Review of Chow Sing Chi's "Kung Fu Hustle".

"As a certain Mister Anderson might say ... Whoa."

http://www.star-ecentral.com/movies/reviews/review.asp?file=archives/movie_reviews/2004/12/22_1_KungFuHustle&title=Kung%20Fu%20Hustle&id=865&rid=906&sec=Movies

---------------------------------------------------
23,000 (and more) dead. Horrible. (Tsunami).

The best of Internet radio... or, at least, "currently listening" (and much better than the AccuRadio broadcasts, which tend to be soft and sometimes crackly):

For "holiday music" (US-ism), i.e. Christmas music:
- EZRock (Google "soft rock") (and I can't believe I'm still listening to Delilah, back here in Malaysia. Shows some kind of underlying neurosis or desperation, I guess. Or maybe, just want to hear the old "Do you hear what I hear?")
- A cappella Christmas (Google "holiday music radio"), from Live365.

Currently, saturated with holiday music, and taking a break. No "Light n Easy", so better:
- MixLatino.com, from Live365. http://www.live365.com

It's funny how last year, I remember being sick to death of all the Christmas music on air and wishing they would play something else!! And here this week, was missing it, finding next to nothing on local radio.

Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database By JOHN MARKOFF and EDWARD WYATT Published: December 14, 2004

"Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.

...collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library...

Google - newly wealthy from its stock offering last summer - has agreed to underwrite the projects being announced today while also adding its own technical abilities to the task of scanning and digitizing tens of thousands of pages a day at each library..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/technology/14google.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnl=0&incamp=article_popular_1&adxnnlx=1103087229-2iZTxDeUbrb949TZ/RVYRw

On publishers and libraries...

"From the earliest days of the printing press, book publishers were wary of the development of libraries at all. In many instances, they opposed the idea of a central facility offering free access to books that people would otherwise be compelled to buy.

But as libraries developed and publishers became aware that they could be among their best customers, that opposition faded. Now publishers aggressively court librarians with advance copies of books, seeking positive reviews of books in library journals and otherwise trying to influence the opinion of the people who influence the reading habits of millions..."

(Same source)

Would be interesting to see what technology they use, and how the standards differ or compare with those practised in other large-scale digitization projects, such as JSTOR, and also even at the University of Michigan itself we saw a small unit with high-tech equipment.

Digitization itself is thankless work - they should automate it as much as possible. Those dark rooms... though I guess if they are not such rare books it would be ok to have some light. Though only books out of copyright will be slated for the project.

I remember the first time American movie people ceased to talk like movie people and began to talk like normal people. I was back on holiday (vacation) from the U.S. and went to watch 'The Wedding Singer' in the cinema (theatre). And then I realised that Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler and company were speaking just like regular (normal) folks.

They don't have a particular way of talking in the movies. That's just the way American people talk!

The end of an era... sorry I was not there to see it. Ken Jennings did some amazing stuff!

'Jeopardy!' Whiz Finally Meets His MatchNov 30, 4:10 PM EST
The Associated Press
http://entertainment.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=174659

The NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/01/arts/television/01jeop.html?oref=login&8hpib

Princeton-In-Asia - paid internship opportunity; interview and orientation are in Princeton, NJ.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pia/

Interesting, huh... how much the MPO pays players (this was posted on their Web site):

Positions & Annual Salaries
Concertmaster (US$95,000)
Principal 1st Violin #4 Chair (US$54,000)
Co-Principal 2nd Violin #2 Chair (US$52,000)
Tutti Violin (US$44,000)
Principal Viola (US$54,000)
Tutti Cello (US$44,000)
Principal Flute (US$54,000)
Principal Bass Trombone (US$52,000)

Benefits include relocation, housing allowance, medical insurance and 8 weeks paid vacation.

http://www.malaysianphilharmonic.com

The Vivaldi Hunters by Michael White. Published November 21, 2004

On the authorship of "Andromeda Liberata", [a] recently rediscovered quasi opera... now a subject of a fierce dispute within the normally quiet world of music scholarship, led by two contestants who could pass for David and Goliath."

