Just another dent in the damage…

The world’s greatest showman Phineas Taylor Barnum has come to Sheffield! Well considering he died in 1891 this isn’t exactly true but almost. Humbug is the first exhibition to make use of the new Exhibition Gallery at the University of Sheffield’s Western Bank Library and this past weekend I brought some of the family over to take a look.

Barnum, the showman, the circus proprietor, the impresario, famed for his traveling circus and hoaxes (humbugs) like the Feejee Mermaid and Tom Thumb was the first circus owner to move his circus by train and credited with being the pioneer of the modern entertainment industry. Whilst mainly associated with his circus sideshow and display of freaks Barnum also commissioned Jenny Lind’s American tour and set out to change attitudes about the theater from ‘dens of evil’ to palaces of edification and delight.

I was particularly interested in hearing what my grand-parents made of it all and they were suitably impressed with the exhibition on a whole. The celebration of 200 years of Barnum includes bannered artwork from Mark Copeland (of the Insect Circus Museum) and the most amazing/creepiest sculpture of all time by Anthony Bennett. Have a look at my Flickr photostream for a taster but better yet come down and have a look! The exhibition is on until May 30th 2010 and is open daily – Monday to Friday 9 til 9 and weekends 9 til 6.

I’m a fan of technology… always have been. From my Dad’s first home-made ‘beeb’ computer I used to play what I consider to be some of the best computer games of all time on, to my first film-loading camera, to my first Walkman, to my first (and only) Playstation, to my first mobile phone, to my first iPod, to my first handheld games console, to my first laptop, to my first digital camera, to my first Mac, to my first iPhone, to my first ebook reader. Oh wait. It’s not actually my ebook reader. No no, it’s the library’s ebook reader. But still, there’s an ebook reader in my hand and for this week I’m calling it mine (it’s a pocket edition Sony eBook Reader)!

So why do I have one? Well, we’re looking into how we can make use of them in the library – whether ebook readers are an appropriate means to deliver content to our students, whether this is feasible or not and whether our users would even be interested in having access to electronic readers – and we have both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony eBook Reader to evaluate. I must admit, one comes in pretty handy when you’ve a load of PDFs to read – simple drag and drop them on and away you go (the Kindle even allows you to annotate, highlight and save clippings). It’s small and light enough to carry anywhere and everywhere and the long-life battery means you only need to charge every couple of thousand page turns. Now being used to charging my phone most days this actually blows my mind!

However, I’m not entirely sold. I found that rather than being as technologically advanced as expected the devices were actually rather painful from a usability perspective. They feel clunky, content is difficult to browse, page turns are slow and it does bother me that they don’t have backlights. Oh and did I mention that because we’re UK customers a lot of the Kindle functionality is not available – wireless access to Wikipedia/blogs etc – and we are unable to buy content for the Sony eBook Reader from the Sony eBook store. How bizarre.

What I will say is that when it came to reading I did rather enjoy using it. I don’t know much about this e-ink display thing but it’s not like reading from a mini computer screen (which to be honest is what I expected) and it was handy being able to just hold the reader and turn pages in one hand and eat my soup with the other.

As for the content, if you want to read classics fine but if not I’m afraid you’re rather limited. eBooks are expensive still and generally not particularly of interest to me (well of interest enough to warrant the initial expenditure) and in a library setting they’re not particular scholarly (unless we’re talking the study of classics). I’m definitely more sold on the idea of storing and reading PDFs or Word files on the device and being able to annotate documents is certainly useful. Princeton University for example went as far as handing out devices to students preloaded with content – but I don’t think this really went down so well either.

Generally I think I’m swaying more to the side of buying ebooks that are compatible with ebook readers to loan to students rather than loaning out the devices. But is this managable? Would we have the ability to remove content from a user’s device once the loan period had expired? Something worth looking into eh? I think what I’m really waiting for is the iPad! Now this looks like a handy piece of kit.

If you’re interested in finding out more about ebook readers there are seriously hundreds of review sites but some of the ones I looked at include: eBook Readers Review; eBook Readers and Wired.

