End of an era?

Just a quick note to let all 11 of the Warrior Librarian fans know that Yahoo!Geocities has informed all and sundry that as of 28 October 2009 all sites hosted there (including the Original Warrior Librarian) will cease to exist.

The good news is that almost all of it is cached at the Wayback Machine, and a new and brighter Warrior Librarian Weekly will soon be available once some Other Matters have been finalised. More information is here ...

Google Digitization Project

For those of you with an interest in copyright matters, and published works, the deadline has now passed for opting out of the Google Digitization. But you do have until 5 January 2010 to claim the Cash Payment on offer from Google, and by extension obtain the percentage of the profit Google will be making from your work.

Careful with filling out the online form, though. Or you may find yourself in ongoing correspondence with the process administrators, such as:

Dear [name removed for obvious reasons],

I'm not sure if you noticed that my email address ends in the country code "au" ... I am resident in Australia. Unfortunately your toll-free number is not available through overseas directories, so it is of little help for you to continue to refer me to that number.

I do thank you though for your explaination that you require that "rights holders who wish to have changes made to their book listings send said corrections in the form of a signed request". We do indeed live in Strange Times! Is it not absurd that the "signed request" that you require - presumably for security purposes - is so much more easily "forged" than a digitally traceable email?

However, if you check the Google Settlement Entry for the rights holder details for the book that I wrote you will see that I have actually been able to correct the error (that I have been asking for your assistance in correcting for some months) myself, through my secure password-encoded log in.

Sigh.

I am certain that you will understand that the above does not inspire confidence, in regard to appropriate administration of the processes with which your company has been engaged in the matter of Google's digitization of copyright protected publications.


Regards,
Amanda Credaro


Too narky? Perhaps. But it is now on its way through the ether, regardless.

Street Smarts or Dumb and Dumber

For a while now, I've been noticing that people seem to be getting stupider. I almost had myself convinced that the problem was really just me, that I myself was getting crabbier and less tolerant. Until yesterday.

Racked items in KMart's Children's Clothing section had tags attached at the neckline "Warning: Clothing must be removed from hanger before wearing". No one would possibly make this up. Not even me. Q.E.D.

The History of American library humor ...

Jeanette Smith of the New Mexico State University Library wrote:

I have been researching and writing a book on the history of American library humor, and now that my 451 page manuscript is complete, I am contacting people that I mention and make short quotes from in the book. You are, of course, an important library humorist worldwide and in America. Below, I have attached material from your work in the book, with full citations. May I use this material in my book? ...

I really do love it when folk ask permission first! I wonder if I'll be getting a complimentary copy of the published work? Most probably not; the only folk to have done so thus far were ALA, who honored me with a copy of The Whole Library Handbook 4 in thanks for my humble contribution (p 368).

You'll have to get hold of your own copy of Jeanette Smith's book to find out which quotes she is going to use. And no, I'm not getting a commission on sales. As usual.

The Lost Widget ...

There's a terrific little widget to publicise Dan Brown's latest offering, which would have been appearing here to impress all 10 of my blog fans. Sadly though, Blogger tells me that I am not allowed to use the html necessary for the widget to be displayed.

Geez, but doesn't it make your toenails curl backwards when the simplest of technology falls down when the administration of it become the barrier. There's nothing malicious in the code (no pun intended, Mr Brown), a bit of Shockwave, a touch of embedding for display purposes, and so forth.

But my 10 loyal fans can still see the widget and "grab it" with immunity from http://www.thelostsymbol.com/ where it is generously on offer to all.

Postscript: No birds this week, so far. But it is only Tuesday.

A bird of another feather

Yep, another bird flying around the library again on Friday. Not the cute little 'blue jay' of previous fame, but the ubiquitous Indian Minor, an import by a previous generation and charged with contributing to the extinction of native species.

The Indian Minor doesn't get good press, nor any legal representation, but all that aside this particular feathered fiend flew (another 'f' word) through the library, and did in fact poop a number of times. Once - that I found - on our newly shampoo-ed carpet, and another on the back of the shelf at the end of our Reference collection.

We've got 'rules' about how high we can climb on ladders and such, so I'm still not quite sure as to who will get up the tops of the shelves and clean them, nor when. Not the cleaners' role, apparently. It may be lucky that there's a 10 year accumulation of dust across the tops of the books on the upper shelves - it may just save the books from the messages left by little birds ...

My New Hero

There is more than one Mohammad Tariq in the world, so if you are Googling, make sure you include "Keddies" in the search terms. You will unveil a story worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.

This particular Mohammad Tariq took on a major law-firm, who had ripped him off mercilessly when they were supposed to be Acting On His Behalf. Mohammad Tariq - eventually - won.

You're probably thinking "that's nice", or something similar. Unless you are a compensation lawyer, in which case you're probably in the middle of shredding documents. Almost worse than a lone-voice-in-the-wilderness, Tariq fought against the establishment. He was threatened with incarceration as "mentally unstable" on one occasion. He was charged $49 by his own lawyer for being told said lawyer was taking a holiday. He was charged hundreds of dollars for phone calls that could have been (and most probably were) made by clerical assistants.

Tariq took to 'sandwich-board' protests. In April this year, one newspaper described him as a "one man headache" when he protested outside the TV station on which Keddies front man has a football talk-show. The same newspaper changed its tune in August, when barrister Michael Robinson, appointed by the Supreme Court, found that ''Keddies in each case has practised systematic duplication and overcharging, which, in my opinion, is deliberate and has in many cases led to the charging of costs that are grossly excessive''.

Mohammad Tariq took a stand and won. Sure, it took him 3 years, but he never gave up - despite all the 'experts' that told him that he would never win; he was wasting his time; he should get over it. Etc. Just a personal opinion, but I think he should be the official Poster Boy for natural justice and fair play.

Weirdness and Mind Power

I have to start, right here, by swearing to you that this is true. You can choose to be sceptical, which is your right. If I was sitting where you are now, and about to read what you are about to read, I can honestly say that I wouldn't believe it either. But that's probably more to to with being a cynic than anything else.

So I'm working away, doing what I'm paid to do, during the course of which some YouTube resources were being evaluated. A small and unexpected deviation into the area of Zen philosophy resulted in a number of footages of streams/forests/mountains with the feely-floaty musical background.

Next thing I knew, and I kid you not, into my office flew a Superb Fairy-Wren. Our American cousins should maybe thing along the lines of a "blue jay". It fluttered around alarmingly for a bit, then settled on the top shelf of my professional resources. For a moment there, I thought it might poop on the folders containing the last 7 years of stock take records. That alone gives pause for reflection.

I co-opted a colleague from a nearby office, and together we gently encouraged my little feathered visitor back out into the Wide World. Bird poop on stock take records might be a fair call, but it sure would be a financial tragedy on expensive reference books.

Being Friday, Staff Morning Tea was the next event on my schedule. Don't laugh - its a serious venue for exchanging information, strengthening working networks, ensuring sufficient sugar levels are maintained until lunchtime.

But Blow-Me-Down! (an Australian expression meaning a surprise of sufficient proportions to knock an individual horizontal). When I came back from Morning Tea, my small feathered friend was perched next to the main door of the library, waiting to be let back in.

Now the really spooky part of this is the thought of what might have happened if I'd been reviewing material on, for example, Continental Drift. Would we have had an earthquake?

Just wondering.