University of West Florida Booksale

UWF is holding its annual book sale today and tomorrow. Hours today are 11am-5:30pm and Saturday 9am-4:30pm. The sale takes place in the John C. Pace Library.

Info: http://library.uwf or contact Dan North at 474-2449 or dnorth@uwf.edu.

Create Your Own Search Engine

"Are you tired of wading though thousands of irrelevant search results to get to the information you want? Ever wish you could narrow your search to sites you already know and trust? With Rollyo, you can easily create your own custom search engines, and explore and save those created by others." -- From Rollyo Website

Rollyo allows you to enter up to 25 trusted websites and create a one-search tool for just those sites. Try it out.

Baghdad Burning!

Incondicional wants us to know that a female blogger from Iraq who goes by the name "Riverbend" has been nominated for the BBC's Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction. Her blog Baghdad Burning chronicles the experience of a being a civilian behind the lines in the Iraq war. She is highly educated and conversant with Western culture -- Smurfs and the Oscars make appearances alongside Sunni/Shia conflicts and the devastation of war. It brings to mind Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis:The Story of a Childhood ...only the war is happening now, and there's no guarantee the author will survive until tomorrow to make the next entry.

Guys Read

Jon Scieszka's Cool Site is called "Guys Read". The author introduces the site as follows: GUYS READ is a web-based literacy program I've made it to help boys find stuff they like to read. Get started by checking out recommendations from other GUYS READ visitors. Or go ask GUY what he thinks you might like to read."

So guys...check it out!

New Blog Offers Higher-Ed Views From the Right

National Review has started a new blog, Phi Beta Cons, which it bills as “the right take on higher ed”—that’s right as in conservative and libertarian. The blog, which its editor describes as “dedicated to keeping an eye on the politics of campus life,” has so far drawn postings from Stephen Balch, of the National Association of Scholars, on the Lawrence Summers resignation; David Gelernter on Yale’s admission of an ex-Taliban spokesman as a student; Candace de Russy on the “Jihad on campus”; and Anne D. Neal, of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, on what she describes as “the vast divide” between “academic elites & mainstream America.”

Grey Literature Clearing House

Trying to understand what Grey Literature is? In a nutshell, it's all that stuff that you can't find through library catalogs, article databases, or other standard sources of scholarly information. Grey literature includes online journals, blog posts, self-publishing on the web, and much more. For those of us in the technology world, 90% of what we need for projects and research comes from grey literature...not standard print sources.

Check out GreySource. GreySource "provides examples of grey literature to the average net-user and in so doing profiles organizations responsible for its production and/or processing." They lay out sources for grey literature by subject area--very helpful.

Bird Lovers, Meet eBird

For all of you out there, take a look at eBird, a site from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. You sign up and then record the birds you see in North America. Your sightings are put into a database that anyone can access. They also offer a Google Group.

Autistic or Just a Geek? Take the Test

Apparently a much higher than average percentage of computer workers are diagnosed with a mild form of autism called "Asperger's Syndrome". This test allows you to filter yourself out as just Geeky or maybe having something to actually worry about.

New Google Earth Maps of Avian Flu Spread

This is the new beta of an operational service designed to provide Google Earth maps of avian flu spread on a weekly basis for the first time. As well as mapping human cases and poultry outbreaks, the maps also provide additional data on each event, and additional datasets, such as poultry densities worldwide, to let you explore avian flu.

Links to other Avian Flu maps are also provided.

OCLC Publishes Top 1000 Books List for 2005

This list, updated for 2005, contains the "Top 1000" titles owned by OCLC member libraries—the intellectual works that have been judged to be worth owning by the "purchase vote" of libraries .

Google Makes Job Hunting More Interesting

Try THIS for job hunting on Google!

National Archives Opens State Department Records

"U.S. Newswire: For the first time, the National Archives and Records Administration has made available online more than 400,000 State Department telegrams and other records for 1973 and 1974. These digital records from the Department of State's Central Foreign Policy Files are publicly accessible at the National Archives Web site at http://www.archives.gov/aad."

EPIC 2015: The Future of Media

EPIC 2014 has been circulating on the web for some time now. This flash movie really forces someone to think about media and communication well into the future. Notice there is the old 2014 version that was actually pretty close on some of its early predictions and a newer, improved 2015 version.

Online Test Measures the Speed of Your Brain

A company named Posit Science has produced an online test using Flash that uses sounds to measure the speed of your brain down to the millisecond. According to the company, the test 'measures auditory processing (listening) speed—one of many measures of brain function...The faster we can take in information accurately, the better we can keep up with, respond to and remember what we hear.'

Sell Your Used Books to Barnes & Nobles

You can see how much they pay for any book with the ISBN. If interested, you can complete the transaction and they will send you a prepaid postal cover to send the book. After the book is received they will mail you the check. Though the rate offered is small (it depends on the demand for a book), you can make some money out of the unused books.

