News archive 2003 |
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DecemberDecember 31. Wide enough for libraries? Summary of paper for the conference Professional Information on the Internet, to be held in Cracow, Poland 31st May - 1st June 2004. December 10. The University of California at Berkeley has excellent library resources. Today I want to point out:
December 2. Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. The article by graphics guru Edward Tufte (in Wired, September 2003) started a ferocious debate. NovemberNovember 22. Difficult questions about health? Go ask Alice! A great answer service from Columbia University, New York. November 20. Practice your English - with Conversation Cathy. November 19. Comic characters in the making: Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan November 15. President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg (PPT). November 14. Darwin met Harriet in 1835. Darwin died in 1882. Harriet lives happily in Queensland. [With thanks to Laila]. November 6. The library schools in Cracow (Jagiellonian University) and Oslo will exchange teachers in 2004. Tord Høivik will give a 15 hour course in Cracow in the week March 7-14. Remigiusz Sapa will come to Oslo as a visiting lecturer in September. More ... November 5. Visit The museum of online museums. OctoberOctober 20. Do you need a friendly Slavic reference service?
SeptemberSeptember 30. Remigiusz Sapa gave an interesting lecture on library web sites on September 24. September 15. Nordic librarians love international conferences. Austria, with 8 million inhabitants, sent 24 delegates to IFLA in Berlin. Sweden, with 9 million, sent 97. AugustAugust 20. Bozena and I went to the IFLA conference in Berlin this summer. - with papers. Bozena presented her library (Ask public library) - which integrates a book collection with a small local museum and archive. I discussed the lack of practical reaction to research on reference quality. We were both satisfied with the response - and will write more on the issues. The conference was larger than expected. It could not compete with the Love Parade, however, which filled the streets with 750 thousand ecstatic young people one month before. But I discovered that tiny Iceland, with 280 thousand inhabitants, sent 11 delegates to IFLA. That means 4 delegates per 100.000 people. If all countries had followed Iceland`s example, there would have been 250.000 librarians in Berlin. And I started to wonder: who are the people that go to IFLA? A statistical report, in several instalments, is underway. August 18. U.S. libraries answered 400 million reference questions last year (says OCLC in a curious report). Google answers 200 million a day! OCLC has also discovered that total U.S. library expenditures (13 000 million USD) is comparable to US expenditures on
This sounds really BAD. JulyJuly 20. But did not our alphabet come from Phoenicia? Yes, indeed. Consult the Encyclopedia Phoeniciana - published by the excellent Salim George Khalat, Webmaster, Infographist and Melite Greek Catholic. July 18. The surviving works of
Aristotle contain 1,107,097 words says Thesaurus
Linguae Graecae. Which is impressive. But the great doctor Galen,
who wrote in Greek during the 2nd century, and the church father Augustine,
who used Latin, produced rather more: 2,6 million words in the case of
Galen - and 5 million words in the surviving works of St. Augustine. July 15. Today`s fact: In late antiquity, the Roman empire - from Mesopotamia to Britain - had about 56 million inhabitants. Today, this is the population of Italy. July 4 (no less). Great news for the Silly Season: Lore Sjöberg`s list of Least Surprising AP Headlines:
All are real. JuneJune 23. "The Middle Ages are a postapocalyptic period", says Torill Mortensen, and fits role-playing games. The breakdown of Greek and Roman order created space for mysticism and heroic deeds. Torill studied Dragon Realms from 1995 to 1999 and submitted her Ph.D. thesis on computer games to the University of Bergen in March 2003:
She also writes a mean blog Links
June 21. Summer solstice must be a good time for revisions. I have written a very small and very occasional blog since May 2002. From now on the blog will run on the current page = my home page. Thus, PS will be more of a cocktail - mixing sober news and succulent views. June 16. Why is quality control so hard? Paper for IFLA Library Theory and Research Section, which has evidence-based librarianship as its main topic. June 15. Library innovation is hard work. Bozena Rasmussen (and I) wrote this paper for IFLA Genealogy and Local History Section. June 14. Gjerdrum public library lies in the municipal centre, named Ask. Today, the municipality arranged its annual fair. This year, the theme was public health, and the library participated with an exhibition. June 13. New student ork: About twenty student sites from the course in Web publishing and information architecture are now available on the open web. June 2. Notes for a lecture on web based tutorials, at the library conference Summer in the city. MayMay 27. Report on current research. May 12. Oslo University College supported a teaching visit to the Institute of Librarianship and Information Science in Cracow on May 4-11. [2002] |
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Tord
Høivik - 2004/07/14 |
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