I’ve been putting off this link roundup for reasons discussed last post, but I also have a bunch of links I want to share, so. Links!
Technology and online spaces
- How to batch convert Word files to PDF using Google Drive.
- What the law can (and can’t) do about online harassment.
- The Academic PKM blog has a nice roundup of links about more ways to use Evernote well.
- Advice for safe surfing on public wi-fi networks.
- A massive chart of iOS text editors if you’re looking for one with specific features.
- What happens if you apply modern technology to pointe shoes (along with some interesting history and art)
- Defence Against the Digital Dark Arts (a Prezi by Eric Stroshane at LibTech 2014)
Libraries and the pursuit of knowledge:
- On changes to Oxford’s Bodleian library to move into the 21st century (video, no transcript, alas.)
- I was fascinated by this lengthy article on the Knowledge, the testing process for London cabbies (and particularly by the comments on how technology can’t duplicate some of this.)
- Some excellent ideas on teaching students how to do higher level research projects from Iris Jastram
- LifeHacker just ran a career spotlight about Kathryn Bergeron, who is currently the assistant director of a library outside Detroit. I thought it did a great job of explaining some of the misconceptions about the profession.
- Jessamyn West has a great piece at Medium about the challenges of artificial scarcity, ebooks, DRM, and explaining them to people who just want to read without technological friction.
History:
- My favourite conference poster ever, about whether we can tell if a cemetary has attritional death or catastrophic death (like in an epidemic, say, the Black Death.)
- Julia Scheeres has released a long essay adapted from her new book A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown. In online discussion of the article (which is harrowing in places, be warned), one of the things that kept coming up is how people were unaware of some of the details.
- A rather thorough overview of what we know about Hypatia of Alexandria.
- A Metafilter discussion of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen also has a trove of other interesting links and resources.
- A Wild Truth is a book by Carine McCandless, sister to Chris McCandless, that follows up on a number of points from Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild – an NPR article does a good job summarising.
- A really amazing and emotional overview of the history of personal computing.
- 10 lessons from revolutions that fictional dystopias often ignore.
Other topics of interest:
- Making events more accessible – a great overview of things to be aware of and inform potential attendees about.
- An infographic about translating from client to web designer.
- I did love this trailer for Elementary.
- A new service is looking for ways to connect organizations and events with freelance ASL interpreters – Linguabee has launched in Minnesota. There’s a great article talking about some of the possible implications for events.
- Some thoughts about Helen of Troy.
Reading and watching: A friend suggested I give the new-this-fall TV show Forever a try, and I’ve been finding it very enjoyable. (One online comment I read about it said that it isn’t doing anything very new, but it does what it does very well, and I agree with that. Another conversation I’ve had about it brought out that it is an essentially hopeful show, with a lot of joy in it, and that’s also a good thing.) Anyway, knitting watching is a good thing. I’ve also been working my way through the later seasons of Poirot thanks to picking up an Acorn subscription, and enjoying the second season of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries even more than the first, and rewatching Leverage and White Collar more recently. (I have also been watching The Librarians though that really deserves its own post.)
Reading has been a lot of series mysteries – Oyster has picked up a lot of the Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels books, and those are reliable enjoyable reads. I recently finished The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey, in which the author begins by researching something different, and discovers three gaps in the otherwise absurdly extensive family records, and I’m currently reading Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Hughette Clark and the Spending of A Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman.
