LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Cataloging interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:50:24 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://mblc.state.ma.us/jobs/find_jobs/rss.php?job_id=6077 The Electronic Resources Librarian, under the general supervision of the Assistant Director for Technical Services, is responsible for budgeting, licensing or otherwise acquiring, compiling and loading bibliographic records for, and maintaining online access to, all the electronic resources acquired by the library. This position is also responsible for evaluating and renewing as appropriate continuing accessibility to the library's electronic resources. This position will also, under the guidance of the Assistant Director for Reference Services and the reference department, initiate new electronic resource acquisitions. This position also catalogs (both original and copy cataloging) electronic resources including unique digital objects such as maps. And, as needed, will also provide support and maintenance for computer equipment and communications, in conjunction with other library staff and the University ITS Department. (Source: MBLC Job Listings) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:55:02 +0100 825252 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14589 Director of Information Services/Librarian (American Philatelic Society, Pennsylvania) The American Philatelic Society, a public charity, has an immediate opening for its Director of Information Services/Librarian. The Director’s primary responsibility is to develop and implement a plan to improve access to and use of its unparalleled resources by members and stamp collectors throughout the world, most of whom use the library remotely. A successful plan includes enhancement of the online union catalog, development of finding aids, digitization of materials, recruitment and management of volunteers, and development of grant proposals/fundraising. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:50:02 +0100 825246 http://mblc.state.ma.us/jobs/find_jobs/rss.php?job_id=6078 Librarian: Full time, Applewild School, kindergarten-gr.9 independent school, Fitchburg, MA Qualifications: An MLS degree or equivalent and emphasis in children's and juvenile literature,experience working with elementary and/or middle school aged children in a teaching a/o school setting, up-to-date technology skills, good communication skills, and the desire to collaborate with faculty in integrating library and subject content curriculum. Duties: As Director of Library Services, manage two separate libraries, maintain book collection, library catalog and online resources, teach library skills classes to grades K-4, teach research skills to grades 3-9 as needed, collaborate with faculty to design curriculum, conduct book talks, maintain library webpage, and coordinate volunteers. Applewild School is a coeducational, K-9 independent day school that prepares able students for success in secondary school. We provide breadth & depth of academic programs, extensive arts offerings in impressive facilities, athletics, and service opportunities within a community that emphasizes respect. The School seeks innovative self- starters who enjoy the challenge of working collegially with like-minded professionals to achieve our mission. Competitive salaries, professional development opportunities, and a comprehensive benefits plan, as well as a warm, supportive environment for faculty are all attractions. Applewild School is committed to recruiting and retaining outstanding faculty members from diverse backgrounds. Interested candidates should send materials hard copy, attention Jeanne May at Applewild School, 120 Prospect Street, Fitchburg. MA 01420 (Source: MBLC Job Listings) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:43:31 +0100 825251 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/10/online-database-index-to-american-botanical-literature-searchable/ From the “About Page: The Index to American Botanical Literature has provided a service to the American botanical community for over a century, published initially in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club and subsequently in Brittonia. Beginning in 1886, when Elizabeth Britton of The New York Botanical Garden was editor, the Index has provided bibliographic data both on books and articles in periodicals. In 1999, the Index went to an entirely electronic format. The Index contains entries dealing with various aspects of extant and fossil American plants and fungi, including systematics and floristics, morphology, and ecology, as well as economic botany and general botany (publications dealing with botanists, herbaria, etc.). “America” is defined in the broadest possible sense, encompassing land and marine plants and fungi from Greenland to Antarctica. American territory outside this area, e.g., Hawaii, is not included. The searchable database includes all those entries published in the Index since 1996, and thus includes botanical literature appearing since late 1995. We have made minimal progress in retrospective cataloging, and will continue to add older literature as time and manpower are available. If a bibliographic entry is not in the Index, it probably means either (1) the subject matter was considered inappropriate (e.g., physiology, genetics), or (2) the publication has not arrived at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden. Access and Search the Database Search Using: + Category + Author + Title of Article or Chapter + Journal + Book Title + Keywords See Also: Fact Sheets About Plants, Flowers, and Gardening Tips See Also: 1000 Plants to Know (21 Pages; PDF) Source: New York Botanical Garden (via Infomine) (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:26:24 +0100 