Being a proper grammarian about How To Use An Apostrophe AND involving bacon! What better way to lead more people away from the sadly prevalent trend of writing 'it's' when 'its' is called for?
As a recent Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) scholarship University of North Texas (UNT, the Eagle of Eagle Dawg) distance learning degree graduate myself, I am thrilled to help promote the South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana (SWIM) Regional Collaborative Library Education Project at http://msl.mt.gov/swim/.
The program is for 50 residents of these four states who want to become librarians but not relocate in order to earn a professional degree (see how there are no American Library Association accredited resident programs there), and who will continue to serve their communities as professional librarians after earning their distance learning degrees. The scholarships pay up to 80% of the tuition and fees for the degree (almost $13,000).
I particularly love this concise yet dead-on accurate assessment to help determine if a professional distance learning degree is right for you from the Ask Yourself page:
The combination of the reality of distance learning (critical to have support for your learning and how much time it takes) with active participation in local professional organizations does lead to the best chance for success as a new graduate.
A wonderful person at the National Library of Medicine wrote me after last week's post asking if I knew about bacolicio.us, which I had covered for the New Year. I was hopeful they would deck out the bacon in a costume by now for Halloween but that appears not to be the case.
Are you sick of society's (and my own ) bacon obsession in the first place?
Then veg.bacolicio.us is just the thing for your website viewing pleasure with an abundance of fresh broccoli!
*Yes last week was also #57, because the week before that while I had probable You Know What 1 flu-like illness I called it #56 when it should have been #55. I've gone back and corrected the sequence now. My bad.
What's the context of this presentation? Were you one of these medical librarians? How was the discussion? Or was the crowd in shock about PubMed launching forward for good and that's why I haven't heard anything about it?
Sorry, couldn't resist. Unexpected exclamation points do that to me.
At approximately 10:00 am Pacific time today the PubMed Preview transitioned to the main page, held steady for a little bit, then died. After a while the prior version was put back into place with notice via a listserv (more on that below) that the switch would happen in a few days.
That's normal enough, we've all had databases go down for much longer than a few hours, but this is also your wakeup call: Get familiar with the new redesign now if you haven't already! Don't make me resurrect this post :)
While the announcement of the transition on the PUBMED-ALERTS listserv was at the same time the PubMed New and Noteworthy RSS feed broadcast (albeit with a broken website link) this morning, notice of the reinstatement (as of 9:45 pm Pacific) still has not appeared on the RSS feed. I consider it noteworthy that a transition had to go in reverse.
I don't like having to second guess which communication channel regarding PubMed is most accurate and reliable. The RSS feed is prominently promoted from the redesigned PubMed front page and there's no mention of the listserv. Communication about PubMed, unlike making sure the entire database platform is stable, should be simple and not require digging nor duplication.
Me with Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum, creators of Unshelved
Does it get any better than hanging out with our local hometown heroes of the library comic strip world and receiving an autographed copy of their latest book for free as a thank you present for helping out? As a bonus I can add that I know how to operate those credit/debit card swipe machines to my CV!
The truth about the bacon bookmark: Pretty much every library meeting and conference Unshelved goes to (including ours) has someone in attendance who has experienced this strange user phenomenon in their returned books. It's about 50/50 whether the bacon is raw or cooked. Have you had this happen at your library?
I had a great but tiring time at the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association (PNC/MLA) annual meeting earlier this week in downtown Seattle.
I wrote a few entries for our conference blog about two of the dynamic speakers we had and wanted to share them with you since they are very timely topics about health care reform:
One drawback to a conference being local is that in addition to the wonderful networking and learning, you don't get to detach from the family routine... lunches still need to be packed and school buses caught by 7:30 am, and there were no late nights over drinks with colleagues for me. Nonetheless, for as much as I enjoy online social networking I truly love face to face connections at conferences and already can't wait for our meeting next year in Portland, OR!
I'm a medical librarian at the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM). Views expressed here are my own and in no way reflect those of NN/LM, the National Library of Medicine (NLM), or other entities. I am not an acronym, I am a free woman.