Very cool - most cell phone companies have set up a system where you can send an email to someone and put in their phone number plus a predetermined string and it will be sent as a text message to their phone. Example:number@tmomail.net and there are more examples at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway#Carrier-provided_Email_or_Web_to_SMS_gateways
As seen in “Library Administrator’s Digest” (May 2008) there are some neat library programs out there. Two of my favorites are “Paws for Reading” where certified therapy dogs are read to by children, and the bicycle loan program at Fort Collins, Colorado, to “reduce air pollution and traffic congestion”.
At one of the libraries where I work, a co-worker passed along a fascinating link to a haunted library. So why did I categorize this under technology? Check this out.
One library in particular has installed three cameras that are connected to the internet. Yep, you can watch for their ghosts online ’round the clock.
If you see a ghost, you click on the camera image. The image is saved and you can write comments with it. Then the saved image and your caption go into their online collection of ghost pictures.
This was really cool because, as a total scaredy cat myself, I would never ever go near a haunted anything on purpose. Much like I wouldn’t go see a lion in the wild, but in the zoo it’s a different story because I feel more like I’m observing the critter from a safe distance where it is unaware of my presence.
While most of the saved images are shadowy, there were a few that I found truly startling.
Here is a link to their ghost cams: http://www.willardghost.com/index.php?content=ghostcams
And here is a link to one of my favorite ghost images from that library:
1. Disembodied leg. http://www.willardghost.com/ghostspottings/inspect.php?capture=28760&pic=20070111/WillardGhostCapture_20070111-04:09:29.jpg
I was recalling this morning at work how very much easier life has been since most of our students have acquired thumb drives. These are also called USB drives or USB keys. Sometimes you will see them on a keyring or a lanyard.
These are so cool becacuse, unlike floppy disks, they don’t get ’stuck’ in the drive slot (for which we have our high-tech diskette removal beauty supply eyebrow tweezers).
They are better than CDs for three reasons. The first reason is that some of our older computers don’t write to CD. The second reason is that sometimes the student will bring a CD that is not re-writable and then they get upset that they can’t write over an older file. The third reason is that CD are prone to scratches and USB do not expose the data surface to damage.
The only drawback to USB is that they are so small. Usually this is a good thing, except that they are so totally small that people forget to take them out of the machine before they leave. We have a special box in our lost & found collection for these.
My thought on this is that the manufacturers should start making them in dayglow neon colors instead of the traditional black and grey - that way they’d be much more eye-catching and therefore more difficult to leave behind on accident.
But until then, if you leave your USB on the lanyard when you put it into a computer, and you tie a colorful little ribbon on the lanyard, you’ll be much less likely to forget your thumb drive when you leave.
My newest addiction.
Free site where you can add your favorite titles to your ’shelf’, rate and review them, and share with friends and see their ’shelves’ too. Great concept, now they need to do this with music and movies and they’ll be all set. http://www.shelfari.com
Finally got it working - between code from three different people I’ve got a search box for the NULS OPAC working. I inserted a demo in my MySpace page. For those of you who wish to add it to your webpages here is the source code (use ‘view source’ to pick it up) http://www.myspace.com/virgh
PURL stands for Persistent Uniform Resource Locator, also known as a persistent URL. URL is the address you type on the internet to access a webpage. We’re testing PURL with our online catalog, and I’m excited about it because for the last three years no one knew how to do it and this is totally useful for us.
Yahoo! had a piece on this recently - fascinating stuff - using technology to line up humans behind the screen. Much like in the ‘Wizard of Oz’, except you know there’s someone behind the curtain.
They highlighted ‘mechanical turk’ - a venture by Amazon to “complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it.” They call each of these tasks a “HIT” which stands for Human Intelligence Task.
There’s also a search engine out there - ChaCha - that combines brainpower with bandwidth. Their ‘Search with a Guide’ will “get the few exact results you want, not the millions of results you don’t.” Sounds like a librarian to me! 
Check out this list of ‘bests’ for Web 2.0: http://realsoftwaredevelopment.com/2006/10/best_of_the_bes.html
They say they’re updating it daily based on user feedback, so watch for new innovations too.
Wow! This is truly the power of an online community. Catalog and review your own library of books, and share that info with others!
Do you do the Library Thing?
