It seems odd that it hasn’t happened before now, but the Library of Congress has just started a blog.

from One Big Library

Open Medicine is a new journal from Canada which is striving to be an online, open access alternative to the likes of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). 

There have been many new open access journals in the past couple of years (see the Directory of Open Access Journals for an idea of what is available), but this is one we should keep an eye on, because JAMA and NEJM are such high profile publications.

from Open Access News  

OCLC is announcing a new pilot project called WorldCat Local, intended to provide tools to help find materials close to the user. These tools will likely include circulation information, full-text capabilities for available resources, and eventually social networking features.

The program will begin later this month in select areas, starting with the University of Washington. I don’t know if you have to enter library card info to access the resources, or if you can simply use a local zip code to try this out.

Jessamyn at Librarian.net has a very relevent post about libraries who cannot afford to join in, and how it affects the WorldCat users in those communities.

from ResourceShelf

Creative Commons is getting ready to create CC Learn, a new division that will be devoted to “education, broadly defined — from kindergarten to graduate school, to lifelong learning.”  Their immediate need is to hire an Executive Director for the division.

The initial purpose is to establish standard licensing for educational content that can be shared for the benefit of all who seek to learn and/or teach.  An article on eSchool News provides some excellent detail.

from Open Access News

A CBS News producer has been fired for plagarizing a Wall Street Journal column by Jeffrey Zaslow about how children and adults view libraries in different ways.  The CBS report by Katie Couric has been removed from their website.

The article is interesting, although it is a shame that it came to my attention because of someone’s mis-appropriation of it.

spotted via the Drudge Report

The Wikipedia of Public Libraries : A quickie wiki primer, the PLWiki project, and You (pdf) is a presentation by Andrea Mercado, PLA Blog Manager, on wikis and how they can benefit libraries.   It contains a link to a request for feedback about a proposed PLA wiki.

If you work for a public library, or if you have any interest in how this might benefit libraries, check this out and give her your feedback and suggestions.

from ResourceShelf

libSite.org is a brand new, as well as fantastic, site for us library folk to visit, contribute to, and benefit from. It is a wiki that is used to let others know of library-related web sites, blogs, and other resources that might be of interest.

Visit, sign up, and be sure to recommend a resource, or add a comment about resources already added. You can sign up to receive e-mail or rss alerts when certain types of resources are added to libSite.org, as well.

from Web4lib listserv posting by Leo Klein (libSite creator)

Open Data : What Would Kilgour Think? is a post by Jay Datema about the recent settlement between the New York Public Library and iBiblio regarding the latter’s harvesting of records from the NYPL catalog.

I am increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of metadata being copyrighted.  This includes, but is not limited to, Dewey Decimal Classification and MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) records.  These are tools that follow shared rules, developed and honed by communities and experience, that we use to store information about our collections.

We use these metadata systems in order to have a shared method of storing, finding, and retrieving what we have.  They should not be confused with the resources we make available, the software we use to search for them, nor should they be considered intellectual property, as they exist solely to describe something else.

The standards behind each of these systems is important to the library community.  It does not increase the value of our collection if we lock our MARC records using copyright; it only keeps other libraries from sharing our information, which decrease the value of libraries in general.

As with all good standards:  the standards themselves should be well-defined, controlled, and updated as frequently as necessary.  Their benefits should be available to anyone who can put them to good use.  The library community (including companies and corporations) should recognize the value of the commons, and strive to make our metadata available for the benefit of everyone.

from Librarian.net

A couple music-related web sites of interest:

• LyricWiki is run using MediaWiki, the same software that runs Wikipedia. They describe themselves as “a free site which is a source where anyone can go to get reliable lyrics for any song from any artist without being hammered by invasive ads.” The site is in need of content for the less-mainstream musicians, but you can help out (which is what wikis are for).
• Second Hand Songs is a site devoted to song covers (when a musician or band does a song by another musician or band). If you want to find out who did the original version of Louie, Louie, or scan the variety of covers for the Beatles’ Yesterday, this is definitely the site you want.

LyricWiki found via ResourceShelf

Sophie is a brand new piece of software from The Institute for the Future of the Book (blog) that may signal one possible direction for written media.  When finished (it is Alpha software at the moment, meaning that you should use it only to try it out), this software should allow the user to integrate text, hypertext, audio, video, and images seamlessly into one experience.