It’s actually amazing what you can teach yourself given an hour or ’sew’ to focus. After finally fixing up Max’s gi (one of the bigger boys at Brazilian Ju-Jitsu ripped it up) I decided it was time to teach myself the buttonhole! For Christmas I received Cath Kidston’s awesome book Sew, complete with bag project. Problem is I’ve been too scared to tackle the project because of those dreaded buttonholes required to attach the bag strap. Well, turns out they’re not so bad! With not so much help from Alison Smith and surprisingly my machine’s manual I set to work and with a few tweaks managed something that resembles a buttonhole in about an hour (and most of that time was spent threading my machine because the naff cotton I’m using keeps snapping).

Anyway given The Sewing Book’s reputation as a seamsters’ Bible (which I have to agree is, most of the time) I was a bit disappointed to find it lacking a clear step-by-step explanation of how to actually create a buttonhole – how to position the foot, which stitch to use, what to do to adjust the stitch balance etc. Sure enough it includes beautiful photographs of each stage and when you’d use the different types, it even gives instructions for the more fancy buttonholes but honestly I’m a total beginner you have to spell this all out for me. I still haven’t managed to work out how to round the corner for a keyhole buttonhole but I will. So… take a look at what I did, all by myself!

Here I’m learning how to build the stitches:

My buttonholing foot:

And here’s a close up!

My house is full of vegans – bar Bella, she eats fish with her Amicat – and it means there are a lot of cook books. I make it sound like there are a lot of people in my house but in fact there’s just the two of us and our cat, Bella. And I guess the reason we have so many cook books is due to Max’s obsession with recipe clippings, he has a whole lever arch file full! Being vegan is not difficult, it just means you have to think more about your food, plan your meals, your pack lunches for work and check menus before you agree to a night out. But to make veganism really work for you at home you’ve got to learn some darn cooking skills, make your food exciting and never settle for just a hummus sandwich or a dreadlock burger or that god awful sos mix. Veganism is better than that! But I hate cooking – I hate waiting for things to cook – anything that takes longer than 20 minutes makes my stomach hurt and I end up eating most of it out of the pan before it even hits my plate. Max calls me a picker, I can’t help it! Say you’re cooking with a pepper and you’ve got it nicely chopped up ready, for every piece the pan gets my mouth gets the other. It’s just the way it goes.

Max caught on to my dislike of cooking early on and figured the way to my heart would definitely be through my stomach. It worked. Five years on I eat like royalty… every day. Even if there’s absolutely nothing in he never fails to cook up a feast of feasts. Leave it to me and we’d be eating chilli and wedges every day, not that there is anything wrong with that either though.

So just as I was getting used to letting Max own the kitchen, except on my occasional baking days when I crack out super tasty cookies or cupcakes, in walks Vegan Yum Yum and turns my culinary failings into something more at home on Masterchef. I’ve turned a corner, I get excited about coating my tofu with a corn flour batter, whizzing up a tahini paste for my steamed broccoli and turning tomato ketchup into an incredibly mouth watering sweet and sour sauce. I’ve followed Lauren’s amazing blog for a while and always been insanely jealous of these rather special cupcakes from the Martha Stewart show but I never really thought I (the world’s most reluctant cook) could make any of this incredible food myself. Then I get a copy of the cook book and how wrong I was.

What makes the book so special for me and what makes me rate this more highly than any other book on our shelves are the beautifully shot images of the finished meal. Pictures of the food is something a great deal of our cook books lack and by being so anal about following craft patterns to the T I’m one of these that literally follows every instruction within the recipe and I like my food to look like the picture. Without pictures how can you really make your recipe appealing? Really? I like to decide what I want to eat by seeing how tasty it looks. And there are many many tasty things to choose from in this.

