Bloggable Librarian

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Lexis Nexis Becomes Exclusive Distributor of Praeger Security Online

Lexis on Crime

LexisNexis Now Exclusive Academic Distributor for Praeger Security Online

LexisNexis (www.lexisnexis.com) and Greenwood Publishing Group (www.greenwood.com) announced a partnership in which Greenwood’s electronic product, Praeger Security International Online (PSIO), will be sold exclusively to 2- and 4-year college and university libraries by the LexisNexis Academic Sales Group. Designed to serve the needs of professors, researchers, and students who need quick and efficient access to reliable information on the world’s most important political, military, and foreign policy issues, PSIO combines expert commentary with the complete text of hundreds of print titles—and the easy access and comprehensiveness of a sophisticated online database.

Updated weekly with commentary by advisory board members, expert authors, and researchers from Oxford Analytica (an international consulting firm drawing on senior faculty at Oxford and other major research institutions), PSIO provides in-depth analysis of security issues that threaten to destabilize our world. Expertly indexed and cross-searchable and featuring the complete text of more than 600 books, original content on important and regional events written by today’s leading scholars and experts, more than 1,000 primary documents, a worldwide chronology of terrorism events, and a carefully prepared annotated bibliography, PSIO is constantly evolving. It is intended for both distance learning and residency programs in homeland security, foreign policy, criminal justice, and business security.

Source: LexisNexis

This should provide an excellent resource for scholars, students, journalists, and professionals working in government and law enforcement.

Here is the link to this story:

http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/wndReader.asp?ArticleId=40971

Monday, February 18, 2008

Pure Sweet Rage

Mama Said there Would be Days Like This

Awh Man!

Keeping Up with the Tech Blues

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Sony's Blu-ray technology is emerging as the likely winner in the format battle for the next generation of DVD players after Toshiba appeared ready to ditch its HD DVD business.

People watch a demonstration of HD DVD at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Such a move would help consumers know which system to invest in and would likely boost sales in Blu-ray gadgets, analysts say. But it will disappoint the 1 million people around the world estimated by Toshiba who have already bought HD DVD players.

Toshiba said Monday no decision has been made but acknowledged it had started a review of its HD DVD strategy. The comments follow a flurry of weekend Japanese media reports that the company was close to pulling the plug on the business.

I sometimes joke with my father who still argues with sales clerks in department stores and goes on extended polemics standing on line at the small video store which still rents VHS. "Why don't they just make up their minds?" he drones. He has a VHS player and refuses to budge.

Who can blame him? I don't make a lot of money. The thought of having to chuck out all my gear and movie collection (as I had to do with my VCR and VHS tapes) sends a jolt of cosmic outrage up my spine. I can't keep up. I have friends who have made the jump to HDVD and Plasma this and High definition that and I still have the TV set I got as a freshman in college. And now with the 2009 cross-over looming, a large section of techy updaters are going to be shouting: "Awh man! Give me a break here!"

But now after roughly 6 years of building up a DVD collection I am hearing that Blue Ray will be the format of choice. It kind of hurts to hear it.

Storage methods have come a long way from film and magnetic tape formats. There are no doubts that in the next ten years grandpa will get teased for his funky Blue Ray collection.

So what do you do in the mean time? Have a lot of cash on hand I guess. Keeping up on the latest tech is pricey, and dicey. Ask any librarian who has a basement full of Microfiche. Its a hard life, that tech life.

Any thoughts?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/02/18/toshiba.hddvd.ap/index.html

E Art

You-Art

DeviantArt gets 1.5 billion page views a month, making it one of the most popular Web sites that many people have never even heard of.

Despite the name, only a fraction of the art on the site is what might be labeled deviant. In reality, the site boasts millions of user-uploaded works of art, everything from photography to 3D digital conceptual art to old-fashioned canvas-and-paint portraits.

Think of it as a YouTube for artists trying to show their own work. Pieces can be viewed, commented on, even added to a user's own gallery of favorites. The range of work defies characterization, but there is a heavy dose of cartooning and fantasy art as well as some adult content, which is blocked for unregistered users.

In some cases, artists have posted their digital leftovers in a "stock" pile that other artists can use as the genesis for their own work.

