Internet, email and printing down March 1

Due to routine maintainence Internet, email, and network printing will be unavailable on Saturday, March 1. Please plan accordingly.

Library closing at 6 PM

Due to the weather the library will be closing at 6 PM today. (Thursday the 21st.) The lobby will remain open as usual.

The 25 Most Important Questions in the History of the Universe

Good news, everyone! Neatorama has found answers to the 25 Most Important Questions in the History of the Universe. Feast your mind on answers to such questions as:

Is There One Move That’s More Likely to Win a Game of Rock-Paper-Scissors?

Can a Pregnant Woman Drive in the Carpool Lane?

Why Do Most Snooze Buttons Only Give You Nine More Minutes of Sleep?

How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck if a Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood?

Why are Grape-Nuts® Neither Grapes Nor Nuts?

You might also want to check out the Annals of Improbable Research which hands out the Ig-Noble Prizes every year.

Make your own library catalog at home

If you have ever wanted to have an online catalog for your personal book collection you may want to check out LibraryThing. This site not only lets you easily catalog the books in your collection but also tag them and explore other members' books and tags. What other ways do you have of engaging with books and other bibliophiles online?

Where do Wikipedia edits come from?

A new website called Wikipedia Vision aims to answer that question. It displays the location that edits were submitted from on a Google map. Not only is this an interesting way to see where edits come from but it is an easy way to see what is being edited as well. You can click through to the wikipedia article or see what has been edited.

via College & Research Libraries News

Are books not interactive enough?

A columnist at Computer World opines that the reason young people don't read books is because they are used to more interactive media like YouTube. He glances at the book publishing world in Japan where last year five of the top ten best selling books started as stories written by amateurs and distributed by cel phone. Western publisher Penguin tried a novel written via wiki but that project hasn't really gone beyond the concept stage. There is also a small group of English speaking fiction bloggers (Ahem, "floggers.") but that concept doesn't seem to have broken out of being a fringe hobby. There have also been some stabs at video book reviews but, really, if someone won't read a review what are the chances that they will read a book? Amazon has long allowed reader comments, and readers even comment on each other's comments which seems a lot like the interactivity books are supposedly missing. Add to that the fact that many authors keep active blogs or foums (some of which are directly accessible through Amazon and similar sites) and it seems like books are about as interactive as they can be while still being a coherent set of ideas. What do you think the future of the book is?