A few brief numbers on last night's election results (official numbers here, cool viz from Keith Ng here).

Largest majorities

• John Key, Helensville, 19,116 (no surprise there)
• Amy Adams, Selwyn, 17,708 (I think I just saw one of her movies)
• Tony Ryall, Bay of Plenty, 16,720
• Simon O'Connor, Tāmaki, 16,257
• Simon Bridges, Tauranga, 15,812

The largest Labour majority (and 10th overall) was Ross Robertson in Manukau East, with 13,850.

Smallest majorities

• Brendon Burns (L) and Nicky Wagner (N) are tied in Christchurch Central (presumably special votes will separate them).
• Paula Bennett, Waitakere, 349 (fingers crossed for special votes, though that would mean Labour would lose Andrew Little - and have no list MPs!)
• Kate Wilkinson, Waimakariri, 395
• Nikki Kaye, Auckland Central, 535
• Pita Sharples, Tāmaki Makaurau, 746
• Hone Pani Tamati Waka Nene (take a breath) Harawira, Te Tai Tokerau, 874

Greens

Best:

• Wellington Central, 26.3%
• Rongotai, 22.9%
• Dunedin North, 22.5%
• Auckland Central, 22.0%
• Port Hills, 19.1%

Worst:

• Manukau East, 3.4%
• Māngere, 3.8%
• Manuwera, 3.9%
• Botany, 4.2%
• Papakura, 5.3%

Interesting that their three worst electorates were Labour rather than National strongholds. 

NZ First

Best:

• Tauranga, 15.3%
• Bay of Plenty, 12.9%
• Coromandel, 11.2%
• Waiariki, 11.1%

Worst:

• Epsom, 2.6%
• Wellington Central, 3.0%
• Tāmaki, 3.9%
• Ōhariu, 4.0%

ACT

• Epsom, 2.6%
• Tāmaki, 2.4% (NZ First's second worst is ACTs second best :-)

I don't think we need to say anymore...

National

65.2% in Epsom, 64.8% in Tāmaki.

Also over 60% in East Coast Bays, Clutha-Southland, Hunua, Pakuranga, Selwyn, North Shore, Rodney, Botany, Taranaki-King Country, Waikato.

5.6% in Waiariki, 5.8% in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, and under 10% in all the other Māori seats except Te Tai Tonga (14.4%).

The lowest general seats were 

• Māngere, 14.6%
• Manukau East, 14.6%
• Manurewa, 20.4%
• Dunedin North, 32.0%
• Rongotai, 33.5%

Labour

Best:

• Māngere, 69.7%
• Manukau East, 64.4%
• Manurewa, 54.9%
• Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, 48.3%
• Hauraki-Waikato, 45.4%

Worst:

• Rodney, 13.1%
• Bay of Plenty, 13.3%
• Helensville, 13.8%
• Tauranga, 14.5%

Conservative

6.5% in Rodney and 5.3% in Northland - over the threshold.

• 4-5% in 6 electorates
• 3-4% in 21 electorates
• 2-3% in 18 electorates
• 1-2% in 14 electorates
• 0-1% in 9 electorates (all Māori and Auckland/Wellington Centrals)

Foreshadowing greater things in 2014? At 2.78% overall, it does seem a shame that that many votes will be wasted.

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party

Scored highest in the Māori seats (1.0 - 1.4%).

Next up were Invercargill, West Coast-Tasman, Clutha-Southland, Northland, Christchurch Central, Coromandel and Rangitata. Interesting mix.

Others

United Future only got over 1% in three seats (yes - outpolled by ALCP!).

The Māori Party got 10.4% (Te Tai Tokerau) to 20.9% (Waiariki) in the Māori electorates, but otherwise only breached 1% in Rotorua (close in East Coast).

Mana also did will in the Māori electorates with 5.6% (Te Tai Tonga) to 23.7% (Te Tai Tokerau). Again, they only breached 1% in Northland (close in Rotorua).

Libertarianz got 85 votes (0.26%) in Wairarapa - more than double their second best.

