Need to learn about an old bottle? Learn about design elements, markings, and other ways to date and learn about that object that has been on that basement shelf since before you moved in.
from MetaFilter
They’ve been around for a while, but I haven’t blogged about them yet, and they keep adding great features, so here is another great site for finding info related to location:
Melissa DATA has links to resources that give you information based on zip code, street address, and more. Want to find out if an address is valid? Know the address number and zip code, but don’t remember the street? Mail delivery routes? School districts? These searches and more are at your fingertips.
found at ResourceShelf
It seems that not all is rosy with Google’s recent agreement with the CIC libraries. There are apparently some fairly restrictive clauses in the contract, some limiting the libraries access to the digitized materials they provide.
The project, as well as the Open Content Alliance‘s scanning project, is terrific as long as everyone wins: the organization doing the scanning, the library, the publishers, and the public. If all four groups are able to derive benefits from being able to access the materials (respecting fair use), then the boon for society would be hard to exaggerate. If any group finds itself cut off, then there is a serious problem.
found on Open Access News
It is called the Library Of Unified Information Sources, a.k.a. LOUIS. It’s purpose is to make it easier for people to learn about what is happening in the federal government, and is sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation.
It currently contains the following resources, with more being planned for the future:
found on ResourceShelf
No brand new flashy sites in this post; just a small collection of links on how one deals with the demands of time, projects and learning:
Big or Small? — Jen Riley at the Indiana University Digital Library Program has a post regarding doing a few big vs. many small projects.
Nicole’s Burnout Blues — Karen Schneider, a.k.a. Free Range Librarian, gives her tips on preventing burnout.
Three Hard Things — new guy at OCLC Roy Tennant‘s follow-up to his Five Easy Pieces essay three years ago.
Each of these pieces speak to me, as I am preparing to start a relatively involved project that will require a fair amount of time management. It could work, mainly because the time involved can be very flexible (and who needs sleep when you have a project?).
However, most everyone I know is trying to balance their time, effort, energy, and resources. Perhaps there is a helpful nugget or two for everyone who follows the links….
Ken Varnum – RSS Basics and Beyond : Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most out of Syndicated Content. (PowerPoint) (Handout)
Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
Where does RSS come from?
Reminder to remember copyright
Tools – common traits
Computer-based:
Browser-based:
Aggregators (web-based):
Integration — RSS = Stream of information = easy to integrate into HTML
hooks:
HTML:
Myfeedz — from Adobe’s Romanian office
generates new content based on your feed choices
Create “live” subject guides
del.icio.us (all tags have RSS feeds)
New books lists
Checked out book reminders for patrons
Monitoring the web
web page changes
Google Alerts
Page2RSS
Roll your own
Write by hand (not recommended)
set up free blog
write a script (Perl, PHP, Ruby)
FeedXs
Course reserve lists on class pages as an example of a script
Notes: Kens presentation was great as an overview of what can be done with RSS beyond just blog postings and news story gathering. I plan to use several of his suggestions, and expect that it will change the way I work with the web.
Brian Mathews – Social Computing
When do we reach Library 2.0? No final destination; no “library 2.0” finishing point: it’s an evolving picture.
Sisyphus analogy: it’s not what you do when rolling the rock up the hill, it’s what you do walking back down… “how do I do it differently this time?”
Website: LiveJournal – geared towards blogging to friends
We use social networks as:
He discussed library storefronts (comment: makes me think of a portal)
Facebook has lots of librarians, and for academic and school libraries, a lot of your patrons
the key to using these tools / sites = social interaction… “not manipulating, but causing ripples”
Products Needs
blogs, facebook, myspace, posters, classroom sessions, etc.
Website: Google Groups
q&a question:
Tools for self forming groups (his campus system implemented one; he has generated groups relating to library, i.e. distance learning library resources)
Notes: Social networking is the area I am least familiar with, so this was a great learning experience. I like his emphasis on these services being the means to communicate with our patrons, not the end in and of themselves.
I especially think his approach towards finding campus social computing groups that the library would be a natural part of (study groups, class projects, etc.) and introducing his services into the equation. Very proactive.
