I had enough time during the commercials to finally add to the Radio 101 Docs. The new tutorial is for How to Add a Script to Open Links in a New Window. Maybe more later if I can fit it in.

Whew! A close one, but the Jayhawks pulled it out. I hope Miles looks back at the tape to see some of the shots he should not have taken. Hawks undefeated in conference play, though - one big goal down. Two more to go.

From ESPN

Okay, here we go. KU versus MU in a revenge match for the Tigers who lost by 32 points in Lawrence last time they met. Good thing I've got my rubber Bad Call Brick ready. Rock Chalk Jayhawk KU!

I've been remiss in getting around to reading Jon Udell's article Radio UserLand 8.0 Is a Lab for Group-Forming, but Jim's message prodded me forward. I'm glad I did, because Jon makes some excellent points. Now when I describe Radio, I'll be using Peter Drayton's description, as highlighted by Jon:

"WYSIWYG Blogging+Navigator Links+RSS Syndication+Referrer Logs+FTP Upstreaming==Topic-Oriented Web of Smart People."

Jon also expresses one of the thoughts that has been bubbling in the back of my mind.

"Monitoring the flow and interconnectedness of this meta-conversation, by means of citation indexes, is central to the way science creates shared knowledge."

It's a lot like the print science citation indexes you find at academic libraries, exept it's much more immediate. What you lose though, is the subject access that is suddenly becoming so important to me as both a reader and a publisher.

This whole "group-forming activity" is going to be huge during the next few years, in addition to the impact it will have on information (eg, my new-found belief that news aggregators will change the way we view and use information). I really want to get libraries started as one of these groups.

And thanks for the link, Jon!

Proposal May Save State Library 

"The State Library, facing extinction in the state budget crunch, might be spared under a proposal gaining support in the Legislature. The new plan, which is backed by the State Library Commission, library staff and lawmakers of both parties, would transfer part of the agency to the Secretary of State's Office and other parts to the state archives office." [Library Stuff]

Let's hope this passes for Washingtons' sake, although there is concern that cutting up the Library's services and putting them in different departments still doesn't save enough money. I can't imagine living in a state with no State Library. It would cripple Illinois because the ISL is the glue that holds it all together, visions for the future, pushes and prods libraries forward, and (hello!) distributes the money. Not to mention the statewide purchase of access to FirstSearch for every Illinois resident, supporting the regional Library System online catalogs, and providing grant monies.

Non-librarians don't understand how devastating this would be, but for librarians it's somewhat analogous to what would happen if Network Solutions/VeriSign/whatever-they're-calling-themselves-these-days suddenly disappeared and there was no global whois for routing anymore. It's that drastic, except libraries are a bajillion times better than NS/VS and they exist for everybody, not just commercial interests.

I'm especially surprised that this is happening in Washington because:

• Such a high-tech state should understand the importance of libraries at all levels;
• Washington started the whole Find-It! program, although I believe it was more a project form the State Archives than the State Library;
• Paging Mr. Gates, Mr. Bill Gates.

Check out the following excerpt from the Site Information page from Access Washington:

"Wa Wiz Quiz
We would like to make a special acknowledgment to Shirley Lewis, Information Specialist and Liz Yeahquo, intern of the Washington State Library who were instrumental in the research for this project."

And that's exactly what you lose at the STATE LEVEL - information specialists. If you live in Washington, I encourage you to contact your representatives and let them know how important it is to maintain the State Library's presence.

Unwiring Your Home in the Seattle Times

"A Wi-Fi network is made up of individual radios on each computer and a central hub, called an access point, which coordinates traffic from the individual machines. The hub often can be plugged directly into a DSL, cable, or dial-up modem, too." [via 80211b News]

A great introduction to wireless that I will be using as a handout in my future presentations. One of the best things I did last summer was install a WiFi network at home. I can't wait to lay on the hammock this summer and blog! A particularly enjoyable thought in light of the eight inches of snow and arctic winds outside right now.

Kevin comments on my comments about the music industry.

"I too worry about what will happen with libraries and their ability to maintain media libraries. I've seen several good documentaries and historical films from libraries, all of which were copyrighted. I wonder why music feels it is somehow different? If the entertainment industry had it's way, it would do away with the notion of "public libraries" altogether. I for one won't stand for it. Keep up the fight!"

Mark Lemmons: Six Degrees - Weblog. "There's interesting new[unknown entity]research about all this from Xerox PARC via Ted Smalley at TRN News. "In a case of make-do evolution...the humble email program has become a primary organizer, haphazardly covering a far broader range of functions than it was originally designed for." This isn't all bad. Most good apps are used in ways that were never intended. The more troubling aspect of this research is the suggestion that the more experience we have with email, the less efficient we are at managing it. The complexity of folder structures gets deeper. The number of messages goes up. The filtering gets more complex. We get swamped." [Which supports why Mark Hurst's Good, Easy Email system works so well. It eliminates your email client as organizer. Six Degrees takes another view of the problem and the methodologies can be (should be) complimentary.] [Archipelago]

True, true, true. At SLS, I am consistently mocked for the size of my email mailbox. In fact, we just bought one of those huge network storage devices, and they joked that it was for me. But I'm a librarian and I just can't seem to get rid of potential information and unfortunately, the software companies didn't build categorization, linkage, and meta data into the system from the start. I'm really intrigued by Six Degrees, but I won't be able to use it at home because I'm not running the right version of Windows. However, I will likely try it at work now that we're upgrading to Windows 2000.

Things to do in the morning - check your referrer log. I'm happy to announce that someone searched Yahoo for "sexy librarian .jpg" and Yahoo/Google pointed them to my site. I was gloating about this until I read the referrer underneath that one from the same source - "latest invention in fabric industry." Hmmmmm... which one should I Google Bomb? Decisions, decisions.