The added bonus of planning my every meal around the Lauren Ulm Bible is being able to take her recipes everywhere I go via my phone! Yes, she has an iPhone app [iTunes link] too that includes many of the recipes from the book and updates as and when she updates the blog. And again, as well as a handy ‘tick’ function to mark off your ingredients, there’s pictures!! Don’t just relay on making your food sound good… make it look good! Have a look at some of these master pieces from my very own kitchen:

Broccoli Almond Sweet and Sour Tofu

Nearly Raw Tahini Noodles

Spicy Tomato and Chickpea Soup (pp. 180) with a pepper, onion and avocado salsa topping

Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread (pp. 13)

Creamy Broccoli Dal (pp. 173) with homemade roti

And tonight we ate Hurry Up Alfredo (sorry about the poor image quality on this one):

We added black olives on top for a little extra bite, and it was wicked! This cook book is amazing… seriously. It’s probably the best cook book in the world. When Lauren says ‘decadent (BUT DOABLE) animal-free recipes for entertaining and every day’ she actually means it! They are the most doable recipes I’ve ever read and some of the most yummy food I’ve ever tasted.

I’m not much of a New Year’s Resolution type person but last year I did write a list of 25 things I wanted to do in 2009. I thought it’d be worth going over what I did and didn’t do ready to prepare a new list of 26 things I want to do in 2010. So let’s see:

1) Set up an Etsy store and start selling small crafts: Well, I got the Etsy store bit sorted but getting the stuff to sell has been harder. I thought it’d just be a case of make a load of stuff and get it listed but it turns out a lot of the patterns I’ve been using to make consumables are all copyrighted and you can’t sell the stuff you make using them. Turns out I need to start writing my own patterns if I want to sell anything I make. The only things I really have for sale are my SSCS crochet whales as it’s OK to make money you intend to donate to charity, but a store with only one item to sell would be pretty naff right? I’ll work on this one. Promise.

2) Make more use of sewing machine and create at least one skirt from scratch: Again I kinda half did this. I reorganised my craft room so I can actually get at my machine without having to carry it about everywhere and I sorted out all the stuff I need to get on with making things – I just didn’t get round to making the skirt. But, I did make a lovely cushion (and embroidered it) and ploughed through one of my sewing books so I can learn more about what my machine does. I think this coming year will be my skirt making year so watch this space!

3) Learn to dive: CHECK! I actually did this one. This year I not only got my PADI Open Water but I completed my PADI Advanced Open Water and got qualified in Enriched Air diving. I’ve got about 20 dives logged now and am super excited about getting out and seeing more of the world’s oceans. At Christmas I went to Malaysia and got to play about with my new camera, here’s Nemo:

4) Learn Photoshop basics to improve photographs: So Photoshop is harder than I thought and there is definitely a lot to learn on this… but I’ve made a start. I’ve managed to cut three people out of one image and put them in to another, I’ve rubbed out plastic bottles and lamp-posts and learnt about image size and how to crop (ya’know – the simple stuff). My cutting out skills definitely need working on though. Max also showed me how to open my eyes – i.e. cut out Claire’s open eyes and stick them over my closed eyes!

This is a photo taken of Claire and I with Todd Kowalski from Propagandhi. On the original picture we were outside a pub and my eyes were closed. Here we are in Hawaii with my eyes open (if you look very closely you’ll notice they’re very similar to Claire’s eyes).

5) Take more photos and get uploading to Flickr: My new camera has helped with this one. On my last holiday I took about 1000 photos! Can you ever imagine doing this with an old camera that needed film? Crazy! Anyway I’ve slowly been making more use of Flickr and you can go and see my photos any time – lexrigby’s Photostream.

6) Make Donna a big granny blanket: Yes yes I did this. It got completed on March 18th for her birthday. Here is a picture of me admiring the finished product:

7) Print some Moo cards: Totally failed on this one. I figured I didn’t really need any if I didn’t get the store up and going. They’ll come eventually when I’m all business like.

8) Get funding for the IATUL conference in Belgium: I failed this too but it was kinda out of my hands. I wrote my statement about why I should be awarded the funding but at the last minute one of my bosses decided to write the entire thing himself on my behalf. I don’t blame him for not getting it or anything as I was told the application was exceptional, just not exceptional enough. Life goes on.