The site's goal, in a nutshell, is to democratize and inspire art.

After checking out this site I thought of the Impressionists of the 1860's. Up until these artists the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the French endorsed institution that defined, set, and held up what was supposed to be great art. Without the support of the Academe, an artist could not show his work in the Salon and would be treated like a rank shlock. The importance of the meeting of the Impressionism was giving artists like Cezanne and Monet a venue and to help establish a public exchange.

And this site is an exchange, it has chat and forum sections where those who contributed can discuss issues.

I am not sure that I am a good judge of the content so I am pulling away from offering opinions. What interested me is to see how Web content is so powered by ungoverned class systems. The open source rubric of the Internet is at the heart of most Virtual spaces. While there has been a move to public censure or control Web content, the model of the Web World continues to defy categories and move faster than words can describe it. It is a dream land. What is the web, other than a tool which morphs as it is used? As technology breaks down walls the possibilities change how we express and think. It defines us as people and how we behave. It's only limit is that of the user itself. The story is the story teller, not the fiction itself.

Any thoughts?

Here is the link to the full story:

http://browse.deviantart.com/?offset=24

http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9873228-56.html?tag=nefd.top

New SIIA Survey

Web 2.0 is Good Business

SIIA Releases Survey Results on Business Use of Web 2.0 Technologies

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) has released the results of a survey on business use of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, social networking, and user-generated content, which indicated that businesses are increasingly embracing these new technologies. Conducted to coincide with SIIA’s Information Industry Summit, the survey explored the ways in which business-oriented content companies are using the various forms of Web 2.0 capabilities to enhance their connections to their users.

Nearly 42% of respondents are currently using social networking technologies such as MySpace and Facebook, while another 35% plan to do so in the near future. Only a third place user-generated content on their sites, while more than half carry at least one blog. The survey found that B2B users expected social networking to enable them to reach new markets and increase user engagement and loyalty. While slightly more than 80% of respondents expected to achieve these goals, about 40% feel they have already reached new markets, and a third believe they have increased customer engagement.

Those surveyed about the utility of blogging had a mixed reaction. While more than half of survey respondents indicated that they do publish blogs, almost two-thirds believe that their influence on the industry has been mixed. Only 15% view blogs as "critically important" to the industry’s market environment.

To view the full results of the SIIA survey, visit: www.siia.net/content under Recent Publications.

Source: SIIA

More evidence of how user created content is changing the exchange.

Any thoughts?

http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/wndReader.asp?ArticleId=40925

New Wilson Web Release

New Wilson Web Update

InfoTech: H.W. Wilson Announces WilsonWeb CX Edition

Josh Hadro -- Library Journal, 2/15/2008 5:55:00 AM

Formerly known as WilsonWeb 3.0

Tool includes a frameless search screen to speed up result retrieval Can translate documents into foreign languages

H.W. Wilson has announced its revamped WilsonWeb CX Edition interface, named to commemorate 110 years since the independent publisher’s founding. Formerly known as WilsonWeb 3.0 in its October 2007 beta testing release, the new software’s goal is to let users and subscribers access “Wilson data with unprecedented ease and versatility,” said product manager Bernie Seiler.

The new design for the company’s online tool includes a frameless search screen to speed up result retrieval, new graphics for buttons and tabs, and a new translation feature allowing the user to “translate Full Text HTML documents from English into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and/or Korean.”

The new language translation feature will be a great help to students.

Any thoughts?

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6532721.html

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Goose!

Something to Look at Other Than a Lover

15TH Century Man Seeking Woman:

Young Duke of Orleans
stuck in dead end career
after battling English dogs
seeks a bright and professionally
bound Lady of noble manners.

Address all drawings/stats to:

Frenchman
Tower of London
London
England
(Strumpets need not apply).

How Lovers Love the World Over on Feburary 14

ASIA

In China, on February 14, officials can confiscate flowers according to BBC reporting. The holiday is popular amongst most of the population. China also celebrates Valentine's Day on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. On this day, lovers go to the Matchmaker Temple to ask for prosperity in love.