Chad Boeninger – Wikis in Libraries : Enhancing Services, Promoting Sources, and Building Community (Powerpoint)
Chad started off with a show of hands – what type of librarian’s were in the audience, including media specialists.
He went on to define what a wiki is.
He emphasized that the strength of a resource depends on the strength of the community.
Software: Gallery (similar to Flickr, but hosted on your own server)
Wiki examples:
Internal wiki example:
ReferenceWiki replaces their 3-ring binder of stumper questions, sticky-notes, and shared network folder documents.
Internal wikis ultimately become a knowledgebase:
Important extras:
Scholarly software is linked via reference wiki
Their library has skype-based video chat between floors — remote reference!
External wiki apps can be used for:
Wiki example: Biz Wiki (similar to ReferenceWiki in structure and style)
He demonstrated the creation and editing of info on the wiki
So you want a wiki:
Choose software
Locally hosted options
Wiki farms / services
Wiki: WikiIndex (a wiki of wikis)
How to create a community
when is a wiki done?
Is a wiki for you?
Challenges
Notes: This was a very good how-to session with a very well-defined purpose. If someone were asking the question of whether a wiki could be beneficial, and what it would take to make it happen, then 90% of their questions were answered here (the other 10% would be local questions concerning their IT setup, administration, etc.). Having set up a few wikis for a variety of purposes, I found this to be an excellent presentation.
Steven Bell – It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Web 2.0 World : Hidden Treasure or Just More Pressure? (Powerpoint) (Handout)
The title is adapted from It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, the “epic comedy” film from 1963. He likened our (libraries) search for “Library 2.0” to the frantic search for the “big W” in the film, even showing a couple of clips.
He recommended a Wired magazine article by Chris Anderson called People Power.
A manifestation of the second-generation web is User Generated Content (which strikes me as a good summation of the change taking place).
Business Week’s June 11, 2007 issue of Inside Innovation has an incredible set of charts showing demographics of those using and generating content.
He recommended an article from the v.25#2 issue of Library Hi-Tech called Taking the information to the public through Library 2.0 (abstract only; sounds like an ILL opportunity).
He pointed out a blog post by David Lee King called How Can We Change the Unchangeable, or David’s Rant.
He showed several video clips of library staff scenarios (think of those training movies you see with acted examples):
His main points were to try out new technology, be open-minded about staff using technology, and recognize that much of Library 2.0 technology involves a time investment, but is otherwise low-risk (and low-cost).
His caveats were to focus on identifying problems needing solutions, find technology with the potential to solve those problems, learn about the technology, and practice.
He referred to an article in the April 2004 American Libraries titled A Dozen Solutions to all Library Problems (which makes some great points with a dose of humor).
Design thinking – libraries approaching problems like designers approaching problems
Stages for implementing change:
He used an interesting prop to illustrate increased tension associated with technology: a block of wood with a bolt partly screwed into it… he uses a ratchet to tighten the bolt… increasing the tension.
“Reverse the Technology Ratchet”
Website: Steven Bell’s Keeping Up Website
We must learn to evolve
Example: Change. Deal with It. (a.k.a. Jim Carroll’s squirrel experiment)
He concluded with a quote from David Bishop, Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois:
Notes: This was essentially a keynote, and did not go in-depth on any topic. It hit many points, and used a great deal of humor to do so. It was a great start for the conference, and the end quote sets the tone for one of the later sessions.
I am attending (not presenting, though) Ohio State University’s Library 2.0 Seminar, being held yesterday and today on the OSU campus. I am taking lots of notes, and plan to at least outline each of the sessions here.
The speakers and topics have been fantastic, and I hope to convey that with the following entries. In addition, videos of the presentations will be available (within a week, they said) via the OSU Knowledge Bank website.
Here are direct links to the posts:
Michael Gorman, former president of ALA, has riled up some people with his posts on Britannica Blog titled Web 2.0 : The Sleep of Reason (part I) and (part II).
