punypng is a great service for those who work with the .png image format.  If you work on web sites, presentations, or other projects that involve image files, this is really worth adding to your toolkit.

What it does is fairly straightforward:  you upload your .png image file to their site, their algorithm examines the file and determines what can be done to make the file smaller without sacrificing image quality, and offers you the file as a download.

I tried it, and got as much as a 48% reduction in file size, without any visible loss of quality.  Even if all you get is a 10% reduction in file size, it means that your web sites, presentations, etc. will load and run faster.  For a busy web site, like Google or WorldCat, every reduction in the data needed to be sent to each user can add up to large savings in time, energy, and ultimately money.

found via SitePoint

Lorcan Demsey discusses a previous post about Metadata that he wrote a couple of years ago, and the implications for how we approach the creation and selection of information about information.  His four categories:

1. Professional. Produced by staff in support of particular business aims. Think of cataloging, or data produced within the book industry, or A&I data.
2. Crowdsourced. Produced by users of systems.Think of tags, reviews and ratings on consumer sites.
3. Programmatically promoted. Think of automatic extraction of metadata from digital files, automatic classifcation, entity identification, and so on.
4. Intentional. Data about choices and transactions which support analytics or business intelligence services. Think about ranking, relating, recommending in consumer sites (e.g people who like this also like this) based on collected transaction data.

The traditional library approach has been the first category (Professional).  The downside is that it it far too time consuming to keep up with the firehose of new resources.  When was the last time you heard someone discuss cataloging the internet?

The challenge with the remaining options is the opposite.  There is a great deal of metadata being generated, and the challenge is to organize and/or standardize what we use.

Where does this leave library catalogers, and libraries in general?  How should we focus our efforts?  Should we focus on traditional metadata creation, or should we attempt to update and adapt our processes and standards to a changing world?  Potential rewards, and possible troubles await either choice.  Can we forge a path that allows us to do both, or is that doomed to failure.

Just some things to think about….

BBC Languages is fantastic web resource provided by the British Broadcasting Corporation, and is filled with audio language resources.  These include 12-week beginning lessons, a Quick Fix section containing “essential phrases”, and teacher’s resources.

found via Librarian in Black

Circulating Zen posts about dealing with a staffing issue on a holiday weekend. She is faced with a student worker scheduled to cover several shifts (allowing other students to travel home for the holiday weekend) who has come down with influenza.

Her solution is one that doesn’t fit the guidelines of her workplace.  It does, however, fit the guidelines of her work ethic : professionalism.

Read her post, and remember the instances where you, and others, have stepped beyond your working hours, your job classification, or some other guideline to solve a problem.  Why is this done?  Someone sees a need, determines a solution that fulfills the need in a way that best serves the principles of libraries and their own work ethic, and follows through.

Simple?   Not really.  It is easy to say “not my job” or “I’m simply following the rules”.  Far more challenging is determining when and how to step beyond what you are supposed to do, and do what is truly called for in the situation.  Especially since the person potentially exposes themself to criticism by doing so.

Circulating Zen sums it up well:  “I shouldn’t pawn it off on anyone else. It’s not professional.”

The Future of Libraries, With or Without Books is a rarity : a mass-media (CNN) news article about the ongoing evolution of libraries that doesn’t dwell in stereotypes, cliches or “gee-whiz” style examples.  What the reader gets is a well-written news article that paints a well-balanced picture of the issues and general direction of the library world.

Good work, CNN!

found via Helene Blowers on FB

A follow-up to yesteday’s post on HealthBase:

It wasn’t what I was thinking of when I provided a caveat regarding Wikipedia being used as a source, but apparently some search results have offbeat listings, occasionally with negative associations.

My caveat was in regards to the fact that Wikipedia is what I call a “starting point” for information search, not a source itself.  This actually places it in the same category as HealthBase, in that one should not take any particular piece of information as accurate, but to use the information to follow to primary sources and develop search terms and a broader understanding of the topic.

On HealthBase’s problem:  this is to be expected with new methods of indexing and searching, and this type of problem will tend to show itself with a broad base of users.  I still think it is a great starting point for health information searches, and that the searching algorithm will become more sophisticated over time.

HealthBase is a health information search tool created by Netbase that should be on your short list of resources.

Search results are drawn from a diverse range of resources, including WebMD, PubMed, Medline Plus, and the Mayo Clinic.  NetBase uses a semantic-based indexing system to obtain the context of articles, and provides targeted results categories to allow the user to find specific information on their topic.

It is a very useful service, with the usual caveats regarding health information on the web (they also index health information from Wikipedia, so be sure to check sources).

found via ResourceShelf and TechCrunch