Well, this week’s post almost didn’t happen because the Dude has been swamped with surveys, Monday was President’s Day, and the Dude is home today with a sick kid. As an update to the public library survey (the deadline was last Friday the 13
th), thank you e-mails have been sent out to those of you who have submitted and finalized your surveys. There are some surveys that have issues that are in need of a little TLC, and you should have received e-mail questions or calls about those by now. If all your issues are cleared up (or if you had no issues to begin with) you should have received an e-mail about the
supplemental survey. If you haven’t, please let me know and I will check on the status of your survey. Since the Dude is still working on finalizing some surveys, wait a few weeks for the final numbers on our survey response rates.
With the Dude suffering from a bit of a survey hangover, there is a shortage of material for this week’s post. Now, some of the abstract ideas ranged from word clouds, stories about robots in libraries, and more statistics on technology. But let’s be honest; the Dude finds most word clouds to be a bore, so they will be saved for another day when boring is on the menu. So for today the Dude will keep it simple, and note his interest in Reddit’s
DataisBeautiful, mostly because the data there is usually interesting but also because it is often uniquely presented. Using data in a simple way such as this not only gets a point across, but fits the innovative bill as well. Enter
this image, illustrating the number of deaths in George RR Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series. For GOT fans, the image says it all. For the record, the Dude is a fan of the HBO series (since the Dude doesn’t have cable, he wishes to thank Lincoln City Libraries for selecting the DVD’s in their collection), but found the books (after about the first 1/3 of Storm of Swords) to be long-winded. The Dude ain’t afraid to say it. Shaka.
Well, this week’s post almost didn’t happen because the Dude has been swamped with surveys, Monday was President’s Day, and the Dude is home today with a sick kid. As an update to the public library survey (the deadline was last Friday the 13th), thank you e-mails have been sent out to those of you who have submitted and finalized your surveys. There are some surveys that have issues that are in need of a little TLC, and you should have received e-mail questions or calls about those by now. If all your issues are cleared up (or if you had no issues to begin with) you should have received an e-mail about the supplemental survey. If you haven’t, please let me know and I will check on the status of your survey. Since the Dude is still working on finalizing some surveys, wait a few weeks for the final numbers on our survey response rates.
With the Dude suffering from a bit of a survey hangover, there is a shortage of material for this week’s post. Now, some of the abstract ideas ranged from word clouds, stories about robots in libraries, and more statistics on technology. But let’s be honest; the Dude finds most word clouds to be a bore, so they will be saved for another day when boring is on the menu. So for today the Dude will keep it simple, and note his interest in Reddit’s DataisBeautiful, mostly because the data there is usually interesting but also because it is often uniquely presented. Using data in a simple way such as this not only gets a point across, but fits the innovative bill as well. Enter this image, illustrating the number of deaths in George RR Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series. For GOT fans, the image says it all. For the record, the Dude is a fan of the HBO series (since the Dude doesn’t have cable, he wishes to thank Lincoln City Libraries for selecting the DVD’s in their collection), but found the books (after about the first 1/3 of Storm of Swords) to be long-winded. The Dude ain’t afraid to say it. Shaka. 