"Playing David is Olivier Fourés, a young French dancer and violinist who has turned himself into a serious Vivaldi expert. Traveling around Europe, he acquired an interest in libraries and manuscripts, looking for things he could make use of in performance; and two years ago, in the course of a casual trawl, he happened on the anonymous "Andromeda" manuscript in the library of the conservatory in Venice..."

Also on "that other Vivaldian mystery, the Ospedale della Pietà [where Vivaldi taught and worked].

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/arts/music/21whit.html?oref=login

"Books on the composer usually describe the Pietà as a girls' orphanage, sometimes as a convent, and they almost invariably give the impression that it no longer exists. But they are wrong. And the living proof is a robust, chain-smoking, gruff-voiced Englishwoman, named Micky White (no relation), who opened the place up for me one recent Saturday morning and showed me its treasures.

Ms. White is the Pietà's archivist. She is working on a book about Vivaldi, which, she says, will counter "the garbage people write about him.""

How lovely.

On how to solve the problem of technological obsolescence (i.e. digital stuff going inaccessible):

"Peter Schwartz, chairman of the Global Business Network, which specializes in long-range planning, says that a decade or two from now, the museum approach might be the most feasible answer.

"As long as you keep your data files somewhat readable you'll be able to go to the equivalent of Kinko's where they'll have every ancient computer available," said Mr. Schwartz, whose company has worked with the Library of Congress on its preservation efforts.

"It'll be like Ye Olde Antique Computer Shoppe," he said."

From "Even Digital Memories Can Fade" By Katie Hafner Published November 10, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/technology/10archive.html?hp&ex=1100149200&en=0b6f57f06554be78&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Quotes from Stewart (1998) Intellectual capital: The new wealth of organizations"

"... the economy of the intangible" - referring to the Knowledge Age, p. 5

"Knowledge management and knowledge databases should really be about linking people to people to serve customers, people needing expertise with people who have expertise. They should be about connection, not collection." - on people trying to create encyclopedic master files

Nice sum-up/tribute:

""Ray" while not a great movie, is a very good movie about greatness, in which celebrating the achievement of one major artist becomes the occasion for the emergence of another. I'm speaking of Ray Charles and Jamie Foxx, of course, though at this point I'm not entirely sure I can tell them apart."

Don't you just love movie (and music and theatre) reviews. Or book reviews. The review is an art form in itself.

Four guys in black tops (3 with blue jeans) in a row on the LRT. Chinese, foreign (Burmese?), Malay, Indian. Red Twisties advertising all around.

Mass giving of seats for old crowd. It's easier than doing it alone.

KL Sentral fair - walking past leopard print bras and lingerie round the corner from Takaful Nasional and Bank Islam

Book check

The Magic Pencil: Teaching Children Creative Writing - Eve Shelnutt, 1988- lots of good ideas for activities, concisely presented

Language Death - David Crystal - well-written, concise, scholarly while not being ponderous. fresh prose, easy read.

I highly recommend Salvador - my current playlist is all but 2 tracks from their album Salvador, and 1 track from Into Motion. Latin/Christian, English/Spanish. Great stuff. My new favourite group. (My only other favourite was Steven Curtis Chapman, who has been uncontested since 1993).

SPECIAL LIBRARIES MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK: THE BASICS
http://www.libsci.sc.edu/bob/class/clis724/SpecialLibrariesHandbook/INDEX.htm

SLA links
http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/professional/employresources/startingbib.cfm

Western Ontario librarian http://www.sla.org/chapter/cwcn/wwest/v5n1/tegart.htm

Book check:
The teacher who couldn't read / John Corcoran - easy to read, inspiring story
Language Visible / David Sacks - history of each of the letters of the alphabet. Cool.
Musica - history of Latin music, esp. in the US. interesting.
The Subtle Knife / Philip Pullman - 2nd book in the Dark Materials trilogy. good so far.
Tropical architecture or some such - coffee table book/photo tour, historical and contemporary South East Asian houses
Mary Poppins Opens the Door / P.L. Travers - wonderfully whimsical, as always
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix / J.K. Rowling - Harry's world. 'Nuff said.

