolina wren
ruby-crowned kinglet
northern cardinal
song sparrow
white-throated sparrow
We went in the late morning, so the temperature was inching up to 40 or so, but it was pretty windy. Gloves helped, but it's so hard to turn field guide pages with them on! The bright winter sun shines behind birders IDing ducks on the pond in the morning; the male wood ducks looked especially handsome.
*At first I wrote "out of season," but Cornell says they're year-round here, which is why one consults several sources.
On the Musak at Ukrop's: a Squeeze Singles tune. Bother, I can't remember which one and I am not going out to my car to find the CD.
Capital City weather: 18 degrees
At the Byrd: Eragon
wood duck
mallard
black duck
american wigeon
northern shoveler
ring-necked duck
canada goose
great blue heron
lesser scaup
turkey vulture
yellow-bellied sapsucker
red-bellied woodpecker
hairy woodpecker
pileated woodpecker
eastern phoebe *
blue jay
carolina chickadee
brown creeper
carolina wren
ruby-crowned kinglet
northern cardinal
song sparrow
white-throated sparrow
We went in the late morning, so the temperature was inching up to 40 or so, but it was pretty windy. Gloves helped, but it's so hard to turn field guide pages with them on! The bright winter sun shines behind birders IDing ducks on the pond in the morning; the male wood ducks looked especially handsome.
*At first I wrote "out of season," but Cornell says they're year-round here, which is why one consults several sources.
On the Musak at Ukrop's: a Squeeze Singles tune. Bother, I can't remember which one and I am not going out to my car to find the CD.
Capital City weather: 18 degrees
At the Byrd: Eragon
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)