Sat 31 Mar 2007
Inside Higher Ed is running a op ed piece by Pamela Snelson, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) titled Libraries at the Cutting Edge. It is one of the best brief summaries of the value that academic libraries add to their institutions that I have seen in a while, and I recommend that you take a couple of minutes and absorb what she has to say.
from ResourceShelf
Sat 31 Mar 2007
eTools.ch is a search engine with a couple of interesting twists…
It is a meta-search engine, meaning it doesn’t do its own crawling and indexing of web pages, it sends your search to 10 other search engines, then sorts the results for you. But this is neither new or interesting; MetaCrawler was doing that when Google was called BackRub. Look at these features, though:
from Search Engine Land
Fri 30 Mar 2007
A couple of font-related items:
The SIL Open Font License (OFL) has been updated, primarily to clarify allowed usage such as document embedding (such as Pdf files). Read about it here. (from NewsForge)
The Open Font Library is a collection of, you guessed it, open fonts. They currently have 26 fonts, but this number will only increase. (also from NewsForge)
Thu 29 Mar 2007
Jenn Riley recently posted an essay on the TechEssence blog titled Involving more librarians and library staff in technology projects. It is well worth reading, and provokes a couple of thoughs of my own:
Every staff member, librarian, and administrator should be involved in projects. More importantly, they should be involved in projects that involve skills they don’t currently use and information not directly related to their current job.
Why? The more you know about what other people’s jobs entail, the better you will be able to understand how your own work fits into the bigger picture. Additionally, you may come into contact with tools and approaches that can be applied to your area. It is much harder to discover what you don’t know if you aren’t exploring new areas.
You also must be given room to fail. A good administrator is not necessarily a good cataloger, and vice-versa. Each will still benefit from working in the other’s area, and even ideas or effort that fall short will add to the organization.
Notice that I don’t specifically refer to technology, unlike the essay that inspired this. This is because the issue is much greater than any one approach, and is helpful in more ways than we can know.
Everything is connected to everything else….
Wed 28 Mar 2007
This article from Linux.com is a great overview of what it takes to run a digitization project with fragile material and across great distance, as the Library of Congress and Archive.org work together on a project to preserve some of the rare materials in the library’s collection that are at risk of decaying.
from NewsForge
Mon 26 Mar 2007
The Citizendium project has officially gone into beta (leaving alpha). This means that they are officially open for business, but still working the kinks out of the project.
For a good overview of the project’s purpose, this USA Today article covers it fairly well, as does the Wikipedia entry. It will be interesting to see how it compares to Wikipedia over time.
from Open Access News
Mon 26 Mar 2007
The latest news from the Evergreen ILS project is that Equinox Software, the support company founded by several of the Evergreen developers, and the King County Library System in Washington state, are teaming up to develop a proof-of-concept installation.
This installation will help Equinox work out any glitches in the installation process, and ultimately show the library world that Evergreen is ready for their production environment.
from oss4lib
Mon 26 Mar 2007
Library Journal came out with their Movers & Shakers supplement last week, and I got a chance to browse through it. I was surprised to discover that I have not only met one, but two of the people on their list. Note that I say “met”… I don’t “know” either of them, but have had opportunities to meet them.
Linda Slusar from College of DuPage (IL) is an incredible influence in the world of library support staff. She is directly, and indirectly, responsible for many, many staff obtaining their LTA certification, as well as co-founding and producing Soaring to Excellence (highly recommended). I first met her at the LTA graduation ceremony of a co-worker, several years ago.
“Gene Ambaum” is a pseudonym for an anonymous teen librarian from the Pacific Northwest who is one-half of the infamous Unshelved team. Unlike with Linda, I remembered to get proof of not only meeting “Gene”, but his co-creater Bill Barnes as well:
Sun 25 Mar 2007
The Public Knowledge Project is a Canadian research initiative started nine years ago in order to develop “free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals and conferences.” In doing so, they have found themselves at the forefront of both the open source and open access movements.
With the trend of increasing subscription prices and tightening budgets only getting worse, projects like this may play an ever greater role in our libraries in years to come.
from IT Manager’s Journal, via NewsForge
Sun 25 Mar 2007
Reed Elsevier, the European publishing corporation behind over 15,000 journals, is being challenged by one of them, The Lancet, in regards to its commercial involvement in the arms trade.
