It is nearly time for Marshall Breeding’s annual Automation Systems Marketplace report, published in the April 1st edition of Library Journal.  This is as comprehensive and informative a report on the software we use to organize and present our collections as exists, and it portrays trends within the library community.

Paired with his announcement, however, was a request for library staff to review their listing on lib-web-cats, an online database of libraries, their basic directory information, and the software packages they use.  Find your library, review the information, and add / update / remove any information needed to make your listing current.

encountered on GuidePosts

Geonames is an online database of places.  Type in the name of a place, be it a town, city, geographic feature, or landmark, and you get a list of places with that name.

Want to know how many places in Colorado have the name Illinois?  Or whether Anytown really exists?  This is your resource!

The Advanced Search allow you to limit your searches by feature and continent.

from TechCrunch

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