Letter From the Editor...

Greetings, iSchoolers!

Welcome to February and the latest Silverfish issue. As I write this, the sun--yes, you heard right. The sun--has broken through a normally bleak Pacific NW winter day and is baking my shoulder and cheek. It’s a honey child of a day.

This issue highlights--collection management in The Gambia, ducking into mid-winter ALA convention booth area only to be reminded of a career selling ink cartridges, the best of the free online music recommendation sites and so much more. Really. Lots. Before you do that, though, read about our brand, spankin’ new blog!

We’ve been busy around here. We not only have a new issue of the Silverfish for you, we now have an official blog, The Silverfish Newsletter over at blogspot: http://silverfishnewsletter.blogspot.com/! This is the official blog of the Association of Library & Information Science Students (ALISS) at the University of Washington.

This blog has been a long time in coming. Here’s how and why it works: as contributions roll in, they’ll be edited and go up on the blog. When it’s time for another issue of the Silverfish, the web site edition, we’ll copy all the blog content over to the beloved Silverfish website. A blog can’t give you the lovely layout that the ‘fish website does (thanks to our web guru Amy Vecchione), but it does offer your stories/photos/news/reivews, etc. in an easy-to-read, photos included, timely format. Why wait 6 to 8 weeks to get iSchool news produced online by you, dear iReaders, when technology has made it so that we can get your contributions out into the iUniverse the next day! So. You can consider the Silverfish blog for contributions that you might not normally due to the lag time between 'fish website edition issues. The story and pictures of your event last night or concert review, or DFW last quarter, letter to the editor, etc. will be posted within 48 hours, probably sooner. And then it all goes into the Silverfish, web site edition, for posterity. This makes it an incredibly easy, top-drawer portfolio opportunity. One thing: don't send us press releases. We want the real deal from your perspective!

De.li.cious the blog (or whichever social network you use) and check back often. It's meta-cool. Sign up for RSS feed. Yep. We tend to change the blog a lot frequently. Better yet, contribute! Drag yourself over to the typewriter/paper & pencil/MAC/whatever and write something already. Brag about yourself, your organization, your….um, I guess that’s enough bragging for now. We're still in beta mode, working out the kinks so if you have an idea or two or a contribution, email us: thesilverfish@gmail.com.

The purpose of the Silverfish, whichever edition, is to publish material relevant to the experience of being a student at the iSchool—which could include anything from book reviews to bar reviews, and from interviews with faculty to reports on new technological gadgets. There’s room for you, people! You fill up our Silverfish Newsletter, blog edition, which in turn will fill the Silverfish, website edition. (Did I mention your portfolio is looking kind of thin and sickly?)

Thanks to Sheri Boggs for her ace book review and publicity skills and to all our contributors for the writey stuff.

St. Valentine's Day beckons. Are you ready to answer the call? This cute birdie pic is one of, the at last count, 138 Valentine email cards to send from Hipstercards.com. There's even one starring Sigmund Freud!

Everything's copacetic here; hope it is where you are.

Cheers,

The Staff of The Silverfish
Joyce Hansen
Editor, The Silverfish Blog, Feed & eNewsletter
http://silverfishnewsletter.blogspot.com
http://students.washington.edu/aliss/silverfish