825330 http://www.librarystuff.net/2010/03/10/the-mysteries-of-cataloguing/ Jennie Law – “Here, we have our own catalogue system. It doesn’t have a name, but if it did, it would probably be something along the lines of “I need this book NOW, no I don’t care about the precise spelling of the authors middle name, or their date of birth.” I know, I know, it’s not snappy, but it’s accurate. Cataloguing demands are different in a commercial law firm: we don’t care about much more than what it’s about, who wrote, when, and what jurisdiction it covers. And what we really, really care about is “where the hell is it” (Source: Library Stuff) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:00:48 +0100 825307 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/kvlUlan6dI0/ Peter Kafka at the “MediaMemo” section of AllThingsD points to a job listing with Amazon for someone to help build “an innovative embedded web browser.” He notes that the current Kindle browser is fairly limited, and adding a better one could be a significant change for the device. Certainly it would be helpful in competing with the iPad. At the moment, the Kindle is the only major e-book device to offer any kind of web access at all. Samsung’s E-6 e-reader will be coming this spring to Barnes & Noble at a list price of $299 (down from an original $399), report Engadget and Gizmodo. It is unclear whether they are just going to be sold in Barnes & Noble stores, will hook into the B&N on-line store the way the Nook does, or both. It is also unclear why anyone would buy one rather than the more featureful, less costly Nook. A press release from book-industry collaboration software provider Above the Treeline notes that the company is partnering with BookExpo America to create an online catalog of new titles being exhibited at the next BEA (to be held in New York City May 25-27). The press release does not really make clear whether it is talking about e-books or print books. We mentioned Above the Treeline partnering with Firebrand Technologies on a digital galley distribution service back in December. Here’s another “burn the boats” recommendation from Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, who notes that “Newspapers could save a lot of money if the primary access to news was via the Internet.”  However, Varian adds, newspapers historically have not made much ad revenue from their news, but rather from special-interest sections—and on the web, there are already a lot of websites that cater to those special interests. See also this comprehensive post by Varian on Google’s Public Policy Blog. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0100 825315 http://blogs.ala.org/nrmig.php?title=imls_webwise_2010_metadata_for_lunch&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 Last week at the Institute of Museum and Library Services' 2010 WebWise conference: "Imagining Our Digital Future," the topic of metadata thoroughly permeated the presentations and conversations. At lunch on Thursday, March 4, each table was assigned a facilitator and a topic for discussion. At the metadata table, one librarian in very early stages of a digital project asked, "Are your institutional repository records in your catalog too?" Facilitator Jenn Riley, Metadata Librarian at Indiana University, shared the recent discovery that WorldCat Local was including harvested records from the IU repository in their local search results -- an exciting development precipitating further action on their part to tidy up their harvested records. Umbrella search solutions such as AquaBrowser were also cited as a solution. These off-the-cuff remarks sounded much less time-intensive than crosswalking repository records to MARC in order to batch ingest them into the OPAC, a solution another librarian had been considering. The brief conversation among eight lunching librarians and museum professionals left this blogger wondering -- what discovery solutions are you using at your institution? -by Alice Platt (Source: ALA Weblog Service) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:45:52 +0100 825347 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14579 Library Director (Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research, United Arab Emirates) Applications are invited for the post of Library Director at The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The holder of this position is expected to assume a leadership role in planning, directing and managing the Center’s large and expanding library. The incumbent will be responsible for the following: •Successfully managing the functioning of a world-class library. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:50:02 +0100 825068 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/15937 Hello all, The Library of Congress is seeking a Metadata Specialist for the World Digital Library (WDL). The Metadata Specialist will be responsible for creating, tracking, and managing metadata; researching and analyzing cataloging-related tools and technologies; training internal and external constituencies; and providing leadership in the evaluation and implementation of metadata standards within the WDL. Please note that the official title on the job announcement is "Information Technology Specialist (Data Management)." More information about the job and the application process is here, http://jobview.usajobs.gov/getjob.aspx?OPMControl=1839877. Apologies for cross-posting. Michelle Rago Technical Project Director World Digital Library Library of Congress mrag-+hwoy1Po9Oc< at >public.gmane.org http://www.wdl.org/ 202.707.1634 (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825365 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MsvuLibraryBlog/~3/AV7RjuA2Awk/all-questions-welcomed.html At this time of year, you are no doubt hard at work on papers, presentations, etc. Searching for material on TOPICS can be challenging and time-consuming. Don't forget that the Mount librarians are here to help you whether you are working in the library, or working from home. . . Library desk/phone: A librarian is available in the library from 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. Monday - Thursday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. on the weekends.  