Library of Congress comes in at #10 on a list of the ten largest databases. It might be a surprise who is listed as #1 but at the same time, you should take this list with a grain of salt as a lot of these numbers are speculative guesses.
(via DiggieFilter which has some discussion of who might've been missed – everybody from Wal-Mart to CERN.)
[Edit: Actually, from the Digg comments, here's a more accurate list of large databases (PDF) because it's compiled from information the companies submitted themelves. Plus, if you're a nerd-type, it breaks down the sizes based on a bunch of various permutations of how a database might be configured. Geeky-goodness!]
I saw someone in London complaining on their blog or Facebook profile because they had to go to school when it was -12. All I can say is please look at the “feels like” line on the screencap below. Also “please don't ever whine about -12 again!”
Being a good Saskatchewanite, -41 didn't stop me from taking my beautiful wife out for supper and a show (although I admit, I felt like my eyeballs were going to explode walking to the restaurant.) We weren't the only ones out enjoying the weather though – Saskatchewan's Premier came in to have a meal and sat in the table beside us!
The show was a Jimmy Buffet Tribute band (true romantic, that's me. Just kidding – it was my cousin's pick because he and his wife are big fans. But when it's -40, it's nice to sit in a theatre drinking pina coladas and listening to white man reggae.)
I was laying in bed last night trying to figure out what my blog is about now that I'm out of library school (which was 90% of my focus for the past year.)
I came up with:
1. library-related stories
2. technology developments
3. baby stuff
…with a side helping of politics, Saskatchewan news bites and miscellanous observations – often in a tasty list format. Sound about right?
Here's an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell that combines two of these major categories – library-related stuff (especially if you're interested in children's librarianship) and baby-related stuff:
Early acquisition of skills — which is often what we mean by precocity — may thus be a misleading indicator of later success, said Gladwell. “Sometimes we call a child precocious because they acquire a certain skill quickly, but that skill turns out to be something where speed of acquisition is not at all important. … We don’t say that someone who learned to walk at four months is a better walker than the rest of us. It’s not really a meaningful category.”
Reading may be like walking in this respect. Gladwell cited one study comparing French-speaking Swiss children, who are taught to read early, with German-speaking Swiss children, who are taught to read later but show far fewer learning problems than their French-speaking counterparts; he also mentioned other research finding little if any correlation between early reading and ease or love of reading at later ages.
(via DiggieFilter)
That last line surprised me as it goes against everything we, as book-lovers, tend to (and are taught to?) believe. Anybody else ever heard this?
I bought a copy of Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals About Reading, Libraries and Community but never got to read it cover-to-cover, only excerpts. Time to go back to it I think…
“Why don't you look it up on DiggieFilter?” – my mother-in-law talking about the web site I mention all the time on my blog. 
In my recent blog survey, someone mentioned that one of their favourite parts of this blog is my book recommendations.
Having just finished “The Logogryph: A Bibliography of Imaginary Books” by Thomas Wharton (which was beyond excellent – I'd give it my highest recommendation, especially for book lovers!), here's a list that was my submission to the FIMS book zine in Winter 2006.
But first, a small taste of “The Logogryph”:
It is believed that within the city there are at present over five hundred optometrists and sixty-five thousand librarians. Eighteen of the latter, usually the most capricious and heterodox, are chosen yearly as anti-censors, whose duty it is to ensure that no book is ever banned or prevented from reaching any reader. There is also a body of officials whose function is to ensure that any disturbing or scandalous volumes are distributed at random through the city, in order that the wrong reader may come upon them by accident, and so complicate and deepen her reading life with matter she may otherwise never have encountered.
(God, he's a good writer!)
Ten Great Books About Books
(And Language and Writing and Libraries)
1. Salamander – Thomas Wharton
A fantastic (in both senses of the word) tale about an 18th Century book binder and printer who is commissioned by a Hungarian count to create an infinite book.
2. Skipped Parts – Tim Sandlin
Two bookish young teenagers attempt to discover what authors write about in the “skipped parts” of their books. Set in the shadow of the Kennedy assassination, Sandlin has been called the J.D. Salinger of his generation.
3. Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn
A meditation on censorship set on a fictional island where letters are slowly being banned from the alphabet. The author incorporates this device in a series of letters between the novel's characters as they increasingly struggle to communicate within these limitations. If you like this, you'd also probably enjoy Christian Bok's “Eunoia“, a Griffith Prize winning poetry collection with each chapter written using only one vowel (and if you follow that Eunoia link, you'll find many other “gimmick” book suggestions.)
