All Starbucks Close Between 5:30 and 9:00 P.M. on Tuesday to Perfect the Art of Espresso

According to their press release, All Starbucks Store will Close Between 5:30 and 9:00 P.M. on Tuesday to Perfect the Art of Espresso.

The release goes on "Starbucks conducts historic in-store education and training event for more than 135,000 store partners (employees) across the United States.
In-store event and media-related details include:

• The company will close each of its nearly 7,100 company-operated stores in the U.S. on Tuesday, February 26 at 5:30 p.m. local time to conduct a nationwide education event, designed to energize partners and transform the customer experience."

What do you think? training 135,000 people in 3.5 hours?

Students 2.0

Read an EBook Week

In honor of "read an ebook week," Epublishing Weekly has posted 30 Benefits of Ebooks. Read on ebook week is March 2 - March 8, 2008.

Summary: Maryland Public library RSS feed links

A summary of the result from my request for Maryland Public library RSS feed links.

Allegany has 3 RSS feeds that the public can subscribe to.

1) From within our catalog, to be notified when we purchase material (www.alleganycountylibrary.info)

2) A feed for upcoming library events (in our scrolling events box of www.alleganycountylibrary.info)

3) And a directors blog (not well known in the public yet) (aclsdirector.blogspot.com)

ESRL – What’s New at ESRL

http://esrlnews.blogspot.com/

Harford County

1. we have RSS capability through our catalog via the AquaBrowser… a customer and save a search and generate an ongoing RSS feed for that particular search

2. a “newly acquired” feed generated through AquaBrowser that looks like this: http://aquabrowser.hcplonline.info/aquabrowser/rss.asp

3. HCPL News & Events - http://feeds.feedburner.com/HarfordCountyPublicLibraryNewsEvents

Kent County Public Library Innovations

http://kcplinnovations.blogspot.com/

Montgomery County

1. Book Newsletters - (Find out about noteworthy books by genre) http://www.supportlibrary.com/nl/nl_rview.cfm?x=376

2. Calendar of Events (Events at area branches and by program type.) http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/libtmpl.asp?url=/content/libraries/newsandevents/eventsrss.asp

3. Press Releases (An archive of MCPL's press releases.) http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/apps/News/RSS/rssDeptPressReleases.asp?id=71

4. Weekly Shhhout Out Blog (Roaming librarians file dispatches from the world of information.) http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/apps/News/Blog/LibraryBlog.asp?BlogID=3

Plus other blogs from within these headings

Enoch Pratt Free Library

http://www.prattlibrary.org/home/rss.aspx

On the mdch.org site:

Our collections page is a feed:
http://www.mdch.org/collections.aspx

The site blog:
http://www.mdch.org/blog/index.aspx

Tag Cloud as Catalog

Take a look at Flinder University Subject Heading Cloud. They have created a tag cloud out of their LC subject headings. I am not sure but I assume the cloud is built from a count of actual searches in their catalog. Neat Idea.

Book Video Widget

Regina on her blog brought my attention to this new widget that, according to Simon & Schuster "so you can add great content to your blog or website from some of Simon & Schuster's best loved authors. Each week we'll be featuring two new authors with a video interview as well as book content."

Helene Blowers of 23 things comments, "The only thing that could make this widget better (well 2 things actually)...

1) it allowed for library branding/ co-branding

2) "Reserve a copy" was listed as a menu option."

Better Than Free

Kevin Kelly's Blog The Technium has a really interesting post called Better than Free. In it he states that the internet is a giant copying machine and it is a very good copier. "when copies are super-abundant, they become worthless." He then goes on to say that

"When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied."

He then lists 8 generatives that make something better than free. Near the end of the post, he summarizes trait that make something better than free

"In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits. "

Front pages from around the world

The Newseum displays daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. The Newseum bills itself as the interactive museum of news. The site includes a news trivia game and offers visitors an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits.