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.
In the time it has taken to transfer the domain, I have been thinking about the blog, especially what its focus is and will likely be.
I am, as of three minutes ago, changing the name of the blog from “LibrarySupportStaff.org” to “Libology Blog” and am adding another layer of discontinuity to what was meant to be a behind-the-scenes change of hosting services. It makes sense, however, to do this now instead of later, and make July 2008 the “month the blog went kabloee! and everything changed”.
A major focus of this blog, and my interest, will be library support staff and how they can improve library services. The blog is more than that, however, which is why I think the name change is ultimately a positive thing.
There is a lot I have to do to clean up the blog, the main being updating the links that point to other posts. Until then, please bear with our mess.
The Internet Search Environment Number (ISEN) is a fantastic idea. On-line databases would be assigned their own, unique number, similar to an ISBN or ISSN, which would identify them as a resource. This would aid tremendously in organizing and ultimately accessing these troves of information that, for the most part, belong to the deep web.
found via Catalogablog
Disclaimer: I have been an avid user of Scrabulous for several month (Stats: 70 wins and 3 losses, best bingo at 158 points), and am sad to see it go. I am not posting because of this, however, but because of how the the article illustrates the problems with current copyright law.
Scrabulous Highlights the Failure of American Copyright Law is an excellent article in the Inquisitr. They examine the copyright history of a game that started off with the name Lexiko, and compare it to the current patent laws as they apply to prescription drugs.
The intent of copyright is to encourage creativity by granting a period of exclusivity, but not at the exclusion of others with time. Copyright law as it stands today limits the creation of new works by denying the rights of others to create derivative works after a reasonable time. Copyright law today works against the greater good.
from LISnews
If you are reading this, then something has gone right! I fought with the backup for nearly a week before giving up, and have rebuilt the blog from another method entirely. This resulted in many duplicate entries, and it really messed up the post numbering scheme – so all links into this blog are currently dead 🙁
The good news is that everything seems to be here, and it seems to be working. The entire blog has been moved to the Libology server, and the LibrarySupportStaff.org domain has been transfered. This means that there are two links to this blog:
http://blog.librarysupportstaff.org/ (not yet linking to the new installation)
and
Hopefully both will work equally well. There may be a re-design in the works as well… one step at a time.
Thank you, loyal readers, for your patience. I hope to soon be posting some of the interesting things that I have encountered in the past 11 days!
One of my plug-ins has caused instability in the database structure of the blog when it froze during a re-indexing of data… I have attempted to fix it (attempted to re-re-index, removed plugin, etc.) but am still having troubles. I think it is time to see if the backup plug-in does what it is supposed to do.
If you are seeing this message, it means I haven’t fixed it yet (since this wasn’t part of the backup).
Oh, and by the way, this is a great reminder of the idea of backing up often. I had backed up the entire database just before running the re-indexer doohickey. I should have all the posts when restored.
Until then, sorry for things not working well….
Read Lori Ayre’s blog post at TechEssence to find out what she means by “Learned Helplessness”. I think she hits the nail on the head, then drives it home. I will be watching her future posts….
After more than a year, there has been a bit of activity at the Google Librarian Central site, though not what was hoped for when I heard that they were preparing an update.
What they announced in a post titled “Endless Summer” was that they were closing down the Librarian Central Blog and communicating via their newsletter. Comments and suggestions will be handled by a web form submission.
Ouch! Double-Ouch!! This is better than the dead silence of the past year, but just barely. We have been moved back in time, relegated to Web 1.0.
They could have kept the blog alive by posting the individual newsletter items one-by-one. They could have used the blog for items posted or discussed elsewhere, but posted there because of their interest to libraries. They could have opened things up a bit and asked for volunteers to coordinate topics and ideas for better incorporating Google into libraries. Any of these would have been about the same amount of work, and would have preserved or improved the dynamic and social aspects of the site. They backed away instead.
We are left to wonder why.
Classify is a new service from OCLC which returns class numbers (Dewey, LC, and National Library of Medicine) assigned to books in WorldCat. This could be a good way to use the “wisdom of the crowd” when you are not 100% sure where to group a particular book.
I noticed that the url had a “2” at the end, so I removed it to see what would happen. It appears to be an earlier version of the service. I didn’t have any luck with the first few ISBNs I entered, but the example links work well.
Any other changes to the url bounce the user to the DeweyBrowser, which is a lookup service from a couple of years back. Although it also has a “2” at the end of the url, nothing happens when one changes it. So much for rewarding curiosity 😉
Classify found via Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog
Tim Spalding of LibraryThing has started a new ambitious project: develop a new shelf classification system that would eliminate the baggage of the 100+ year-old systems many libraries have in place, as well as create a system free from the trademark, copyright, and license issues connected with Dewey.
He is looking for a few librarians (one to five) to manage the project, and has started a LibraryThing group for everyone to join in the conversation.
This just started up this morning, folks… they’re still talking letters vs. numbers and general classification philosophy. We’re talking ground floor timing, so sign up and begin discussing!
found via Tim Spalding’s post to the Web4Lib list
In February, I wrote about the shootings at Northern Illinois University, which happened about 100 yards away from a former co-worker (and current friend). I stressed that until something like this happens in your community, it seems remote and somehow not fully real. However, we must strive to remember that these things happen in real communities, to real people, and that individuals, organizations and institutions (such as libraries) can do much to be better prepared for tragedy.
Jessamyn at Librarian.net writes about a horrific murder which indirectly involved the local public library, and how they have reacted. As you read her post, and the news articles she links to, ask yourself what your library or organization can do now to be prepared for not only this type of event, or a shooting, or a book challenge, but what you can do to simply be prepared.
Once you have thought about it, discuss it with your co-workers and community members. Solicit ideas. Take the best ideas and put them into action. You may never need this, but if the unthinkable happens you will be in far better shape than if the only response is “we never imagined it could happen here!”
Do it this time, starting today… because you cannot predict where, or in what form, the next horrific event will occur. At worst, you will be prepared for something that may not happen; at best you may save lives.
To celebrate the 100th birthday of Louis L’Amour, Bantam Books is providing a free copy of “Education of a Wandering Man : The Centennial Hardcover Edition” to any free lending library in the United States.
found via the Unshelved blog
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Libology Blog
Established July 2006
ISSN: 1946-1852
by Rick Mason
