Just for Fun

Positive attitudes, creativity, and Fridays

/ dwakimoto

Some weeks make it easier than others to have a positive attitude. Luckily for me, this week was a great week and having a positive attitude really wasn’t that difficult. First, we got the overhead lights working again in the archives thanks to our awesome electricians. That was enough to keep me smiling all day (we haven’t had working overhead lights for months due to some truly interesting electrical wiring issues). Everyone liked the cookies I brought in to celebrate having lights in the archives and to thank the electricians. It is finals week on campus which means next week is break week and I’ll be able to get a ton of work done. The weather is absolutely glorious in the Bay Area this week. Plus, I just accessioned the first faculty collection in the archives which makes my archivist heart happy. But in case your week hasn’t been going as well, at least we can all be happy it is Friday!

I am really enjoying reading the blog, zen habits and thought the post How to be a positive person, in under 300 words was wonderful. Being positive doesn’t mean sticking your head in the sand and ignoring what is going on in the world; it means that you don’t get discouraged and cynical when setbacks and challenges occur. Besides, just as colds and yawns are contagious, so is a positive attitude. If for no other reason, go look at the post because it ends with my favorite quote about why it’s worth having a positive attitude.

I like reading books that are outside of my professional areas of interest and research areas and seem to read a lot of business and marketing books. I found out about this this book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity while reading Seth Godin’s latest, Linchpin. Hugh MacLeod’s Ignore Everybody is fantastic–short, funny, great cartoons, and even better advice. For a taste of it check out this snippet on his gapingvoid blog.

If you are finding it a little difficult to focus at work because of the lovely spring weather, check out Lifehacker’s Keep Your Daily Momentum Going with a 10/15 Split. I am a fan of taking a few minutes each day to organize what I need to get accomplished during the day. What methods do you use to keep organized and stay productive?

Another great way to keep your momentum going and actually get things done is to Keep Projects Manageable by Limiting Scope and Features. This post reminds me a lot of the Cult of Done Manifesto. Both give very good advice and it is freeing to “laugh at perfection” because “done is the engine of more.”

Before leaving you to watch a great cartoon, here is my one piece of shameless self-promotion: my first peer-reviewed article, Information Literacy Instruction Assessment and Improvement through Evidence-Based Practice: A Mixed Method Study, has been published! I’m very excited and just wanted to share. And I have to give public praise to Hanna over at …fly over me, evil angel… who graciously reviewed multiple drafts of the article and gave great feeback–thank you! Please check out the entire issue; this is a great publication that is truly advancing library and information science research.

Finally, here’s something to make you smile and give you a short break today (because you deserve it), the wonderful Simon’s Cat “Let me in!” short:

Have a lovely weekend and read a lot (and if you are looking for a quick, fun, library-related read, check out Pearl North’s Libyrinth).

Excitement and the Library

/ dwakimoto

Nope, the blog title is not a mistake. I think there is a lot to get excited about when it comes to libraries, archives, and creating knowledge. But my question is, why don’t people get excited about stuff? Or perhaps I should rephrase to: why don’t people show that they are excited? I know that some people get excited, but it seems like the majority of people simply try to downplay any showing of emotion. And I understand the social and cultural reasons why we have to keep emotions in check, etc., etc.. But I think that being excited about your work, or new discoveries, or the fact that your favorite author has a new novel out, is totally natural and a good thing. It means you are not a robot. So to celebrate, here are some fun and helpful things that might not make you get up and do a happy dance, but will hopefully help you in some small way.

Did you read Goodnight Moon as a child? Do you like Star Wars? If so, you will love Goodnight Forest Moon. It is available to download along with instructions for assembling the book. People’s creativity never ceases to amaze me.

Not particularly fun, but very useful is the article: Do a Total Background Check on Yourself. It is good to check and correct any errors you find–this is more comprehensive by far than simply Googling yourself. (Side note, does anyone else get weirded out when people say they’ve Googled you? Or is that just me?)

Back to the amazing, fun, and used for the betterment of books, QR Codes. Ever since I saw this amazing video, I’ve been fascinated with QR Codes:

So, of course, you can imagine my excitement over this article on How to Make Your Personal QR Code. Technology can be so much fun! Just think, you could make QR codes as part of marketing your library’s programs or as fun ways to link to updates about library news. I think the students I teach will love this–QR Codes are a hit in class while learning about copyright is not, go figure.