Alliance got 137 votes (0.48%) in Wigram - nearly triple their second best.

Democrats for Social Credit managed 121 (0.40%) in Invercargill and 119 (0.36%) in Dunedin South before dropping away.

I've been thinking a bit more about the EPUB container idea. Short version - it's probably not practical at the moment, and may not be a good idea anyway. But I'd be interested in hearing any thoughts if you have them.

On the usefulness side, as Deborah Fitchett says, having an EPUB that requires internet access could well be annoying and not terribly user friendly. It does seem in a way to defeat the purpose of having an EPUB - a self-contained device- and formatting-independent information container that you can display where and how you like. But I'm not sure that's necessarily a huge problem - the point is that we would be taking something that is even more restrictively limited and attempting to make it available in a slightly more convenient way. Perhaps it wouldn't add enough to make it worthwhile, but perhaps it would. (This is where your thoughts come in - there's a comments box at the bottom. :-)

As far as the practicalities go, I have had a brief experiment. I created an EPUB file with Sigil that contained a local image and one referenced on the web. Then I added an iframe that pointed to my library's website (Sigil said that tag wasn't allowed, but I saved it anyway). So, what happened? I opened it with a few desktop and iPad apps.

• Sigil: downloaded and displayed the image fine, and displayed the embedded webpage in a small frame - clicking through appeared to work mostly ok but was clunky.
• Calibre: exactly the same as Sigil.
• FBReader: didn't display the remote image, and displayed the iframe alternate text rather than the webpage.
• iBooks (iPad): didn't display the remote image, and displayed a blank frame instead of the webpage.
• Stanza (iPad): displayed the remote image and webpage, but the webpage was displayed as an image (i.e. couldn't click a link etc).
• Kobo (iPad): displayed the remote image and webpage fairly nicely. Links in the middle of the page opened in an embedded browser (links on the left and right were supersceded by the prev/next page navigation).

So, it would appear it's not technically practical at the moment, and I would hope that by the time it is that it wouldn't be needed. But in case the EPUB eutopia doesn't arrive soon enough, is it something worth investigating..?

I had an interesting idea on the way home yesterday. Libraries (particularly academic) subscribe and buy number of different ebooks. Some can be downloaded - most of these in PDF format - and can be stored and read in your ereader of choice (Kindle/Nook/Kobo device or iOS/Android app). But others can only be viewed online in a web browser - usually, because of licence restrictions, they can only be viewed via the library's EZproxy server (or similar). Could we package these in EPUB?

EPUB is just packaged HTML, and EPUB3 as I understand it is based on HTML5 (with CSS and JavaScript). If we could create an EPUB container that displayed these restricted books then we could allow library users to organise and read them in their reader of choice.

Two thoughts:

1. Have a single EPUB that gives access to all the institution's ebooks, i.e. a "University Library Books" book. We could utilise the Summon API (or similar) for custom searching, and could possibly use a local database to store the user's selected books.

2. Have a single EPUB for each book. Would authenticate to EZproxy and then display that one book, so would fit in with the ereader's library better. Possibility of HTML5 with offline storage to remember last location? Could download the ePub from catalogue page, or course page. Would need different setup for each provider.

I haven't thought all this through too far yet, nor looked in to the technicalities. But I thought it would be interesting to throw the idea out and see what people thought. The main issue that comes to mind immediately is whether the nature of the underlying ebook format would degrade the reading experience and negate the benefits of putting it in EPUB. And of course you would need to have an ereader with internet access - so no reading at the beach with your iPod Touch, and no luck at all with some of the dedicated devices (Kobo etc).

 

I've been on Twitter for a while now, and mostly access it on my iPod touch (2nd gen FWIW). But why can't I find app satisfaction? Surely there must be something out there that works properly (i.e. how I want it to)?

First, my brief tale of woe: I used Echofon for a while and it was good; then I paid for Tweetie 2 (which became "Twitter") and it was better. Then I started using lists and it was worse. I've tried a couple of other apps and nothing seems to work "properly".

