Monday, May 21, 2007

'Some things are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside'

What these topics have in common (other than librarianly interest) is that the links came from conversations among librarians over the weekend using the social networking website, Twitter. (Hmmm, you can't really get what's happening on Twitter unless you can go to some particular person's Twitter ID and eavesdrop on them and their friends, but I don't want to post it here. David Lee King has a pretty good explanation. So does Kathryn Greenhill.) Along with reference questions, acronym-filled techie laments, project progress reports, lunch menus and text-messages posted from airports and supermarkets—each in the compass of 140 characters or less, and cast in the form of answering Twitter's question 'What are you doing?'—various items caught our eye.

Joshua M. Neff pointed out Neil Gaiman's charming piece about the role of Dr. Who in his childhood. (The title of this post is from his essay.) Steve Cohen of Library Stuff found an article from Harvard Journal of Law & Technology on Social Isolation and American Workers: Employee Blogging and Legal Reform. Karen Schneider highlighted a post on the consequences of the new postage rates for small presses, and her own take on the campaign to save book reviews.

PS It's an interesting compositional challenge to reduce what you're doing (and what you're thinking about it) to 140 characters...

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