tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71627982008-10-31T12:06:00.613-04:00My site complete with blog, pics, links, tools, changes, words, and wonders beyond belief. What? Don't you believe me?Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.comBlogger421125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-1837539169046817492008-10-31T12:06:00.001-04:002008-10-31T12:06:00.782-04:00

Just downloaded and tried out a new "social networking" browser called Flock.  Pretty neat.  It allows me to save my ids to and access easily all my social networking related accounts and tools and sites like facebook, del.icio.us, Blogger, Flickr, etc.  It's got all the bells and whistles that Firefox has (and I do like Firefox) since it's built on the Mozilla engine so it's got all the basic

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-78312216002997965082008-10-30T20:45:00.002-04:002008-10-30T21:05:38.649-04:00

Despite any of our best efforts to live our lives rationally or even with some sort of reasonable guidance, all it really comes down to is random chance, brute force and instinct. What?!? What am I talking about? Here's an example: a recent post on "Tomorrow's Professor's Blog" called "How to write anything". It makes the usual but absolutely true claim that to write (whatever it is you're

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-27738235435902305722008-10-16T15:31:00.001-04:002008-10-16T15:32:03.919-04:00

Ok, can you tell I'm a librarian? I'm celebrating Dictionary Day. Well, not actually celebrating (although I guess I could go pick up a cake after work... hmmm...) but rather just pointing it out on my blog. Nobody else here at the library has made mention of it, and really there's not that much to be found easily online on the topic. Here's a couple mentions: OUPblog: "Dictionary Day is

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-28925235218762737502008-10-09T10:41:00.000-04:002008-10-09T10:41:25.397-04:00

Read: Springer to acquire BioMed Central Group from Springer's News postings (written 7 October 2008). So, Springer, a big commercial name in STM (Science, technology, medicine) publishing has bought the biggest open access (OA) STM publisher so far. Woah. That just sounds wrong. Or very, very good, depending on how you look at it. Worst case scenario: Springer's commercial, for-profit

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-62997575872112728662008-09-25T22:59:00.003-04:002008-09-26T21:31:37.490-04:00

As you can see I'm in the midst of playing around with my site design. I guess this is the bare bones structure I'm going to be working with but there's a few graphical elements and additional pages that I'm going to have to make before it's fully formed. Please be patient and avert your eyes if it gets too horrible to look at... lol

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-90680767031692263232008-09-12T12:41:00.001-04:002008-09-26T21:31:21.088-04:00

Read the article "Maurice Sendak’s Concerns, Beyond Where the Wild Things Are" by Patricia Cohen from NYTimes.com, on September 9, 2008. I don't read the New York Times. I didn't even when I lived there. I actually found this out from a library related comic strip that I read via RSS called Shelf Check (#268 from September 12, 2008). What made me click on the link to read the article itself

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-82382780686914457492008-09-08T22:24:00.000-04:002008-09-08T22:24:41.571-04:00

Read: CAUT Bulletin article Survey Exposes Surprisingly High Rates of Research Fraud among US Scientists. I'm not sure why the article title should include the word "surprisingly" other than publishing an article entitled, "Ho-hum, More Research Fraud" wouldn't really sell many copies. Now, I'm not one to blindly paint the whole scientific with the same brush, and put them all down as lying con

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-40100304802710556582008-08-04T17:34:00.004-04:002008-08-04T17:49:23.840-04:00

Just had an interview on Friday for the position of "Reference and Government Information Librarian" at the local public library. Although I've gotten used to being an academic librarian for the past few years, the job description (responsible for the government documents, electronic resources as well as the reference collection) sounds like something that I would do well at and really enjoy as

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-14748356127237390392008-07-25T12:02:00.000-04:002008-07-25T12:02:10.353-04:00

Frugality: 7 Ways Your Public Library Can Help You During A Bad Economy Even as a librarian, I have a hard time remembering all of these. Public libraries save you money. We all get in the mode of thinking that "if I'm not paying for it, then it's no good" but that's not always true. Besides, you are paying for it. It's a miniscule part of your tax bill but it's there, so why not borrow a

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-6668640942861771822008-07-24T21:54:00.000-04:002008-07-24T21:54:04.009-04:00

Too often, when I see the "new things" that libraries are coming up with these days I too often less than surprised. Don't get me wrong, there are some great things that libraries and librarians are trying out and implementing in terms of new services, new functionality on their web pages and catalogs, and new media and tools being used on the floor and in the back room. But very very little of

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-44066571279726692012008-07-23T09:36:00.000-04:002008-07-23T09:36:16.555-04:00

Read: "Dating violence can affect teenagers too" on Yahoo! Health This is another area where more information would really help. It says in the article that "teenagers who have a friend in a violent dating relationship should be taught to report the situation to an adult". But the problem is that all three people in the equation - victim, friend and adult - are usually really unaware of the

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-75311002674537928382008-07-23T09:20:00.000-04:002008-07-23T09:20:57.432-04:00

Read: "NYC chain restaurants posting calories on menus" on Yahoo! Health What a good idea! Imagine knowing just a little more about what you plan on eating. This is not just about health because we all know this is not going to bankrupt McDonalds or the Olive Garden or any store really. This is about information. The more information we are provided with about the things we do -