From Laura Wendell:

"Here is the latest article about WLP. Thank you Bev Bauer, Tom Streamand all the other volunteers who contacted Debra Lau. I think the print article has pictures."

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA439811

3 publications (or notice of) this Aug:

MLA Forum (newsletter of the Michigan Library Association, online only)
Vol. III, Issue 2, July 14, 2004
http://www.mlaforum.org/volumeIII/issue2/article2.html
"Avuxeni, South Africa: Volunteering with the World Library Partnership"

Public Understanding of Science
July 2004, vol. 13, iss. 3, pp. 309-322(14) SAGE Publications
"Science in the News: A Study of Reporting Genomics"

LIBRI International Journal of Library and Information Science
"Non-Western languages and literatures in the Dewey Decimal Classification system"
Student paper award competition "honorable mention"; publication sometime in the next year

"Oh, yes, he will - won't he, Mary Poppins?" Jane's voice was full of anxiety.
"How should I know?" snapped Mary Poppins. "I'm not a Public Library!"

- From P.L.Travers - The Cat That Looked at a King, in "Mary Poppins Opens the Door"

Devastated by AIDS, Africa Sees Life Expectancy Plunge
By CELIA W. DUGGER Published: July 16, 2004

"Africa is getting poorer and hungrier as life expectancy continues its steep decline in the countries hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic, according to a United Nations report released Thursday. It said infants born now in seven nations with high rates of H.I.V. infection could expect to live less than 40 years...

Africa's setbacks are a break from recent decades of progress. From 1960 to 2000, for example, life expectancy in developing countries rose to 63 years from 46. Africa was part of that progress until the mid-1990's, when AIDS began seriously eroding its gains. The bleak statistical portrait of sub-Saharan Africa, drawn from the 2004 Human Development Report, does not spare South Africa, the region's economic powerhouse, which celebrated a decade of post-apartheid democracy this year. It is a discouraging portrait that the South African government sharply disputed Thursday. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/international/africa/16afri.html

"Globalis - an interactive world map

Globalis is an interactive world atlas where you decide what is to be displayed on the map...

At Globalis you will find statistics from the Human Development Report 2003, which is the first global status report discussing how the countries of the world compare in reaching the UN Millennium Development Goals. For each goal you can choose between several indicators, which show the countries' positions. You can also display temporal changes to see which countries are going through a positive or negative development in relation to the millennium goals."

http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/

Private Voluntary Organization (PVO)
"USAID defines private voluntary organizations as taxexempt, non-profit organizations working in, or intending to become engaged in, international development activities. These organizations receive some portion of their annual revenue from the private sector (demonstrating their private nature) and voluntary contributions of money, staff time, or in-kind support from the general public (demonstrating their voluntary nature).

Many Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in international development and humanitarian aid preffer the term to NGO. NGOs typically include any private or nonprofit entity that is formed or organized independently from any national or local governmental entity. These can include for-profit firms, academic degree-granting institutions, universities and colleges, labor institutions, foundations, private voluntary organizations, and a cooperative development organizations."

From Wikipedia, cited in
http://www.fact-index.com/p/pr/private_voluntary_organization.html

On the horizon: Devil in the White City, about the Chicago World's Fair in 1983; a William Monk novel (Anne Perry mystery); more literacy or writing workshop material; a more focused architecture book, possibly Frank Lloyd Wright or Gaudi?

Need really to get away from the white world. Oh yes. Add African history to the list. But otherwise, really. All escapist. Need to find some other development or social justice type story or book... perhaps biography or school.