9) Design a cross-stitch pattern to raise more funds for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society: This was another one of those half did/half didn’t ones. Whilst I didn’t get around to design the pattern I longed to do I did get all subversive after buying Subversive Cross Stitch and started writing some cross stitch patterns inspired by Propagandhi lyrics.

10) Organise another SSCS fundraiser: This one is another ’still to do’. I think time ran away with me on this one. Whilst I didn’t organise a fundraiser myself I did volunteer at a number of events this year (including the International Dive Show at the NEC) and completed the first round of volunteer training. I’m now listed as an official volunteer on the Sea Shepherd UK website, so it’s all good in the hood still.

11) Make sushi: No making but plenty of eating. I’m going to get Donna to show me how to do this, she makes amazing sushi!

12) Finish Ursula tattoo: Yep, done and dusted. This is on my back:

13) Start work on Kali tattoo: I didn’t do this but I did get a whale instead, I think Kali needs more thinking about. This one is on my left inner arm – it was pretty swollen so excuse the chubbiness, I think the photo is a bit squished too (I got it off Myspace because I couldn’t be bothered to take a photo):

14) Keep up the weekly postings on my work blog: I did this! Want proof? See Librarians’ Blog for Science and Engineering.

15) Master the art of false lashes (just because there’s got to be at least one vanity thing in here): I did this too but none of my pictures are close enough for you to see them clearly. I’ll work on getting proof of this.

16) Keep up with the personal training sessions: After a year I figured these were just getting far too expensive to continue. I went from about August 2008 to August 2009. I fully intended to restart them but really £120 a month on top of my £42 a month gym membership… really.

17) Tick off the to-do list and write up results: I guess the result of this is this blog post. I did tick items off in my book and did refer back to my list to remind me what I needed to do, I just didn’t do as much as I wanted. I had planned to do a scrap book but I definitely think a blog post is more my thing.

18) Start open uni short course on marine biology: The Open Uni course I wanted to do is a short module called Life in the Oceans: Exploring our Blue Planet. It looks like the greatest short course of all time but a las I’ve not had a spare £150 to do it yet. I will though, studying Richard Attenborough’s Blue Planet sounds like the best thing ever.

19) Prepare for Cilip (this is the professional association of librarians) chartership: I simply changed my mind on this one I’m afraid. I just don’t know if I want to charter just yet. The chartership means doing a lot of work I just don’t want to do at the moment. Career development portfolios and all that malarky… snore.

20) Cook for Max at least once a month: I managed this one I think for a few months. I mainly make him puddings like cookies and cake. This will change this year though as I’ve a new cook book and it’s amazing. I won’t tell you anything else yet as I’m working on a post for this beauty that stands alone.

21) Visit Stef in Canterbury: Sorry Stef, you just come home too much. I’ll visit her this year for sure.

22) Read Moby Dick: I didn’t do this either, but I did read a lot about other whales!

23) Cycle to work at least twice a week in the Summer: This is my main regret I think. I should have done this, but I didn’t. Curse me.

24) Watch a broadway show: For my 25th birthday Sarah got me some gift vouchers for a London show and after loads of faffing about she never got to come with me. Instead, Max and I went to see Wicked… and it was wicked. I’d already read the book (and thought it very strange) so was interested to see how it would translate to stage. I liked it, it worked well and luckily they kept all the sexy scenes out.

25) Finish decorating the kitchen: YES, YES and YES and it’s the greatest kitchen of all time.

I’ve already written this year’s list… I might put it up later but in the meantime, thanks for reading.

The first couple of weeks of term are always the busiest for an academic librarian, mainly because it’s the god awful induction time of year. To be fair I got off quite lightly by only seeing about 300 students, but of the sessions I did a couple of those were to over 100 at a time! How scary is that! I’m not a teacher and never envisioned having to ‘teach’ but alas for your average librarian information literacy skill sessions are just a part of the job now. I think once over the nerves I’ll be cool with it and the more practice I get the better I’ll be…. right?