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-79293326560780265402008-05-25T20:53:00.000-04:002008-05-25T20:53:00.246-04:00

Re: The Krafty Librarian's post "Life as a Healthcare CIO". Summary: Article about how hospital IT decisions are strictly limited due to HIPPA and money, but that this hurts many parts of the hospital including the library. Absolutely. But I certainly don't blame the IT people. Well, not by themselves. KL says that she feels that "hospital IT departments lack an adequate method to

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-57716946441553475832008-05-23T18:17:00.000-04:002008-05-23T18:17:51.267-04:00

So the national and state libraries in Australia have endorsed the following principles to address the challenges facing the "new library universe": Reshaping our collections 1 Resources in electronic format will be acquired in preference to print, where available. Collection development policies should reflect this preference. 2 NSLA recognises that commitment to consortium purchasing of

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-70514536985533808622008-04-25T11:07:00.000-04:002008-04-25T11:07:48.479-04:00

Read The 'Net: A Tangled Web of Health Information on Yahoo! Health. Some good but incredibly basic information about information on the web. (Woah. Meta.) "Lot's of junk on the web." Yep. "School, government and non-profit sites are probably more trustworthy." Uh-huh. "Your doctor should be the final judge on health info." Totally. And at the bottom, if you want to know more about using

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-29785178836655188662008-04-25T10:43:00.000-04:002008-04-25T10:43:43.341-04:00

Atlantic City votes to ban smoking on floor of casinos... Woah.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-55264785294128961612008-04-18T11:59:00.001-04:002008-04-18T12:00:50.126-04:00

Just finished reading: Harris R & Wathen N. 2007. "If my mother was alive I'd probably have called her.": women's search for health information in rural Canada. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 47(1):67-79.which concluded with the following suggestions (some of which are pretty obvious but are important to spell out specifically nonetheless). "...an important, overarching consideration

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-34244323242006717742008-04-15T14:18:00.000-04:002008-04-15T14:18:33.649-04:00

Whenever I read about some country creating a law like how France is trying to outlaw inciting thinness, I first think, "Hooray!" What a great idea... Hopefully it will help save the health of some people. But then I think about how truly chaotic and irrational legal systems really are: why don't they (or why haven't they already) outlaw the promotion of unhealthy behaviour or possibly bad

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-87308043808891010912008-04-15T11:46:00.000-04:002008-04-15T11:46:29.131-04:00

So the US Department of Housing and Urban Development tested laying down sludge on lawns and a vacant lot to see if it reduce lead poisoning. Interesting. Lead poisoning is certainly bad but besides the rather suspicious fact that studying this only in poor black neighbourhoods seems unethical in terms of choosing the people who would have the fewest means to argue, it also seems invalid. What

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-22880793813261630072008-04-15T11:35:00.000-04:002008-04-15T11:35:27.125-04:00

Watch out health care community! Now that a robot anaesthetist has been developed in France, it's only a matter of time before all the doctors, nurses, rehab therapists, and other health care professionals are replaced with robots! I wonder how good the robot is at 12 holes of Christmas?

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-83955708855245213552008-04-04T16:04:00.002-04:002008-04-04T16:13:56.749-04:00

Notes from Web 2.you workshop (February 15, 2008, at McGill University, Montreal) session called “Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0” 1.5 hour presentation by Jessamyn West, Library Consultant from rural Vermont & blogger from “librarian.net” [librarian.net] (professional) & “Abada Abada” [jessamyn.com/journal] (personal) [Her presentation notes can be found at librarian.net/talks/mcgill] As a

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-57156576657676482012008-04-04T15:56:00.002-04:002008-04-04T16:03:08.130-04:00

Notes from Web 2.you workshop (February 15, 2008, at McGill University, Montreal) session called “Blogging for Professional Development” 1.5 hour presentation by John Dupuis, Head, Steacie Science & Engineering Library, York University & blogger from “Confessions of a Science Librarian” [jdupuis.blogspot.com] , February 15, 2008. [Presentation given here can be found at tinyurl.com/2u24do or

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-70520685867929813722008-04-03T09:46:00.002-04:002008-04-03T09:53:39.608-04:00

Reading "moving from the ivory tower to the community" by Margo Fryer from the October 2007 "Academic Matters"... This is an interesting article about UBC's "Learning Exchange" - a facility with free computer resources and Internet access for Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. As I was reading their description of it: The... patrons are a diverse mix - former resource industry workers whose bodies

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-24620156533665609522008-04-01T10:45:00.000-04:002008-04-01T10:45:52.909-04:00

Re: Free Photoshop beta launches online from USATODAY.com. A couple of weeks ago, Adobe Photoshop (gawd love 'em) went online. Or at least a version of it. Totally free. At least for now. Stemming from their awesome, but complicated to use photo editing software, and their interest in not being left behind in the whole web-based software game, they've created Photoshop Express in beta.

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7162798.post-14476539395420014212008-03-22T11:39:00.003-04:002008-03-22T11:44:04.602-04:00

Babies are not only the funniest creatures in the world, they are also under the impression that everything else is just as funny as they are. This is a lesson for all of us bothered with spending too much money on gifts...

Matthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11382637543517859063noreply@blogger.com0