Is this cool or what?

In re-reading an article for a new project I came across a description of a really cool open source, web 2.0-ish tool that some chemists have developed.

"Using Greasemonkey (4), a Firefox extension that allows anyone to write scripts that can change the way a web page looks, the Blue Obelisk group, a community of chemists who develop open source applications and data-bases in chemistry (5), has created several such scripts to enable chemistry-related features. One of these tools will insert links to blog stories about journal articles into the tables of contents of any ACS, RSC, Wiley, or NPG journal (6). This enhancement to a journal’s table of contents is completely independent of the journal publisher." (Martinsen, D. P. (2007). Scholarly communication 2.0: Evolution or design? ACE Chemical Biology, 2(6), 368-371. doi: 10.1021/cb700111w)

Holes or the Library Wellness Program

The shelves are finally back in place today and we started to shift them around from alphabetical by title order to call number order. As I was shifting (a fairly mindless pursuit as long and the books you're moving are in order to start with and you pay just a tad of attention to keeping that way) I was reminded of the movie Holes, you know, the one where they spend all day digging holes in the desert and filling them back in? We started the shift by creating "holes" in each range of shelving by consolidating all of the books at one end, Once we're done with that we'll start pulling them off the shelves in call number order starting with the A's (LC classification). BUT in order to make room for the items in call number order, we'll have to keep shifting into the holes we made today.

The next random thought I had was that this was pretty good exercise. We were bending and stretching and lifting and twisting up a storm...what a great workout! Who need's the University's Employee Wellness Program...we've got our own Library Wellness Program. Just put on your jeans and a t-shirt and come find me...I'll put you to work shifting too!