If you post a lot of photos online, or are in charge of creating websites, this application will help: Web Resizer. It resizes your photos to bandwidth friendly sizes. This is a huge help if you don’t have Photoshop and don’t have a ton of photos to process. And it is free.

Finally, to end on a fun note, for everyone who needs a bit of validation (and really, who doesn’t like a compliment and validation?), check out this lovely video (thanks to KarraCrow over at …fly over me, evil angel… for posting this:

Read lots, there will be more tech and library fun coming soon and just remember, you are awesome!

Wild World of Information

/ dwakimoto

Today is a very exciting day for me (and I hope for you too, although probably for different reasons). Today is the kick-off event for the Faculty Learning Communities at my university and I’m facilitating the learning community on teaching with technology. It is exciting and anxiety-producing and all that other stuff. I’m also excited to talk, or I guess more accurately write, more about information today.

First up is this rather disturbing article: As the Internet Replaces Print Publishing, Urge to ‘Unpublish’ Means Censoring History. Archivists have to deal with issues like this all the time and they are only amplified with digital data. More information is being produced than ever before, but if it isn’t properly preserved and managed, all that digital information can be lost. On a positive note, at least this issue is getting more attention outside of library and archives journals. Hopefully this means we’ll actually make progress in preserving digital data and not “unpublish” the past.

Archivists will have no trouble identifying with the issues presented in this next article: Archives and electrons. It extends, yet again, the seemingly never-ending debate over history and digital sources versus traditional physical archival sources. That some historians stood up and testified that sources outside the archives are just as important, and sometimes make the researching and writing of history possible, was definitely a “Yes!” moment for those of us who work in archives and also in history. Again, like I’ve said before, the world is not binary (even if binary code is) and we don’t have to give up analog for digital or vice versa. Instead, we can use what makes sense for each project and program.

Not about “unpublishing” or debates over digital archives, but instead about finding fantastic, usable sources: 25 sources for Creative Commons content. I think anyone who has read posts on this blog understands how much I love Creative Commons and this list makes me happy. Now I have even more places to look for great Creative Commons content.

This article is just lovely: Students wary of sourcing Wikipedia from the Spartan Daily at San Jose State. As I teach information literacy to first year students and we often discuss Wikipedia, this article just made me smile. Wow, students acknowledging that Wikipedia may not be accurate, my teacher heart is happy. With that insight, we can move on to more interesting discussions about discernment, crowdsourcing content, and Web 2.0 conundrums.

In a different vein, I got asked yet again by a colleague if I sleep. Why do I get asked these questions? Do I really look that haggard? It is actually possible to be highly productive and also get enough hours of sleep so as to avoid all those nasty illnesses and health complications that come from not getting enough sleep. The real reason, I think people ask me if I sleep is because they can’t believe I don’t procrastinate and I must have to “burn the midnight oil” to get my work done. I contend that if you actually are passionate about your work, and really focus for 8-9 hours on work a day, you have more than enough time to sleep, eat, relax, meditate, and do whatever else you need or want to do. So I fully support Lifehacker’s It’s National Procrastination Week: Let’s Celebrate by not Honoring it. Just don’t procrastinate–it only hurts you.

And something else from Lifehacker that truly makes me smile: Naps can Seriously Improve All-Day Learning Abilities. Let’s hear it for nap time! This just supports my argument that I’ve been making since I got back from Bolivia that we really need to get the siesta mainstreamed in the United States.

Finally, something fun from The New Yorker The Subconscious Shelf. Check out the photographs of readers’ bookshelves and the analyses of what the shelves say about the readers.

Have a lovely day, a fantastic weekend, and don’t forget to read a lot. Because, as Seth Godin writes in his new book Linchpin “It’s not an accident that successful people read more books” (p. 126).

Quizzes, Randomness, and Other Things that Confuse me

/ dwakimoto

It is another gloomy Friday in the Bay Area. We are supposed to have another storm moving in today, thus the gloom outside. But, as the title of this post indicates, there are plenty of weird and wonderful things to keep me busy so I can ignore the rather grey day outside.

