Rethinking the Catalogue (pdf) is a paper that was delivered to the Innovative Ideas Forum in Australia by Alison Dellit and Kent Fitch.  It presents another perspective on the state of library catalogues, and how we can go about improving them.

from Resource Shelf  

Interested in quick and straightforward tutorials for making dynamic websites and such?  Check out Google Code for Educators to get a few ideas and examples that you can use to enhance your projects.

found on the Official Google Blog

Eight Tips for Healthy Meetings is a post by Karen, a.k.a. Free Range Librarian.

Having spent a fair amount of time in meetings both good and bad, these are excellent guidelines for increasing one’s chances for running a productive and useful meeting.  Meetings are best when they are casual, friendly and open, but structured enough to keep the group on task; this can be a balancing act for the person wielding the gavel.

The ASL Video Dictionary is exactly that:  a dictionary of sign language that covers words, common phrases, and even religious signs.

found on MetaFilter

This demonstration of Photosynth, software from Microsoft that creates links among pictures based on elements within the picture, is fascinating to watch.

The most fascinating thing about this demo is you can start to sense the potential for this technology, for both the positive (imagine how this could improve searching through archival photographs) and the negative (facial recognition software for public cameras, anyone?).

It reminded me of this demo for a multi-touch interface.

found on Hanging Together

The Diary of Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraqi National Library and Archive is available via the British Library website.  In the diary, Dr. Eskander details the day-to-day challenges faced by the library staff as they attempt to do their work, and live their lives, in what has to be one of the most challenging environments for librarianship.

found on MetaFilter

WebRunner is a project derived from Mozilla’s Firefox web browser that lets you install a site-specific browser on a computer.  The browser would be lacking the usual menus and toolbars, and would open everything within one browser window.

This is designed for online applications and such, but I suspect that this could be turned into a fairly good kiosk for many library OPACs.  This is definitely something to consider when you are looking into creating a single-purpose workstation.

from Linux.com

Gliffy is an interesting flash-based online application that lets you create organizational charts, flowcharts, entity-relationship diagrams, and floorplans, and other projects  Registration is required, but Gliffy is free with some limitations (you have a limited number of projects that you can work on without signing up for the premium service).

found on Web4Lib listserv (thanks Leo!)

The British Government has rejected an extension of copyright beyond the current 50 year term.  This is interesting for a few reasons, including the impending rush of British Invasion music becoming royalty-free, but mostly because it may signal a sea change in the world’s approach to copyright terms.

It is far from over, however, as music publisher’s and musicians are working to pass EU legislation to extend protection beyond the current limits.

found on The Patry Copyright Blog

Forever Minus a Day?  Some Theory and Empirics of Optimal Copyright (Pdf), a presentation by Rufus Pollock, examines the history of copyright terms and determines that the optimal term length is about 14 years (half of what the original copyright term was in both England and the U.S.).

His full paper can be found here (Pdf).

found on The Patry Copyright Blog

VuFind, touting itself as “The Library OPAC meets Web 2.0″, has been released.  It is an open-source OPAC replacement that works for Voyager integrated library system (ILS) for now — they are planning to expand to other ILSs soon.

This is great… there are a growing number of choices out there for libraries, and many of the most promising are open source.  What we, as libraries, get for this:  lower costs, greater choice, easier customization, and the task of choosing and implementing all of this.  We, and our patrons, will benefit greatly from these trends.

originally seen on Catalogablog

When TechCrunch posted about images of the pages of the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being available via a torrent site called The Pirate Bay, they were reporting about a newsworthy event within their blog’s scope (technology and society).

Scholastic, the publisher of Harry Potter, thinks differently. They have served a takedown notice to the site, which has responded by publicizing the notice and explaining their position. They are likely to be safe in this, as Salon, CNet, and The New York Times all posted the information on the same day.

Consider this:  does this blog post aid in violating Scholastic’s copyright? If you think it might, please note that every link in this post (including the one’s in the p.s.) can be found independently via Google. When does the right to provide information about an event become publicity for that event? When does giving out information become aiding in the abusive use of said information?

And how does that affect a library’s role in answering reference questions, and providing access to information? Note that I am not limiting this line of questioning to copyright violations…

p.s. Jessamyn at Librarian.net has posted a link to a site that summarizes much of the posted book, chapter by chapter. I warn you that the first thing your eye will see on the page, assuming it is true, will tell you a major, major element of the story. I won’t know for a few days whether this has spoiled my reading of the book, but you get to decide whether it is better to wait and let J.K. Rowling tell you herself. Jessamyn’s post is here, if you decide to take the risk. The direct link to the summary is here.

Comment (7/23/2007):  I finished the book early this morning; the creator of the summary gets more items wrong than right.  So, if you looked and haven’t read the book yet, you may not have spoiled the fun!)

A post on the Freakonomics blog titled “If Public Libraries Didn’t Exist, Could You Start One Today?” contains some interesting parallels to some of today’s copyright/publishing concerns.

from Librarian.net

In what has to be one of the most interesting comments without clarification in an interview, “Gene Ambaum”, co-creator of the Unshelved comic, states that Buddy the Book Beaver is real.

How much of him is real?  His checkered past?  His inability to read?  His unrequited love for the children’s librarian (Tamara)?  Or simply the ill-fated original incarnation of Buddy?  This shocking revelation raises more questions than answers, as he is one of the more colorful characters in the strip.

The Open Library is a project I have been hoping for years that someone would start – an open source universal book catalog.   Think WorldCat meets Wikipedia meets Amazon and you won’t be far off.

So go to their demo site, do a couple of searches.  Their data is sketchy in places, but this means you have an opportunity to try out their editing interface.  I just corrected the title for “John Irving : Three Complete Novels” (you can look at the history for “revision 2″), although my change may not be the final word, as this seems like a possible duplicate.  The wonders of a wiki!

This project, if it grows wings or even legs, will truly remake our digital presence.  From Open Library Numbers (OLNs) to user corrections and additions, this merger of open source and books gives us both freedom and control of our cataloging information.

from Alexis Rossi via Next Generation Catalog for Libraries (ngc4lib) newsgroup

Footnote describes itself as “History for the People”, and it’s collection of online historical resources is very good.  The free section of the site makes it worth the visit (and this blog focuses on resources that are free and relatively open), especially if you are interested in topics they feature.

They are also looking for historical collections to add to their site – check out their “Affiliates” link if you think they might make a good partner for a historical collection.

found on ResourceShelf

PLoS ONE, an open access publishing site created by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), has instituted a ratings system for articles published through them.

By asking readers to rate every article they read for insight, reliability, and style, they are hoping to provide another means by which to allow the best articles to be found by researchers.

found on Open Access News

A Quick Look of a Few Free Science Search Tools is a post on ResourceShelf (if you only have time to follow two blogs, they should be the other one!) that provides a good starting point for finding free and/or open access science resouces on the web.

Foreign Languages : Translations and Translators is a collection of links from Academic-Geneology.com to help with many of your translation needs.

from a posting to Web4Lib

An interesting, but non-conclusive, study has found that open access journals are ten times less likely to cease publication than their traditional counterparts.  Might this become a reason for journals to adopt open access – namely to broaden readership and improve their chances of survival?

from Open Access News