Day in the NGO life: get there, boss on phone, hands me 2 scribbled pages. i go off, take a look at mess. find people. kinda. bump into people, more like. luck or serendipity. look at stuff in boxes. get carts moved. read up on org. fortuitous request for org chart has more info - includes info abt field offices (tho still need more) and history of org. figure what the hack and empty all boxes in the afternoon. break down boxes and talk to grantwriter. on leaving, i tell my supervisor "see you tomorrow", and she says "yes! she's coming back!"

Feel like i've accomplished something, not so much due to the boxes (which is physical), but because started getting some info from people. Looks like will have to do this very much piecemeal. Side conversations and so on. Lucky break to have helpful administrative assistant around.

Day in the holiday life: Friday. Play guitar. Go to Longs to pick up photos. Go to mall. Go swimming. Watch French and BBC news. Watch Jeopardy.

Saturday. Read a section of Story of Architecture. A chapter of Because Writing Matters. A chapter of Katharine Graham. The science (Saturn's rings and moons), movie (Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11), news (Iraq's new government), and opinion (French opposition to US initiatives) in Time magazine. Dinner is egg and tomato and french beans and shrimp. Rice is white and brown mixed. Peach for fruit.

Books reading: The Story of Architecture/Norman Glancey. Visually appealing. Nice prose. Key feature: global scope - includes Africa, Asia, East Europe... areas not usually covered in intro art history.

Personal History/Katharine Graham

Because Writing Matters/National Writing Project

Books read: Guns, Germs and Steel/Jared Diamond

Mountains Beyond Mountains/Tracy Kidder

Graphic Novels

"He works on two desks, side by side, one 19th-century, as he likes to say, and one 21st. The first is an old-fashioned drafting table, and the second is a computer; in between, there is a scanner. He can sketch something by hand and then refine it on the screen, or do it the other way around. By the time he is finished with a piece, he says, he can no longer tell the difference between what is computerized and what has been done by hand."

- Talking about Art Spiegelman. Article about graphic novels in NYTimes Magazine. Okay, fine. Citation info: Not Funnies
By CHARLES McGRATH Published: July 11, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/magazine/11GRAPHIC.html?pagewanted=5

"The movie musical has not so much died as migrated"

- A.O. Scott on Bollywood (a very enthusiastic piece)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/16/movies/16BOLL.html?pagewanted=1

Call Me E-Mail: The Novel Unfolds Digitally
By ADAM BAER
Published: April 15, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/technology/circuits/15nove.html

"...[Eric] Brown, 59, calls "Intimacies" a digital epistolary novel, or DEN, terms that he has trademarked.... The story unfolds through e-mail messages, instant-message conversations and Web sites, all within a window generated by the DEN software..."

The article goes on to talk about other versions of new media storytelling.

Stoppard's Eight Lords A-Leaping - review in NYTimes of his play "Jumpers." Why can't they mount a production of Arcadia???

A friend pointed me to fray.com, which is a short story site. I didn't look at any of the stories necessarily, but saw some interesting looking links, like this one:

Center for Digital Storytelling
http://www.storycenter.org/index.html

Libraries with blogs
http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/index.shtml?links.html

The Shifted Librarian
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/

J'adore [faire] le service de référence! (mm wonder if that's the right term. Bibliotheque Mazarine says so, but that's a sample of one...)

C'est un beau jour a Ann Arbor (et ce n'est pa ma faute, l'absence des accents ici... the keyboard shortcuts don't work and I ain't gonna figure out how to do them otherwise) - ou c'etait un beau jour... maintenant le soleil se cache... aargh quelle horreur, mon francais

Anyways, in honour of Easter weekend, an article from Slate magazine:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2098553/

Il est toujours interessant, what the world has to say...

Bah. Bo-ring. Look at February. Lots more fun stuff then.