Check out the website at: Barnes & Noble.com

National Library Week 2006
April 2-8
Pensacola Junior College

During the week of April 2-8, 2006, library patrons may return overdue library materials and have the fines associated with those items waived. Please use this opportunity to " clean up" your library account.
Also during the week, members on the PJCLIST e-mail will receive a poem each day written by a PJC student, faculty member or employee. Additionally, PJCLIST members will have the opportunity to play literary trivia each day. First one to answer all ten questions will win a prize!
Daily activities:
Monday: Coffee, juice and donuts in the lobby of the Pensacola campus LRC. Begins at 7:30am and lasts until the refreshments are gone.
Book Fair: 9am-3pm, Pensacola campus LRC. Books for everyone – fiction, children’s, history, mystery, etc. as well as gift shop type items will be available for purchase. Funds raised will go to the PJC Foundation account for the LRCs use.
Google it! Workshop 2-3pm, given by Ginny Vail, PJC reference librarian. SPD credit will be awarded to registered participants.
Tuesday: Portrait unveiling of Dr. Lois Zaragoza-Goode, 2pm, second floor of the Pensacola campus LRC. A reception will follow the unveiling.
Thursday: PJC Authors’ Reception, 1pm-2pm, second floor of the Pensacola campus LRC. PJC students, faculty, and employees who have published during the past year will be honored.
Saturday: PJC/WFLF Writers’ Conference. PJC Student Center, Room 509. Registration, 8:30-9:30am. Cost $25 which includes lunch. Registration limited to 35.
First Session: 9:30-11:00: "Cutting the Umbilical Cord: How Editing Gives Life to the Words You Produce" given by Linda Wasserman, President of the Pelican Press, Pelican Press: A subsidiary of The Pelican Enterpise, LLC.
Second Session: 11:00-12:30: "Secrets to Writing Magazine Articles that Sell" given by Harriet Riley, University of West Florida, Department of Communication Arts.
Lunch: 12:30-1:30
Third Session: "From Pitch to Publication" given by Sarah Smiley. Military spouse Sarah Smiley is the author of Shore Duty, a syndicated newspaper column that reaches more than 2 million weekly and of the memoir Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Wife (New American Library.) Sarah has been featured in The New York Times Magazine and Newsweek, and on ABC’s Nightline, CNN, CBS The Early Show, Fox News and MSNBC. The rights to Going Overboard were recently optioned by Kelsey Grammer’s company, GRAMMnet and Paramount Television Grammnet, and Paramount Television. It is now in development to be a half-hour sitcom for CBS. Smiley will be signing copies of Going Overboard after the third session.

Google Launches Google Finance

Google has launched a long-awaited financial news site, which will compete directly with significant Web traffic generators for Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN unit. Google's site, finance.google.com, will compile news, stock-price data, stock charts, company fact pages and other financial data, much like the offerings at other finance Web sites.

Google has launched Google Mars, a project similar to the popular Google Earth, with colorful elevation maps of the planet's surface.

The Spiraling Costs of Textbooks

What is the solution to the never-ending increase in college textbook prices?

Recent articles discuss state legislation limiting textbook costs for students in Virginia , and another article focuses on scholarships directly applied to textbooks for students in Oregon . This second link, an article from Portland State U., points out between 1999 and 2004, the total cost of attending PSU (tuition, housing & board) increased 7.8 percent, but that during that same five year period, wholesale prices of college textbooks rose nearly 40 percent (information from the National Association of College Bookstores).

It seems incredible that a publisher needs to charge over $75 per single copy to recoup costs and make enough profit to stay in business.

Tax Forms

It's getting closer to April 17th. Don't wait until the last minute to do your taxes! Both Federal and state tax forms are available at the Internal Revenue Service web site at http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/. You might also want to look at the possibility of e-filing your taxes. New laws have made e-filing free for many taxpayers.

National Archives Offers Historic Films Online

Washington, D.C. and Mountain View, Calif. – Feb. 24, 2006 – Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Google Co-Founder and President of Technology Sergey Brin today announced the launch of a pilot program to make holdings of the National Archives available for free online. This non-exclusive agreement will enable researchers and the general public to access a diverse collection of historic movies, documentaries and other films from the National Archives via Google Video (video.google.com/nara.html) as well as the National Archives website (www.archives.gov).

"This is an important step for the National Archives to achieve its goal of becoming an archives without walls," said Professor Weinstein. "Our new strategic plan emphasizes the importance of providing access to records anytime, anywhere. This is one of many initiatives that we are launching to make our goal a reality. For the first time, the public will be able to view this collection of rare and unusual films on the Internet."

"Today, we've begun to make the extraordinary historic films of the National Archives available to the world for the first time online," said Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of technology at Google. "Students and researchers whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 - the historic first landing on the Moon."