So, what do I want? It's not that hard. I split my followers into lists so that it's easier to manage the volume - basically I want to treat each one in the same way that most apps treat the main feed (remember where you are and what you've read, load all tweets etc).

Twitter (previously Tweetie2): Handles the main feed in a great way, but lists aren't treated as first class citizens (i.e. in the same way). It loads the list from scratch each time, so you always start at the latest tweet, rather than the oldest "new" one.

TweetDeck: This is pretty cool - it's got a completely different interface to the others and gives you great flexibility over what you see. It treats lists as first class citizens - as it does searches, and anything else you can configure. In fact it would be perfect but (and it's a big but) for the fact that it doesn't load all tweets. It only loads a relatively short number, and unlike other clients doesn't give you the option to load more in the "gap". For example when I get up in the morning it only gives me about 3 hours of tweets coming in from the UK - not much point following these people if I can only see what they say during my daylight hours. The desktop version has on option to configure the number of tweets to download (up to 600) but I can't see anything like that here. It also bugs me that tweets are deemed to not be new when I close the app - if I load it up and read the new tweets in list A but don't look at list B, then it would be handy to still have the ones in B marked as new when I come back later on. But that's pretty minor in comparison to the problem of not getting all the tweets.

TwitBird: This almost seems to be what I want. As well as having some nifty features, like showing the original tweet below a reply (often making things more intelligible), push notifications (if I pay more money) and rotation lock (yes, in iOS4, but for Touch2g) it actually treats lists as first class citizens. New tweets are marked as such, and retained when I close it down; it remembers where I was in the feed last time, and if a tweet occurs in two lists it marks them as read in both. It's almost like they took some time to think about how I would actually like to use it. So where's the "but"? Yes, unfortunately those features aren't enough - it's often slow and clunky, and occasionally crashes. Perhaps this is (partly?) the fault of the system - everything seems a bit slower and slightly less stable since the iOS4 upgrade, but nothing else is as bad as this. It takes longer to do anything than the other apps and the crashes mean that it often doesn't remember where I was last, but the time before last (so I have to scroll up through 1/2 a day's tweets or more to get to the new stuff). Maybe I'll get used to it, but I'm seriously doubting whether it will be practical to keep using.

I've also tried Echofon, TwitBit and Twittelator but none of them get near to what I want either.

So, am I being too fussy? Am I being naïve in hoping for perfection? Or have I just not encountered the right app? It doesn't feel like I'm asking for too much...

Marshall Breeding has recently released the results of his 2009 Library Automation Survey. Some of the results are quite interesting. See the main writeup, which gives a good overview of the results; the demographics; and the search page for access to all results.

Caveats

One has to be careful about drawing too many conclusions from the survey - it is a voluntary sample, so it won't necessarily be indicative of all customers. And it's likely that the answers of each single respondent mask a range of views within each organisation. Similarly, comparisons with the previous two surveys have to take into account the different number of respondents. In that vein, I was pleased to see the number of both New Zealand and Voyager respondents had doubled on last year.

Satisfaction

I graphed the "are you satisfied with your ILS?" responses in one of them nifty Google widgets which gave a different view from the tables. But Posterous doesn't allow Javascript so you'll just have to take my word for it.

I'm not surprised that Voyager satisfaction is so low. It seems to have risen 2007-2008, presumably due to the concerns over the Ex Libris takeover being ironed out. The 2008-2009 drop may just well be the increase (doubling) in respondents. Aleph 500 has had a steady increase, but it also had a doubling of respondents.

The open source systems have grown from small numbers (presumably due to more people switching to them) so previous comparisons aren't terribly meaningful. I don't find it too surprising that Liblime has relatively low satisfaction, given what I've been hearing lately - hopefully the PTFS buyout will improve things there.

