I'm starting to think Kate needs her own blog. Today she told me about an interview she saw on the local news last night. It was with someone from Chicago Magazine because their new issue is out and it rates 192 Chicago suburbs. Neither of us has seen the issue yet, but she was impressed because Elmhurst, one of the suburbs covered by my organization (Suburban Library System), came in first. One of the major criteria used - the quality and usage of the library!

"Our survey of 192 Chicago suburbs tracks crime rates, school scores, recreational amenities, library holdings, house appreciation, and other variables—and then ranks those communities based on the results."

It's easy to see why the Elmhurst Public Library put the city over the top, especially with the new building currently under construction. Elmhurst values library services, and residents proved it when they approved a referendum measure last year for that new building. Congratulations to the Elmhurst community and its fine library staff!

Yes, it's true - libraries do make a difference in your every day life.

Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites That Work

"This is a book review of Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites That Work by Tom Brinck, Darren Gergle, and Scott D. Wood (San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2002). The book is a how-to guide. It describes methods and techniques for designing websites with the assumption that the principles of usability are pervasive throughout. This book is not about HTML. It is a book about the concepts and principles surrounding the organization, creation, and design of interfaces to data and information presented via a Web browser.

This book was well worth the money because it outlines and details a systematic process for creating usable websites...." [Eric Lease Morgan, via LISNews.com]

This book, along with Andy King's Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization, sound like two good titles for libraries, both for the circulating collection and for internal use. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on them.

Word 'Bursts' May Reveal Online Trends

"Searching for sudden 'bursts' in the usage of particular words could be used to rapidly identify new trends and sort information more efficiently, says a US computer scientist.

Jon Kleinberg, at Cornell University in New York, has developed computer algorithms that identify bursts of word use in documents.

While other popular search techniques simply count the number of words or phrases in documents, Kleinberg's approach also takes into account the rate at which the word usage increases.

Kleinberg suggests that the method could be applied to weblogs to track new social trends. For example, identifying word bursts in the hundreds of thousands of personal diaries now on the web could help advertisers quickly spot an emerging craze....

Researchers at Google, the world's most widely used internet search engine, have already shown that identifying spikes in search terms can be used to track the spread of news and rumours around the world. The algorithms that run Google's automated news aggregation service remain secret, but it is not difficult to imagine that word bursts could, or do, have a useful role." [New Scientist]

What an interesting idea in light of Google's recent purchase....

ATTENTION ALL GROWNUPS

"Your 'inner child' has long been waiting for a chance to usurp control of your body and force it to perform certain actions. The time is now at hand. Read and follow the instructions below." [MetaFilter]

Jet Blue Redefines "on Hold"

"Clive sez:

I was supposed to fly to San Francisco on Jetblue this morning, but the northeast blizzard has grounded all flights. So I'm on the phone to Jetblue trying frantically to get rebooked -- when I discover they have the finest 'hold' message on the planet. Here's my transcription of it:

'You know, everyone seems to think being on hold is a bad thing. Let's re-examine this, shall we? Don't look at it as being on hold. Look at it as being held! Because we all like to be held -- don't we?

For example, when you're sitting in front of a fire with someone special, being held is very comforting. Or when you're upset about something, being held can make you feel a whole lot better. Or when walking in the park with our significant other, we like our hands to be held. Or even coming home from school and having your books held.

You see? It's not all that bad. So remember. Don't look on it as being on hold. Look on it as being held!' " [Boing Boing Blog]

Free Storage

"Dan Gillmor's Sunday column points out that hard-disk data storage now costs less than one dollar per gigabyte. Thanks to Moore's law, the cost of storage is asymptotically approaching zero. It's interesting to stop and think about what happens as storage becomes essentially free.

Traditionally, storing data has been expensive, so we spent time sorting through our stored data to see what we could discard. We only kept something if we really needed it.

If storage is nearly free, though, the traditional cost equation inverts -- it becomes much cheaper to keep information than to worry about whether to delete it. Why go to the trouble and expense to sort through your old stuff, when instead you can just keep it forever?

If storage is free, then the only reason to delete a record is because it might embarrass you, or because it might put you in a bad legal position somehow. In such a world, the very fact that you deleted something would arouse suspicion....

All of this has serious implications for privacy. People will avoid excessive recording of their own activities, but the temptation to record others, just in case the recording might be useful, will be strong. If cost is no longer a barrier to surveillance by our neighbors, some new barrier has to arise. What will it be?" [Freedom to Tinker]

Meanwhile, Ernie the Attorney notes the implications for lawyers, while Gizmodo asks, "Can you believe that they can now squeeze 2 gigabytes of storage space into one of those keychain USB drives?" and TechBargains notes that TigerDirect has dropped the price of a 256MB Lexar USB 2.0 Jump Drive down to just $79.97.

How long until that 2GB version is under $100?

"Jamie Kellner, the Turner exec credited with the quote about bathrooms and personal video recorders, has stepped down." [Scripting News]

Why am I not surprised?

Actually, I am surprised... that it took this long. Even his mouth wasn't big enough the foot he tried to insert into it. He didn't even offer a pretense for leaving. Let's hope his successor, Philip Kent, thinks before he speaks during interviews.

Important Announcement

"Library News Daily has now been re-named Peter Scott's Library Blog and has a new home at

http://blog.xrefer.com

Please update your bookmarks to refer to the new site. Subscribers to Library News Daily are asked to sign-up to the new service, in order to continue to receive e-mail updates" [Library News Daily]

My only complaints are that there are no permalinks and no obvious RSS feed, both of which are important to me because Peter has such great content to which I frequently link. For example, in catching up with his site, I found the following entry:

"Good Job! - a web log describing some of the excellent work done by Lane Library (Ohio) staff"

What a great blog! Smart marketing. My favorite part, though, is that the Lane staff are promoting the LibraryLookup bookmarklet they made through Jon Udell's generator. They have a whole page devoted to it. Excellent!