Kurdish reaction to Saddam execution

As one of the major victims of Saddam Hussein and the only real friend Americans have in Iraq, you might have expected the Kurds to jump for joy over Saddam’s execution.
Not really. According to several stories gathered by the Kurdish news site kurdmedia, the Kurdish community is very angry that Baghdad couldn’t wait till after [...]

Saddam is dead, but it didn’t have to be this way

Saddam Hussein, former dictator of Iraq, has been hanged. While I believe that his trial was a mockery of justice, especial when compared to the Nuremberg trials of the prior century, I also think the publicly available evidence makes it plain he was guilty.
The ironic thing to me is that while we make a big [...]

Content Locked by Google, Freed by Marines

Brief history of the 8th marines
Originally uploaded by AlaskanLibrarian.
Find this book in a library. Read this book online. Or see how Google Book Search hides most of this public domain government document!
For all of their bravado in taking on mass digitization projects in the first place, Google really disappoints me with their over-cautious [...]

Logging and Sawmill Operation – Army Style

Logging and Sawmill Operation – Army Style
Originally uploaded by AlaskanLibrarian.
Looks like the Army needed to know how to do *everything*. How is the Army way of logging different from the rest of us? Read the book.
Why is this cover even here? Part of the raw materials of govdoc videos.

A book we all should have read in 2003

Today I came across a 1999 publication by the US Marine Corps Studies and Analysis Division that I think would have been valuable in the debate running up to the Iraq War in 2003.
That book is The other side of the mountain : Mujahideen tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War. It was written to help Marines [...]

Setting the stage for the reference interview

As librarians, we are told that the reference interview is fundamental to answering the question the patron really has, as opposed to what question the patron came in with. You know, someone asks you where your archived newspapers are. You take her to the microfilmed newspapers and ask if that’s what she is looking for. [...]

100th posting! / SG-1 as librarians

According to Blogger, this is my 100th post at Alaskan Librarian since I started the blog on August 6, 2006. I don’t know whether this is a good or bad thing. Am I productive or merely voluble?
I thought about doing a retrospective, but it’s been less than six months since I started. So that seems [...]

Military Music – Not just marches!

Did you know that all of the military services not only have official bands, but also offer some of their music as free downloads? Check out the band sites below for both historic and fun songs in many genres:

Air Force
Army
Coast Guard
Marines
Navy

Some of the music is commercial, but some of it was written by the military [...]

My first few govdocs videos

I’m always searching for new ways to try and wake people up to the huge world of government information, both on the web and in the nation’s 1100 plus Federal Depository Libraries. This past week I got inspired by a energetic YouTube video promoting a public library.
This set me to work with my minimal video [...]

Libraries and Gaming: A painless way to learn more

The September/October 2006 issue of Library Technology Reports is all about gaming and libraries. The issue includes case studies of video games used in school, academic, and public libraries.
Full cite: Library Technology Reports, Sep/Oct2006, Vol. 42 Issue 5 by Jenny Levine
Because I work in a special library and didn’t see immediate application to my [...]