Open Source

Marshall concludes that there isn't much interest in moving to FOSS ("open source") systems, despite all the hype. This doesn't surprise me too much. The proportion of librarians (even system librarians) who have a philisophical drive towards open source is reasonably low, despite knowing the pain of vendor lock-in. Combine all the ambivalence / ignorance / mis-perceptions with the fact that moving to a new system is a costly exercise (in more ways than just money) so it isn't usually done more than about once a decade. The majority of libraries aren't looking at moving to a new system - when they do many will consider open source systems on an equal footing with proprietary ones and will go with whatever they feel suits them best (which in a lot of cases will be open source, according to many in their ranks! :-) - but until they're in that position it's not surprising that they don't express a desire to go that way.

Open source isn't well served in this survey by the product-vendor arrangement that the underlying LibWebCats database uses. For proprietary software there is a single vendor that is the sole source for purchasing the product from, and for providing support and development. For open source software the product can be acquired for free from the web; everything can be done inhouse by the library, or a company may be paid to provide set-up, support and development in a similar fashion to the proprietary model. Alternatively there may be a mix of both approaches. Additionally, support and/or development may be purchased from a number of different companies - sequentially or concurrently. LibWebCats lists Evergreen as a single option, assuming the "vendor" is Equinox; Koha is represented by 10 options - nine companies ("Koha -- LibLime", "Koha -- ByWater Solutions" etc) and "Koha -- Independent". Recently Eric Morgan compiled a list showing that there are at least four companies supporting Evergreen and at least 23 supporting Koha.

Comments

The comments that are recorded are probably the most useful and insightful part of the survey. With each product there is a range of positive to negative, and the removed (for anonymity) context of the institutions that they come from would probably helpful in interpreting them. I find that the snarlingly negative ones are the most revealing, likely because it's easy to get eloquent and verbose about something you really dislike, but you have to really really like something to get positively verbose about it in this context. And very few people feel that way about their ILS. :-)

Those considering adopting ALEPH should be aware of a few things: While highly configurable (and it truly does have great potential), the utilitarian configuration and maintenance of it requires a robust and savvy institutional IT staff. The demands that will be placed on them are easy to underestimate, as customization of this beast is woefully essential. It simply cannot be used in its out-of-the-box state. Astonishingly, given its improbable length, the provided documentation for this thing is inadequate. Anticipate alternating bouts of weeping and mocking despairing laughter. There are also significant issues with its archaic architecture and numerous hard-coded features that are impossible to work around. Its much-maligned reporting and statistics components, while easy to target for their inadequacy and staunchly counter-intuitive nature, have improved somewhat over the years. However, Ex Libris is so aware of the problems with the built in reporting functionality that they're eager to sell additional software to their clients, so they may more readily extract the necessary statistics from their ILS. Take note: this is a great way to monetize failure. It must also be noted that Ex Libris' revision process is staggeringly far from responsive to user needs. In the worst case scenarios, long-standing problems will finally be fixed in the current version only to be backed out of as soon as the newest version rolls out, starting a new years'-long ordeal of petitioning for change. This has happened and serves as a fine working definition for whatever the opposite of customer service is. That being said, these issues principally impact the staff-side of things, which can almost universally be worked around, no matter how inconvenient or inefficient it may be to do so (and sadly, you can expect routinely automated tasks to be rendered manual once you've adopted this ILS). The absolute worst component is the patron-side. The OPAC is a consummate dog (no disrespect intended to canines), guaranteed to frustrate and retard users. So don't embark down this road unless you also have plans for an alternative front end. This raises an interesting question: if the back-end is unwieldy, the front-end is unusable, and the customer support is vacuous, what value are you getting from your high-priced ILS? [ALEPH user]

Our library is part of a Consortium of libraries and the final decision on staying with Aleph or going to another product is not ours. But if our library could afford to purchase another product on our own we would leave Aleph. When you do get an answer it is usually worded as rudely as possible. They promised many features that they did not have. The system is lacking basic circulation functions that actually work or produce the correct information. [ALEPH user]

