Even the Links are Bigger in Texas!

I’m on my way to the Texas Library Association annual conference, where I will square off in the ring with the likes of Stephen Abram, Roy Tennant, and Joe Janes for a “Great Debate.” Good luck guys, I plan to mop the floor with you!

So as I mosey westward, here are some links for your delectation (including one shameless plug):

Treat your ears to this delightful batch of music to accompany National Library Week, from Miki, a librarian and digital DJ.

Twitterprose continues to live! Yes, subscribe by RSS or Twitter and get a choice line of creative nonfiction every day. Great for readers and library collection builders, and of course I love suggestions.

Flickr now accepts short (up to 90-second) videos. This puts them in an interesting space on a continuum with YouTube (10 minutes max, unless you’re a “director”), and blip.tv and Google Video (much longer film). It definitely feels more “Flickr” — perhaps because most videos this length will be self-produced.

The Big O swells its midriff with the latest news that Orbis and OCLC will be “working together” on a consortial borrowing solution (the way a shark “works together” with a minnow), a move explained most clearly in this blog post. All poking of OCLC aside, this is fascinating and important news, particularly for those of us who believe that no matter how we get there, we have absolutely got to move away from proprietary, hidden data-silos.

The Digital Library Federation issued a statement about ILS development and interoperability, and the world fainted… no, not quite, but it’s certainly interesting, and many organizations and vendors signed on, except a certain three-vowel company that had just been jilted (see previous paragraph) and was last seen standing in the corner of the dance hall stomping on its corsage.

Can you Pecha Kucha? Computers in Libraries featured one program in this new presentation format, where each presenter had 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide, for short, lively presentations that got to the point. See this clip on blip TV!

I’m not really having a big ol crush on the Big O, but I think this ability to limit WorldCat to digital images is interesting, though doing so via the “CNTNT” limiter may not catch on quickly with the masses.