19 January 2008

Michener where are you? Wandering the Stacks....

I was curious about Michener the other day, so off I went hunting. I was shocked! After searching some libraries.....I had a hard time finding his work! Granted there were one or two...and I can always grab a reserve, but still, he seems to be an author that should be quite popular on the shelf. Has his time past? Does anybody still read Michener? What title should I start with? Never read Michener? Try Wikipedia to get started:

James A. Michener section

18 January 2008

Just The Facts....

From what my research says, Jack Webb actually never said those words at the beginning of this post. Over at snopes, they have a pretty good explanation:

Dragnet Facts Explanation

If you love Dragnet as much as I do, I found a great intro on YouTube:

Wikipedia and Vintage Information

I was doing some research the other day for a possible freelance article on 1948 and noticed that wikipedia is a great resource for yearly breakdowns...well at least for the year I was interested in. In particular, it linked me to the Information Please site which had a ton of information. Here's the links I found:

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948

Information Please (1948) http://www.infoplease.com/year/1948.html

The End of Libraries?

I hear this all the time: " Libraries are gone, dead, kaput...." However, I'm not buying it. I saw a post yesterday on Slashdot (link: http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/01/18/0420247.shtml) about the impatience of today's kids and implications for the library. I can't deny that it's good: Google books, Wikipedia, etc. however,there is still something about a library that I can't get online. Being a history major, maybe it's the sense of history. Maybe the fact that there are millions of books in the library that are not online and probably never will be. Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic about books. I'm sure the measure of truth is somewhere in between it all.