This will be a bit sparse to start but I thought I'd do a post of FIMS classes that have related blogs.
If you know of any other course blogs (or other related online materials – wikis, etc.) that are beyond the FIMS intranet, please let me know via a comment or e-mail.
LIS746 – Collection Development in Academic Libraries
LIS757 – Social Software
Or as a sleepy new father and an overtired new mother call it: “everyday.” 
This really has turned into a baby blog (as opposed to a library and technology one) lately, hasn't it?
I checked my stats and the number of readers continues to grow but I assume that's as much to do with the long tail of old entries that people are finding as with anything new that I'm writing. Oh well…the focus of this blog has shifted before and it will shift again.
And as somebody said to me once, “When you're a librarian, it's all on topic.”
So with the excuses made, here's a list of myths parents have about their babies (via Reddit, my current favourite one-stop shop for interesting links.)
It's a good list, pretty funny, pretty accurate and I only wish it was longer!
In unrelated news, my laptop is back from the shop and FedEx says it's sitting in the Regina depot since Friday awaiting “next business day delivery”. But it's not in my hands so apparently that means FedEx doesn't consider either Monday or Tuesday as a business day. Monday, I could see – does anybody consider it one? (What's that rule about never buying a car that's made on Monday morning or Friday afternoon?) But Tuesday? They had all day today when I was off and back in Regina to deliver it. And they didn't. I am very sad. 
I'm not a big fan of the Hallmark holidays – those ones that you just know were made up at some point in the past, mainly to sell greeting cards. But anyhow, happy first Father's Day to me!
Most of us know the ways that parenthood affects mothers. But in keeping with the theme of the day, here's an article from Slate magazine outlining some new findings about how parenthood affects fathers (er, if you're a marmoset):
There's also preliminary but tantalizing evidence that fatherhood can change the brain. A 2006 study
found enhancements in the prefrontal cortex of the father marmoset.
After childbirth, the neurons in this region showed greater
connectivity, suggesting that having young children could boost the
part of the brain responsible for planning and memory, skills parents
need when having kids gives them more to keep track of. The neurons
also had more receptors for vasopressin, a hormone that has been shown
to prompt animal fathers to bond with offspring. (Receiving an
injection of vasopressin, for instance, prompts a male prairie vole to
cuddle and groom a youngster.)
(Thanks to Heather M. for the pointer to this article)
Doing my third diaper change of the morning reminded me of this excellent Malcolm Gladwell article I read a year or two ago. In it, he looks at the history of disposable diapers, their science and the impact various elements have had on the economic aspects of the product.
Shea and I did the cloth v. disposable debate and like all good neo-hippies of the world, we were going to go with cloth. But someone (Quinn? Ian?) showing me a Wired article about how each is equally bad for the environment (PDF) in its own way along with the extra complications of trying to do cloth while maintaining two separate households, tilted the pointer towards convenience.
I had this ready to go yesterday but never got near a computer to post it. So I'm backdating to Friday and life goes on…
“The Prelinger Library is a small privately owned “public library” in San Francisco with the unique philosophy
that browsing library stacks can reveal new knowledge, if the books are
arranged for browsing. This is counter to most public libraries who
rely on computer terminal searching, databases and the Dewey Decimal
system to atomize books and subjects, with stack browsing a sort of
random after effect. Now a (real) public library in Arizona has joined the revolution
and claims to be the first public library in the nation to drop the
Dewey Decimal system. Instead, books will be shelved by topic, similar
to the way bookstores arrange books. The demise of the century-old
Dewey Decimal system is overdue, county librarians say: “People think
of books by subject. Very few people say, ‘Oh, I know Dewey by heart.’
“”
(via MetaFilter which has some great discussion about the role of classification systems in libraries and bookstores)
I can't remember if I ever mentioned it on this blog (probably knowing me) but I'm currently volunteering on the web site redesign task force of the Canadian Library Association.
For tomorrow's telefconference, everybody was asked to submit a link to a web site whose navigation they thought worked well. Some people did, others simply gave lists of what elements they liked (and didn't like) and since I agreed with most of what was already said, I sent the list of sites below instead.
So, two questions for anybody who's out there:
1) is there a library and/or organizational web site whose look/navigation you particularly enjoy or that works really well?
2) are there any sites you like that have good tips about web site design? Or any personal preferences for things you like (and don't like?)
—
Hi all,
Rather than chime in and repeat a lot of what's been said already (and which I agree with for the most part), I'll point you to a few sites you may or may not have seen before. I know most people won't have time to peruse these by tomorrow but they might be useful to look at as this process moves forward.
Web Pages That Suck
– has a good checklist of things to watch out for when designing a site. Ironically, their site design is horrible (or maybe that's intentional?)
Jakob Neilsen's Top 10 Web Design Mistakes
– an annual list of the worst trends/ongoing errors in web design. Highly worth reading and featuring lots of other Top 10 lists for other years and specific topics.
The book “Don't Make Me Think” is great. The web site? Not so much…
Finally, a Google search for “Best Library Web Site” led to this best practices wiki
Cheers all – talk to you tomorrow!
Jason
