Thursday, April 16, 2009

hall of shame: ALA and NJASL

As an LIS student, I rely on professional library organizations for information for papers and online discussions. So, I was quite annoyed to find, for the 2nd time this month, a library organization has taken formerly free information on their website and moved it to a (paid) members-only section.

Hello? I thought:
library = free = access to information
Right?

I mean, I'm willing to pay for a hard copy. I realize these documents take money and effort (albiet from VOLUNTEERS) to produce. But, get with the 21st century already and throw up a free pdf on your site. Actually, in these cases, KEEP the free pdf that you ALREADY HAD (for FREE) on your site for months (or YEARS). Why move it to a member-restricted section of your site NOW? (i.e., A few weeks before the end of MY semester?!)

ALA, NJASL? You know what documents I'm referring to. I'll be waiting for your reply while I find a friend to email me a copy she wisely downloaded before you went all Amazon on me.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

from Easter eggs to Amazon

Just last week, my family & I were discussing Easter eggs in video games and DVDs. Somehow, the conversation turned to Google bombs like Find Chuck Norris, French military victories,
and the now defunct miserable failure.

So, when Amazon laid another kind of egg this Easter weekend, I wasn't surprised when the following Google bomb had immediate and huge success: Amazon Rank. [Enjoy! Kudos to the gals at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. And don't forget to vote for their definition of amazon rank at Urbandictionary.com, and use it in your everyday speech. As in, "My principal amazon ranked me and removed the copy of And Tango Makes Three from my library."]

So, anyway, now they're blaming it on catalogers?! [No wonder RU removed the word library from one of its top-ranked programs! But I digress.] Nice try, but ahem, and #glitchmyass.

Aside from my moral outrage [and, yeah, my growing annoyance with the garbage showing up in my #Amazonfail clogged Twitter stream], I am ticked that now I can't keep up with my gadget girl neighbor and get a Kindle. How can they do this do me. Darn you evil corporations!

Friday, April 3, 2009

feeling meme-ish

Actually, I'm shamelessly copying Purple Polka, but here's what my blog looks like on Wordle:

Wordle: do i really sound like this?

Kind of reminds me of the first time I heard my voice on tape: "Do I really sound like that?" Except now, it's like, "Do I really blog like that??" Looks like I like sound like my middle-school son, with like the big giant, "LIKE" and all. (Go ahead and click on it, because it looks so much better up close and in person on the Wordle.net website.)

I like heart Wordle, so, I'm going to declare this a meme. Cuz, I like, you know, have all of about 3 readers. But, if you're like feeling all memey, consider yourself, like, tagged.