If you don't see us there, request us! If you are off campus please call us at 457-6250. Online/Virtual: Email us at library@msvu.ca or chat with a librarian using the Live Help chat box located on the Ask Us! page, in the Novanet Catalogue or in many of our Subject & Research Guides. Live Help is staffed by librarians from several universities & colleges all ready to help with your research and citation questions.One-on-one consults: We can help you improve your searches, and/or help with other types of questions. Book a 30 minute appointment today. Visit the Mount Saint Vincent University Library website. (Source: MSVU Library Blog) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:01:05 +0100 825366 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14582 Assistant Librarian (The Art Institute of Fort Worth, Texas) Job Summary This position is responsible for supporting the technical, circulation, and reference functions of the library. The position is responsible for overseeing the library facility, materials, service and operations in the absence of the Director of Library Services and the Reference Librarians. Incumbent must assure that the EDMC philosophy: quality services to clients; development, growth, involvement, and recognition of employees; sound economic principles; and environment which is conducive to innovation, positive thinking and expansion - is considered in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of this position. Key Job Elements -Process library materials used by patron. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:50:02 +0100 824867 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/fsREHwJmqv4/wellcome-library-workshops.html This week's free Wellcome Library workshops are:Using historical newspapers onlineDiscover the world of nineteenth century newspapers. In this workshop you can explore the Times Digital Archive, and learn how to search the text of newspapers from the British Library's newspaper archive online. A wealth of social history for all!Tuesday 9th March, 2-3pmWellcome ImagesDo you need a picture? Find what you need from the Wellcome Images catalogue: search 160 000 pictures online, covering the history of medicine and the history of human culture from the earliest periods of civilisation to the present day.Thursday 11th March, 2-3pm (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:18:54 +0100 824878 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/vdMlcx_1ZH4/ Nieman Journalism blogger Martin Langeveld posts a whitepaper currently being presented at a journalism conference at the University of Missouri in Columbia. The whitepaper reflects on the ways that the iPad will change the face of publishing. Langeveld writes: iPad is not a linear, incremental development. It’s not a simple next step after everything that has preceded it (even iPhone); it’s a new direction that will have unpredictable impacts on digital behavior. He then proceeds to…predict these “unpredictable impacts”. They include a substantial increase in mobile shopping, as the iPad provides a much better display medium than a smaller-sized smartphone screen, and a decline in print and “insert” advertising as ads move increasingly to the mobile web. It is even possible that mail-order catalogs will stop being shipped by post, as the iPad and tablets like it end up as “coffee table” devices. Langeveld lays out a list of assumptions for publishers to make, and strategies to pursue, based on this idea. Papers should “reinvent content for the mobile Web and iPad,” and journalists should “develop new streams of content, in new formats and with new kinds of interactivity and connectivity.” In some ways this reminds me of the “burn your boats” advice from Marc Andreesen that I covered the other day. Langeveld seems to be saying that the iPad is going to bring a sea change in the way things are done, and you must adapt or get swept away. On the one hand, I’m not sure I buy it. It seems a little early to start predicting The End Of The World As We Know It before the device even hits store shelves. On the other hand, prognostication is an important part of doing business, so if you don’t try to predict what’s coming you might end up getting left behind. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0100 824969 http://careercenter.sla.org/jobdetail.cfm?job=3318837 US - PA - Bellefonte, The position requires knowledge of current library information trends, changes in information technology, intellectual property management, national library data standards, and cataloging software. D (Source: SLA Career Center Search Results []) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:59:00 +0100 825069 http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/2010/03/marc-21-update-no-11-full-and-concise.html News from the Network Development and MARC Standards Office at LC.Update No. 11 (February 2010) is now available on the MARC website (www.loc.gov/marc/). It is integrated into the documentation for each of the Online Full and Concise formats that are maintained on that site -- the Bibliographic format, Authority format, Holdings format, Classification format, and Community Information format. The documentation includes changes made to the MARC 21 formats resulting from proposals which were considered by the ALA ALCTS/LITA/RUSA Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI), the Canadian Committee on MARC (CCM) and the BIC Bibliographic Standards Group in January 2010. Many of the changes in this update have been made to accommodate the new cataloging rules, Resource Description and Access (RDA). Note that no changes are needed to the Holdings, Classification, and Community Information Formats in this update.The changes are indicated in red in Update 11. Update 10 (October 2009) changes have also been kept in red since that update was only recently issued and 10 and 11 are being combined. Each format also has an appendix, "Format Changes for Update No. 10 (October 2009) and Update No. 11 (February 2010)" that lists the changes that comprise the combined update. The Web version of the formats is the official version and is considered the start for implementation planning for MARC 21. Users are not expected to begin using the new features in the format until 60 days from the date of this announcement: May 5, 2010. For more information about format documentation see: http://www.loc.gov/marc/status.htmlThe printed version of the update will be available through the Cataloging Distribution Service in the future. The print format update will combine Updates 10 and 11 into one update dated 2009/February 2010. The printed publications will be announced when they are ready for distribution. (Source: Catalogablog) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824838 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/ngY_a8SjCYE/ John Ingram, Ingram Industries; Evan Schnittman, Oxford University Press; Michael Tamblyn, Kobo; Roland Lange, Google Kobo: started by pbook seller who felt was going to loose 5 to 10% of sales to ebooks. Idea was to “compete” with the book seller and keep ebook sales under the same roof. Will be working with publishers, OEM, retailers and carriers. Feel devices will get more and better and that you should be able to read the book on all of them. Book should follow you from device to device. 2m books in catalog and delivered books to 200 countries. Purchased books mirrored in the cloud so will follow from device to device. Will be on iTablet. DRM is tied to the user’s account. Price is the major discussion of ebooks right now. Publishers don’t usually ask what readers want and what readers are doing right now. People buy ebooks in the $6 to $11 price range. Current ebook consumer is price sensitive. Requires razor thin margins and lots of volume to make money. Average sale price is $8.76. With agency model publishers set prices and retailers not allowed to discount. Redistribute 9.99 to 13/15, but publishers make less money per book. Publishers are betting that consumers will follow. First time that industry has raised the price of an existing format, and while doing this will be limiting the tactics retailers can use to entice consumer. Based on assumption that consumers will pay more, but we’ve just never asked them to. Kobo’s focus groups show that consumers want instant and convenience, device portability and price came in number 5. But price was still in the mix. Concept of bundling: talking with some publishers but publishers seem frightened about anything that would “devalue” the pbook as an asset bundling runs into this. They have data that indicates that consumers would like this. Google: Partner Program, 2m books from 30,000 publishers worldwide. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:37:33 +0100 824758 http://www.cla-net.org/weblog/2010/03/register_now_fo_2.php Fling yourself into Spring with the California Library Association's 2nd Annual Professional Development and Networking program series. This year's Spring Fling programs include workshops, cultural and social events, as well as panel discussions. Events take place online in addition to eight cities, ranging from San Diego to Sacramento. While attending CLA's Spring Fling programs you will meet new people, learn new skills, and spend time with colleagues and friends who share your interests. Visit the Spring Fling website to find the program that's right for you! Discounts on registration are available for CLA members while further savings have been made for library students. On behalf of CLA's staff and volunteers, we hope to see you at a Spring Fling program! List of 2010 CLA Spring Fling Programs March Betwixt, Befuddled and Be"Tween" April The Internet Public Library: Opportunities for Participation Religion & Public Libraries: Do You Dewey 200? SCCTP Basic Serials Cataloging & Holding Workshops May Best Practices for Successful Computer Literacy Workshops for Adult Spanish Speakers Angel Island Immigration Station Tour Baby, Preschool, Bilingual and Spanish Storytimes Showcase! Career Development Workshop: Embracing the Past, Celebrating the Future New Developments in Cataloging Practices June Will LIS Graduate Students Accept Coursework in 3D Immersive Spaces? Taking Charge of Your Career: Resume Writing, Interview Skills, and Finding a Job that's Right for You (Source: CLA Weblog) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:25:22 +0100 824695 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/08/meet-adrian-praetzellis-audiobook-narrator-for-librivox-org/ Most of you are probably aware of LibriVox. For those who aren’t, it’s a FREE service offering audiobooks utilizing books and other text documents in the public domain. Simply download the audiobook either as a podcast (the book in three installments per week) or browse/search the catalog find what you want to listen to and then download as a Zip file. This page has more details and yes, you can listen to LibriVox content with your iPod,iPhone,iTouch, and in the near future, your iPad. Access the catalog (browse or search here) of audiobooks here. So, with that 30 second intro complete you might want to take a look and enjoy an