Imagine a how-to manual that could play a demonstration video for any part of a project you wanted to create.  How about a mystery story that had clues located in pictures, audio, and video, as well as within the text?  Now think about what could be done to create an entirely new media experience using these elements.  There are a lot of possibilities.

from Free Range Librarian

On Coyle’s InFormation, a blog written by the ever-interesting Karen Coyle, there is a discussion about the transcripts of a Section 108 Study Group meeting hosted by the Library of Congress on the topic of copyright, libraries and digitization.  These meetings are happening because Section 108 was written to create guidelines for photocopying, and digitization/internet issues aren’t covered in any clear way. 

Sounds a bit dry?  Actually, it isn’t.  Karen does an excellent job of selecting key passages that reflect the lines being drawn in the debate over what should, and should not, be allowed in the realm of library research and inter-library loan(ILL).  If you care about ILL services, database access, and access to information, you really should read her blog entry.

The Library Salary Database (press release) from the American Library Association is an online database where you can find out what people earn in various library positions at various places in the country.

It seems like a good resource, but the ALA is charging quite a bit for access:  $250 per year for non-members and $150 per year for members.  Their “special deal” is $30 for one months access.  I could understand a reasonable fee for access if you were a non-member, but I suspect that they have obtained these figures from surveys of their membership, and to charge this much for access seems excessive.

The book format of this costs quite a bit less than database access:   between $63 and $100, depending on membership and whether you want MLS or non-MLS information.  And why does the non-MLS book cost at least $30 more?

To the ALA:  if you make this resource much more reasonably priced, perhaps making it a no-added-cost benefit for members (or perhaps even “in exchange for providing salary information”), you will find it a much more popular and respected resource.  I don’t believe it will get wide use in its present form.

from ResourceShelf 

Jessamyn points out that today is CSS Naked Day, a day to shut off our CSS style sheets and remind ourselves to keep everything accessible without styes.  The site will look fancy again tomorrow!

The first, Finding Time in the Penn State Libraries, is an example of what can be very wrong with how our patrons must use our online resources.

The second, Mr. Bean: The Library, is an example of what can be very right with British comedy.

the Penn State video link was posted to the Web4lib listserv by Chuck Lockwood, from a presentation by Ellysa Cahoy of Penn State

NetLibrary has launched what it is calling eAudiobook Subject Sets, which are bundles of downloadable audio books grouped by subject, so that libraries can tailor their purchases to their particular needs.

from ResourceShelf

Introducing the Michaels is a column by Michael Casey and Michael Stephens in the current issue of Library Journal. Read it. Print it out. Leave copies in your break area for co-workers to read.

Michael and Michael’s “tenets of the transparent library” are are golden nuggets of wisdom, and their application can greatly improve library environments throughout the world. Most of all, their application within the workplace can transform the internal environment of our own libraries.

Don’t think that this is a top-down project, however. Recognize that the best way to change your environment is to change what you are doing, and encourage the same changes for those around you. Network. Discuss. Share what you do, so that others better understand not only your role in the greater organization, but their own as well.

To those who think in terms of “knowledge is power” and respond by portioning out information in a controlled manner, these tenets are revolutionary (and perhaps even subordinate) ideas. Recognize that greater openness is the stronger weapon, and that the most effective way to wield it is to apply it in your own work.

The opportunity is here for libraries to become the standard-bearers of the information age, or the greatest irony.

The challenge of finding information in foreign language websites can be daunting.  If you need to translate a single page, then Babel Fish or Google Language Tools can help quite a bit.  What if you need to navigate throughout a site, though?

Online-Translator.com will translate a website on the fly, allowing you to navigate through the site in your native language.  As in all machine translators, the conversions can be a bit odd, but it will usually let you figure out what you need to get what you want.

Big news today in the announcement that Google has acquired OCLC. What will this mean for libraries? The merging of the Google Books Project and Worldcat, for starters. The library blogs are all over this story, so I will simply link to a few of them:

• ALA TechSource
• Free Range Librarian
• Hectic Pace
• Library Garden

Although I am really excited by this development, I understand why it isn’t getting much more mainstream press. It is a weekend, for one. Then there is the Final Four, and the ongoing political troubles for the Bush administration. Plus it is the beginning of the month, as well. Wow… is it April 1st already? Time’s fun when you are having flies.

See also: Gmail Paper