Laurabelle’s Blog

Another public library system begins the transition to open source! The city of Cape Town and South Africa's State Information Technology Agency (SITA) are planning joint development of a new, open-source integrated library system. Apparently they're trying to do this to save money, which is always a risky proposition. Let me summarize the strategy for you: Spend [...]

I've been playing around with What Should I Read Next? which is interesting but not fully functional. I'm not just referring to the fact that the site doesn't yet have a critical mass of data for recommendations; that's understandable. What's annoying is that the interface has some bad design choices that I don't understand. The site's [...]

Banned Books Week 2005 is September 24 - October 1. Celebrate by reading a banned book! In 2003 I posted a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books (1990-2000), noting which I had read. Unfortunately, I don't believe I have read any more challenged books since then. Shame on me. The Secret Garden Bookshop in Ballard [...]

I haven’t been in a comic shop for about twenty years, but James Turner’s new Rex Libris is about to make me break that record.

Just as a tide of ignorance swells up and threatens to engulf the world, out of the ashes of the Great Library of Alexandria arises a hero, an educated fellow with [...]

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is going to be released this Friday night at midnight, and the whole world is going insane, not least KCLS. KCLS ordered more than 500 copies of this book, and they arrived today. The books were processed and checked in to trigger holds... and they are spending tonight under [...]

I knitted a pair of socks.

Then I cataloged them.
100 1 Melton, Laura, ‡d 1979-
245 1 0 [Cabled socks].
260 ‡c [2005].
300 1 pair socks : ‡b wool, brown : ‡c 54 cm. long.
500 Title supplied by cataloger.
500 Pattern: [...]

I was poking around on the Web today (trying to figure out how to clean up some of the gunk that is filling up my C: partition without reinstalling WinXP) and found this article entitled When good interfaces go crufty. I'm not sure that I completely agree with the article I disagree with almost all [...]

Thanks to Jessamyn, I found out how N2H2 has categorized my website: Web Page Hosting/Free Pages Profanity Recreation/Entertainment I have been known to spice my language very occasionally, and I can't really argue with Entertainment, but I'm definitely not on free hosting. Neither is Jessamyn, for that matter, and that's how they classified one of her sites, too. (Is [...]

Dorothea thinks call number searches are mislabeled, that users don't know what a call number is or what it could be used for, and she does have a point. The real problem is that this capability simply does not belong in the initial search screen! What do you do when you browse in service of a [...]

A couple of weeks ago I promised an answer to the problem of open-source projects trying to address many libraries' diverse requirements for an integrated library system. What I had in mind was an open set of communication standards that would allow different tools to communicate with each other, but the more I think about [...]