escape coffins and patent classification

Blogging at the Death Reference Desk has been interesting, entertaining, befuddling and more. We get the occasional reference question, but it’s mostly pulling in news articles and other content through RSS feeds (the deathwire, as I calls it) and selecting, summarizing and commenting on items of interest.

I do, however, look for opportunities to dig deeper—to be a librarian, not a blogger, and add research value, not regurgitate the web…

#acrl2009

March 12-15 I attended My First Library Conference, ACRL 2009, in three-hours-south Seattle. Schoolmates and I skipped classes and ditched work to play Tetris with a car trunk and try not to laugh explaining to the border guard the purpose of our visit to those United States. They look at you funny when you claim you’re a book-sort, even if you’re not, without fail, it’s true.

facing facebook

As most people reading this probably know, the latest Facebook debacle, as uncovered by The Consumerist, hinged not on their telling all your friends about what you thought were private transactions on completely unrelated sites, or hints of selling us off wholesale to market researchers. The onerous, out-of-no-where head-check this time comes from their updated Terms of Service (TOS), revised February 4 without user notification, which their TOS conveniently allows them to do.