Libology Blog

Coffee and Libraries go together (at least for some of us who are addicts of both).  That is why the Free Starbucks Coffee Recipe E-Book (direct link to zipped Pdf file) is a nifty download brought to you by CoffeeFair.

thanks to ResourceShelf for the link

In an example of how much open access may change scholarship, it was announced the Dead Sea Scrolls will be scanned in high resolution and made available online and open access.

As more primary sources are made available for study, scholarship will become more democratic.  This will have both positive and negative aspects, but as with the greater availability of scientific studies, the primary result will be beneficial.

found via Open Access News

A Simple Book Repair Manual is a web-based guide created and hosted by the Dartmouth College Library.  It covers what a library needs to set up a toolkit and make straightforward repairs.

Conservation Book Repair : A training manual by Artemis BonaDea is a pdf formatted book from 1995 (200 pages - complete 12MB pdf here) written by a Conservation Technician (who is now Curator of the Alaska Heritage Museum).

Bookbinding and the Conservation of books : A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, hosted on the Stanford University web site, is exactly as described, a dictionary of terminology.

Add these to your collection of useful links!

found via MetaFilter (warning : as addictive a blog as exists anywhere)

There is now a READ Mini Poster creation tool on the American Library Association web site which lets you upload a photo into one of four templates.  This is a neat offering, with a couple of caveats:

1. The positioning tool for the picture is very limited.  I was only able to use my facebook profile picture in two of the templates, and each still didn’t look quite right.  I have been spoiled by Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook’s Pieces of Flair (note that there is a piece of Libology flair, if you are feeling desperate for library-related buttons) and expect such niceties as mouse-controlled positioning.
2. In addition, there are no terms of use listed for these creations.  Knowing that ALA limits the use of other versions of the Read posters, I assume that they would make a specific statement regarding this on the creation page.  I wasn’t even able to load their copyright statement page, so I feel forced to go with default copyright.

These reasons are why I don’t have my newly-minted READ Mini Poster shown here.  This is a great promotional idea, if they can work out how to let us use it effectively.

thanks to Karen R. Schneiderman for posting a link to the Lex Scripta blog on Facebook!

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Update: Jenny Levine, Internet Development Specialist & Strategy Guide for the ALA (and also known as The Shifted Librarian) wrote an e-mail assuring me that “these images can be used by the person generating them for use on personal or library blogs, personal profiles, or other social networking sites.”  When the ALA updates their site next week, this will be clearly spelled out, she says.

I suspect that criticism can easily sound snarky in this medium, so I will re-iterate the dominant point from above:  this is a great promotional idea for the ALA, libraries, social media, and readers.  Check it out!

The Great Pandemic : The United States in 1918-1919 is a single resource on a specific topic, but it presents it very well.  Created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it focuses on personal stories from influenza survivors, telling the story of the outbreak from its origins in Haskell County, Kansas through its worldwide spread.

If you are not familiar with this event, this is a great place to start.  If you are familiar, this is a great review and a way to introduce this important historical event to others.

found via ResourceShelf

Great post over at RSS4Lib about placing Creative Commons licensing information into your RSS feed.  This is a fantastic idea because the entire purpose of RSS is to let others have control over how they receive your content.  This allows you to convey your wishes for how people can use what you create within the medium itself.

This reminded me to update the footer information for this blog (look at the bottom of the page if you are viewing this on the Libology web site)

found via Catalogablog

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2012 has been posted!  A couple of samples:

• 28. IBM has never made typewriters.
• 60. Students always had Goosebumps.

What library-related items can be added to this list?  The absence of Card Catalogs?  Computers being available for patron use?

Also:  What brand-new addition, change, or development in our culture will become the norm for the class of 2030 (being born as this is written)?

from ResourceShelf

Issuu (not a typo) is a new PDF web publishing service, and it is a very good service.  You can upload a document in PDF format, and Issuu presents it in a reader that is both intuitive and easy to use.

As an alternative to Google Docs or Scribd (both also excellent services) Issuu is well worth exploring.

found via PDF World

Mike Dunford writing in of The Questionable Authority has written a post that compares the business model and profits of journal publishers with oil companies.  One figure that he arrives at is shocking, to say the least, but also illustrative of the current journal market:

Gas prices are going up. You’ve been combining trips, cutting your milage as much as you can, driving a more efficient vehicle, and your fuel costs are still going up. You drive home from work, stopping along the way to put $30+ dollars worth of gas into the 10 gallon tank in your Prius. You sit on the sofa, turn on the news, and hear that Exxon-Mobil just reported quarterly profits of about $1,500 per second. The price of something that you need to buy is going through the roof, it’s making things inconvenient for you, and the people who sell it are making money faster than the mint can print it. How happy are you?

If you want to understand the anger that the major publishing houses are generating, that’s a good place to start.

Publishers don’t make money at anything close to the clip that Big Oil does, but they’re not doing badly. Elsevier is probably the biggest fish, and they come in at a respectable $1,700 per minute. That’s 60 times less than Exxon-Mobil, but it’s still a nice chunk of change.

He goes on to discuss the relationships between authors and publishers, and the reaction to the open access movement.  All in all, this is a good essay that can provide some perspective for those outside of the library and publishing worlds.

found via Open Access News

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld (pdf) the Creative Commons License as valid, as well as establishing its relationship to copyright law.  Basically, if someone uses a work in violation of a Creative Commons license, the license itself vanishes (because it is an additional allowance of use under copyright), and the full copyright restriction becomes the rule by which use is judged and restitution made.

Long live Creative Commons!

found via the Lessig blog

Getting The Most Out Of Your Library is an article from the Digital Web Magazine.  The article is great:  a basic guide for techies on the resources found in many libraries (from Art and Graphics books, coffee kiosks, and online resources otherwise locked behind a payment wall.

This is the first time I have encountered this site, and I like what I see.  There seems to be a web designer focus to the articles, and they seem to be broader than the “how to” or “prettify your site” articles that are so common.  Not that there is anything wrong with either category; it is simply refreshing to find some straightforward articles on ideas and approaches to web design work.

found via Catalogablog

Saw a shelf browse created for an Innovative (III) OPAC that is quite neat.  It lives on a development site for the Cambridge Public Library in Ontario, Canada and integrates Syndetic Solutions book covers into a pseudo-shelf listing.  Here is a direct link to a record.

Note that this has been done without resorting to Flash.  Try turning off the page’s CSS and you will see that it works just fine (just with a different scroll direction).  The page’s html still doesn’t validate, but I suspect that there aren’t any III opacs that validate properly, though I hope to be proven wrong someday.

Someday libraries will collectively understand what a good API can do for our web presence, and then the ILS companies will improve their products accordingly.  At least I hope so….

thanks to Mike Cunningham for posting the link to the Innovative User’s Group list

Understanding the Web Browser Threat is an essay that details web users and the browsers they use.  The primary focus is on how current one’s browser version is, as opposed to evaluating one browser against others.

It is too little understood how dangerous using an older version of a browser can be for a user.  If you are using a current version of a browser, any of the main varieties will do, you will be much, much safer than using an older or unpatched version.

Check not only your own computers for this, but also your public access terminals.  Older browsers put all of your patrons at greater risk, as well as your library’s network.

My own recommendation:  Firefox (currently at version 3.01).  Not only has Firefox been quick to fix security issues, it has automatic updating built into the program.  It also works on any platform (as well as from a Flash Drive), so it is about as universal a program as you willl likely find.

thanks to Jessamyn for the link!

One of my lesser known interests is road signs.  I enjoy looking through various Rules of the Road sign pages, odd signs found on various roads, and pictures of road signs in foreign countries.  Making sense of some of the Mexican road signs during my visit last year was a challenge (a funny moment came with the understanding that “Returno” wasn’t a place, but a permitted area for a U-turn).

With that in mind, Manual of Traffic Signs is a fascinating site which focuses on United States signage.

found via ResourceShelf

This is one of those resources which you hope will not have to be used, but when it helps someone find the information they need, it can be invaluable:

The Unidentified Decedent Reporting System (Warning:  site is definitely not for the squeamish) is the National Association of Medical Examiners online tool for posting information about unidentified bodies across the U.S.  It is a distinctly depressing web site, with hints of sadness and loss in dozens of lives, and the realization that for many of these people there are families and friends without answers.

Along with the Doe Network, this site can help to bring closure to tragedy.

from ResourceShelf

The Koha Integrated Library System (ILS) has just released version 3.0 of their software.  This New Zealand-based open source project is quite mature and provides many libraries cost-effective means to run their operations.

The release notes for this version show that the biggest changes are in the database storage (Zebra) and improvements in standard APIs (such as COinS and OpenSearch).  Additionally, their attention to accessibility, staff templates, and additional modules is commendable.

thanks to Catalogablog for the heads-up

Not the death of this blog, but of the ending of The Patry Copyright Blog, which has been consistently informative, educational, and timely.  I truly hope that William Patry returns to blogging at some point, as I can only guess at the amount and quality of information that I won’t gain from him in the meantime.

On a “making lemonade out of lemons” note, he is “creating a file with most of the posts (weeding out really trivial one)” and offering it up to all who ask.  I have responded, and am planning to host the file on Libology.com.  Other people have indicated their interest, as well, so it is likely that his blog will be accessible in some form.  How the posts will be presented on Libology remains to be seen (I don’t even know what format the file will be)… I hope to present them in some way that makes them more easily accessed and used.