MeFi Projects

Nametrix is an iOS app I created initially for baby naming, but it ended up being way cooler than that. It uses public data on millions of people (US census, US campaign contributions, Wikipedia) to determine what professions, political parties, and other affiliations each name tends toward. For example, Ellen is a disproportionately common name for 1) psychotherapists, 2) librarians, and 3) activists. Ellens also overwhelmingly lean toward the Democrat party and have tended to be most popular in the northeastern part of the US. As far as I know, nobody else has made anything remotely like this... Pretty fascinating stuff, right? What other kinds of metrics would you like to see?
posted by hodgebodge on Jan 24, 2013 - 23 comments

It occurred to me that some of the best conversations I’ve had lately revolve around the question - why are you a librarian? I thought it would be fun to collect these stories in a central place so that we’d have a snapshot of all the different reasons people join the information science profession but more importantly, why we’ve stayed in libraries. I’m collecting anecdotes from Twitter (tweet with hash tag #ilibcause), via email (ilibcause@gmail.com) and via a submission form on the website ilibcause.com/submit. More information available at ilibcause.com/about. [more inside]
posted by ginagina on Apr 21, 2011 - 1 comment