Voyager 7.0.4 was totally untested when released. Major functionality was lost, much to the surprise of the vendors when reported. We had to cancel the upgrade at short notice after involving staff from 5 consortium libraries in intensive testing - a major waste of staff time. The second attempt at an upgrade was ultimately successful, but the release was still very "buggy". Response from the vendor was slow and they did not make an effort to fix bugs, many of which we have to live with i.e. we have had to turn off patron initiated short loan bookings on the web. Major step backwards. [Voyager user]

We have no money, we have no staff, we have a server that is ready to die and can't upgrade unless we get a new server, and we can't afford a new server. We can't consider any new technology, such as a search interface. We haven't even enabled all the current capabilities of our ILS, due to lack of funding and staff. We have missed several upgrades and patches since our server can't accommodate them. Open source? Might be interesting, IF we had any staff who knew how to program. Unfortunately, we don't even have the library staff with the tech skills for day-to-day needs and depend on institution staff, who don't understand or care about library-specific needs for technology. Our administration does not understand library technology needs. Our user computer stations are now 7 years old. This is not because of the recent financial meltdown, but has been exacerbated by it. It's very frustrating. The tyranny of the upgrade. Our administration does not understand why our costs for networking are always increasing, and frankly, neither do I. This little comment box is not big enough to include the extent of my frustration and outrage. Also, why do I need a staff or a system librarian specifically for the ILS, this college's administration does not understand, seeing it as any other software that any network administrator can maintain. Well, why not? Is the ILS so "special" ? There is no option for a small and underfunded college library to get quality software product, because that's not where the money is- there is no profit is providing that kind of system, so we have not choices, all of the ILS are very robust, complex, expensive, and demanding of staff time, and we can barely keep up. It's ridiculous. There is no middle ground, or I haven't seen any, unless you have a sharp programmer or computer-language-savvy librarian. God help me if we ever need to migrate to a new ILS. We have actually been planning for what to do if we need to fall back on a card check out system- if the ILS fails, if the server fails, what will we do? We have no backup, no failsafe, and faculty, staff, and the administration do NOT understand and would not think that a card checkout system was so bad. Some think that's what we do now already. Back to the stone age. Sorry, I could go on forever. It's just really bad for small libraries with clueless administrators and shrinking funding. Shrinking to disappearing funding. [Voyager user]

I think the service has improved as the prior company had poorly trained techs with bad coustomer service skills. When I call up it is because I need help and am too busy to sort through all the materials and then comprehend it. There are some major flaws in the catalog duplicate detector which I had to figure out myself as the tech people didn't really understand libraries. The ISBN number only checks a few digits and since the 13 digit system came in, I am getting many hits on different titles. This is really bad. When I called up tech support, they had no clue. I finally figured it out and they claimes that -OH yeah there is a bug-. I think the design team should include librarians with up to date skills and not some tech person writing codes. [Voyager user]

III's insistence on maintaining a closed architecture for their ILS is becoming more problematic as time goes on -- real interoperability remains severely limited. We are doing more work outside Milliennium - keeping our III database as the db of record but exporting data into other, more flexible systems for manipulation, combining with other data sources, and for analysis. We're beginning to look at replacements for some III's modules that aren't as tightly coupled into the ILS (WebBridge, ERM), and to think about what traditional ILS functions might be done in other systems as we have less need for inventory control and more need for management information and decision support. [Millennium user]

The main problem with the current provider of our library system, Innovative Interfaces, is that they are very expensive. The system is good and so is the support, but I am frustrated that whenever I want to extend the system or do something cool with it I am prevented from doing so. The company invariably then can provide me with a way of doing what I could do for cheap or free with an expensive price tag. It is of vital importance for libraries to have the freedom to innovate. [Millennium user]

ILS vendor not necessarily responsive to customer needs; seems to have their own agenda on improvements and enhancements to services and products, often cherry picking for the quick and easy solution rather than meaningful and desired by their customers [Millennium user]

Coming from outside "LibraryWorld", I find the support and services provided by suppliers and vendors to libraries generally appalling. The whole industry needs to stand up to vendors and suppliers and tell them to shape up or we will go elsewhere or do it ourselves! Even this survey tends to perpetuate the issues - I don't want good support from a vendor, I want a product that works, that I can control and configure myself, so that I don't need support from them! [Symphony user]

