Libology Blog

The Joy of Computing Cookbook (pdf) comes from the excellent MaintainIT Project, and is an excellent resource for smaller, rural libraries who are trying to manage their technology within confined budgets and tightened schedules.

Like the MaintainIT project, the project is collaborative in nature, drawing upon the experiences of librarians and library staff from all over.  It is also another example of how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is helping the libraries that most need help.

One suggestion:  because it would be a handy alternative for many, I recommend that the project make the book available in paper form, via a print-on-demand company like Lulu.com.  They could offer the book at cost, which would let people have a traditional book option for this excellent resource.

from BlogJunction

The Library Fix is the title of Garrison Keillor’s current column, and presents his take on the long-term role that libraries can play in society.  It also appears in today’s Chicago Tribune, though you may need to register for access.

It also reminded me of the first library I worked in, a Carnegie library in Brookfield, IL.  It was warm in summer, cold in winter, drafty, and the antithesis of ADA compliance, but it was a charming building.  Its replacement is a good library building, but doesn’t have the same charming feel to it.

Google as Publisher : Is Google Poised for a New Push into the Information Industry? is a report for sale ( for $1,295.00!!!) by Outsell Inc. detailing how the world’s largest search company would be able to become one of the world’s top publishers “with the flip of a switch.”

For those of us without the chunk of change to purchase the article, their Press Release will just have to do.

In regards to the report, it would be a financial gain for Google to start selling the public domain books they have scanned. They would become the world’s largest print-on-demand company, and could reduce the number of out-of-print books significantly.  Food for thought….

found on Open Access News

The Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) has just been made easier to set up and use.

The brief summary: create a page of links to web resources you feel are useful and appropriate for a given topic. Via Google, you generate a short bit of code that is added to the page, and you have a search tool that will let people do a full-text Google search on all of those resources — without you having to maintain anything other than the page of links. If you add or remove links, the CSE automatically adjusts the search to match. Techie description and details are here.

So if your library has lists of web resources, this may be a way to effectively let your patrons search them for the information they want.

from Google Librarian Central

Specifically, Bowker has bought the company that owns AquaBrowser.

Bowker, best known for publishing Books In Print, as well as assigning ISBNs, has bought Medialab Solutions, the Amsterdam company that developed the search interface.

If you haven’t used AquaBrowser lately, try it out.

found on ResourceShelf

This isn’t directly related to libraries, and even the indirect aspect only applies to larger libraries, or libraries within larger institutions, but I thought there were some points of interest in this blog post from an anti-Google blog.

Of special interest to me is how Google handles their IT issues (near the end of the post). They have a local IT person (one per floor, it seems) who handles initial troubleshooting, updating and changing equipment, and other tech-related issues. This looks like a very flexible and quick system to get people what they need to keep working effectively. I have lost count how many times something like this would have been beneficial for a workplace.

Some of the gripes (office space, management structure, insurance) could be a reflection of what that particular employee values in their work experience. They could also reflect growing pains on Google’s part, so I leave it to the reader to decide where they would prefer to work, or at least which of these ideas could be applied to your library.

found on Search Engine Land

The Open Text Book blog was started a few days ago by the Open Knowledge Foundation. In their first post, they describe the blog as:

a place to list and keep track of news about textbooks that are open in accordance with the Open Knowledge Definition - i.e. free to use, reuse, and redistribute. While in the future we may post text book content, for now the site will be mainly used as a registry.

I like how this is gaining momentum. There are certain subjects that would benefit greatly from open texts, and I suspect we shall see more of these over the next few years.

found via Open Access News

WebJunction has launched a Rural Library Sustainability Online Course, and it’s free!

Their site has the following synopsis of the course:

• Visit each of the seven areas of interest critical to sustaining public access computing in your library.
• View case studies of rural libraries that have developed and completed an action plan in each of the areas.
• Create an action plan for your library by assessing your library’s current state and selecting achievable six month goals.
• Follow manageable steps from peer-recommended resources to accomplish your goals.
• Explore each area of the course at your own pace and return to any lesson at your own convenience.

found on BlogJunction

Well, it’s not a list from an official generator of trend lists, but Karen Coombs has posted a Top Tech Trends 2007 list that I think is well thought out and close to the mark.

How quickly (and how completely) these trends become our reality is open to debate, but we should be learning about them, and planning how to keep ourselves, and our libraries, as prepared as possible.

The future is coming!

Scitalks is an online collection of science videos, or as they put it, “Smart people on cool topics”.

Many of their videos feature notable researchers, and the topics range from experiments, to demonstrations, to lectures.  Don’t miss the classic Protein synthesis: an epic on the cellular level for your education on how to demonstrate the building of protein molecules using college students.

found on Open Access News

The Kirtas-BookSurge book digitization program has arrived, digitizing books from four libraries using Kirtas’ automated book scanning equipment and  BookSurge’s  position as an on-demand publishing subsidiary of Amazon.com.

