Chrome’s library extension for Amazon

Posted on January 24, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Coworker Liz does it again. I have long been a Mozilla Firefox user, but (gulp) am finally switching to Google Chrome for my internet browser, and here’s why: Chrome’s new Library Extension for Amazon.

The concept is this: when you look up a book on Amazon, you have the option – once you have this extension set up – to see at the same time whether that same book is available at your local library.* For instance (after buzzing right through Lost in a Good Book), I am looking for the third Thursday Next book by Jasper Fforde:
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And I would normally have two tabs open in my browser, so that I could search Amazon and my local library at the same time. But now:
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Look at that. My local HPL has me covered – and all in one browser tab. Thanks, HPL! And thanks, Google!

Now, it remains to be seen whether this will continue to fly for Amazon, an organization which likes its profits. If Amazon were to suspect any drop in business I imagine they’d find a way to keep libraries off their website. But we can hope – and enjoy it while we can.

*Once your local library is set up in the extension. Ours wasn’t, so Liz emailed “the guy” who does such things and the next day, there we were. So it might be just that easy – at least while the traffic remains manageable for “the guy”, which, I have no idea.

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article from Orion magazine: “Dark Ecology” by Paul Kingsnorth

Posted on January 16, 2013 by pagesofjulia

This article came to me from coworker Liz (who always recommends good stuff), and simultaneously from Pops, who also thought it was great. That should be testimony enough; but I am unstoppable and will say just a few words myself, too.

Paul Kingsnorth writes about the future of ecology, conservationism, “green” thinking, or whatever you’d like to call it. This is “dark” ecology because the news is not good. I’ll let him give you the real dish because he does it better – as Pops says, “the good news is that Kingsnorth is a writer first, not a social scientist, so it reads pretty well” – but I really appreciated his willingness to look forward to what’s ahead and what we have to do differently than the old guard of environmentalism, which sadly hasn’t worked. And his ideas about what’s ahead and what we might do in anticipation, however dark, resonated with me. Plus, he writes beautiful thinking lines like these:

Our human relationship to the rest of nature is not akin to the analysis of bacteria in a petri dish; it is more like the complex, love-hate relationship we might have with lovers or parents or siblings. It is who we are, unspoken and felt and frustrating and inspiring and vital and impossible to peer-review. You can reach part of it with the analytical mind, but the rest will remain buried in the ancient woodland floor of human evolution and in the depths of our old ape brains, which see in pictures and think in stories. Civilization has always been a project of control, but you can’t win a war against the wild within yourself.

I give you:

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multimedia journalism from the NYT: “Snow Fall” by John Branch

Posted on January 10, 2013 by pagesofjulia

I have a librarian coworker, Liz, who always finds the coolest latest thing, and is expert at sending me articles (etc.) that will interest me. Recently, that was an article from the New York Times that blew my mind in a few different ways. For one, the story is striking: in February 2012 an avalanche in Washington state had tragic consequences for a group of skiers. The story of that day is told in this article in a structure that I very much appreciate. In a manner reminiscent of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (a book that started as an article in Outside magazine) and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, journalist John Branch approaches his subject from various angles. He informs us on the science of weather and snowpack and how avalanches form; the latest trends in backcountry skiing; the biographies of the individuals involved. As a text article, it would be very impressive, and very moving.

But that’s not the full story on this story. As presented online, Branch’s article uses a variety of media: still images and animations, video and audio clips, computer-generated demonstrations of (for example) avalanche activity. And, as Liz points out, all the media are combined in such a way that, as one scrolls to read the article, it all flows and combines smoothly without distracting the reader. How many times have you seen this done the wrong way, where flashing images pull your eyes and/or mind away from the content you’re trying to access? I think I can say that this is the finest multimedia presentation I’ve seen online. Combined with the incredibly powerful story Branch has to tell, this is a unique experience you don’t want to miss.

And with that long introduction…

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