John Lennon was shot to death on December 8, 1980. I always think of Lennon at this time of year, not because this is when he died, but because “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” is one of my favorite songs, and it’ll be on the radio a lot now. You also can search on YouTube to hear many, many renditions of it, including videos with Lennon’s recording.
Andersen Library has materials on John Lennon, if you’re interested. Search the HALCat catalog to find titles such as “I read the news today”: The social drama of John Lennon’s death (3rd-floor Main Collection, ML420.L38 F64 1994) and Come together: John Lennon in his time (3rd-floor Main Collection, ML420 .L38 W5 1991). A search of the UW System Libraries finds a recording of the Happy Xmas number on the Shaved Fish album, available to UWW students and staff through the free Universal Borrowing service. Article databases can be searched to find articles such as the front-page New York Times article “John Lennon of Beatles is killed; suspect held in shooting at Dakota” (Dec. 9, 1980).
Please ask a librarian for assistance with finding materials.
My blog posts usually promote Library events, services, & resources. But I saw this video on a blog about how to promote a reference chat service, and I simply could not resist sharing it! Maybe I can claim it’s relevant to the Library because we are constantly striving to get the word out to people about what we offer so that they make use of our resources and services, but I wouldn’t say that’s really like “herding cats” because people are pretty receptive when we talk to them. Well, in any case, enjoy.
For all the hardworking staff in the Library…a Friday present to reward your efforts all year long. There is a plug for the Library in a video on YouTube, produced by the 2008 Hawk Squad (skip to 2:24)!
OK, I wasn’t planning to blog today until I saw something on the Today show about a “lifelike” Japanese robot modeling a bridal gown at a fashion show. Oh, my. I wouldn’t call it very lifelike, myself, but to judge for yourself read “Here comes the cybernetic bride” at the CNET news site and see it for yourself at YouTube: 
If you’d like to read more about robotics, Andersen Library’s catalog can help you find titles such as The robot: The life story of a technology (3rd-floor Main Collection, TJ211 .N63 2007).
The Library’s article databases could be used to find such articles as “Computational Models to Synthesize Human Walking” (Journal of Bionic Engineering, vol.3:no.3, Sept. 2006, pp. 127-138).
Please ask a librarian for assistance with finding materials.
From the CitizenTube blog I learned of the U.S. Government’s channel on YouTube. From there you can view and subscribe to videos from NASA, EPA, White House, FEMA, Census Bureau, and other federal agencies.
The videos are on all kinds of subjects, e.g., FBI videos on “Inside the Questioned Documents Unit” and “Bullet ballistics through various objects” (linked below), “Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in World War II” from the Library of Congress, “Wetlands and Wonder” from the EPA (linked below), and NASA’s “Kepler – A Search for Habitable Planets.” Enjoy.
The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!
Some people kill time by watching YouTube videos or your favorite television shows on Hulu for hours. And if Alec Baldwin is correct, then your brain will turn to mush. What if there was a place where you could watch interesting videos and expand your mind?
There is. Academic Earth provides thousands of videos of lectures done by today’s greatest minds. With six of the most prestigious universities in the country participating in the project, you can listen to individual lectures, such as To Get an MBA or Not? from Stanford, to entire courses like Introduction to Solid State Chemistry from MIT. In true Web 2.0 fashion, you can even grade instructors on their presentations as well.
Check it out – you might just learn a thing or two.
Learn to dance! Sure, why not? There’s more to summer than school!
The University Library has videos that can help.
Latin dancing for beginners (1st-floor Media Center Video Collection, GV1751 .L44 1997) covers all the good stuff (five basic steps for meringue, paso doble, tango, bolero and mambo with tips on leading and following) in 45 minutes!
If you fall in love with one dance more than the others, search for just that dance in the Library Catalog, e.g., search for “tango dance?” and videorecording and you’ll get a list of videos, most of which are all about tango, including one simply called Tango (1st-floor Media Center Video Collection, GV1796.T3 T3 1997).
There are also videos on YouTube, including the one below (lesson no. 1 of 20):
Ever post a video to YouTube? Ever embed a YouTube video in your blog or webpage? Have you ever viewed a YouTube video that may have come from a movie or television show protected under copyright?
Viacom, owner of movie studio Paramount and MTV Networks, has been pursuing a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube and its parent, Google, since March 2007. An issue is whether YouTube is protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
On July 1st 2008, Judge Louis Stanton (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York) ordered Google to release data including copies of all videos that were once available for public viewing on YouTube.com but later removed and the “logging” database that contains information about each instance when a video is watched, either through YouTube or through embedding on another site. The logging database includes data such as usernames of YouTube viewers and users’ computer IP addresses.
UWW students and staff can read this latest decision in the legal research database LexisNexis Academic (search for 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50614).
Further information can be found in magazine, law review, and newspaper articles. For example, search ProQuest Newsstand Complete to find related New York Times articles such as “Google Told To Turn Over User Data Of YouTube” in the (July 4th, p.C1) and “Google Takes Step on Video Copyrights” (Oct 16, 2007, p.C7).
Here, for your Friday enjoyment, a music video in honor of the noble librarian…thank goodness for YouTube!
Do you “publish” on the Web, or are you a lurker? User-created content on the Internet is extremely popular–what effects might it have on journalism? advertising? social relationships? politics? and more…
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports, based on data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, that “over one-third of all US Internet users have posted content to the Internet” and 25% of Internet users under the age of 30 have blogs.
The 2007 report lists YouTube as the fourth most-popular web site worldwide, while a more recent visit to the source of this information, Alexa.com, finds it moved up to number two (the ranking is updated daily). Other web sites of user-created content in the top 10 globally are MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, and Wikipedia.
The full report, Participative web and user-created content: web 2.0, wikis and social networking, is available online. It discusses the types of user-created content, active Internet participation in several countries, possible economic and social impacts and implications for policy and business.
The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!
