Link Smorgasbord, November 18 - 24

DIY Star Wars Snowflakes
Gorgeous and intricate Star Wars themed snow flakes.  I'm trying to convince the youth services librarians that they would make for a great craft.

24 Tickets Every IT Person Is Sick Of Getting
ALL OF THIS.  Much giggling was inspired by this collection, perhaps it leans towards hyperbole and snark, but it is also pretty spot on.

 "Douglas County Model" gives libraries new e-book leverage
I've mentioned the Douglas County ebook platform/model before, as well as Jamie LaRue.  This article gives a pretty good idea of what libraries are looking into on their own since we cannot get what we were looking for from publishers, and how what we are looking to do is expanding because we had to strike out on our own.

 The Absence Of Serendipity, Or, Why I Hate Shopping At Amazon
The concepts here go beyond just shopping at Amazon.  This is why I turn off as much personalization as I possibly can on just about any service I use.  I don't want just the news articles on topics I seem sympathetic too, I want to stumble across a variety of topics and opinions.   Often what an algorythm may mark as similar doesn't match up with actual preference, as I am sure most Pandora users are overly familiar with.  Florence and the Machine does NOT sound anything like the seeds of Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphies, and I'm still puzzled how one of my stations started with Maroon 5 and ended up with Tool (which for me is an entirely different mood).
"Which brings me to Amazon. I do indeed like it if I know what it is that I want to buy. Various bits and pieces of electronics have been purchased over the years. But I find it an intensely irritating way to buy a book. Cheap, yes, convenient, most assuredly, but intensely irritating. For I’m almost never going out to buy a book that I know that I want to read. I am, rather, browsing to try and find one that I do want to read. And that is something fueled almost entirely by serendipity and in my case it’s what makes second hand bookshops near to nirvana. Being able to flip through the first couple of pages of twenty to forty books, spotting the pile of mouldering 50s sci-fi pulps, shying from the radioactive evil of the chick lit shelves, it is this browsing that has done more to introduce me to new and interesting authors and or genres than anything else. And try as I might I cannot gain that same experience from Amazon, the recommendation engine (at least the level of my knowledge about the actual use of computers) doesn’t manage to replicate that experience."

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