This year I mainly stuck to a traditional ‘I speak, you listen’ type format yet with inquiry-based learning on the rise I guess I’ll be expected to try new things soon. It seemed to work quite well and by keeping it short I hope I didn’t bore too many people. I can’t ever remember being told how to use a library catalogue but I guess I must have been at some point. Maybe I just used common sense, who knows, but for a lot of students this could be the first time they’ve ever used a library and we can’t assume that everyone is good at simple searching. Amazon wasn’t that popular when I was at university but I guess the majority of students these days are familiar with how to search that… and it’s not that different to searching a library catalogue. Is it?

It’s not until you have to prepare induction sessions that you realise how much there is to tell people. I kept my actual speaking time to about 30 minutes because I understand that new students have so much to take in during those first couple of weeks and most of what I say probably went in one ear and out the other anyway. I simply just covered the basics: how to find the library, how to use library systems and general house rules. I think the main thing is to give the library a face. Students need to know who I am and where they can find me.

I also ran a session for post-graduates. The difficulty with these is that you need to focus more on databases and how to access/search journals. Therefore you need to know what databases they’re likely to use and come up with good examples of things to search. Lucky for me these students were from Animal and Plant Sciences and given they’re my second favourite department I was quite comfortable with search terms and strategies.

This year is the first year we’ve had the new Liaison Librarians (i.e. myself and two others) in place as support for the Faculty Librarians and so it’s been the first year my equivalents have also done these induction sessions. One of my colleagues was a little braver than me and decided to introduce the Cephalonia (or Kefalonia) way of doing these. The ‘Cephalonian Method‘ is the brain child of Linda Davies (Cardiff University’s Science Librarian) and was introduced to ‘freshen things up and give induction some sparkle‘. I managed to sit in on one of these sessions and it definitely worked as a good ice-breaker. It made the session more interactive and students were very responsive… it even led to more questions at the end. I’m not sure if I’ll do something similar next year but at least its given me something to think about. If anyone wants to share any induction ideas with me then please… get in touch, I think I’m gonna need a lot of help.

Waltz with Bashir is both an incredible screen animation and graphic novel depicting Ari Folman’s quest to rediscover his lost memories from the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut during 1982.

One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. Every night, the same number of beasts. The two men conclude that there’s a connection between the dream and their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early eighties. Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing about that period of his life anymore.

Intrigued by this riddle, he decides to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world. He needs to discover the truth about that time and about himself. As Ari delves deeper and deeper into mystery, his memory begins to creep up in surreal images.

The Sabra and Shatila massacres are central to the plot development, which culminates in the unlocking of Ari’s lost memories about the horrific mass slaughter of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians carried out by the Lebanese Forces Christian militia group, following the assassination of Phalangist leader and president-elect Bashir Gemayel. It’s beautifully drawn and beautifully shot without losing the realism of the deeply disturbing subject matter or the difficulty Ari himself has in confronting his painful past.

There are a number of clips to watch on Youtube but given the book will only take you an hour to read (tops) there’s no excuse. And seriously the film is well worth it. But remember ‘behind those beautiful drawings and animation there were real people, they were slaughtered, they were killed. There were kids there, there were women there, there was thousands of people there’. Gives you something to think about eh?

I’ve recently finished reading a book about a translator, a tribesman in Darfur caught up in the violence when his village was destroyed by helicopter gunships in 2003, when ‘the Sudanese government-backed militias came to murder, rape and burn’ and drive the tribesmen from their lands. The Translator, his name Daoud Hari, is a Zaghawi who grew up ‘racing camels across the desert, attending colourful weddings and, when his work was done, playing games under the moonlight’ who survived not only the decimation of his village but also a harrowing journey to Chad, six illegal border crossings (each with their own tale of rape and murder), abduction, torture and imprisonment.

