tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-260456672011-04-21T13:47:31.341-04:00A column from Paul Wiener, Melville Library's own Information Junkie, where he guides you through websites that contain the shapes information weaves across the web.Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.comBlogger101100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-46988923736237837142008-01-16T15:25:00.000-05:002008-01-16T15:26:41.674-05:00

**Due to a system upgrade, STARS will not be available for 24 hours beginning at noon Saturday, 1/19/2008.**

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-46617524328746296412008-01-08T09:33:00.000-05:002008-01-08T09:34:24.083-05:00

Let's say your professor has been brave - or foolish - enough to approve your term paper topic "The Cultural Significance of Moby Dick." He probably thinks it's a great topic, in fact. Everyone knows about Moby Dick, right? Moby Dick is.....well, it's obvious. It'll be easy to research. There's probably no limit to the ways you can explore the topic - there's the whale, the book, the name

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-56464276113817656162007-04-27T14:01:00.000-04:002007-04-27T14:42:08.634-04:00

DOES GOD EXIST ONLINE? Theme and Variations by Paul B. Wiener Librarians know better than most people how easy it is to find the answer to a question. They also know how hard the search can be. That's because most questioners are - or believe they are - looking for the right answer to a question. Since I've been searching for God since at least the age of 6, I decided

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-1164231711945200632006-11-22T16:09:00.000-05:002006-12-06T10:19:08.133-05:00

"The universe (which others call the Library)......." BorgesWho in the world was the "Underground Grammarian?" Who is S. Berliner III? What about "Radio Free Mike?" Dan Traister? The Dead City Library? Paul Bourke? David Chesler? Leif Parsons? The Underground Grammarian was Richard Mitchell, a professor, author, bibliophile and wit. Dan Traister is a scholar and rare books librarian - also a

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-1158677289963074972006-09-19T10:41:00.000-04:002006-09-19T10:48:10.040-04:00

"Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time future,And time future contained in time past"- T.S. Eliot (Burnt Norton)How much time does it take to think of something new - a poem, a scientific theory, a song, a conspiracy? Can we watch it happen? Is the time it takes to think of something preserved in the product? What is it about Time - the most unsolvable puzzle life offers -

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-1154526370996811892006-08-02T09:41:00.000-04:002006-08-02T11:52:13.383-04:00

Let’s go on a little fishing trip. There’s nothing else I can call it: you’re at a website you wanted to be at, you start exploring it, and then….maybe that site’s URL is intriguing. Or maybe you see all those tempting topical links that the page’s author felt just had to be there. One of them looks sort of promising. You click on it, and …..oops! You’re hooked! Suddenly you’re on a very

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-1151699378110642372006-06-30T16:26:00.000-04:002006-07-05T13:49:52.556-04:00

by Paul B. Wiener All definitions of information may have only one thing in common: they assume it is recognizable. One definition I especially like says: it is a measure of how surprising something is. True, that comes from a protein engineering glossary at the Biomedical Centre in Uppsala, Sweden, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I have a special affection for surprising

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-1149686241475423272006-06-07T09:12:00.000-04:002006-06-07T09:19:30.733-04:00

Google has introduced one of those new search applications that’s just the kind of thing that makes many librarians distrust Googled information. It’s called Google Trends and it provides context-free information that seems to have no bearing outside the arcane world of search itself. But no one ever accused Google of humility. This new engine is a seductive toy that at this stage promises much

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-1146580965347454492006-05-02T10:41:00.000-04:002006-05-02T17:33:11.503-04:00

Reality can be an interesting source of information. Or is it the other way round? I use the web all the time to find out about the real world. Don’t you? And what I find is “information.” If it isn’t, what is it? I use reality all the time too (in the form of a computer, a chair and the electrical grid) to find ------information. Defining information can seem like a silly word game,

Melville Librarynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26045667.post-1144952215949419812006-04-13T14:13:00.000-04:002006-04-13T17:05:04.710-04:00

Where does information come from? From the world, from the senses, from the mind? If sometimes it's self-evident, at other times it has no fixed form. So how do we know it when we see it? There is a running debate among some physicists about whether information can escape from a black hole. Current opinion says that it can. As quoted in Wikipedia, "Quantum perturbations of the event horizon

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