It’s finally here! After tons of hard work, the Koha community has announced the release of Koha 3.0 RC1. This from the many Koha mailing lists:
You can download from the usual location:
http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-stableRC1.tar.gz
http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-stableRC1.tar.gz.sig
You can check the integrity of the package; either by verifying the provided GPG signature (.sig) or by comparing the MD5 checksum:
5cc0914c5e8250c2491f4dbcf27d4301 [...]

This from Rachel Singer Gordon. I’m no artist … but you may be:
LISjobs.com is seeking submissions for a new logo that reflects its mission of job hunting and career development for librarians and info pros. This logo will be featured on the upcoming redesign of the LISjobs.com website, as well as in additional print [...]

This panel was very very insightful. The panelists were all recent grads of the University of Washington’s iSchool. They were Alex Berta, Rebecca Blakewood, Ann Glusker, Elizabeth Gould, and Beth Sanderson. Joe Janes and Nancy Gershenfeld professors at the iSchool gave us an intro.
University of Washington was the first school that decided [...]

Two great presentations from Sarah:

Methods for Staying Current (PDF)
Tools for Staying Current (PDF)

Awesome news from LibraryThing:
We’ve just hit our first major milestone: there are now 50 libraries using LibraryThing for Libraries. See the full list here. For a visual representation of what may be the opposite of LibraryThing for Libraries, but of the same number, look to the right.
We’re also pleased that number 50 is Portland [...]

I am certainly not someone who is very green - but I do try to do my part. I recycle at home and grow my own herbs and try to shop at the farmers market when possible. The best way I can go green is to not print handouts for the classes I [...]

This sounds too cute not to share with you all. Orange County Library System has created a new game to promote gaming in their library:
What has the Orange County Library System been up to lately? We just made our new flash game, Citricon: Library Defender, live! Aliens have stolen the Library’s books, DVDs, and [...]

Last night I got to hear Stephen Abram talk about the future of SLA & librarianship. First (and most important) I have uploaded my pictures to Flickr.
Stephen started with a mini rant (a good rant) about the fact that there is no proof that the book is at risk. Reading stats are going [...]

Karen Coyle has a great post on her site where she calls for help on creating “An easy, online, social library catalog.” Why another cataloging tool? Karen has recently returned from Kosovo where many of the library don’t have catalogs and certainly don’t have the resources to run many of the affordable solutions out [...]

Did you know that Library of Congress had a personal portal? I didn’t see any announcements about it, so thanks David for pointing it out.
Through myLOC.gov, the new personalized Web site of the Library of Congress, patrons can continue their exploration of the world’s largest collection of knowledge, culture and creativity. Visitors can bookmark [...]

Via LISNews:
Lynne writes: “Greetings to all librarians. I am Lynne Martin Erickson. I have been the fiscal agent for The Hollywood Librarian documentary film since 2004. I post this in the hope that librarians will respond immediately and repost widely.
As many of you know, this wonderful film is the result of the tireless efforts of [...]

New from Blake Carver the man behind LISNews & LISHost:
I started a new site, LISWire - The Librarian’s News Wire (http://liswire.com), and I’m doing my best to spread the word. You can probably guess what the site is all about from the name, but there’s also 2 mailing lists, and a bunch of RSS feeds. [...]

I know I’m a bit behind on this, but the Ellen blog has a post about librarians from last month.
Librarians are the opposite of cheerleaders. At the library, if you make any noise, they deal with you immediately. First you get the silent, “How dare you?” look. If that doesn’t work, they give you the [...]

Amy De Groff, Head of Library Technology Services talked to us about using open source at the Howard County Public Library. Amy started by telling us that she was not going to convince us that open source is a good thing - the other speakers had already done enough of that.
Amy’s library will [...]

Kyrille Goldbeck and Dr. Godmar Back of Virginia Tech talked to us about LibX. I (probably like you) have heard of this tool before - but I had no idea how cool and powerful it was!!
LibX was originally developed as a way for patrons to take the library with them on the web as [...]

I love listening to Marshall Breeding present - it always makes me feel better to know that someone can talk faster than me Marshall started his talk by showing us the lib-web-cats advanced search which allows you to search for libraries running specific systems. He did remind us to keep in mind that [...]

Karen Schneider moderated this very interesting two part session on WoePac to WowPac - a look at OPACs as we know them and would like them to be. As a librarian who has often torn her hair out over the sad state - “or should I say sucky state” of our OPACs she’s the perfect [...]

Well, maybe it’s not the best way to celebrate National Library Week, but it’s always fun to look at pictures of libraries. In the features titled: 18 Sexy Trips to the Stacks Entertainment Weekly shows pictures of scenes in libraries from 18 movies.

A request for help posted to the Web4Lib List that I think might be of interest to you:
This is an appeal to the readers of Web4Lib to help me collect information regarding automation products used in libraries. I maintain the lib-web-cats database and use it as a tool for analysis of what automation products [...]

I didn’t respond to Rachel Singer Gordon’s post about what makes a librarian - mostly because I’ve made it pretty clear what my opinion is in the past - but I just have to laugh at this comment and Rachel’s response:
Librarianship is a profession akin to medicine or law. You don’t see people without law [...]

Tim Spalding has a great post over at Thingology about self publishing sites (specifically LuLu):
Getting Real is an important book. It came along at exactly the right time, said something important. To the extent the greap web-app “explosion” of 2004-2007 had a book, this was it.
And it was successful. According to 37Signals the (paid) version [...]

After all of my work bug checking and writing the manual for Koha 3, the beta release has finally been announced. I’d love some help testing - so I can’t wait to see what you all have to say!!
Technorati Tags: koha

Stopped by Mishawaka Penn Harris
Public Library to see for Myself
Originally uploaded by mstephens7
I’m sure it’s not the first, but this picture from Michael Stephens is so sad. This is why I love that my job lets me go out to libraries and educate librarians.
Today I went to my new public library - [...]

So I invited parents to throw tomatoes at my rant about the article by Dave Gibson in American Chronicle and my mother was the one to respond:
Mom: WOW!! What do I respond to first!!??
Nicole: hehe
Nicole: well for goodness sakes - who does he think we are???? do you damn job - you had the kids [...]

An article in the American Chronicle struck me the wrong way - that is your warning that a rant is to follow.
Author, Dave Gibson, writes:
A recent article in my local newspaper (Virginian-Pilot) about libraries “efforts to woo teens,” caught my eye. Apparently, the works of such luminaries as Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain have been [...]