The 365 photos meme was quite popular last year (despite the 366 day leap year). I might have joined, but it’s unlikely I would have finished. Instead, I’ve been pushing my my brother-in-law Corey Blanchette, nicknamed CoreyB or CoreyB603, to do 365 songs in 2009. He launched on January first and since then has done songs about elves, the serotonin in Saratoga, Albert Ayler, and a bunch of others.

My favorite so far is An Empty Room Doesn’t Cry But an Empty Person Might, a song that comes from what he describes as a “pretty pretentious” phase of his recording history.

Some of his songs are new; a number of them are previously recorded. You can make a request here, and subscribe to the podcast with this link: http://coreyb603.com/feed/ .

Sandee’s not such a fan of the new theme here at MaisonBisson. Without really telling me that I should have discussed the new decor with her before making any big decisions, she does say she feels it doesn’t suit her style. There are lots of ways to resolve the, um, difference of opinion, but we decided that just as Sandee gets most of the authority regarding the kitchen and I get the office, we can find a way to share the website.

The result is Nest. Sandee’s picked out the drapes and carpet, I’m tweaking the installation and moving the relevant stories from our back catalog in. It’s a little amusing to see our tag cloud prominently reflecting our interest in drinks and homemade sweets, but i guess those are the things that we enjoy sharing most. Pictured above are scenes from the top stories: a toast, our submission to AT’s Fall Color contest, and the Sumo Sac review.

I hope to eventually create a combined feed of the blogs, but if you’re interested you can follow the Nest feed here.

A little more than two years after I realized how (really) bad the problem was and about 18 months after I prototyped my solution, our new library website, catalog, and knowledgebase launched last week — just in time for the fall semester opening.

It’s all built on Scriblio, includes a very simple new books list that you can narrow by subject and get via RSS. And if you search for subject areas like anthropology, economics, english writing, or any of a few dozen other topics, you’ll find our librarians’ subject guides listed at or near the top to help you out. You can also use the facets, clustered metadata shown in the right sidebar that reflect the aggregated results of that search†, to easily explore the collection or find the exact resource you need.

This started out simply, but the distance from prototype to working, um, product is difficult, dangerous, and frustrating. Still, when successful, it’s also wonderfully gratifying. And none of this would have happened without the help and support of a number of friends and colleagues both inside and outside the my library (callouts: Zach, Matt, Lichen, Jessamyn, Jon, Elaine, David, Anne, Dwight, Chris, PSU, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a lot of fellow library bloggers who’ve shared stories, spread the word, and helped make magic).

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

One more thing: This site isn’t perfect, but it’s a library catalog we can fix. Tell me what’s wrong, or better yet, download the software, join the list, and let’s work on it together so we can all have a better system.

† a set of facets can show you that anthropology is related to history, sociology, and ethnology, and help you narrow any of those subjects down to field work, methodology, or study and teaching.

library, libraries, lib20, library 2.0, Plymouth State University, Lamson Library, website, launch, Scriblio, WPopac

The rumors are that the AT&T store here has about 30 phones. Nobody is talking about how many our Apple Store has.

waiting, line, iphone, anticipation, launch