Questions people asked that made me think:

"So, what did you learn?"
- Faculty person (actually 2 of them, one after the other; the first two people I saw and was 'reporting back' to after my trip and after I'd heard the results)

"What major changes in your life have you seen, or how have you changed, in the last 2 years since you've been here at SI?"
- Jay Jackson (not quoted verbatim), interview question today - I was doing a video interview for some promo CD they are doing for the School

Also, prior to the trip, when I'd first heard about it, and was telling whoever, they asked "So, is this the ideal job?"

I have answers to these questions now... but of course, I'm not going to post them here :) (Or maybe I will, later. Right now I have a business plan to edit.)

Reflect - for literacy and more

"Reflect is a diverse & innovative approach to adult learning and social change, used by over 350 organisations in 60 countries. It has been used to tackle a wide range of issues, from peace & reconciliation in Burundi, to community forestry in Nepal and holding government accountable in El Salvador....

Groups develop their own learning materials by constructing maps, calendars, matrices, and diagrams or using drama, story-telling and songs to capture social, economic, cultural and political issues from their own environment. "

From ActionAid Education site

Official site
http://www.reflect-action.org/

Reflect and ICTs
http://217.206.205.24/Initiatives/ict/home.htm

Creative Commons - Get Content has links to places that provide content, among them Open Photo:

http://openphoto.net

Creative Commons - interesting. To look at later perhaps.

e.g. "Writers' and Bloggers' Corner
Do you want people to redistribute your stories, articles, and web writing widely, as long as they give you credit?
Do you mind if people copy your stuff, so long as they don't make money off it?
Do you like the idea of other people making new works based on yours — provided they offer those derivations back to the public on the same terms?
Do you want to help create and have access to a pool of royalty-free writing?"

http://creativecommons.org/learn/artistscorners/writers

Other stuff for today:
Gadget http://snipurl.com
Also TinyURL
tools to truncate URLs

"Spiritual lust makes me demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God Who gives the answer."

- Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (quoted in jemufo's blog)

Paulo Freire "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" - situational learning
CDI - Brazil, Chile, elsewhere. Schools of Internet Training and Citizenship. (CDI= Committee for the Democratization of Information. Acronym used because "committee" has negative connotations associated with the old (Pinochet?) regime.)

D-Lib Magazine - internet, searching, digital preservation, etc. - short articles - intellectual property, open access...
http://www.dlib.org/

I'm reading the Pilgrim's Progress - an updated version. It is most excellent. Would like a smaller version of the updated version, though. (This one has notes and is quite a thick volume. How to lend/give people like that? I'm not reading the notes either.)

John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. I know it from the comic book version. And from Little Women (they use it a lot).

I figured what I like so much about GCF, beyond just the “really nice people”, and the “great Christian people, who are thoughtful and intelligent, diverse in disciplines yet united in mind, serious about their faith, and socially lots of fun—a great community of God’s people.” Being serious about the faith, thoughtful in struggling through the issues of how to integrate their faith and their academics and their lives in general… that’s what I identified earlier as special.

But now I see – it’s a maturity – that’s what I love about it. It’s having mature Christians of around my own age, who are struggling with similar issues, who have walked the road longer than me, and whom I can share with, learn from, and look up to.

And the ‘my own age’ part is significant – it’s not that I haven’t had Christians to look up to before… it’s fellow travelers on the same part of the road. Some a little ahead, some a little behind, in different places with different things, all in the same general vicinity, or at least have a deep understanding of the general vicinity (that’s for the older folk, who are a bit further along :)).

"If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect."

- Benjamin Franklin, quoted in Conley, Dalton. "Op-Ed Contributor: The Free Lane on the Information Highway" New York Times, March 19, 2004.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/opinion/19CONL.html?ex=1080741497&ei=1&en=9124b796e08a6189

Job stuff: Wonder if I should not have "gone soft" and sent the extra email offering to take the less desirable option for travel itinerary. Setting self up for being less valued? Or demonstrating good faith? Or just making sure self doesn't feel bad? Or putting ball back in the other's court? Or analyzing too much...

It doesn't matter anyhow.