Open Access News has a great overview of it, including why it might be a better deal for the libraries involved than Google’s own project.

A neat little post on MetaFilter on the history of alphabetization.  We take it for granted, but someone had to develop the system (and I am sure someone else was there to say “what’s wrong with the way we do it now?”).

Buried somewhat within the comments (which on many MetaFilter posts can be more interesting than the posts themselves) was a link to the Straight Dope’s background on the Dewey Decimal System.

(warning:  MetaFilter can be a not-safe-for-work place; there is no telling what types of topics will be posted)

WorldWideScience.org is a federated search tool for science resources sponsored by The British Library, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information, and eight other participating countries.  It searches 15 science portals and combines the results for your researching pleasure.

found on ResourceShelf

Lawrence Lessig, chair of Creative Commons, writer for Wired Magazine, and much much more, has announced that he is changing the course of his life, and will be attempting to champion the cause of a democratic society.  Don’t read my wholly  inadequate summary, however:  he words it quite eloquently.

from lessig blog

Need to learn about an old bottle?  Learn about design elements, markings, and other ways to date and learn about that object that has been on that basement shelf since before you moved in.

from MetaFilter

They’ve been around for a while, but I haven’t blogged about them yet, and they keep adding great features, so here is another great site for finding info related to location:

Melissa DATA has links to resources that give you information based on zip code, street address, and more.  Want to find out if an address is valid?  Know the address number and zip code, but don’t remember the street?  Mail delivery routes?  School districts?  These searches and more are at your fingertips.

found at ResourceShelf

It seems that not all is rosy with Google’s recent agreement with the CIC libraries.  There are apparently some fairly restrictive clauses in the contract, some limiting the libraries access to the digitized materials they provide.

The project, as well as the Open Content Alliance’s scanning project, is terrific as long as everyone wins:  the organization doing the scanning, the library, the publishers, and the public.  If all four groups are able to derive benefits from being able to access the materials (respecting fair use), then the boon for society would be hard to exaggerate.  If any group finds itself cut off, then there is a serious problem.

found on Open Access News

It is called the Library Of Unified Information Sources, a.k.a. LOUIS.  It’s purpose is to make it easier for people to learn about what is happening in the federal government, and is sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation.

It currently contains the following resources, with more being planned for the future:

• Congressional Reports
• Congressional Record
• Congressional Hearings
• Federal Register
• Presidential Documents
• GAO Reports
• Congressional Bills and Resolutions

found on ResourceShelf

No brand new flashy sites in this post; just a small collection of links on how one deals with the demands of time, projects and learning:

Big or Small? — Jen Riley at the Indiana University Digital Library Program has a post regarding doing a few big vs. many small projects.

Nicole’s Burnout Blues — Karen Schneider, a.k.a. Free Range Librarian, gives her tips on preventing burnout.

Three Hard Things — new guy at OCLC Roy Tennant’s follow-up to his Five Easy Pieces essay three years ago.

Each of these pieces speak to me, as I am preparing to start a relatively involved project that will require a fair amount of time management.  It could work, mainly because the time involved can be very flexible (and who needs sleep when you have a project?).

However, most everyone I know is trying to balance their time, effort, energy, and resources.  Perhaps there is a helpful nugget or two for everyone who follows the links….

Ken Varnum - RSS Basics and Beyond : Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most out of Syndicated Content. (PowerPoint) (Handout)

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

• Data format: RSS, RDF, Atom, etc.
• data interchange (sharing) : syndication - think of what AP or Reuters does with news stories

Where does RSS come from?

• blog software
• CMS/wikis (”what’s new feeds”)
• Perl, PHP, Ruby, etc - search databases (Search Alerts)

Reminder to remember copyright

Tools - common traits

• can access feed
• can track whats been seen already
• can reproduce item content
• can link to original source

Computer-based:

• FeedDemon
• FeedReader
• NetNewsWire (Mac)

Browser-based:

• Safari
• IE7
• Firefox / thunderbird

Aggregators (web-based):

• Yahoo
• Bloglines
• Google Reader (now offline-enabled)

Integration — RSS = Stream of information = easy to integrate into HTML

hooks:

• webblog software
• cms
• wikis

HTML:

• feed2JS (build & post rss html)
• RSS2HTML

Myfeedz — from Adobe’s Romanian office
generates new content based on your feed choices

Create “live” subject guides
del.icio.us (all tags have RSS feeds)

New books lists

Checked out book reminders for patrons

Library Elf

Monitoring the web
web page changes
Google Alerts
Page2RSS

Roll your own
Write by hand (not recommended)
set up free blog
write a script (Perl, PHP, Ruby)
FeedXs

Course reserve lists on class pages as an example of a script

Notes: Kens presentation was great as an overview of what can be done with RSS beyond just blog postings and news story gathering. I plan to use several of his suggestions, and expect that it will change the way I work with the web.