The relationship between the company and the UK customer base seems to be going from bad to worse. The UK Enhancement Forum (a group of customers charged with prioritising Symphony/Unicorn product enhancement requests from all the UK sites) recently decided to dissolve itself after 2 years of hard work, citing company inertia and a lack in interest from the company in taking the requests seriously. At Huddersfield, I've had no direct contact from our Account Manager in nearly 2 years, despite having a contract which requires a quarterly on-site visit from the company. As the most recent version of Horizon available to the UK academic market is still 7.3.4, we've not been able to upgrade for over 2 years and are stuck with a system that won't work with Vista or Windows 7, and that requires a legacy version of Java. The only benefit of this is that we rarely require customer support from the company. Sadly, I find myself unable to think of anything positive to say about the company! [Horizon user]

We are on Polaris Hosted, and it was a tough transition with many issues with our equipment and the remote desktop connections. It took almost 8 months for everything to actually work together smoothly where we were not getting disconnected, and all the printers could move easily between the remote desktop environment and the regular environment. This was the first time I have seriously questioned if we had made the right choice. It is working out now very well, but the process was anything but smooth, and I had lots of complaints and issues. I do not know if I could say the service had gotten worse, however: it was a whole new set of problems. Service was responsive and caring, but it all took too long to get right. Some issues turned out to be ours, some Polaris, some our ISP. The whole mess aged me quite a bit. [Polaris user]

Our library underwent a horrifying upgrade experience in [...]. Circulation was down for two days and it tooks weeks to get the system to work without any problems...we are still working out for of the kinks months later. This is the second bad upgrade we have had with this company. The first was in 2005 in which we lost half of our patron accounts, the cataloging system messed up, and the bookmobile program was totally wiped out. [Library.Solution user]

TLC has given poor customer service and makes it almost impossible to use any third party software needed to interface with TLC. TLC is NEVER at fault and provides little or no assistance to resolve issues that are not totally TLC. EXP: recent purchase of an RFID system from another company resulted in a complete rewrite of SIP software and ONLY done with the persistence of the RFID--Tech Logic insistence. Our issues are always at the bottom of the list. Responses to are measures in weeks. One request took more than TWO years!!!! [Library.Solution user]

We recently migrated to LibLime Enterprise Koha. We are not happy. There are serious deficiencies in using this ILS for cataloging, making what was previous a relatively smooth process very slow and cumbersome. There is an extensive list of unresolved bugs in the cataloging module. Because of this, there is now an extensive backlog of unprocessed books in our technical services area and we are not sure when the bugs that are the causing the problems will be addressed. The OPAC is buggy as well, producing search results not consistent with user's expectations. MARC fields that are traditionally indexed in most OPACs were not indexed in LEK when we migrated, and many of these problems have persisted. Clicking on subject heading hyperlinks does not lead to searches for that specific subject/subheading combination (the subheading is dropped from that search.) Automatic truncation of terms occurs even when this setting is turned off. It's very difficult to do specific searches for titles, since some MARC fields are indexed as title fields which are not traditionally searched in a book title search. Not all of the MARC fields normally indexed in a keyword search were included in searches. There is a stop word function in the admin that can be activated in the admin module but we were warned that we should not implemented because of conflicts with the Zebra search engine bundled into LibLime Enterprise Koha. Frequent staff changes at LibLime make it hard to determine where to send a particular help or change request. Emails directed to specific staff members at the company, sometimes get no response, and even when responses are received, resolution of a problem is slim. Timely resolution of issues is very rare. Even the staff at LibLime often seem to not know which staff member handles a particular type of problem. Our library was part of a major migration of a group of libraries implementing the system at the same time and it seems that LibLime is not really equipped to deal with this sudden and large increase in their customer base. We migrated from our previous ILS in part because of their poor customer support. This has not been an improvement. I use other open source software frequently. I am using the free version of all of those products, and I find it ironic that I am getting better support from the unpaid user base for Ubuntu, Thunderbird, and Firefox than our institution and consortium is getting from Liblime. Every time I have posted to Ubuntu or Mozilla project forum, I've gotten answers, but my emails to LibLime often get no response. They offer multiple support venues, but the bottom line is that the support is unreliable. The same bug is sometimes reported multiple times without any response or resolution from LibLime. The user support group email list is full of posts of problems with [LibLime Enterprise Koha user] (LLEK is a fork from the main Koha)

Lib-Web-Cats has a fancy new map feature. You can see maps for countries, cities, ILS's etc and combinations thereof.