4. The Book on the Bookshelf – Henry Petroski
The author uses the development of the innocuous bookshelf to trace the development of books and libraries.
5. A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes and the Eternal Passion for Books – Nicholas Basbanes
Basbanes has a whole series of books on different aspects of book culture from rare books to bibliophiles to the power of books to change the world.
6. The Professor & The Madman – Simon Winchester
An amazing history of the creation of the Oxford English dictionary.
7. The Proud Highway – Hunter S. Thompson
Probably one of the most revealing glimpses into the lengths someone will go to to become a writer, this collection of Hunter S. Thompson's early letters show the writer he will become in a way that even his early works don't.
8. HappinessTM – Will Ferguson
A hilarious comic novel that (accurately) pokes fun at the behind-the-scenes of the publishing world via the story of a guru who writes a self-help book that actually works! The first work of fiction by one of Canada's greatest non-fiction writers.
9. First Chapter: The Canadian Writers Project – Don Denton
Portraits of great and emerging Canadian writers along with their answers to either the question “Why did you become a writer?” or “What would you tell your younger self now?”
10. Revolting Librarians Redux – Jessamyn West (ed.)
Great look at activist/alternative librarianship in a series of essays as well as lists, poetry, comics and more.
Reason magazine recently declared the “end of the post-9/11 era” citing a story linking Zsa Zsa Gabor with Anna Nicole Smith after the latter's death.
Hard to argue with that. The whole media frenzy around the Anna Nicole Smith death the other day shows that we're truly back to the way things were on September 10, 2001. Therefore, I would encourage you to tell everyone you know that's it's over – no more saying “it's a different world now” or talk of terrorists and “threats to our liberty.” No more of any of this (a person can dream, right?)
So why does the death of a Marilyn Monroe-wannabe signify the end of the “post 9/11 era?” ThinkProgress reports that “NBC’s Nightly News devoted 14 seconds to Iraq compared to 3
minutes and 13 seconds to Anna Nicole. CNN referenced Anna Nicole 522%
more frequently than it did Iraq. MSNBC was even worse — 708% more
references to Anna Nicole than Iraq.”
This, on a day that included “the sixth downing of a US helicopter in the past three weeks, allegations that a deputy Iraqi health minister was aiding a Shiite militia in its attacks against U.S. troops, and the death of four Marines.” That's not even touching the recent story that the US Military shipped $12 billion in cash (link to a Daily Show clip, ie. worth watching) to Iraq and somehow managed to lose track of it. <Dr. Evil voice> Twelve BILL-ion!</Dr. Evil>
Larry King summed it up: “The death of Anna Nicole Smith is the number one story around the world tonight.” Yes, it is Larry. Yes, it is. (That first link might be disturbing for some people. I know it is for me.)
Sometimes an idea for the day’s FFL pops right in your in-box on a
Friday morning. Here’s something fellow Librarian Activist editor,
David Jackson, sent me today.
“I Bless The Rains Down in Africa” is an article from music web site Pitchfork,
comparing the presence of information about Africa with information
about the Star Wars universe on the Internet. Perhaps not surprisingly,
Africa doesn’t fare very well. As author Chris Dahlen points out, “This
is partly because sci-fi nerds in the Western world have better net
access than most Africans. People also seem more drawn to the relative
simplicity of pop culture than to the complexities of real life. Pop
culture gives us a world we can understand, and problems we can solve.”
If you don’t read the complete article, I’ll pull one thing that might be of interest. GlobalVoicesOnline.org
is a blog aggregator that “gathers online news and opinion from the
global blogosphere. With a staff of almost 20 editors and more than 100
contributors, it’s a major resource for world news at a time when fewer
and fewer [North] American newspapers collect the stuff on their own.
Global Voices collects “bridge bloggers,” or bloggers who can talk
about their region to a worldwide audience…A great bridge blogger is
hard to find, and the countries that need the most representation have
the least access to the internet.”
See below for a call for readers and audience members for a Freedom to Read Week event forwarded by the esteemed Michelle Lake.
I organized the event last year and on a personal note, I think it's a great experience to participate in something like this – to learn more about freedom of expression issues, to see how an event similar to what happens in libraries all the time is run, and just to have a social evening out with your classmates. (They may surprise you – one of my quieter classmates got up and read the “Fuck” section of a dictionary of slang, getting a great response from the assembled crowd.)