Do you like quizzes? I never liked graded quizzes in school but taking rather random quizzes is sometimes fun. I have to admit to being slightly surprised, but not shocked, by my results from taking this quiz:How Millennial are You?. Even though I am technically a Millennial (or Generation Y, depending on who is writing the article), I scored so low on this quiz as to be considered more akin to the Baby Boomer generation. I find this both hilarious and scary. Hilarious, because trying to make sweeping generalizations about a generation is a risky venture at best and often breaks down when analyzing a single person’s life. Scary, because there are only 14 questions in the quiz and I have issues with some of the questions that are used to separate out the generations. If you take the quiz, let me know what you think–I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Now for a quiz that I actually quite like and probably appeals because, well, just check out the title: Nerd? Geek? Dork?. My friend who writes the blog …fly over me, evil angel… alerted me to this quiz. Yes, it is fluffy. Yes, it is something that is just fun. No, it isn’t going to help you solve any library technology issues. But it will make you smile and everyone needs a smile (and perhaps even a chuckle) on a Friday.

Now that you’ve finished with some interesting quizzes, here is a link that can actually help with a possible library or other workplace technology issue: Basic Netiquette for Email Lists and Forums. If everyone read and followed these simple guidelines, I would be very happy and I suspect you would be too. Let’s all agree to stop sending the “Me too” responses to lists and stop hitting the “Reply All” when we don’t need to, okay? Thank you from the bottom of my never-ending email inbox.

Since it is so gloomy, I thought it might be nice to have a link to an article on luck and how to make your own luck. This article makes me happy and it is a good reminder to break out of routine and try something new.

And the final public service announcement for the day comes from Lifehacker: Fact and Fiction: The Truth about Browser Cookies. Share it with someone and decrease, in some small way, the amount of confusion in the world.

Finally, what would Friday be without xkcd? A Friday without xkcd, but that just wouldn’t be any fun.

Honor Societies

Honor Societies by xkcd

Have a fantastic weekend.

Self-Improvement Friday

/ dwakimoto

I dislike self-improvement books whose authors take themselves too seriously, although I love finding out information about self-improvement if the authors are funny. But I do like the idea of self-improvement because, really, when you get right down to the crux of the matter you can only really improve yourself. This really isn’t as self-involved as it may seem (and yes I promise that it has something to do with technology and libraries, if you will bear with me for a moment) because improving yourself can be interpreted as broadly or as narrowly as you wish. I happen to believe that improving yourself includes helping others, being selfless in giving, and also learning to do the tree pose in yoga.

So for this Friday’s post, I decided to finally round up all the posts, feeds, and tidbits of information about improving yourself. Let me know what you find is the best advice for improving some facet of life–I’d love to hear about it.

Lifehacker has a nice write-up on the book Confessions of a Public Speaker. I just started reading this book and think it is fantastic–funny, engaging, and helpful. What more could one want in a book? I get stage fright every time I have to present in front of an audience, which some people find hard to believe considering I teach and often present at conferences. Therefore I find it a comfort to know that a lot of great speakers and performers also get nervous before performing, plus the advice in this book is spot on. So if you hate public speaking but have to do it, go read this book.

Before you get to the public speaking though, you’ll actually have to finish up a project or presentation to have something to present. To help you get to that stage, check out Work Awesome’s Stay on Track with an Idea Embargo. I love this advice, especially because people seem all too willing to give advice at the eleventh hour on projects. I implemented this on the last project I worked on at my library and it went rather well.

One of the endemic issues in librarianship (see I told you I would work in libraries) is the fact that so many librarians are professed introverts. Now, of course, not everyone who is a librarian, or archivist, is an introvert; however, the professions seem to have a great deal of introverts. As an aside, I thought I was a total introvert until I went to library school and suddenly discovered that in my new profession I was definitely one of the more extroverted people in the program. Part of the reason people don’t want to give public speeches and presentations is because they are introverts and some introverts are inordinately shy. So for those of you who are shy and want to push yourself out of your comfort zone, check out the article on How to Finally Overcome Shyness. Great advice.

I didn’t say it would be easy to change, but it is well worth it. As I’ve noted on this blog multiple times, getting over the need to be perfect will free you to do and be so much more than you are now. And if you’re thinking to yourself that is all well and good but does the Waki Librarian actually take any of her own advice, the answer is yes, I do. I’m so far from perfect at speaking in front of groups, or even just one on one at parties. I practice and I continue to present and speak, even though I stumble over words when I’m nervous (or excited), have a tendency to mispronounce words, and sometimes talk too quickly. Communication really is key and by becoming more comfortable (and less shy) you’ll find that you will be spending so much time trying new things and tackling new ideas, that you won’t have time to worry about if you’re perfect in your speech or what everyone else thinks.