It’s difficult to call it a good book, yet it’s probably one of the best books I’ve read in a while. A book that makes you stop and think about life and whether there is something more the better off jokers like me should or could be doing to try and make the world a better place for those of us less fortunate. for those suffering the consequences of a modern genocide let’s say! After putting the book down the world has turned a somewhat shitty shade of brown and left a part of my mind in a permanent state of sadness. I dug out an old copy of the New Internationalist from a lapsed subscription – Darfur: Don’t look away (401 June 2007) – remembering it’s opening:

‘God how grim’, is the most common reaction I’ve been getting when I tell people I’m doing a magazine on Darfur. Often followed by: ‘It’s just so awful – but there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do.’ This feeling of powerlessness in the face of extreme human suffering is unpleasant and upsetting [you're not wrong]; so we’re inclined to look away.

But we shouldn’t be! This is what the UN are calling ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis’, we shouldn’t be looking away, we should be tackling this head on – pushing for effective peacekeeping forces with a mandate to protect the people. Sounds good on paper eh? But how do we do this? Well, I’m not so sure but I do know that Amnesty International is always a good starting place for anyone looking for current information or wanting to take action.

So back to the book. After losing his brother, Ahmed, one of the village defenders left behind to slow the attack and helping to push his people (those with no animals who could hide and make a temporary life) into the mountains, burying the newly dead along the way Daoud arrived in Chad and got to work moving around the refugee camps helping in any way necessary. In Chad refugees are welcomed by the government but restricted from working – even for free – and so this is how Daoud came to be Suleyman Abakar Moussa of Chad and how he was able to begin using his knowledge of both English and Arabic to work as a translator for journalists and NGOs documenting this occurrence of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.

Essentially this book is a memoir of one man’s horrific journey through life using language skills as a weapon against war. It’s a tale of his survival aimed to tell the story of those lost and of those still fighting and of those left waiting for peace, for those wanting to return to their homeland free from fear. It is written for those wanting to learn more about the people of Darfur and the cause of their conflict, for those wanting to know what happened to young children like Amma, stabbed through the stomach with a Janjaweed’s bayonet, thrust into the air and then left to die a slow painful death under her Abba’s tear drenched eyes. It is for all of us wanting to find hope behind the horror stories embedded in Darfur’s long and complex history who want to help rebuild their communities in whichever way we can. And lastly it’s for those of us wanting to spread the word and speak out or rather ‘whine and kick and scream until everyone has everything they need’.

In the space of a day I’ve gone from being super skeptical of quick response (QR) codes to super enthusiastic – which is a weird predicament for me anyhow. I’m usually pretty quick on embracing new technologies but I just didn’t get what the fuss was about with these things. Now that I’ve had a bit of a play about with them I’m kinda getting them and beginning to see their usefulness in the library setting/educational sector. It obviously helps having a good piece of reader software but I’ll get to that bit later.

So what are QR codes?

Hailing from Japan, these two-dimensional barcodes are a device used to store information that can be downloaded at high speed (hence the name ‘quick response) via mobile phones. Originally they were being used as a tracking device but these days you can pretty much use them for just about anything. They can store text, URLs, telephone numbers,  and even entire poems (The Walrus and the Carpenter).  Put simply they’re like the next generation barcode. Traditional barcodes (those that you see on your baked beans) are only able to hold about 20 digits whereas QR codes have the potential to contain 7000 digits and 4300 alpha-numeric characters. Now that’s cool!

What do they look like?

Generally, they look a little something like this:

These small squares are usually 2cm x 2cm and feature a pattern of black and white pixels, which encode its contents. This example above contains the URL for my weblog and should you want to test how it works you’ll find that you’ll be re-directed right back here – pretty clever huh?

How do they work?

To retrieve the information contained within a QR code you’ll need a) a mobile camera phone and b) some QR reader software to decode the information held within the image. I lacked this second part for a bit and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t read the darn thing, looking back it’s pretty obvious something was missing. Doh. Anyway, what you need to do is use your camera to first of all snap a picture and then as if by magic the software converts the information into something more familiar. I have an iPhone so decided to play around with some of the free apps available in the app store and come to the conclusion that I really like BeeTagg. Looking at their website you’ll see they support quite a range of phones but failing that try a few of these:

• Kaywa;
• Nokia Mobile;
• Upcode;
• Quickmark.

How do I make my own QR code?