• Libraries of New Zealand
• Libraries using Koha

 

 

The catch is that a number of entries don't have coordinates, so they don't show up on the maps. This is either because the entry hasn't got a proper address for Google to find the co-ordinates, or because Google couldn't find the co-ordinates from the address due to one of its limitations. Now you can help, to make the maps more complete and useful (and fun!). The searches below list libraries that don't have co-ordinates in Lib-Web-Cats. You can either find a correct address for them and/or get the precise co-ordinates from Google Maps - then either email the details to Marshall Breeding or register with Lib-Web-Cats to update the entries yourself.

 

Libraries without co-ordinates... (change the URL to see an option not here)
by country/state:

• New Zealand
• Australia
• Canada
• United Kingdom
• California

by ILS:

• Koha
• Evergreen
• Voyager
• Aleph
• Millennium

by discovery layer:

• Summon
• Primo
• VUFind
• Aquabrowser

Last year (2009) I managed to watch exactly 100 films - not planned in any way, it just turned out to be that. Of these, 18 were ones I'd seen before - marked with * in the list below. (Only 98 are listed - I watched Australia and Pan's Labyrinth twice.) A brief disclaimer - some portion of the bunch reflects my wife's preference in movies rather than my own. :-)

1948

Rope, directed by Alfred Hitchcock

1959

North by Northwest, directed by Alfred Hitchcock

1971

Harold and Maude, directed by Hal Ashby

1972

Last Tango in Paris [Ultimo tango a Parigi], directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

1978

* Grease, directed by Randal Kleiser

1982

Conan the Barbarian, directed by John Milius

1983

Flashdance, directed by Adrian Lyne

1987

* Dirty Dancing, directed by Emile Ardolino

Good Morning Vietnam, directed by Barry Levinson

* Lethal Weapon, directed by Richard Donner

* The Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner

1990

* Ghost, directed by Jerry Zucker

1993

The Firm, directed by Sydney Pollack

Message from Nam, directed by Paul Wendkos

* Sleepless in Seattle, directed by Nora Ephron

1995

* Clueless, directed by Amy Heckerling

1996

Bitter Sugar [Azúcar amarga], directed by Leon Ichaso

1997

Addicted to Love, directed by Griffin Dunne

Life is Beautiful [La vita è bella], directed by Roberto Benigni

1998

* Patch Adams, directed by Tom Shadyac

1999

Message in a Bottle, directed by Luis Mandoki

2000

Jubilee, directed by Michael Hurst

2001

* I Am Sam, directed by Jessie Nelson

* Legally Blonde, directed by Robert Luketic

Spirited Away [Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi], directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Storytelling, directed by Todd Solondz