He makes some excellent points about scholarship and the perils that accompany a lack of authority, but wastes his efforts by railing against the internet as a whole, and against those who participate in generating content (ironic, given that he is making these points in blog entries).
These posts are well worth reading, though, as they do make excellent points and raise valid issues. Unfortunately, you have to wade through the “traditional publishers good” vs. “web publishers bad” chaff to get to the wheat of his argument.
The goal is high quality information, no matter how it is created or accessed.
found on Free Range Librarian, also: good commentary on Librarian.net
Update: Free Range Librarian has a follow-up post with an announcement from Britannica Blog….
A newly released study, Taxpayer Return-on-Investment (ROI) in Pennsylvania Public Libraries (Pdf), comes to an interesting and positive conclusion: for every $10 of tax money invested in public libraries, the Pennsylvania taxpayers receive a return of $55.
found on ResourceShelf
A post, Getting change to stick, at Karen Coomb’s blog, has me thinking about change and growth, but not in an institutional sense, but in more of a personal sense.
I think people can fall into the same trap: we push our envelopes, learning, trying new things, and cannot perceive the subtler changes and growth that occur. It can take hindsight to see what we have learned and how we have developed.
The trick is to keep pushing that envelope, keep trying and learning, and not to lose that long-term perspective that seems to be critical.
There is a great overview of the history and current status of the Open CourseWare (OCW) project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Of interest is the discussion on why to spend millions of dollars to provide free access to that which is a core product of the university. As with many things (news, music, information), the answer to this will be found in some sort of balance. I suspect that MIT will profit (and not only financially) from this effort in the end, probably many times over.
from Open Access News
Chinese Learning Objects, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and provided by the National Foreign Language Center, are online materials for learning to read Chinese. The good news is that, starting in July 2007, the materials will be available for no charge online.
If you have a desire to learn to read Chinese, or know someone who might, this is a great opportunity.
from ResourceShelf
There is a great collection of links about the current shuttle mission on ResourceShelf. I had intended to post this on Friday, before the launch, but better late than never.
FYI, spotting the shuttle in orbit is a neat experience (I saw it for the first time last July 4th), and the SkyWatch site does a nice job at letting you know when good opportunities exist for your location. I definitely recommend it!
A blog post by Richard Charkin, Chairman of Macmillan UK, about he and a colleague “stealing” a couple of computers from the Google booth at BookExpo in order to make a point about Google’s placing snippets of books online makes me wonder how much he truly understands copyright.
Someone going into a bookstore and taking a book without paying for it is committing theft. Copyright infringement is not involved in the action of stealing the book. If a work is scanned and made available online without permission, it is copyright infringement, but not considered theft. The differences are significant, but seem to be confused by many. The chair of a major publisher should not confuse the two.
The copyright question surrounding Google Book Search involves whether Google has the right to scan and index entire books, and whether their providing snippets of the books via their search tool is considered Fair Use. These are questions that haven’t been settled yet, and very well may be decided in Google’s favor.
found via Open Access News
Big news from the Google Book Search Library Project today:
The number of libraries participating in the Google Book Search Library Project just got a whole lot bigger with today’s addition of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). The CIC is a national consortium of 12 research universities, including University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
There are a lot of libraries in that list, and having lived in Northern Illinois for most of my life, I am familiar with many of them (and in fact am planning to visit another one, Ohio State University, within the next couple of weeks to look at a hard-to-find book).
thanks to Ryan Eby for an e-mail post to Web4Lib
FOB : Firms Out of Business is a database of publishing companies that are no longer in business. Why this type of database? The results screen provides information in tracking down copyright holders, useful for when you are attempting to get permission to use something and cannot easily track down the copyright owner.
The main page also has links to information and resources relating to copyright, both in the U.S. and the U.K.
from ResourceShelf
Roy Tenant, formerly of the California Digital Library has been working for OCLC’s RLG Programs division for the past few weeks, and has posted his impressions on the hangingtogether blog. It is well worth reading, and especially to note that he is practically bursting at the seams about something happening with OCLC before the end of this year.
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Libology Blog
Established July 2006
ISSN: 1946-1852
by Rick Mason
