LibrarianActivist.org

Wikirage gives you a snapshot of which Wikipedia articles have had the most edits during a certain timeframe - a very useful way to see what’s happening in the world and on people’s minds (well, what’s on the minds of people who take the time to edit Wikipedia that is. So expect lots of pop culture items when you click that link!)

- JH

I did an earlier post about the guy who designed a program to link IP addresses to Wikipedia edits. This has led to all kinds of discoveries of spin, manipulation and outright lies being planted by individuals and organizations who want to harm others or clean up their own image.

Now a blogger has compiled a list of the seven most scandalous edits that have been discovered…so far.

- JH

Sorry for being late again this week - same “real world must take precedence sometimes” excuse as last week.

That also means anybody reading this has a bit less notice that September 10 has been declared “Librarians Slam The Boards” day.

Jessamyn West over at librarian.net has more details but basically, the idea is that librarians show up on any of the dozen or so “answer sites” on the Internet and provide responses while indicating that the question has been answered by a librarian.

The idea is to promote the role that librarians fill in providing quality information for others.

“This means making it clear that this question was answered by a librarian/library professional/etc. End each answer with the mention your own library, your VR service, etc. Add the link. Mention that readers should consider their own libraries, too. Promote it to local media. Keep in mind how many people don’t even realize that libraries offer reference services. Let’s surprise and delight them with our quality.

I’d like hundreds of librarians to do this. Thousands? Why not?

I see this as an opportunity to make the reference librarian community more visible. I’d like to see a number of us remain engaged in the answer services, on the chance that the users will have us in the backs of their minds when they have questions they don’t want everyone to see. As such, I’m not expecting to see a huge “blip” in our reference/VR stats because of this. But who knows? The point is to meet some folks where they otherwise wouldn’t expect us.”

I love some of the taglines they’re proposing librarians use with their answers:

# Have a question you don’t want the whole world to see?
# Librarians—Ask Us, We Answer!
# If you need more help, just contact your local librarian.
# Librarians—We eat questions for breakfast!

- JH

The ALA recently released a survey of rural librarians with all kinds of interesting, enlightening and downright depressing comments and statistics.

With fully one half of your friendly neighbourhood LA contributor team working in rural library settings, this survey also hits close to home (although I do believe that the situation in Canada for salaries and working conditions is much better than in the US for the most part.)

(via the always jam-packed ALA weekly e-newsletter which, unfortunately isn’t online)

- JH

• How Swearing Works
• BBC’s List of Most Offensive Words (in ranked order)
• Urban Dictionary - a user-created dictionary of slang including many offensive terms. Great for understanding the latest teen slang.
• The Great Internet Swearword Project - picking between two choices helps define the “best swear words in the world“.
• Learn To Swear in any Language
• Letter Cursing - How to Swear Without Swearing
• The Greatest Swearing Moments in Cinematic History

- JH