Category — General

Government Addresses Librarian Shortage. Laura Bush Addresses Nation's Critical Shortage of Librarians: $10 Million to Recruit New LibrariansLast night Laura Bush announced a proposed $10 million initiative for 2003 to recruit a new generation of librarians. The initiative will be managed by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.Of course, this is proposed initiative. I wish the article gave some sense of how likely it is that the proposed initiative will become an actual initiative, or what has to… [Infomusings Blog]

Honestly, I don't think this will help. Librarians are suffering the same fate, except at the highest levels, as k-16 educators, bad pay. so people sign up to be librarians or educators, stay in a few years pay of their loans, and many leave to pursue other careers.

Googlesluts. Jan Haugland nominates David Harris for Googleslut of the century for temporarily renaming his blog Harry Potter 5 Summaries and News. Over 3000 hits this morning and counting…. [Radio Free Blogistan] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

I think this is great fun, hilarious almost.

Writing RSS 1-2-3.

Faster than a speeding bullet, Alan turned out a proper trial RSS feed for the 'low threshold application' page from the TLTR group by the next morning. And in his inimitable style, offers another lesson in how to solve problems *and* educate at the same time. – SWL

- from [cogdogblog]

[EdTechPost]

interesting stuff, this is what can be done with a few minutes and a good idea

Expanding Access to Learning: The Role of Virtual Universities.

Hot off the presses, a new monograph from the PEW Symposia in Learning and Technology. The monograph “assesses the current state of statewide virtual university initiatives, discusses five critical success factors derived from that assessment, and offers an alternative strategy to the predominant collaborative model that can improve current practice.”

For those of us involved in virtual university/consortia projects, this is essential reading. While I think there are real differences in the US and Canadian contexts that effect these issues, there are enough similarities that we need to pay real attention to the lessons being learned south of the border. – SWL

[EdTechPost]

well, i've been pushing for disciplinary collaboration through online education, instead of remaking the bricks and mortar online, why not remake the society online…? a nice distributed university.

marble columns. Over 2000 wealthy tax payers paid no tax in 2000. Meanwhile, states are plunging into budget deficits. Perhaps the tax cuts are meant not to spur the economy, but to defund social programs? [MetaFilter]

ya think? nah, can't be{sarcasm} social programs don't work if they don't have money. motivation falls if people are underpaid. i recently heard that a master of social work costs around 90000, but pay is 25 to 30000, and usually in a city…. good luck digging out of that hole. but guess whose creating a larger one? you elected them, didn't ya.

test

What is a Labor Market?. My post on Marc Bousquet's* job market argument (ie, there is no academic job market) generated some interesting comments on what constitutes a labor market. While Chun the Unavoidable is “sympathetic to Bousquet's argument,” he does “not see the evidence”… [Invisible Adjunct]

well, hmm, i did not expect to get cited here, but i did rant a bit:) if you want to get further into anti-markets start with the link above which talks about something entirely different than academic jobs. the cite for braudel is in there too. i used it in a presentation entitled markets and anti-markets in the software industry.

Oddmusic. Oddmusic is for anyone interested in unique, unusual, ethnic, or experimental music and instruments, according to the site. The gallery is full of strange instruments – some are beautiful, some are whimsical, and some are just silly. Many have samples to listen to, including the noisy-but-impressive Lego Harpsichord. [MetaFilter]

where does he find such wonderful toys? there are some interesting things here for the musically and trivially inclined.

Groove U.

“Groove introduces Groove U, a software and service license program designed to meet the unique needs of higher education institutions. Groove U enables professors and administrators to harness the power of Groove Workspace on a course-by-course basis.“

Groove is definitely worth checking out if you haven't seen it before. What I like about it, like it's predecessor Louts Notes is that it is a development platform for new collaborative applications as much as it is a pre-bundled set of collaborative functions. cf http://www.groove.net/downloads/tools/index.html for a list of additional 3rd party tools available. – SWL

- via [Bruce Landon's Weblog for Students]

[EdTechPost]

if it doesn't work on unix, it should be ignored. i'm posting this in protest.

Enough with humans. Let the flowers talk.. Katinka Matson's scanned flower art : technology lets the flowers speak. “…imagine a painter who could, like Vermeer, capture the quality of light that a camera can, but with the color of paints. That is what a scanner gives you…. In her flowers one can see every microscopic dew drop, leaf vein, and particle of pollen‰¥äin satisfying rich pigmented color…..” (scroll down for images) [MetaFilter]

there is some beautiful images by this artist, she should be proud of her work, i think its nifty.