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We were there because of the Point Judith Corrosion Test Facility — the Rust Museum — but who can resist chasing seagulls? And who can resist posting the sequence?

Assuming you’ve got a recent browser with JavaScript enabled, you should see a bit of a slideshow above. Photos on Flickr, slideshow powered by jQuery and bSuite.

Our intention is to feature “a series of books that challenge our beliefs and test our commitment to free speech,” but on this post about Holocaust denial I found myself unwilling (and unable) to link to the free, online PDF full text of David Irving‘s Hitler’s War. And when we discovered it wasn’t in our collection (though it may have been lost/stolen, not replaced, and the record deleted), we decided not to purchase it.

Sometimes books are challenged. Sometimes they’re just not purchased.

Magazines fail all the time, but it’s hard not to look at them as signs of something larger. MacWEEK‘s fizzle was claimed to represent the demise of the Mac, Computer Shopper has lost more weight than a Slim Fast spokesmodel (800 pages to 80 in ten years!). And now Business 2.0 Magazine is shutting down and sending cancellation notices to readers.

Perhaps the lesson here is that there’s nothing too 2.0 about stories that suggest you buy low and sell high?

The housing market may be melting down, but prices are near rock bottom in these places — and offer opportunities for savvy investors to get in now. 4 smart housing plays.

Over at KLE’s Web 2.0 Challenge I was surprised to learn:

Both Bisson and Stephens are so excited about this concept of Web 2.0 they have not taken a good look at what they can’t do for our libraries. …with all this new technology we can not forget that what is the most important in our libraries is the personal touch. We are one of the few institutions left that still offers individual attention.

KLE is doing some cool things, so I can tell this isn’t an offhanded rejection of Web 2.0 concepts, but the criticism makes me feel as though I’ve been missing my target somehow.

We wouldn’t accept poor service at the desk or over the phone, why should we treat our patrons so poorly online? I don’t think we’ve yet figured out what “good service online” is yet, but that’s what I’ve been focused on. Make no mistake, the future of libraries demands outstanding service everywhere we serve our users.

[tags]web 2.0, library 2.0, lib20, service, quality, libraries, criticism, online, good service, good service online[/tags]

Cindy Harper, Systems Librarian at Colgate University, posted to the IUG list with this notion today:

I’m clearing out a large group of expired student records, and wonder if anyone else has had the same idea that has occurred to me. [Our ILS] keeps track in the patron record of TOTCHKOUTs (total checkouts). At the expiration of the students’ record at the end of their four or so years, this represents a measure that is not perfect, but could distinguish heavy library users from non-users. Of course, it combines book chekouts, video and music checkouts, reserve checkouts, etc. And it misses the effect of electronic sources. I was thinking of trying to get GPA data for these graduates and use an ANCOVA (Analysis of Covariance) to see, once you’ve accounted for the effect of different majors and year-of-graduation effects, if there’s a correlation between library use and GPA?

Has anyone done this type of study? Do you analyze your TOTCHKOUT data in any way?

I’d second her question. Public libraries, I think, do better at correlating their statistics with other metrics in their communities. What do we know about academic libraries?

Anybody who thinks Free Software is anti-copyright or disrespectful of intellectual property should take a look at Mark Jaquith’s post, What a GPL’d Movable Type means. Let’s be clear, Anil Dash takes issue with Jaquith’s interpretation, but the point is Jaquith’s offense at what appears to be Six Apart’s grabbiness for any code somebody might contribute.

Freedom 0 was one thing, the willingness of a person to pour his or her sweat into something, then watch somebody else (or even risk watching somebody else) profit from it is another.

In another sign that my generation’s culture is gaining dominance, NPR gave video games a bit of coverage this morning. Unfortunately, the story that makes it sound like the company invented playtesting doesn’t suggest that Microsoft’s behemoth investment in the Halo franchise makes that testing (and, perhaps, blandness) necessary. (Meanwhile, MSNBC last year ran an off-message story about how playtesters declared the Wii the top console.)

Reality: Playtesting is one of those dream jobs that people scour Craigslist for or start questionable-looking services around. As a side benefit, it improves your vision.

Read: A List Apart: Articles: Put Your Content in My Pocket and Part II.

Test/simulate: Opera Mini, Lynx, a variety of mobile phones, Internet Explorer (because even with Parallels, who really wants to infect their machine with windows?), and iPhone.

We must stop thinking of ourselves as a good-idea factory whose every thought has greater merit than those of our customers. Procter & Gamble doesn’t even do that.

— paraphrased

The CEO of NH’s first online-only, distance education high school expects about 700 students to enroll in its first semester, to start in January. So says a report at NHPR.

Perhaps Talk Like A Pirate Day has been too successful when NPR hosts are doing it, but anything that’s so important to our children’s future success is important enough for me. And if you need a brush up on your skills, don’t miss this instructional video.

The New York Times has struggled with TimesSelect, now they’re killing it. But the news here isn’t that a media giant is giving up on a much hyped online venture. The news is that a media giant is endorsing what we now call web 2.0:

Since we launched TimesSelect in 2005, the online landscape has altered significantly. Readers increasingly find news through search, as well as through social networks, blogs and other online sources. In light of this shift, we believe offering unfettered access to New York Times reporting and analysis best serves the interest of our readers, our brand and the long-term vitality of our journalism. We encourage everyone to read our news and opinion — as well as share it, link to it and comment on it. [Emphasis added.]

If only they’re realized it back when they started it.

The following, quoted from Daily Kos:

Accodring to Chambers, God has caused fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.

So, you think “yeah, he’s got a point.” And you read this, and you realize “he’s flipping smart.”

Chambers says he’s tried to contact God numerous times, “Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant ( ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are’ ) has been unable to do so.”

The suit also requests that the court given the “peculiar circumstances” of this case waive personal service. It says being Omniscient, the plaintiff assumes God will have actual knowledge of the action.

A Pentagon commissioned $400,000 RAND study, Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation, concludes “the ‘force’ brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and lost ground to enemies’ competing brands.”