Victoria and Albert, directed by John Erman

2002

* About a Boy, directed by Chris and Paul Weitz

Red Dragon, directed by Brett Ratner

* Sweet Home Alabama, directed by Andy Tennant

The Transporter, directed by Corey Yuen

2003

Intolerable Cruelty, directed by Joel Coen

* Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld

The Mother, directed by Roger Michell

School of Rock, directed by Richard Linklater

2004

Alfie, directed by Charles Shyer

Being Julia, directed by István Szabó

The Clearing, directed by Pieter Jan Brugge

Finding Neverland, directed by Marc Forster

A Good Woman, directed by Mike Barker

Hellboy, directed by Guillermo del Torro

Kaikohe Demolition, directed by Florian Habicht

Mean Girls, directed by Mark Waters

Shall We Dance?, directed by Peter Chelsom

Troy, directed by Wolfgang Petersen

2005

Cake, directed by Nisha Ganatra

Casanova, directed by Lasse Hallström

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, directed by Tim Burton

Hoodwinked!, directed by Cory Edwards

Keeping Mum , directed by Niall Johnson

Match Point, directed by Woody Allen

Monster-in-Law, directed by Robert Luketic

Prime, directed by Ben Younger

Proof, directed by John Madden

River Queen, directed by Vincent Ward

Rumor Has It..., directed by Rob Reiner

V for Vendetta, directed by James McTeigue

2006

Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuarón

The History Boys, directed by Nicholas Hytner

Miss Potter, directed by Chris Noonan

The Painted Veil, directed by John Curran

Pan's Labyrinth [El Laberinto del Fauno], directed by Guillermo del Torro

Step Up, directed by Anne Fletcher

Stranger Than Fiction, directed by Marc Forster

* The Wrong Man [Lucky Number Slevin], directed by Paul McGuigan

2007

The Grocer's Son [Le fils de l'épicier], directed by Eric Guirado

Hairspray, directed by Adam Shankman

Hot Fuzz, directed by Edgar Wright

I Could Never Be Your Woman, directed by Amy Heckerling

* The Jane Austin Book Club, directed by Robin Swicord

* P.S. I Love You, directed by Richard LaGravenese

La Vie en Rose [La môme], directed by Olivier Dahan

2008

Australia, directed by Baz Luhrmann

A Bunch of Amateurs, directed by Andy Cadiff

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, directed by David Fincher

The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan

Hancock, directed by Peter Berg

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, directed by Guillermo del Torro

In Bruges, directed by Martin McDonagh

Last Chance Harvey, directed by Joel Hopkins

Lost in Austen, dericted by Dan Zeff

My Sassy Girl, directed by Yann Samuell

Rachel Getting Married, directed by Jonathan Demme

Revolutionary Road, directed by Sam Mendes

Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle

Step Up 2: The Streets, directed by Jon Chu

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, directed by Woody Allen

The Women, directed by Diane English

Yes Man, directed by Peyton Reed

2009

Confessions of a Shopaholic, directed by PJ Hogan

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, directed by Mark Waters

He's Just Not That Into You, directed by Ken Kwapis

Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970, directed by Murray Lerner

Love n' Dancing, directed by Robert Iscove

Piece of My Heart, directed by Fiona Samuel

The Reader, directed by Stephen Daldry

17 Again, directed by Burr Steers

Wuthering Heights, directed by Coky Giedroyc

Fun facts - 3 films in French, 2 in Spanish, 1 in Italian, 1 in Japanese; 4 New Zealand films; and 2 W. Somerset Maugham adaptations.

I played around with the information from the IMDb a bit, and was a little disappointed that nothing interesting fell out. But there was no plan or direction in any of the viewing, so I guess not too unexpected. The "most popular" director was Guillermo del Toro, with 3 films. There were seven with 2, but they were all completely by chance (except Alfred Hitchcock).

You'd think that with 100 films there'd be at least one actor that turned up in more that 5, but the max was 4 - Selma Blair, Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson, Patrick Swayze and Chris Wilson. The first four you presumably know, but the last one (the 23rd Chris Wilson IMDb knows about!) played four uncredited roles - villager, airport police officer, major crime unit detective and soldier. I'm pleased to be able to give him the recognition he deserves.

The lower profile crew members are the ones that end up with perhaps more interesting numbers, e.g. conductor Isobel Griffiths (14); ADR recordists/mixers Greg Steele (13), Peter Gleaves (10), Greg Zimmerman (9), Chris Navarro (8); camera car driver J. Armin Garza II (8); negative cutter Gary Burritt (11). A question: if all of someone's credits are "uncredited" - such as visual effects data manager Thomas Mathai (10) - how are we supposed to know that it hasn't all been made up? Perhaps it's not too late to get my name listed in the Lord of the Rings' credits...