Entries from October 2006 ↓

Happy Halloween! I was just looking on the GNUJersey, which bills its self as “The Online Newspaper for the Free and Open Source Software Communities in New Jersey” (and one of the places that syndicates my blog) and I counted 7 Linux-related events in New Jersey between November 3 and November 8. If you are in the area, come out and support at least one of them! For more details see GNUJersey.org. Here is a summary:

# Nov 03 Cherry Hill LUG:
* Cinelarra by Wes Allen
# Nov 05 Rutgers University Student LUG:
* InstallFest! 12:00 — 18:00
# Nov 06 ACGNJ Linux/Unix SIG
# Nov 07 LUG/IP Hardware SIG
# Nov 07 Princeton Library Tech Tuesday:
* Open Source Software: An Overview by John LeMasney
# Nov 07 Rutgers University Student LUG:
* Newbie Night
# Nov 08 LUG in Princeton:
* On Writing Books by Brian K. Jones

Over the last week I went to two different library technology related conferences. One of them was the Palinet conference in Harrisburg, PA and the other one was LITA (Library Information Technology Association) in Nashville TN. The main reason why I went to both of them was to give presentations. At the Palinet conference, I gave a presentation with Jim Robertson of NJIT on Social Software and Libraries (PDF). The presentation was well attended and seemed to be well-received. At LITA I gave a poster presentation on our New Books RSS project – and more specifically on how to use it to get library content via RSS into a course management system. The poster session lasted 2 hours and I didn’t get a chance to catch my breath with all of he people stopping by to ask me about the project. I need to thank Heather Moulaison for preparing the poster with me with even though she couldn’t make it to Nashville to present it with me. I did a poster session once before and wasn’t very happy about how it turned out for a number of reasons, but this one was great and in some ways more rewarding then a regular session. The two main reasons why this one was better was 1) LITA had the posters set up in the main ball room where breakfast was served and there was room for people to look at the sessions and to talk with the presenters, and 2) Heather and I invested a lot of time into making the poster look good aesthetically. I should also thank Gregory Haase for his help creating the poster in Inkscape.

Neither conference was super-techy. I wasn’t that surprised about Palinet, but I though LITA would be more techy. That is not to say LITA wasn’t useful, it just wasn’t focused on hard core techy stuff. If people that have some tech skills but don’t consider themselves a techy have avoided LITA in the past because they were afraid it would be too techy, I think they should give it a try.

Most of the more memorable sessions at LITA focused on the future of the library catalog. For example, Emily Lynema and Andrew Pace talked about the Endeca powered catalog at NCSU, Gregg Silvis discussed his vision for the demise of the local OPAC, and David Lindahl and Jeff Suszczyanski discussed CUIPID 4 and the eXtensible Catalog that they are working on at the University of Rochester. These sessions, being on the Endeavor Users Group board, the Next Generation Catalog mailing list, and other recent readings and conferences have really made me think a lot about the future of library catalogs. At this point, I don’t where we are going for sure, but I am sure the current way most libraries (and library vendors) are dealing with the ILS is not sustainable. One day when I have more time I’ll have to write a long post on where I think we are likely to go, where I’d like to see us go, and what are the reasons for my vision.

Talking about my vision, early today the short A Vision for VALE paper Jim Robertson and I wrote for VALE was discussed at a meeting where approximately 23 New Jersey academic libraries sent representatives. The paper was about Jim and mine’s vision for the VALE Open Library System. I don’t know when this vision will be launched, or if it even will, but it is clear that their is a lot of interest in this idea in the NJ academic library community. There are still a lot of hurdles that will need to be cleared, but this was a good second baby step. (the first being the paper being discussed at the VALE planning retreat over the summer). A little bit of news, to me at least, was that through the NJ State Library, there has been some talk of using an Open source catalog for some smaller public libraries. I don’t really know how serious these talks are, but I found it interesting news and something I want to pay attention to in the future.

… in 1970!

Allan Brown of National Speedway Directory fame passed this along to the Trackchaser Yahoo! group…..

How about this headline in the September 23, 1970 issue of Area Auto.

EAST WINDSOR FINALE
Don Jones, owner and promoter of the East Windsor Speedway, has
informed us today that October 4th, with the ending of the Motorcycling
Jamboree show, will end racing of any form at East Windsor Speedway. The
property is being sold and will be used for business purposes, further
details to come later.

Obviously it took the Jones family another 30+ years to finally shut it down. I drove past it the other day and nothing is really happening on the property. I really do miss going to EWS. It is a shame that it isn’t still open. Oh well…

The article, “Integrating RSS Feeds of New Books into the Campus Course Management System,” that Heather L. Moulaison and I have been working on has been published in the October 2006 issue of Computers in Libraries. It happens to be the “free HTML” article of the month and can be viewed online at: http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/oct06/Corrado_Moulaison.shtml. Of course, the HTML view of the article isn’t the best since the graphics and print layout are missing. If you really want to see it, buy yourself a copy of CiL (or subscribe), find one in a library, or look in an online database that includes a pdf view. If you have access to EBSCOhost’s Academic Search Premier database, this link should take you there.

The citation to the article is:

Corrado, Edward M. and Heather L. Moulaison (2006). Integrating RSS Feeds of New Books into the Campus Course Management System. Computers in Libraries, 26(9), 6-9,61-64.

On the weekend of September 22 – 24 I went to western Ohio to see the USAC 4 Crown Nationals at the legendary Eldora Speedway. This was the first time for me at this race – and also the first time I’ve been to Eldora since Tony Stewart bought it. Tony did make a lot of improvements like a new catch fence, a lap counter/score board, and new bathrooms, but I’m happy to report Tony didn’t do anything to make Eldora lose any of its “Eldora-ness.” In fact even Earl Baltes was there sitting in the owners booth!

This race was probably the highest race on my hit list for the last few years so I was really looking forward to it. The racing part didn’t disappoint, but the rain sure did. I’m sure any dirt track racing fan has already heard about the problems caused by the rain. For the most part, Friday night was a wash. They started pretty early on Saturday, but they would get a race or two in, and then it would rain, they would dry the track, and run another race or two, and this was repeated about 5 or 6 times. We finally left the track at 6:00 AM on Sunday morning after being there for 19 hours! And, there was still the UMP modified race left to go (I herd that ended at 6:48 AM). Not fun as far as the rain, but we persevered and I got to see my first 4 Crown nationals.

My 2006 race attendance stats after the 4 Crown Nationals are:
Races: 23
Tracks: 19 (13 new) (150 lifetime)
States: 14 (3 new) (35 + DC lifetime)