Moments like that made last year's event a blast but my one disappointment was that only one professor read at our event (and I think maybe only one other one was in the audience.) As someone said afterwards, “Professors should set an example for students by attending events like this. If they don't, it's no wonder that students are apathetic.” So if I can make a personal challenge to any professors reading this, I'd encourage you to contact Michelle and get involved!
—
Hi Everyone,
On Monday, February 19th, at 5pm,
myself, several other MLIS students (and hopefully you!) will be
participating, cheering on and taking in a Freedom to Read Event at the
Grad Club!
What we want to do:
Read from Banned Books and other materials! Share Ideas about Censorship! Have Ourselves a Good Controversial Time!
What I need from you:
Volunteers to Read…it’s not an ‘Event’ if it’s just me & the
microphone (actually that’s pretty terrifying, please come and
contribute!)
I have a list of banned books or you can be a bit
creative and choose your own material (psst…Whatever you want to read,
that is your Right folks).
Spread the word!
Get other students out; this event is open to Everyone! If you have a Monday night class, come before, get something to eat, listen to some readings.
How to get involved:
If you want to read, email me back (mlake3@uwo.ca) and/or come to our
little meeting Monday, February 12 @ 10am in the Grad Lounge (4th
floor, NCB). Let me know if you want to read ahead of time, so we can
avoid overlap and make an preliminary schedule.
Why we are doing this (aka why should you care?):
Here is a brief list of books that have been banned or challenged in Canada:
• The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Greasy, Grimy, Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Children by Josepha Sherman and T.K.F. Weisskopf
• Asha’s Mums by Rosamund Elwin and Michele Paulse
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Goosebumps and Fearstreet by R.L. Stine
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
For more information, please visit the Freedom to Read website.
I hope to hear from you soon! (I think I've hit my exclamation mark limit) : )
~ Michelle Lake
Here's a goofy idea I had for a fun (yet embarrassing) entry…
I've been going to public libraries since I was a kid. I've visited libraries across country like they were tourist attractions (which I guess means that they are – at least for me!). I've just finished my Master of Library Science degree. And now I'm going to attempt to recite the top level categories for the Dewey Decimal System (which I probably also just defined wrong – is that what they're called? Yikes!) from memory:
Drag your mouse over the white space below to highlight my guesses and the correct answers. But make sure you try it yourself first and post your score (or even better, your answers.). No cheating!
000 – Computers, Books & Supernatural (Computer science, information and general works. Close enough – Correct!)
100 – Philosophy (Philosophy and psychology – half a point!)
200 – Religion (Correct!)
300 – Natural Sciences (Social Sciences)
400 – Applied Science (Language)
500 – Medicine (Science – I'm going to give myself a half-point for this one)
600 – Fine Arts (Technology – I always wondered why they had a section for computers and another for technology? In fact, you often find computer books in both spots. I think it's because computers were something so new but which became so pervasive, they needed the space that the 000's provided.)
700 – Sports & Leisure (Arts & Recreation – another half point)
800 – Literature (Correct!)
900 – History, Travel (History and Geography. Although a proper cataloguer would disagree, let's say close enough – correct!)
Wow, I suck. What did I get – 5.5/10? I had the right idea on most of them but sometimes had the numbers off by a section or two. Others, I was way out to lunch. This will sound like an excuse but I think I would've gotten a few of them if I though it through and visualized the library a bit better rather than going fairly quickly and relying on my gut instinct. Maybe not though – I would've sworn I had the right answer for the 600's but was way off – hence the size of the comment that goes with it.)
Oh, and the proper term is classes although categories is probably acceptable – at least if I'm reading 025.431 – The Dewey Blog correctly.
Next time, I'll try to name all 100 sub-classes to redeem myself!
“Blogs, they're what old people do now…E-mail is the same way. The youngest generation of Internet users don't bother with blogs or e-mail, preferring social sites such as MySpace and instant messaging to stay in touch.”
– Librarian.net's Jessamyn West, profiled in the “Everybody's Interesting” column of Valley News
…although to be fair, the article does go on to say:
“West is part of a group of young, technologically sophisticated
librarians who exchange information about their work through blog
postings, and, more conventionally, at library conferences. They have
taken it upon themselves to dream about “Library 2.0,” what libraries
will look like and how libraries will function now that information is
both easier to come by and harder to sift.”
On a different note, I've done a couple posts over on LibrarianActivist.org about Steve Jobs' recent announcement that Apple would sell DRM-free music via iTunes if the big music labels would agree to do so. Is this the beginning of the end for DRM-enforced music? I hope so! (And if you don't have LA in your feed-reader, why not add it?)