Thank goodness for professional ethics. Had to practice them today (at the library).

From yi-xing's email signature:

"The call of God is not the echo of my nature." - Oswald Chambers

--------------------
In terms of guidance, good reminder!

"Many new book dealers think of the antiquarian bookseller as a second-hand junkman or as a weird character who obtains books by sorcery, prices them by cannibalistic necromancy, and sells them by black magic."

Sol Malkin, "Rare and Out-of-Print Books," in A Manual on Bookselling (New York: American Booksellers Association, 1974), 208. Quoted in Evans, Developing Library and Information Center Collections

"The search engines seem to be showing signs of strain in attempting to keep up with the explosive growth of the Web. Steve Lawrence & C. Lee Giles of the NEC Research Center conducted a scientifically rigorous survey of the search engine’s coverage of Web content in February 1999.

The findings of their survey, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, suggest that the combined coverage of the 11 search engines used for the study was about 42% of the total number of unique indexable pages on the Web (i.e. not including the ever-expanding "hidden Web"), with no search engine indexing more than about 16%."

From Gill, Tony. Metadata and the World Wide Web (2000)
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/2_articles/gill/content.html#introduction

Introduction to Metadata V.2.0
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/1_introduction/index.html

Harvard Design Magazine - calling architecture and design fans... (urban, landscape, etc. included) for layperson as well as professional, academic or practitioner. It costs only USD 28 per year for student subscriptions in the US and Canada (though if you're a student you can probably get it at your uni, so it's a moot point, isn't it?). The online version has some freebie articles (for back issues as well as current). Font tiny, but pdfs available.

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/current/index.html

Profiles in Science - papers of famous scientists, doctors, public health officials and activists. database-driven digital archive.

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/

Changing the Face of Medicine - exceptional exhibit on women physicians in the U.S.. very inspiring. highlights numerous stories. shows not only pioneering but also building of infrastructure, wider reach - these women are black, white, Native American, Asian American, Hispanic, and more. They are doctors, researchers, public health officials, mothers, wives, activists. They set up hospitals, colleges, literacy initiatives. They work in diverse settings. It's a pretty cool conglomeration. The site also has other features besides the virtual content from the physical exhibit.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/exhibition/

Effective use: A community informatics strategy beyond the Digital Divide - Michael Gurstein

participation vs access; producing vs consuming; local social context; participatory design; "effective use" of ICTs for concrete gains

http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_12/gurstein/

Richard Lamb "The Pursuit of God in the Company of Friends" is an argument for community in knowing God. An easy read. Lessons from the Bible, especially Jesus' life and ministry. Open sharing of anecdotes from his own life. Practical focus - manifesto for action. Each chapter on a different aspect of the philosophy or practice of friendship. Published by InterVarsity Press. I got it free :)

A.W.Tozer "The Pursuit of God". Slim volume. Classic. Everyone should read it. I have to return it to my friend Anne now.

Aiyoh, hungry liao... I randomly put "wan tan mee" into my Google toolbar, which sits at the top of my browser window, and the first hit was this page, with mouthwatering photographs... or at least, pictures of char siu, which I have not had in a long while. The site itself is a rather interesting thing.

http://www.hosengkee.com/English/product.htm

Picture of the shop - typical Chinese coffeeshop model, middle, not corner - http://www.hosengkee.com/English/map.htm

Cornell's Digital Imaging Tutorial "Moving Theory Into Practice".

