Mixer prototype v.0.1

"Lost" fans who can't wait for the show about the mysterious island to return have another option - pick up a book and start reading. Not just any book, however, but a book from "The Lost Book Club."
The new book club even comes with a personal invitation from "Lost" producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Check out more about the book club on ABC.com or take a peek at the letter from the producers:

Wickedlocal reports...A new chapter started yesterday at the Milford Town Library, with Susan Edmonds, formerly of Boston's George Fingold Library, taking over as director and establishing stability for a staff that has worked under three bosses in three months in a newly renovated library.
Edmonds said she's ready to lead, but first has to get her bearings.
On day 1, Edmonds had to check with staff to see how to get into the locked Milford Room, which showcases the town's history.
When a staff member in circulation told Edmonds her staff key would open the door, the new director halted and smiled, saying, "Oh, I don't have one yet." And when the phone rang in her office, "I gotta learn how to use this," she said, picking it up to say, "Hello, this is Susan."
At the state library in Boston, Edmonds worked in technical services, as the library systems manager, assistant director and head of services. Before that, at the Somerville Public Library, she was reference librarian, circulation supervisor and technical services librarian.
"I've been everything else, but," she said of the director's job. "And I enjoy what I did but this was an opportunity I couldn't miss, pass up."

If you ever wanted concrete proof that the "Don't share my information with other companies" and "Stop emailing me" options on a web site are often useless, it's here. It's impossible to know which companies share data and which don't, but registering with the "do not share my e-mail" option ticked didn't appear to reduce spam in any way. Some of the bloggers reported a drop in the amount of spam they were receiving on a day-to-day basis when they unsubscribed from certain services, but the trend is not particularly strong.

Eric Schnell Wonders Will the Next Generation of Library Systems be Customer Generated?
It's no wonder that library systems of tomorrow are really just library systems of yesterday. It seems to me that as a profession we are stuck in a bad relationship with our systems and vendors. We just can't figure out a way to get out of it. Are we happy that III will not give us APIs? Are we so insecure with our relationship with them that we are content to take what they give us? Do we feel we are that powerless?

Sad News from Oregon: Numerous unsuccessful pleas for money to reopen county libraries marked a 50-minute public hearing on the Josephine County 2008-09 fiscal year budget.
“It’s a tough decision,” said Commissioner Jim Raffenburg, “but you can’t call the library for help in the middle of the night.”

As we've gotten over the middle of a busy holiday week in the United States, it is best to give a little hint about what is coming in LISTen #28. The next episode of LISTen is going to have interviews with two fiction writers who have large fan bases. One of them referred to a "porn" text he wrote as being merely a "dirty book" and was surprised that public libraries actually owned copies. The other who is known for his "honor" brought up his speculative views on the future of libraries.
Wondering who the authors may be? Find out Monday after 0400 UTC by downloading the new episode of LISTen.

Sci-fi writer Paolo Bacigalupi uses real environmental science as a starting point for his stories. His collection, called Pump Six, describes a near future where massive droughts create a black market for calories.
Hear full interview on NPR

Some major sites on the Web want to know: What was the last name of your kindergarten teacher, the name of your dog, your mother’s maiden name, the brand of your first car or in what year did you graduate from high school?
These are some of the commonly asked “fallback questions” that Web sites pose to users who need to reset their passwords. Some are just as difficult to remember as the password itself. Others are easily guessable (here’s a list of common pet names, for example.)
Internet companies want us to pick complex, hard-to-guess passwords. As memory-challenged Web addicts, many of us are hopeless at the task. So we resort to punishing our brains to recall which fallback question we selected when registering on the site, and what, darnit, was the name of that kindergarten teacher anyway?
Full article in the NYT here. Article goes on to discuss another method of password recovery that a company has developed.

Newsweek says Don't Be Deceived; Even A High-Tech Library Still Needs Shelves Of Books And Journals.
"Who made the decision that everyone who is not computer-literate-very computer-literate, in the ease of our new library-could be left in the cold? Who is pretending that men and women from low-income neighborhoods, schooled without computers and without computers at home, can use this library? And how many decades will pass before everyone who graduated from pre-computer colleges is dead, and until inner-city and rural public schools have computers in sufficient numbers to teach all their children how to use them? Indeed, precious few minority faces are to be seen at the computer stations in our fancy new library."

Not Much In The Way Of Details Here but, kiosks which provide a wealth of information on a range of topics have just been installed in three libraries. South Holland District Council, in partnership with Lincolnshire County Council, has installed three community information booths in libraries in Crowland, Holbeach and Donington, covering topics such as vacancies, transport, local councillors and local and county services. This information can be delivered electronically at the touch of a button.

Two tales emerge in the saga of Iowa's libraries and the floods.
In one story, the majority of facilities escape the murky water that hit about two weeks ago and become important information hubs, where residents can go online and apply for aid, send e-mails or use maps to traverse around closed roads.
The other account details the harrowing losses of a handful of libraries smacked by the surging waters, including in Cedar Rapids, Iowa's second-largest city.

I don't know everything about librarians, but I do know that some of them are into tattoos. And by "into tattoos" I mean that they have ink work that would make Henry Rollins pause for admiration.
I can't get a tattoo (long story, it has to to with genetic bleeding problems and original sin) but if I could, I'd probably get something like those pictured in this gallery of literary tattoos. Though I wouldn't get the Vonnegut quote from Slaughterhouse Five. I'd be more inclined to get "Hi Ho" from Slapstick.
I'd like to get a tattoo over my whole body of me, but taller. ~Stephen Wright

Want to raise awareness about AIDS? Wear a red ribbon. Poverty? Pin on a gold ribbon. With seemingly endless causes and colors, has the ribbon lost its meaning? Alex Cohen talks to Sarah E. H. Moore about her new book Ribbon Culture, which looks at the meaning — both conscious and unconscious — of ribbon wearing.
Listen to full story on NPR.