interesting article from the Santa Rosa, CA Press Democrat. The article is about Sonoma State University anthropology professor Adrian Praetzellis, who is also a “narrator” of the books (more than 75 hours so far) LibriVox offers as audiobooks. From the Article: His solitary and unpaid exercise in story-telling has reached close to half a million listeners through LibriVox, a free and communally run library of digital audio recordings. The operation was started four years ago by young Montreal techie Hugh McGuire, with the altruistic mission of making as many texts as possible available to a limitless number of people around the world in audio format with no filters, no judgments and no fees. It not only is nonprofit {they’re having a fundraising drive at the present time], but has no paid administration. The only real restriction is that all the texts must be non-copyrighted and in the public domain. In the U.S. that would include anything published before 1923. Some 3,500 people like Praetzellis have posted recordings — 3,175 books and 65,000 other audio texts ranging from poetry and plays to government documents and important letters and speeches on the site, LibriVox.org. [Snip] What the Jewish Praetzellis has mastered well is Yiddish. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:34:06 +0100 824604 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/08/article-the-use-of-handheld-mobile-devices-their-impact-and-implications-for-library-services/ by: Joel Cummings, Washington State University; Alex Merrill, Washington State University; Steve Borrelli, Washington State University. PREPRINT Version: The Use of Handheld Mobile Devices: Their Impact and Implications for Library Services (32 pages; PDF) FINAL Version: In Library Hi Tech, Vol. 28 No. 1, 2010, pp. 22-40. From the Abstract: Purpose: A survey was undertaken to better understand the nature of handheld mobile computing use by academic library users and whether there is a significant demand and demand for using the library services with these small screen devices. Design/Methodology/Approach: A survey was created to measure whether people want to access an OPAC with a small screen. Additionally through with open ended questions, the survey attempted to gain a broader understanding of handheld mobile computing’s impact on and implications for the services provided by academic libraries. Findings: 58.4% of respondents who owned a web enabled handheld device indicated that they would use small screen devices, such as PDAs or web enabled cellphones to search a library OPAC. Originality/Value: The increasing prevalence of handheld mobile computing devices such as PDAs and web enabled cell phones warrants investigation as to its impact on libraries. This study examines an academic library user population and the potential demand for using the library’s catalog with handheld mobile computing devices Sources: Library Hi-Tech (via Spectrum Blog and Twitter) Hat Tip: Gerry M. (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:00:50 +0100 824610 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/08/resource-of-the-week-catalog-of-nonprofit-literature/ Resource of the Week: Catalog of Nonprofit Literature By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor We are big supporters of nonprofits in general both here on ResourceShelf and over on DocuTicker, our sister site. Thus, we are huge fans of the Foundation Center. This is a venerable institution; in operation since 1956, it’s currently supported by roughly 550 foundations and is widely recognized as a pre-eminent authority on “organized philanthropy.” There is an avalanche of useful information on the Foundation Center’s website, and most of it is free. We thought we’d give a little love to the Catalog of Nonprofit Literature — formerly known as Literature of the Nonprofit Sector (LNPS) — this week. The Catalog of Nonprofit Literature is a searchable database of the literature of philanthropy. It incorporates the unique contents of the Foundation Center’s five libraries and contains approximately 28,000 full bibliographic citations, of which nearly 20,000 have descriptive abstracts. It is updated daily. The basic search form offers a standard keyword search that allows for the use of standard boolean operators. Use the radio buttons to either search everything or restrict your search to full-text resources only. To the right are links to more information and/or help, including a guided tour, a bibliography of periodicals, and a quick look at recently added items. The “standard search” is actually an advanced search form offerings several more options that facilitate a more precise query. If you click on the buttons labeled “Index,” a window pops up with a directory of relevant subject terms. Nicely done! Though there are full-text resources in this database, many other items are not available online. They can be viewed at the Foundation Center’s headquarters in New York City, its national collection in Washington, D.C. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:11:11 +0100 824613 http://drakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/03/iraq-elections.html Iraq is concluding what seems to have been a largely successful democratic election process. Many issues remain of course, but where to learn more about this election, and what the future may hold? You could do a Google search of course, and get some articles from various news organizations. You'd find even more in something like our Academic Search. We have lots of books in our catalog about Iraq too. The Library of Congress Portals to the World site is a handy place to find links to lots of information about different countries. (Source: Drake Memorial Library) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825352 http://vivabibliotecaviva.blogspot.com/2010/03/web-30-promete-mudar-as-bibliotecas.html Research Information: February/March 2010  Web 3.0 promises change for librariesAlmost as soon as the term ‘Web 2.0’ was coined, the web community split into two factions. There were those who embraced the term and started debating future iterations and the meanings of ‘Web 3.0’, ‘Web 4.0’, and even ‘Web 5.0’. Meanwhile, the other group labelled the 2.0 moniker as hype.One of the problems with the term Web 2.0 has been the lack of an explicit definition. In his seminal paper on the topic, Tim O’Reilly instead provided a list of features and technologies, such as using the web as a platform, and harnessing the wisdom of the crowd. The wide variety of features has led to arguments that Web 2.0 is vague enough to include everything on the web and as such means nothing. However, away from the details, the term ‘Web 2.0’ reflects a major shift in the way that users view the web: from a read-only web, to a read-write web.The term ‘Web 3.0’ reflects an equally momentous change in the way we view the web. Some of the possible avenues for the future include the 3D web, the semantic web, and the real world web. All have gained a lot of interest among library and information professionals. Virtual 3D worlds such as Second Life provide new places and ways to offer information and services. An increasingly semantic web offers the opportunity for access to increasing amounts of information from disparate sources. Meanwhile the real world web offers to integrate the web with the world around us. We are yet to see which of these will capture the imagination of library stakeholders to such an extent that it will reflect a new perspective in the way they see the web.The 3D webThe potential of a 3D web and a far richer web experience have been enabled by increases in computer processing power and higher bandwidth capabilities. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825057 http://bclyaknow.blogspot.com/2010/03/place-your-hold-on-mockingjay.html Good news for our fellow Hunger Games fans: there is a record in the library catalog for Mockingjay, the final book in the trilogy! This means that you can place a hold on the title now, and reserve your place in line to read it when the book comes out in late August. Visit here to place that hold! (Source: YA KNOW @ BCL) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824738 http://freerangelibrarian.com/2010/03/07/it-aint-easy-being-oclc/ An interesting kerfuffle has been brewing in LibraryLand. Some library organizations have been using alternative utilities to catalog their resources, and now one of them expects their intended savings to be wiped out because OCLC wants to charge them a higher rate for batchloading than for those of us who pay OCLC for cataloging. Meanwhile, a trustee, Larry Alford, has been making pleas for OCLC members to stay within the fold (see letter, linked in news article), warning us of no less than “apocalyptic” disaster if we subdivide LibraryLand into bibliographic duchees. Alford says he seeks our “advice and comment.” Since he has been taking his case to the public, I’ll respond in kind. Also, to spice things up, an anonymous crank has been emailing librarians behind the scenes to remind them that OCLC’s trustees are fairly well compensated (you knew that, right? Alford got $55,000 in 2008, according to the IRS) and that Jay Jordan is paid very well. To which I respond in threefold: I assume that crank has a dog in this fight; trustee compensation is a complex issue; and I don’t care for Jay Jordan himself, but I would hope the leader of the One True Database would be well-compensated. Regarding trustee compensation, the first issue is not whether trustees get a perk for what is probably a fairly significant work effort, but whether a paid trustee is the most strategic choice for a “hearts and mind” campaign by OCLC. Here’s a hint: No. The likelihood of a paid trustee changing my mind about OCLC’s business model is roughly equal to the likelihood of Anita Bryant selling me a glass of orange juice. OCLC needs to start using “real people” to tell the OCLC story. If it can’t find any, then it needs to figure out why that is. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:28:08 +0100 824332 http://freegovinfo.info/node/2924 February 2010 marked the first month where the only documents posted to the Lost Docs Blog were receipts submitted during that month or during the last week of the preceeding month. We also established a new blog category that we hope we will not need to use very much. That category is "Explanation Needed" and if you need an explanation, see my blog entry about it. Now on to the February 2010 Lost Docs Report and Appeal REPORT In February 2010, we posted 27 "lost docs" e-mail receipts sent by GPO to the librarians who reported these missing documents. These civic minded librarians in turn e-mailed us their receipts. How many reports did GPO receive? Only they know, but the more people who send their fugitive docs e-mail receipts to lostdocs@freegovinfo.info, the more accurate our count will be. Of these 27 reported items, two items have been cataloged by GPO since the initial report. You can view this list by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/found/ and looking at the postings with February 2010 dates. We are appreciative of these new records. In our view, six of the items reported to GPO and posted to the blog in January were either out of scope for the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) or were already in the catalog. You can view these items by visiting lostdocs.freegovinfo.info/category/false/ and looking for items with February 2010 dates. In three of these "false positive" cases, it looks like GPO had received the tangible item near the published date of the item and cataloged an electronic equivalent, but did not distribute the tangible item to the Federal Depository Library Program. This may or may not be in accordance with GPO SOD 301 which states that budget permitting, tangible documents will be offered when both tangible and online formats are available. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:19:28 +0100 824263 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/06/new-zealand-library-delivery-in-the-digital-age-an-editorial-from-the-national-library-te-puna-newsletter/ From the Editorial by Jenny McDonald: Over 90% of the New Zealand population between age 12 and 40 use the internet, over 80% of that usage is broadband and 80% see internet as an important source of information (The ‘Internet in New Zealand, 2009’ report from the World Internet Project). Between the 2000 and the 2003 research reports produced by Berkley, new information stored on paper grew globally by 36% and new information stored electronically, by 87%. [Snip] Metadata continues to play a key role in bringing the customer to the content in libraries, either on virtual or physical shelves. There have been efficiencies in scale since the 1940’s with the National Union Catalogue that enabled resource- sharing in New Zealand. Those efficiencies were further expanded in 2007 when New Zealand Libraries partnered with OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) to use WorldCat services. Access the Complete Editorial Source: Te Puna Newsletter, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa (Source: ResourceShelf) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:56:49 +0100 824158 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/05/highwire-press-2009-librarian-ebook-survey/ HighWire Press has released HighWire Press 2009 Librarian eBook Survey. Here's an excerpt from the press release: The survey was conducted as part of HighWire's ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area. The survey data was analyzed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s Head Biology Librarian, and the report presents his perspective on what his librarian colleagues had to say about ebooks. The report espouses some familiar and consistent themes: Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. Related Posts "GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement" Google Book Search Settlement Hearing Transcript "Academic Author Objections to the Google Book Search Settlement" Stanford University Signs Amended Google Book Search Settlement Agreement "Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace" (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:05:40 +0100 823991 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/G1iJ4VEMtV8/ HighWire Press has released HighWire Press 2009 Librarian eBook Survey. Here's an excerpt from the press release: The survey was conducted as part of HighWire's ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area. The survey data was analyzed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s Head Biology Librarian, and the report presents his perspective on what his librarian colleagues had to say about ebooks. The report espouses some familiar and consistent themes: Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. Related Posts "Internet Archive Dishes up BookServer as Digital Books Market Heats Up" Stanford University Preparing Proposal for Text Mining Center Providing Access to 30 Million Digitized Books Plus Highwire Journals Barnes & Noble's eBookstore Offers over 700,000 E-Book Titles Open Publication Distribution System Draft Released Sony’s eBook Store to Offer Over a Half-Million Public Domain Books from Google (Source: DigitalKoans) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:05:36 +0100 824226 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seealso/~3/LRozMNM0FUc/can_i_just_say_a_whole_bunch.html Room 31 of the Main Stacks Originally uploaded by Klara Kim About a month ago, I had a fight with my friend and co-worker, Jessy (that would be Library Shenanigans and the History and Future of the Book Jessy). It was a rather polite, librarianly fight over the importance of academic library collection size. At our small private liberal arts college library, when we give tours someone inevitably asks how many books we have. In the last seven years that I have worked at the library, our usual answer was “about five hundred thousand.” At a meeting last month, one of Jessy’s and my colleagues said that she’d done a little investigating in the catalog, and the number she came up with was closer to eight hundred thousand. She didn’t have all the information in front of her, though, so it was hard for her to answer our questions. 800K what? Item records? Non-serials item records? Did that include electronic books? Websites in the catalog? It wasn’t entirely clear. I was in a bit of a Mood that morning, so I came out with something like “we should just say ‘a lot’ and refuse to answer that question. I feel like I could say ‘fifty thousand’ or ‘five million’ and get the same reaction from most people. If it has the books you want, a tiny collection is fine. If it doesn’t have the books you want, an enormous collection is inadequate.” Jessy disagreed strongly. She pointed out that if you are researching a literary figure on the edge of the canon, you will be lucky if our library has a single critical biography, while a large research library might have several published over the last fifty years. She made the case that while sharing and ILL is great, even greater is being able to go to the stacks in your own library to get the books that you need. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:58:12 +0100 825168 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PegasusLibrarian/~3/Wg2qqktVw1Y/oaister.html For those of you who don’t know OAIster, if you have any reason to search for digitized primary sources, you should check it out. It’s a union catalog of digital library holdings. It’s chief asset is wonderfully descriptive metadata. And like with other collections of collections, I recommend searching OAIster to find which digital collections contain the kinds of things you’re interested in, and then searching or browsing those collections individually. For those of you who know OAIster, you know that it recently stopped being its own unique entity and started being an OCLC-hosted entity. It’s now available on the FirstSearch interface and the WorldCat.org interface. (Here’s more on the history of the catalog.) Enter the oddness. My co-worker ran some identical searches on both interfaces and came up with startlingly different numbers of results for most of her searches. Confused, I contacted OAIster and have just heard back from them why this is so. Apparently, the “keyword” search in the FirstSearch interface searches through the Source, Subject, Title, and Notes indexes. The keyword search on the WorldCat.org interface searches all available fields and all indexes. So now we know. Like Unlike (Source: Pegasus Librarian) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:49:30 +0100 823897 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/05/academic-libraries-tulane-u-libraries-invest-in-digital-sources/ From the Article: In the aftermath of Katrina, more than 700,000 of the library’s print volumes were submerged, along with 1.5 million individual pieces of microfilm. All recordings from the Maxwell Music Library were lost. After receiving relief funds, the library immediately reinvested in online facsimile collections, eJournals and eBook back files to replace and digitally preserve destroyed materials. Through the generosity of the collections’ publishers, Tulane purchased roughly $10 million worth of online resources for only slightly more than half of the actual cost. [Snip] [Associate Dean Andy] Corrigan said he considers books no less important than the university’s database collection. A significant portion of the library’s funding, however, is now dedicated to online resources. Howard-Tilton currently invests more than $8.1 million annually into library acquisitions. The library allocated $2.9 million for digital resources in 2010, which mostly includes subscriptions to online journals. A separate $2.1 million is allocated for serials, which includes both online journal subscriptions and print backups. In all, 41,670 unduplicated digital subscription titles are currently listed in the Tulane Libraries online catalog and eJournals list. Access the Complete Article Source: Tulane Hullabaloo (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:38:43 +0100 823882 http://mulford.utoledo.edu/mblog/?p=2060 by Janice Flahiff The Mulford Library has a large number of online journals available both on and off campus to UT affiliates. A quick check of Browse e-journals by subject (through the Online Journals link in the left column of the Mulford Library Home Page) had these results. Medicine – about 3,100 journal titles (scroll down to Medicine) Nursing – nearly 350 journal titles Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation – nearly 60 journal titles Physical Therapy – nearly 60 journal titles Public Health – over 800 titles (scroll down to Public Health) One may also search for specific journal titles through the Search catalog… box at either the Carlson or Mulford Library home pages.  Options include title and (medical) subject headings. The Mulford Library not only provides access to journals, but also databases as CINAHL, PubMed, and many OhioLINK databases to search for specific articles. Please do not hesitate to contact a Mulford Libarian for assistance! Remember, if the library does not have a specific needed article, you may request an article through the ILLIAD link in the left column of  either the Carlson or Mulford Library home pages. Articles may also be directly requested through the Find It!  link within abstracts at OhioLINK databases. (Source: Mulford Library Blog) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:48:14 +0100 823787 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/05/spalding-speaks-librarythings-tim-spalding-delivers-a-keynote-at-lianza-conference/ Via Clyde Smith at Cultural Research, we learn of a video of LibraryThing Founder and Developer, Tim Spalding, talking about LibraryThing and social cataloging at the LIANZA (Library & Information Association New Zealand Aotearoa) Annual Conference Closing Keynote Address. It took place at the end of 2009 in Christchurch, NZ. The presentation is titled, “What is Social Cataloging?” and runs about 55 minutes. It’s an insightful and interesting presentation full of both facts and ideas to consider. Additionally, Spalding is an excellent speaker. What follows is a NON-COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF a Few Facts and Discussion Points from the keynote. It’s well worth the 50-some minutes to listen for yourself. We think LIS students will also find this presentation worthy of their time. LT and Social Cataloging: + Started in 2005 + 850K Members + Members Have Cataloged More than 44 Million Books + Social Cataloging Will Become More Important to Libraries + The Social Cataloging Ladder + LibraryThing is More About the Content and Less About Pictures, etc. + Largest Tag on LT is Cyberpunk + Comparing LT Tags to LCSH + Explains TagMashing + Collaborative Cataloging + Brings Various Editions of Books Together [Not FRBR but FRBR Like] + Members Adding Value by Adding Metadata and More Not Provided by the Publishers + Legacy Cataloging + Flash Mob Cataloging + LibraryThing for Libraries (A Fee-Based Service) + