Well, I just about fell over myself trying to load the LISTA package in ERM today.  This package goes by the default title in Serials Solutions of Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA) with Full Text.

LISTA’s default title is longer than 64 characters.  ERM is allergic to any incoming title longer than that, so it truncates the title, which in turn prevents the generation of matching checkins. Too bad you only catch these AFTER they fail.  And as long as your eyes are sharp.

I blithely thought I would just use the Coverage Conversion rules to shorten that 74-character puppy.   But multiple attempts (fiddling with trailing spaces, remaking spreadsheets, etc.) to convert the title using coverage conversion rules were failing to work.  

I’m not a stranger to ERM’s Coverage Conversion rules, having set up lots of things in there.  More hair-tearing occured.  Could it be…? Nah…but wait…lemme see if that comma in the incoming title could be affecting the conversion?

Bingo. 

So now we know!  More undocumented ERM features: No titles over 64 characters AND no commas in any incoming title in the conversion rules! 

That just about means that for LISTA, we may end up having to use the dreaded customized name field in SerSol (and we all know how I feel about THAT.)

This package is now fully deserving of an ERM Snake-in-the-grass award.  (Remember the award for Worst Serial title change from your Serial Librarian days of yore? The category assigned for afflicted library publications was given a Snake in the Grass award, or “Et tu, Brute?”)

Just installed the wordpress iPhone app which lets me post from my iPhone. This could be interesting for sure (the autocorrect feature is coming in pretty handy I have to admit…)

This is a well thought-out application – not over-engineered. Well done.

Lawrence Weschler of the New York Review of Books has put together a fantastically splendid slideshow on David Hockney’s iphone art.

I viewed it on my iphone. Which I am now calling my artPhone.

I am in love! And it is a many-splendored thing!!

The trend is pretty clear: it’s a trend.

So many rules about how to blog!  And how not to blog!   Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

You know things have definitely matured when we’ve basically gone from the former chorus of Blogging Rules! to the recent trend of Blogging: Rules.