To make the image above I used the Kaywa QR Generator but there are loads of others to choose from. I just found the simple layout easy to use and easy to copy. Just select what type of message you want to encode, enter the information you want in your image into the box and voila, your very own QR code.

But what’s so great about them?

Had I been asked this question yesterday I probably would of said “nothing, they’re just another useless fad that people who think they’re ahead of the times buzz about on”. Now however I’d probably said something like “they’re a really useful tool for retrieving and storing information on the go, which help to connect you to the information you need much quicker”.

In libraries there are (upon reflection) a number of ways to get using QR codes, especially if you can’t afford those amazing RFID systems (but even then I don’t think these are particularly useful for library users in terms of retriving information about the item in your hand). Barcodes are used within libraries mainly to link items to a catalogue record. Using the traditional barcode the information contained is very limited and only by scanning the barcode (at the library counter) are you able to find further information contained within the catalogue record.

Now stop and think for one moment. If instead we started to use QR codes to label books, journals, audio/visual, offprints etc and a user wanted to see further information about that resource all they’d need to do is scan the QR code. They’d be able to find descriptive information, images, useful URLs etc all at the touch of a button on their phone. And what if at that moment in time they have too many books out? Well, by saving the QR code as an image they’d have a record of the resource stored on their phone so they’d be able to easily find it when they’re ready to loan it. Brilliant.

As a student I lost many a good book by scribbling down the shelfmark on numerous scraps of paper, leaving off other vital information such as its title/author, which I later misplaced. I’ve even lost count of the amount of times I strawn something on my hand to remind me to go and pick up that book at 575.0162 (D), only to find I’ve gone and washed my hands and half of the flaming thing’s missing. I’ve also had a great deal of experience helping users to find books from laboriously typed out messages on their mobile phones. What if there was someway to get this information onto your phone directly from the computer screen? Well, there is and it also saves on paper! Bath University are working on their catalogue adding text as QR codes to the bibliographic record summerising the key information, the resource title, the author, and the shelf location. For example see Bath’s library catalogue result for Sloman. By scanning the code from the screen I’ll have my own record of  ‘Economics for business / Sloman, John, 1947- Level 5 330 SLO’ on my phone to take to the shelf with me. Perfect.

What else?

How about using QR codes on your promotional/marketing materials to link users directly to where information can be found on the Internet? Do you have a library weblog? Are you producing leaflets to inform readers where they can find it? Why not stick a QR code on there so that they’re able to link directly to you? Got some particularly good skills tutorials you want your users to know about? Stick a QR code on your promotional material and they’ll find it straight away! Got an extensive reading list you want your students to read? Why not put a QR code on there to link students directly to the library catalogue record or even the article itself!! Fantastic eh? Why didn’t I think of any of this earlier.

Other sources:

• Tech Tips: High Capacity Bar Codes;
• iPhone in Education: Using QR Code in the Classroom;
• Educational QR Codes;
• Phones are close to cracking the barcode;
• What you need to know about QR codes.

The LA Times has an interesting piece up about Sun Yaoting, the last eunuch to the last Chinese emperor.

Sun Yaoting was 8 when his father castrated him with a single swoop of a razor. The year was 1911, and China was in turmoil. Just a few months later rebels deposed the emperor, overturned centuries of tradition and established a republic.

Pretty gruesome eh? Not only did Sun endure a lifetime of incontinence and sexual frustration but in fear of punishment during the Cultural Revolution his family disposed of his pickled ‘three precious’ denying him the right to return to earth as a ‘complete man’. Despite the imperial overthrow Sun earned a place in Chinese history by becoming the last eunuch to the puppet monarch Puyi, before his death in 1966.

Living his later life tending to Beijing’s temples with his adopted son and grandson he eventually died in 1996. Jia Yinghua’s biography of Sun (The Last Eunuch of China: The Life of Sun Yaoting) has recently been translated into English, based on over one hundred hours of conversations and apparently contains ‘everything you might want to know about the gruesome particulars of becoming a eunuch, along with much you probably would not want to know’. Grim, but I’m sure very interesting nevertheless