In Korea and Japan, girls and women give candies and chocolates to their boyfriends. In Korea and Japan on March 14, "White Day" is celebrated where boys and men give gifts to their girlfriends. The Japanese bake the chocolates at home for their true loves. The store bought chocolates are for co-workers or friends.

SOUTH AFRICA

In South Africa, Valentine's Day is celebrated on February 14. In some places, the girls pin the name of the boy they love on their sleeve. These traditions follow the old festival of "Lupercalia," the Roman festival celebrated on February 15.

*Historical Notes: Lupercalia was celebrated by the Romans on February 15. The festival took place on Palatine Hill, in a cave called Lupercal. This is the supposed place where Romulus and Remus (founders of Rome) were nursed by a wolf.

SOUTH AMERICA

In Brazil, Dia dos Namorados, or "Day of the Enamored" is celebrated on June 12. This is the day before Saint Anthony's Day. He was a marriage saint.

In Colombia and Venezuela, the "Love and Friendship Day" is celebrated on the third Friday and Saturday in September.

THE WORLD

These countries celebrate St. Valentine's Day similar to the United States:
Australian Countries
Bangladesh Canadian Countries
European Countries Mexico

Russia
Thailand
Turkey
United Arab Emirates

According to the Greeting Card Association, St. Valentine's Day is the second largest card sending holiday of the year. Christmas, of course, comes in first. Even though celebrations vary in different countries across the globe, love is in the air on St. Valentine's Day. Spend the day celebrating with your loved ones and feel the love!

Alone on Valentine's Day?

Check this out:

http://www.weddingpaperdivas.com/valentines-day-history.htm

You will discover some darker moments on this day in history that will make your crappy day seem, as the wise Forest Gump chimes: like a Box of Chocolates.

A poem?

Roses are red
and Violets are blue.
Nobody loves you!

If after all this you crave the affections of another this means you are not a realist but a romantic. This is a psychiatric condition marked by long periods of delusion marked by a strong inability not to coo and awe at even the most pedestrian of things. This may mean long nights alone, and if you are unfortunate enough to gain admitance to the private chambers of that special one, reassuring your intended that they are not too fat and that you think everything they say is interesting.

Romantic love, the nuts and bolts of this holiday, are a tradition going back to the 12Th Century. Trent professor Roy Haden (an authority on the history of romantic love) says:

The troubadours were renowned medieval composers and performers who thrived from 1100 to 1300 AD, first in southern France, then later expanding to neighbouring countries such as Italy and Spain. They wrote more than 2,500 song lyrics in what is called the Old Occitan language. Sifting through a database with thousands of songs written by the troubadours during a 200 year period, Prof. Hagan analyzed every instance they used the word 'amors.'“I found some startling patterns,” he says. “They were treating love as some sort of attacking force. In their songs they were turning love into an entity with power that controlled people's lives. That hadn't been done before.” He says the ancients had a concept of love, but love wasn't about the romantic relationship between men and women, it was about family and friends.

So this whole history of this holiday could only have happened with this shift from more community based social structures to the more intimate and personal form of affection that is recorded in thousands of songs since the 12TH century. It is an entirely different concept of early Greek and Roman concepts of state and family. Before this exsisted the culture of Rome where the family was the social model adopted and supported by the state. Love was an act of loyalty to what seems more like friendship and the honor of a family as Hogan notes:

He also discovered the troubadours use of the word amors, and the development of a new aggressive and all powerful love concept coincided with the Crusades during the middle of the 12th century. “It is perhaps no coincidence that the new 'love God' of the troubadours should be a warrior God, whose central focus was to conquer and control its subjects,” he speculates.

It's no wonder that the common lament of young star crossed lovers is "I'm crazy for you", and that this goes as far as Shakespeare could in Romeo & Juliet.

Hopefully you will not have to suffer as much, nor dramatically as the following scene:

Mercutio: O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs, The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, The traces of the smallest spider's web, The collars of the moonshine's watery beams, Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film, Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat, Not so big as a round little worm Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid; Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers . And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight, O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees, O'fer ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are: Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, Then dreams, he of another benefice: Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night, And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled much misfortune bodes: This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage This is she--

This is the gentle advise of not only love, but of its dangers. So if today hits you hard at the bank or in the heart consider this:

Its only love.