Yes, this is the last Carnival of the Infosciences (COTI). Chadwick put out the call for a new COTI administrator and no one answered the call. And would-be hosters were scarce with several carnivals being rained out in recent times. Now is the time to say farewell. Libraries Interact is very chuffed to be hosting the last COTI. It deserved to go out with a bang, not a whimper. And it seemed like a nice event to celebrate Library and Information Week and Information Awareness month in Australia.

The founder of COTI, Greg Schwartz, started the carnival in 2005 and Chadwick Seagraves took over running it in 2006. Greg sent in a farewell ‘speech‘…

“As good an idea as the Carnival seemed at the time, it proved to be counter to the cultural norms of the library blogosphere. Librarians just didn’t embrace the idea of nominating one’s own work for inclusion. They aren’t self-promotional in that way. A heartfelt thanks to everyone who tried to make it work. It was a fun ride while it lasted and I hope at least a few people found value in it.” — Greg Schwartz

Chadwick was going to make a speech too, but it seems the lures of a holiday got the better of him. Look out for a comment perhaps after his vacation.

by rpongsaj (Creative Commons License: Attribution)

Curtain up …..

Security

First up, one from me.. Security is one of the themes of Information Awareness month, so this handy list of Firefox extensions designed to protect your privacy is worth a mention. iLibrarian has synthesized the quick list, 10 Firefox extensions to protect your privacy, from a much wordier post at Web Worker Daily.

Privacy

And Ken Varnum at RSS4Lib asks “will a photograph taken of someone without the subject’s knowledge, published to Flickr with a geotag, be considered evidence of that person’s whereabouts”. Geotagging Photos When You Take Them.

Metadata

David Bigwood sent in a post from Catalogablog about librarians becoming metadata standards advocates in their communities. As an example he says “If the local geneology society puts up a calendar on their website, help them get it into iCal or hCal format. Then we could drop their info into a pathfinder.” David would like to read your comments on this so get on over and comment on Metadata Advocates

I’m recommending a post by Neil Godfrey, Metalogger, Meta-reflections 4: team management issues. This is one in a series of reflections Neil is writing on his experiences with metadata and the Rubric project. This one focuses on team management issues, in the challenging scenario of a multi-institutional project. Not so much on metadata, but on critical success factors in a pioneering project.

Libraries & Collections

Neerav Bhatt submitted his post asking if Libraries are important from Rambling Thoughts. “Today the existence of libraries in our midst is so much taken for granted that their significance as living institutions is almost lost to us. Why are libraries important?” Check out Are Libraries Important and join in with the other commenters.

While we are on the importance of libraries, let’s expand that to the importance of librarians. Peter Binkley suggests Kathleen Seidel may be a librarian with ‘superpowers‘, going by his reference to a phone booth. At Quaedam Cuiusdam, in Stealth Librarian he outlines her research using her librarian superpowers to document the scientific case against the theory that preservatives in vaccines have caused the recent increase in diagnosed cases of autism.

From super librarians to nerdy chic librarians. Derek suggests that perhaps librarians should be embracing the nerd chic tag at Derek’s ALIA blog. It’s worth following the link to the newspaper article reviewing Andrew Finegan’s Library Idol show, too.

Another submission from me is by JBD over at Librarything blog. Two more legacies finished outlines what’s happening at Librarything with recently completed book collections of dead people. This is a good starting point to explore the “I see dead people['s books]” group.

Fiona Bradley submits a post from Cindi Trainor’s Citegeist. An Assessment of Next Generation Catalog Enhancements, Part I: The Model. Cindi outlines the model she used to assess catalogue enhancement options against her ‘best of the web’ which includes Amazon, Flickr, Wikipedia and Pandora (for Australian readers, that is not the NLA’s digital archive, but an internet radio site, that is not accessible to visitors from outside the United States. Check out Cindi’s post to find out about the sweet spot.

That wraps it up.. All you former carnies out there, leave a tribute to the COTI here.

So as the curtain closes… arrivederci, adios, farewell, adieu, good bye to the carnival.