If you want even more inspiration, check out this Interview with Linchpin author, Seth Godin. I am a fan of Godin’s work and his blog. His writing is remarkably jargon free and he has powerful ideas that can help, even if you are not in marketing. Be bold, even if your lizard brain is telling you to take the easy way out.

If you’ve heard the hype, but haven’t tried Google Buzz yet, check out Lifehacker’s Google Buzz Explained article. I freely admit that I activated Buzz on one of my accounts and 24 hours later switched it off. I didn’t see it adding to my productivity or ability to keep up with friends and it was making me anxious that there was yet more stuff I hadn’t read every time I opened up my Gmail account. Some people are finding it useful. If you are using Buzz and like it, please let me know in comments. I’m interested to hear what people think about it.

I promised somehow this post would relate to libraries, so check out: Top 10 Tools for Better Reading, Online and Off. I especially like that the first comment on this great Lifehacker post recommends going to a library for Reader’s Advisory! 🙂

Finally, I leave you with a great comic from xkcd:

comic strip of Science Valentine by xkcd.

Science Valentine by xkcd

Have a happy Chinese New Year on Sunday, read a lot, and the Waki Librarian will be back next week with more tips, tricks, and fun.

DIY, Gifts, Online Education, etc.

/ dwakimoto

Is everyone ready for a vacation about now? I know I am. It is break week on campus and it is like a ghost town around here. On the one hand this means that I am able to get a lot of work done that gets shoved to the side during the academic quarter, but on the other hand it makes me even more anxious to be on vacation. Plus there are less than 3 weeks left in this year (and decade) which makes me feel like I should get about a dozen projects done both at the library and at home. So if you are like me, a feel the need to do something, then this is the post for you.

As anyone who reads this blog fairly regularly knows, I adore Lifehacker. I really do think it is one of the best sites for technology and life hacks. Also, they never fail to have great end-of-the-year lists of their popular posts. So if you feel like making anything this year, check out the Lifehacker article, Most Popular DIY 2009 Projects. Tons of fun projects and great gift ideas.

Speaking of gift ideas, if you haven’t yet gotten your favorite librarian (or librarian-in-training) a gift for the holidays yet, check out this great gift guide on Librarian in Black’s site: Librarian Gift Guide. No one can ever have too much librarian gear, right? Personally I’m rather fond of the canvas bag I received this year that says “got library card?”. And if you still can’t find anything that suits your librarian gift-giving needs, I highly suggest xkcd’s store, thinkgeek, or threadless for all your librarian, geeky, nerdy, and fun gift giving needs.

The holiday season also means that a lot of people will break out the cameras to capture all the great holiday moments. If you are one of these people, you’ll want to check out Lifehacker’s Most Popular Photography Hacks of 2009 for tips on taking and making better photographs.

Okay, okay, for those of you that are still in working mode, here is an article for you about online education. The latest issue of American Libraries had a short article, “The Fab Ten of Online Ed” (pg. 31) that I thought was interesting. If you teach online, or are thinking about teaching online, check out this article. It is a great list of what students need to know before taking an online class. I especially like point #5 “Your lack of planning does not constitute your instructor’s emergency. The class is available 24/7, the instructor is not.”

Have a great rest of your week. The Waki Librarian will be back after the new year with more fun technology, teaching tools, and random library news in 2010. Have a lovely, relaxing and peaceful rest of 2009 and a very happy new year.

Technology, Travel, & Blogging

/ dwakimoto

I can’t begin to describe how happy I am that it is Friday and the quarter here is just about over. The quarter has sped by and I can’t believe that we are almost halfway through December already. This, of course, means that a lot of people are gearing up for travel over the next few weeks to visit family and friends for the holidays. It also means that educators are getting ready to both relax for a couple of weeks and also gear up for the next term. This post, as promised, continues in the traveling and technology vein of a previous post this week and also includes some fun and free resources for teaching.

But first, some shameless self-promotion. The Waki Librarian has been nominated for a 2009 Edublog Award for Best Librarian Blog by Michelle Pacansky-Brock (whose blog MPB Reflections–21st Century Teaching and Learning is up for best elearning blog). So if you’re enjoying this blog and find it useful and feel so moved, I would greatly appreciate your vote. The link to the ballot is here: Best Librarian/Library Edublog 2009 Ballog. Okay, I promise that is the last of the self-promotion for the foreseeable future. Now on to the tech fun.

