The politics of Wordle

Last month, I posted about Wordle, a neat little tool that builds word clouds out of any block of text you enter. Well, that neat little tool made the jump into the political blog scene during this week’s Democratic National Convention, as a poster over at Daily Kos used it to build clouds based on the speeches of Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton.

And, of course, a number of folks have thrown together clouds like this one based on Barack Obama’s acceptance speech:

Which is, frankly, pretty cool. It’s an interesting way to view political speeches, though it may well be more pretty than insightful.

GOOD Magazine’s Wanderlust

Another keen site, this one via Boing Boing: Good Magazine has put together a truly keen interactive map outlining nearly two dozen of history’s most notable journeys, documenting the trips of folks ranging from Kerouac to Columbus to Phineas Fogg (who shouldn’t be excluded just because he’s fictional, says I).

Check it out: Wanderlust. The URL does not lie — it really is awesome.

(Oh, and if funky maps are your thing, be sure to add Strange Maps to your RSS reader of choice. It will not disappoint.)

Of giant crustaceans and cool sites

So, this week, I discovered the existence of the coconut crab (Birgus latro). I am unconvinced that such creatures should exist in a sane world. Some may call such doubts harsh, or cruel, or tied up in my general dislike of bugs. However, as a rational being, I am willing to offer evidence that my uncertainty is merited.

My research of this question led me to discover a page dedicated to these lumbering beasts of nightmare at a site called ARKive, a repository of images and video documenting the vast array of life that inhabits our planet. From their FAQ:

What is ARKive?

ARKive is the Noah’s Ark for the Internet era – a unique global initiative, gathering films, photographs and audio recordings of the world’s species together into one centralised digital library.

ARKive is leading the ‘virtual’ conservation effort – finding, sorting, cataloguing and copying the key audio-visual records of the world’s animals, plants and fungi, and building them into comprehensive multi-media digital profiles.

Using films, photographs and audio recordings, ARKive is creating a unique record of the world’s biodiversity – complementing other species information datasets and making a key resource available for scientists, conservationists, educators and the general public.

It’s an amazing resource, and one I’m glad to have found… even if the path I took there was strewn with sinister crustaceans the size of terriers.

Personal Librarian

Or, in my case, Personal Library Paraprofessional.

Last Spring, the Catherwood Library started a program through which all new faculty and all graduate students would be assigned a librarian or reference staff member as their contact point for all library-related questions, comments, and concerns. As a non-librarian, I was assigned only grad students, whom I dutifully emailed at the start of the semester.

I got responses from only two of them, but had solid reference interactions with both. One contacted me a few times throughout the semester with questions, indicating that she found the program helpful (at least when it came to dealing with document delivery questions).

The interesting aspect of a program like this is that it only took me a few minutes to send those initial emails, and the resulting questions took no more time than any other reference question would have. But we managed to communicate our presence and our value to two of our most important constituencies. I’m looking forward to getting a couple more grad students to contact this term.

Anyone else running similar programs in their libraries?

The New Jersey Odyssey

So, the last several weeks have been eventful, to say the least. Some events were good, some bad, and some simply exist , being far beyond the value judgment of mere mortals. That last category is the only way to characterize my (and a student assistant’s) overnight trip into the wilds of northern New Jersey to retrieve nearly six hundred volumes of labor law texts from a very generous donor.

My fears of not having enough boxes, or not enough room in the van for the boxes we had, proved unfounded: we fit all the volumes into around 55 boxes, with room to spare. I captured the scope of the job on my very blurry cell phone camera. First, the boxes in the back of the van:

Second, the boxes laid out on palettes for storage in the library. Note, one palette was already inside the library when this photo was taken.

As with any trip to New Jersey, the real victory was making it back alive.