The pilot program undertaken by the National Archives and Google features 101 films from the audiovisual collections preserved at the Archives. Highlights of the pilot project include:

The earliest film preserved in the National Archives holdings by Thomas Armat, "Carmencita - Spanish Dance," featuring the famous Spanish Gypsy dancer,1894 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6020302018400450975&q=Carmencita+-+Spanish+Dance);

A representative selection of U.S. government newsreels, documenting World War II, 1941-45(http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=owner%3Anara+type%3Aworld_war_II&so=0);

A sampling of documentaries produced by NASA on the history of the spaceflight program (http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=owner%3Anara+type%3Anasa&so=0);

Motion picture films, primarily from the 1930s, that document the history and establishment of a nationwide system of national and state parks. Included is early footage of modern Native American activities, Boulder Dam, documentation of water and wind erosion, Civilian Conservation Corps workers, and the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

A 1970 film documents the expansion of recreational programs for inner city youth across the nation (http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=owner%3Anara+type%3Aparks&so=0).

The National Archives and Google are exploring the possibilities of expanding the on-line film collection and making the Archives extensive textual holdings available via the Internet.

Apple wants to help out your college career

Apple has created a scholarship fund this year that will help students on their way into 2 and 4 year programs. The scholarship gives the chosen students $2,000, an iPod nano, and a MacBook Pro. Any high school senior entering into a 2 or 4 year program in the Fall of 2006 who is a U.S. resident is eligible to enter the competition. Students must demonstrate their innovative use of technology in how they do their school work.

Judging will be performed as follows:

Applications will be judged by a panel of educators selected by Apple Computer, Inc. Judgment will be rendered based upon the following criteria:

• Educational background. Applicant’s achievements in high school, both academic and extracurricular, that illustrate high level of academic integrity and performance.


• Future aspirations. Applicant’s future academic and professional plans and intent to use technology in future pursuits.


• Application of technology to studies. Degree to which Applicant has used and intends to use technology in academics.


• Ability to articulate value of digital media in academic life. Degree to which Applicant can articulate use of technology in studies to the broader student community.

Get busy on those applications, the deadline is May 30, 2006.

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

Cylinder recordings, the first commercially produced sound recordings, are a snapshot of musical and popular culture in the decades around the turn of the 20th century. They have long held the fascination of collectors and have presented challenges for playback and preservation by archives and collectors alike.

With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the UCSB Libraries have created a digital collection of over 5,000 cylinder recordings held by the Department of Special Collections. In an effort to bring these recordings to a wider audience, they can be freely downloaded or streamed online.

Listen to original wax cylinder recordings online, learn more about the predecessor to the iPod and CD, or listen to a live stream of an American vaudeville show on Cylinder Radio. This fabulous collection is available at the UC Santa Barbara website.

Ipod University?

Two major California universities, U.C. Berkeley and Stanford, are experimenting with podcasting lectures and other course materials. These podcasts are available to students and the general public, and can be downloaded to computers and digital music players. Currently there are about a dozen subjects available, but this number is expected to increase dramatically this year. Check them out at:

Webcast.Berkeley

Stanford on iTunes

Can't Remember All Those Passwords?

Do you find yourself writing down all those usernames and passwords on post-it notes that you stick to your computer? Are you carrying around a crib sheet with your usernames and passwords because you can't remember them? Maybe you are using the spouse's name or pet's name or using one username or password for all your web sites? None of these are good ideas.

Problem is that you can't remember all those usernames and passwords. However, in these days of increasing identity theft none of these alternatives is safe. So how do you use strong passwords and usernames that are different for every site and still remember them?

Password Safe is a free utility that creates strong, unique passwords and saves all the info in an encrypted database that lets you manage your usernames and passwords and remembers them for you. All you have to do is remember one master username and password. It makes keeping up will all those passwords easy and since its encrypted no one else can see your information.

Celebrate Women's History Month

March is Women's History Month. Visit these Internet sites to find out more:

National Women's History Project Gale Resources - Women's History Month American Women's History: A Research Guide

FreeFullText.com

FreeFullText.com advertises itself as "A supplement to every library catalogue on the planet!". It provides access to over 7000 scholarly periodicals which allow some or all of their online content to be viewed by ANYONE with Internet access for free. (Some journals require free registration in order to view content.) It can be a useful supplement to the online databases provided by the Pensacola Junior College LRC.

Bird Flu Information

The Flu Wiki ( http://www.fluwikie.com/ ) presents an alternative to official governmental and medical resources about the Flu.

CNN.com - Flu Wiki alternative to official sources - Feb 27, 2006 NEW YORK (AP) --

You can learn a lot about bird flu and the specter of a global human flu epidemic by checking official information from the government or medical groups. But thousands of times a day, people turn to a much different source. It's Flu Wiki, a Web site maintained by a 52-year-old writer who specializes in risk communication.

It draws in part on contributions from people who don't reveal their names, much like Wikipedia, an encyclopedic Web site that lets anyone contribute.

Why should anybody trust a source like this?

"I'm working with some of the best scientists in the country on the subject of pandemic influenza," said Melanie Mattson, who maintains the site. "If I have a question about what's going on I ask them."

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Other sites with information about bird flu include:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/avian-flu-humans.htm
• FDA Flu Information Page: http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/flu.html
• World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/en/
• Pandemic Flu.gov: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/