I love lists. I think it probably has something to do with being a librarian and organizing information. Anyway, here is a great list of 10 education technology products I am Thankful for. Most of these products are free, which is plus in these lean budget times. In addition to the products mentioned in the article, Twitter, Delicious, iGoogle & Google Gadget, Bloglines & Google Reader, and Web2Access top my list of online products that are valuable for my teaching and other work.

Twitter is fantastic because I can send announcements to students that they will actually receive because they can get it sent to their phones as a text message. They never check their email, so this has been a huge help.

I love Delicious because it keeps all my bookmarks organized and I can access it on any computer with an Internet connection. This is a huge help when I’m using multiple computers per day and because I’m a pretty bad at remembering sites unless I bookmark them.

Google’s suite of products keeps me organized and I am an especially huge fan of iGoogle–I love being able to have so many applications fed into one page through the use of Google Gadgets.

RSS readers, no matter which one you happen to use, are fantastic. I wouldn’t be able to keep up in the field without them.

And if you haven’t taken a look at Web2Access, you really should. These people are doing amazing work on accessibility in the online environment. You can search online resources and see how they score in terms of accessibility, download tools that will help you test the accessibility of your website and more. This is a truly helpful site.

While all the above resources are great for education, none of them will help you get the most out of your laptop while traveling. For that, you’ll have to check out Lifehacker’s article: Top 10 Downloads for a Road Warrior Laptop. Read this before you start traveling this holiday season and you’ll not only keep your laptop safer, but also utilize it more effectively.

That is it for the Waki Librarian today. Read a lot, let me know in comments what are your favorite online resources, vote for this blog if you feel like it, and next week the Waki Librarian will be back with more technology and tips for your library adventures.

Giving Thanks for Libraries and Librarians

/ dwakimoto / 3 Comments

Okay, so I know that it is kind of hokey to have a holiday themed post, but I was watching the Vlogbrothers’ video below and thought it was superb and I should think about what I’m thankful for in terms of libraries and librarians. Take a look at the video below and then let me know what you are thankful for when it comes to libraries.

I’m thankful for:
1. Public libraries that are still free and open to the public.
2. Free wifi–especially when it is available in libraries.
3. Open source software, especially open source library applications like Koha and Greenstone.
4. Internet Librarian Conference–a great way to meet other librarians that are into technology and making technology work for libraries.
5. Evidence-based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP)–a wonderful community of people trying to increase the quality of scholarship, research and practical implementation of research in libraries so we can all make better, evidence-based, data-driven decisions.
6. Banned Books Week.
7. Librarians standing up to the Patriot Act and protecting their users’ rights to read whatever they want without having anyone else in their records.
8. My awesome colleagues who are making a difference every day in students’ lives on our campus.
9. Library school students–the next generation of librarians, archivists, and information professionals who have so much enthusiasm and knowledge.
10. Library blogs–so many great blogs to read, so little time.
11. Archivists–the “new macho heroes of Washington, D.C.” and keepers of history and collective memories.
12. Twitter–finally students are reading the announcements I send out for class, instead of ignoring them (like when I used email).
13. Folksonomies–because I like the word and like to have users create descriptions that are useful to them.
14. Controlled vocabularies–because they make my life easier when I’m researching.
15. New information literacy theories/frameworks–because they treat IL in a holistic manner and not just as a skill set.
16. Open access–I don’t know what else to say about this one.
17. Innovation–keeps librarians and libraries at the head of the pack and in the position to be leaders.
18. Remote access to databases–because if I can’t get it open access, at least I can get at the information away from my desk.
19. Reference help–online, in person, whatever, it is fantastic that the library is a place where you can get help at the time and point of need.
20. Unshelved–a great comic strip for librarians.
21. xkcd–a great comic strip, period.
22.Vlogbrothers-not only because 1 of the Vlogbrothers writes young adult novels, but because they both support libraries, librarians and freedom to read (not to mention have extensive home libraries)
23. The Librarian–yes, we can argue about whether Flinn Carson is a librarian or not later, but it is a fun flick.
24. Rupert Giles of Buffy the Vampire fame–he is one cool librarian.
25. The librarians of Desk Set–’nuff said
26. Librarians who mentor those who are new to our field.
27. Interns from SJSU’s School of Library and Information Science–they come to work with us and are simply awesome.
28. International librarian community–fantastic, helpful, great.
29. Librarian-themed apparel–just for fun.
30. Card catalogs–I love online catalogs, but love the old card catalogs–they make handy storage devices.
31. Being in a profession where there is no such thing as useless trivia–one day it will be used at the reference desk.
32. Patrons that say thank you after being helped at the reference desk.
33. Interlibrary loan–too fantastic for words.
34. Library cooperatives–because we are stronger together.
35. Goodreads, LibraryThing–anything that lets me connect with others and organize my books.
36. Webinars–great way to learn and share without paying for travel.
37. Screencasting software–fantastic for online tutorials.
38. Web 2.0–lowers the threshold for becoming a producer of information online and a boon for libraries.
39. Academic libraries with open stacks.
40. Helpful archivists who love to share their repository’s collections and help researchers.
41. Professional organizations for librarians who help us stay current.
42. Being able to learn every day and apply that learning to improve library services.
43. Destroying librarian stereotypes–little by little.
44. Faculty members who realize that librarians can help their students and have us come into their classes to work with their students.
45. Books–any form or format, I love books.
46. Making libraries the heart of a campus or of a community.
47. Storytime–hook children when they are young, make reading fun, and we’ll have library users (hopefully) for life.
48. Humor–most librarians have awesome senses of humor.
49. Celebration of learning and intellectualism–I love that being a nerd or a geek is totally acceptable and a good thing in libraryland.
50. That I am employed as a librarian–I’m thankful every day to be working in this profession.

