The five-things-you-didn’t-know-about-me meme: Michael tagged me with this. 1. I was a Military Policeman in the Washington D.C. National Guard, primarily because when I transferred there from Pennsylvania, I was too junior to be in the Intelligence battalion of the reserves. I joined the reserves to help pay for college when i was 17. I […]

Barney Cam 2006 (QT): The barney cam, the only thing that this president actually gets right

The Rejection of D-Space: Selecting Theses Database Software at the University of Calgary Archives: This article by Lisa Atkinson of the University of Calgary Archives describes their decision to abandon DSpace for their ETD (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) platform. Richard Jones of Imperial College London has prepared a rebuttal to Lisa’s criticisms. Update (2006-12-19): The […]

It’s a Cool Yule (Log): For many years, growing up in New York, the Yule Log on WPIX-TV (now a CW station) was a Christmas tradition. We didn’t have a fireplace and this was the next best thing. Begun in 1966 at the New York television station by Fred Thrower, general manager of the station, […]

Mass Digitization for art libraries and special collections: The Alfred P. Sloan foundation has granted $1 million to the Internet Archive for digitization in 5 US institutions to boost the materials available in the Open Content Alliance (OCA). — This is great news

Library takes novel approach to romance – Yahoo! News: CANBERRA (Reuters) – A 150-year old Australian public library has a new true-romance section after introducing speed-dating nights for lovers of classic texts. ——- libraries are part of the community…

Mirror gives Italian village its place in the sun – Yahoo! News: A village in the Italian Alps is finally basking in winter sunlight thanks to a giant mirror installed on a mountain top to reflect the sun’s rays into the main square. Viganella, with a population of less than 200, lies in a valley […]

Not Your Average Photos: Things you don’t see every day…

Donald Vance, American POW.: The NYT has a remarkable story about a 29-year-old American working for an Iraqi contractor who became an FBI informant against them, only to have the FBI arrest him for working for the company. He was held as a POW (in the same prison holding Saddam Hussein) and abused for 97 […]

Three Cheers for High Tuition — AMERICAN.COM: A Magazine of Ideas, Online : Modern academics often liken their work to drinking from a fire hose. Historians, philosophers, and physicists all find it impossible to keep up with every potentially relevant paper or study. It’s not just a matter of catching up to the state of […]