Everything you wanted to know about pixels, copyright, metadata, and all those fascinating and terribly boring issues you have to or should deal with in planning or considering or carrying out a digital imaging/preservation/reformatting project - for a start, anyway. Very clean, nicely presented, bite-size chunks. Highly recommended introduction. Just remember, it IS a technical subject. Understandable, but can seem tedious/academic. All this back-end work!

http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/contents.html

Conway, Paul. "Digital Technology Made Simpler", from the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) provides a higher-level overview of the issues involved. This pamphlet does a better job of introducing concepts related to digitization to a novice audience. Also freely available. I love nonprofits, libraries and the culture of sharing! (That's an interesting side issue - access to information vs. proprietary needs)

http://www.nedcc.org/plam3/tleaf54.htm

"The key to image quality is not to capture at the highest resolution or bit depth possible, but to match the conversion process to the informational content of the original, and to scan at that level--no more, no less." - because as resolution increases, at some point image quality will level off, and increasing resolution only creates a larger file

http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/conversion/conversion-03.html

"In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us how to swim."
-Linton Weeks

My first creme brulee at La Dolce Vita yesterday. It's a sweet white custard (mine was flavoured with vanilla bean, the classic, I think). With a thin caramelized sugar crust. Served with berries and tropical fruit. Good, though still does not beat pavlova.

From CremeBrulee.com: (http://www.cremebrulee.com/creme.htm)
"The origins of crème brûlée (pronounced krehm broo-LAY) are very much in contention, with the English, Spanish, and French all staking claim. The Spanish have taken credit for this sensuous custard as "crema catalana" since the eighteenth century, while the English claim it originated in seventeenth-century Britain, where it was known as "burnt cream" and the English school boys at Cambridge demanded it. It apparently wasn't until the end of the nineteenth century that common usage of the French translation came into vogue, putting it on the map from Paris to Le Cirque in New York City." See also note from Trinity College http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=440

A Day in the Life of Africa

"On February 28th, 2002 95 photojournalists from 26 countries spread across the African continent for a 24-hour photo shoot."

http://allafrica.com/photoessay/adayinthelife/

http://allafrica.com/photoessay/adayinthelife/photo1.html

Kicking Tongues - a Nigerian Canterbury Tales

http://www.urbana.org/resources.biblio.detail.cfm?RecordId=518

Beginnings of an information book list

Brown & Duguid, Social Life of Information
David Levy Scrolling Forward: Documents in the Digital Age
Alexander Stille The Future of the Past

While I'm at it - Elizabeth Whitmore participatory action design; Letter to our (a?) teacher; David Barton (recommendations from Ann Bishop, UIUC, community inquiry labs)

Paul Farmer writes books!

Pathologies of power : health, human rights, and the new war on the poor / Paul Farmer ; with a foreword by Amartya Sen. Berkeley : University of California Press, c2003.

Infections and inequalities : the modern plagues / Paul Farmer. Updated ed. with a new preface.
Published Berkeley ; London : University of California Press, 2001.

Library and Information Services for the Pharmaceutical Industry - my Web report.

http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~eskua/626/index2.html

Not great, but there it is.

"Although one may think that all westerns are the same, Genreflecting lists 40 distinct themes and the names of authors who specialize in each one. Some readers will devour any western about range wars but will not touch a title about mountain men." - Evans, "Developing Library and Information Center Collections", Chap. 4

Betty Rosenberg and Diane Tixier Herald, Genreflecting: A Guide to Reading Interests in Genre Fiction, 4th ed. (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1995).

life expectancy

responsible custody

enduring value

http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/arcrept/arcrept.html

From Todd, SI 626: Just thought I would recommend a book for you two if you want to learn more about HTML layout. The title is *Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design*, which goes through examples of using cascading style sheets to do layout. It's much more flexible than tables, although more finicky. The book does a good job of showing different positioning techniques depending on your particular need, and how to make it work in all browsers (that is, how to get IE to render it correctly since it doesn't follow the CSS standards very well). The book is available at the Media Union but it's checked out right now.

I was at the Christianity Today Web site and saw an ad: "Marriage Partnership: Risk-Free Trial Offer!"

It struck me as a contradiction in terms. (It was an ad for a publication of course, not the relationship itself. But you know...)

I am afraid to open my email, because of what I might find there.

Oh well. Suck it up and deal!

An experiment. Archival value? Doubt it. Preservation? Chancy. Still, it's worth a shot.