This connects to libraries in several ways: subscriptions to many print journals, as well as online access, are purchased by libraries, meaning we help to support the company’s activities; until recently, Elsevier was the owner of Endeavor (Pdf), the creator of the Voyager ILS; and in a broader sense, a company involved in both the trade of arms and the publishing of medical journals faces certain contradictions, which eventually raises questions about the quality of information that we provide from their journals.
It is important that we understand the details of this issue, and that we can understand the ways in which this can affect people and institutions. Individually we may not be able to do much, but our collective understanding, attitude, and action will make more of a difference in the world than we may realize.
Sources:
Fri 23 Mar 2007
An article titled “My National Security Letter Gag Order” appears in today’s Washington Post, and although it isn’t written by a librarian, it puts a face on what being served a National Security Letter might be like.
I am not as concerned with the gag order as I am with the fact that there is no judicial oversight of the issuance of the letters, but each aspect troubles me.
Gag orders designed to prevent tipping off suspects to an investigation are sometimes necessary, but to make the gag order include not being able to question the process under which the order was served strays, in my opinion, into one’s right to petition, as well as stretching the Fourth Amendment beyond its intended meaning.
article link from MetaFilter
Fri 23 Mar 2007
In the Citizendium Blog, there is a very good, concise post detailing how Wikipedia and Citizendium compare and contrast.
from Open Access News
Wed 21 Mar 2007
The queer, the quaint, the quizzical; a cabinet for the curious is an online version of a book published in 1882. It is interestingly like a blog: short entries on a variety of topics, many of them oddities.
Want to read a paper copy?
from MetaFilter
Tue 20 Mar 2007
Through Karen Schneider’s blog, I have been pseudo-assigned to post 5 non-library blogs that I read.
Here they are, in alphabetical order (hey, I work in a library… feel lucky I didn’t classify them via LC or Dewey):
If you are a library blogger and are reading this, you are now on assignment… give me 5!
p.s. This meme was started by The Liminal Librarian, btw.
Tue 20 Mar 2007
Bacon as a Bookmark? Librarians Tell All is the title of Mike Hardin’s column in today’s Columbus Dispatch. He details various objects found inside returned library books, as described by Columbus area librarians.
The “cat in the bookdrop” library happens to be located about one block from my workplace.
I know a librarian in Illinois who found a strip of uncooked bacon in a book, but I cannot remember who it was… can anyone jog my memory?
Mon 19 Mar 2007
It’s not at the “web-based, jump in - the water’s fine” stage (though they indicate that they are working towards this), but the United States Geologic Service (USGS) has developed a National Land Cover Database from 2001 LandSat imagery.
This information provides very detailed (98ft square) information on every piece of land in the lower 48 states. If you have an interest in this, and don’t mind working with database information, check out their web site!
from ResourceShelf
Mon 19 Mar 2007
Peter Brantley is the Director of Digital Library Technologies for the California Digital Library (note that the blog that I reference has a different title, but I suspect that they are combining his current employer and a previous title, based on this page — though I could be mistaken, as well).
His recent blog post, Google and the Books, lamented the decision-making process that led to the Google Library Project deal with the UC libraries. He used a later post, Google Books: A Reprise with Clarity, to clarify his position, and set the record straight as to how he views Google.
Taken together, they are very interesting reading, and could stand as a guide for any library’s movement into digital partnerships.
from Open Access News
Mon 19 Mar 2007
The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) search tool has added a “Find in a library” link to many of their search results, which will open WorldCat in a new browser window with detail on which libraries in your area subscribe to the journal containing that article.
This one step makes ERIC much more convenient, and removes some of the guesswork involved with tracking down sources.
from ResourceShelf
Mon 19 Mar 2007
The official summary of the Users and Uses of Bibliographic Data meeting held by the Library of Congress at Google’s headquarters last week has been posted.
Karen Coyle’s blog has her notes from the meetings.
from Coyle’s InFormation and Catalogablog
Sun 18 Mar 2007
The New York Times is offering it’s TimesSelect service for free - if you register with an .edu e-mail address.
You can register here.
from Web4Lib post
