Saturday, April 11, 2020

Recommended 8



Jill Lepore in The New Yorker describes two essential structures for "plague novels": stories set during a time of sickness and quarantine, and those "set among a ragged band of survivors." She cites many, beginning with The Last Man (1826) by Mary Shelley, that end with a portrayal of society having regressed.

And that, in the modern plague novel, is the final terror of every world-ending plague, the loss of knowledge, for which reading itself is the only cure.

 Maybe today is the day, then, to recommend Station Eleven by Emily Mandel. In this plague novel we do experience the lock-down quarantine and also the time after. In the after times, a man curates a archive of artifacts in the airport in which he and others live, and a band of musician and actors roam the land putting on Shakespeare's plays, because "survival is insufficient." Mandel gives us a hopeful ending.

If there are again towns with streetlights, if there are symphonies and newspapers, then what else might this awakening world contain? Perhaps vessels are setting out even now, traveling toward or away from him, steered by sailors armed with maps and knowledge of the stars, driven by need or perhaps simply by curiosity: whatever became of the countries on the other side?

Wednesday, April 08, 2020

Are We on Web 3.0 Now?


The other day, a colleague asked me to remind her about the 23 Things initiative we did when we worked together. It sounded like she was looking for structure to guide people in their self-teaching activities while working from home. I used my 23 Things tag to direct her back to some of the original posts. At the same time, I glanced at those "web 2.0" posts and the things we were excited about then: mashups and widgets; Flickr and BookThing.

I'm also taking a look at the sidebar on this site and culling dead links. In the early 2000s, I liked sites that were internet directories and portals. Before search engines gained strength, these directories reliably pointed users to credible sources. I used them on the ref desk all the time. Now it seems that one of them, the Internet Public Library has become a very bad essay farm? Only it acts like it belongs to Barnes & Nobel??

Library Spot appears to be active and useful still. Here's a page of links to directories: one or two patrons do call my current branch to have us look up phone numbers. Sometimes it's straightforward, but with personal numbers or address you can get bogged down in ads and paid sites. 

Hmm: YALSA book lists is dead and can go; most of those other blogs are long gone. Weird how my early online connections were mostly with strangers. No, wait, that's not right. I follow famous people on Twitter and witty strangers on Tumblr. It's really only Facebook where everyone is someone I actually know.



Recommended 7

99% Invisible on toilet paper.

Tiny Pantone matches on Tumblr.

"Stephen King is Sorry You Feel Like You're Living in a Stephen King Novel" on Fresh Air

Saturday, April 04, 2020

Recommended 6: News Sources

The Washington Post makes COVID19 related articles freely available, here.

The New York Times makes COVID19 related articles freely available, here.  

Quality coverage for Virginia includes
Central Virginia COVID dashboard.
Virginia Mercury
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Thursday, April 02, 2020

Recommended 5

My folks aren't interested in FaceTiming me. They're retired and not trying to #wfh. They live in rural Virginia and have terrible internet speed. They're not talking about zoom or new podcasts or what restaurant has pick up now. Mom's pretty tech savvy; Dad, not so much. Thus I am surprised to tell you that today's recommendation for something to do while isolating comes to you from Dad. He recommends the "takeout" art talks from the Barnes Collection, available here on YouTube. More online offerings from that museum are here.

Red Headed Girl in Evening Dress by Modigliani

Also recommending the storytimes my library system is presenting online (those videos won't stay live for very long). Loving the new-to-me song that Jodi sings, "Knife Fork Spoon Spatula."