Final bonus thing(s) I am thankful for:
51. For everything that I will learn today, the people I will meet who will help me as I help them, and future library adventures.

Have a great Thanksgiving (if you are in the U.S. it will be happening tomorrow), read a lot, and let me know what you are thankful for in the comments. See you all next week.

Thinking

/ dwakimoto / 1 Comment

I think my current mood can be summed up by the quote by Don Marquis that says, “If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” Can we tell that it is the middle of the quarter here on campus? Sometimes it seems that thinking gets the short shrift on campus where frenetic movement and the appearance of busyness count more than actually taking the time to think and ponder before acting. I try to instill in my students, and those I help at the reference desk, the acknowledgement that thinking before action will ultimately save time in their school work and that this is a good idea to take out beyond the campus’ boundaries too.

But I hate to be gloomy so here are some great resources that will make you think and that might just be good conversation starters for those times when you can’t think of anything else to say.

Windows 7 is out, which is lovely. And, as always, Lifehacker is making our lives easier by its post on the Best Window tweaks that still work in Windows 7. Definitely a must read if you are considering (or already have) switched over to Windows 7.

This is kind of a scary article, but a definite must read for those of us who are teaching others how to evaluate sources: 1 in 3 kids think top search rankings most truthful. This is definitely a good talking point for a discussion on search engines and result rankings.

And, finally, because we all need a good laugh, here is a post on 100 hilarious college courses that really exist. Seriously, this is a fabulous list and great for a few laughs before getting back to work.

I hope everyone is having a terrific week and I’ll be back sooner rather than later (I hope) with more great tools and tricks for your techie, library-oriented life.

Travel, Cooking, Chrome, & Copyright

/ dwakimoto

Yes, it is another one of those potpourri days on The Waki Librarian. It is a day to show off, yet again, how cool Lifehacker is and also to help you get ramped up for the back-to-school season (even if you aren’t going back to school). So without further ado, here are the goodies of the day!

Do you travel a lot? Do you want to be more productive? Lifehacker has come up with a great list of the Top 10 Tactics for Productive Travel. I plan on utilizing some of these tips on my next cross-country trip. Now if we could only get all the airports to offer free wi-fi…

Next we need to offer a happy belated birthday to Google Chrome. This is only belated because I hadn’t gotten around to linking to this great post on Lifehacker. Definitely check out the time lapsed video on the creation of the Google Chrome cake. I am a total Google Chrome convert and can’t wait to see what new tweaks and upgrades this next year will bring for Chrome.

Of course, with school having started (or soon starting) we have to talk about copyright. So here is a question for you, Should Copyright of Academic Works be Abolished? Full disclaimer: I haven’t finished this article yet, but I think it is a really interesting idea and would be very helpful to the open access movement.

Finally, here is Lifehacker’s An Exhaustive Geek Guide to managing Your Recipes Online, because we all know that no one wants to go hunting around for a recipe while trying to make dinner. I am continually amazed by the plethora of great recipes that I can access on the web. I guess I should get it together with these recipe organizers–right now all my recipes are simply bookmarked on delicious! And if you want a recipe to get inspired, check out this awesome recipe for ice cream gyoza.

Have a great day, read a bunch and the Waki Librarian will be back with more later this week.