We’ve been banished from an Eden of oscillation
Science fiction writer, John Scalzi, regularly allows guests to write an entry on his blog. It's usually a novelist who has a new book coming out. This week China Mieville breaks down the crime novel. Great stuff.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
New Search Engine
Have ya'll heard about the new search engine called Wolfram Alpha? It's designed to give you answers instead of linking you to websites. I was messing around with it today and plugged my birthday date in. It will also compute fairly complex searches like largest countries by area in Africa. You can also compare different states or countries by entering them and separating them by commas. I did California, Michigan and North Carolina here. If you look near the bottom you can see it generated a graph comparing the population growth of all three states. I am going to use it for reference questions at work and see how it does me.
Have ya'll heard about the new search engine called Wolfram Alpha? It's designed to give you answers instead of linking you to websites. I was messing around with it today and plugged my birthday date in. It will also compute fairly complex searches like largest countries by area in Africa. You can also compare different states or countries by entering them and separating them by commas. I did California, Michigan and North Carolina here. If you look near the bottom you can see it generated a graph comparing the population growth of all three states. I am going to use it for reference questions at work and see how it does me.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Another Wikipedia Story
There is good advice in this article on a hoax played by a Wikipedia user. We use Wikipedia here at the library a lot. It's most useful to me as a tool to start a search. A lot of times a teenager will come up to the reference desk and say something like, "I have to do a report on Some King III." You can then ask the kid who this person is and a lot of times he'll have no idea. You can plug that name in Wikipedia and then you'll know where to start looking. I can tell if this person has enough renown to warrant a full biography or if I'll have to grab a book on his country's history and look the person up in the index.
There is good advice in this article on a hoax played by a Wikipedia user. We use Wikipedia here at the library a lot. It's most useful to me as a tool to start a search. A lot of times a teenager will come up to the reference desk and say something like, "I have to do a report on Some King III." You can then ask the kid who this person is and a lot of times he'll have no idea. You can plug that name in Wikipedia and then you'll know where to start looking. I can tell if this person has enough renown to warrant a full biography or if I'll have to grab a book on his country's history and look the person up in the index.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Philip Pullman Interview
A couple of months ago I read The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Quite a few people whose opinions I respect had raved about it so I took the plunge. I was a marvelous book and I thought I would share an interview with him that I found here.
Monday, May 04, 2009
View from the Morrison Circulation Desk
If ever wondered what the view was like from behind the circulation desk.
Dracula as it Happens
I've seen similar projects before but this is kinda cool. This blog is posting each journal entry from the novel Dracula on the corresponding day. It started yesterday, May 3rd. Think of it as a blog from the past.
I've seen similar projects before but this is kinda cool. This blog is posting each journal entry from the novel Dracula on the corresponding day. It started yesterday, May 3rd. Think of it as a blog from the past.
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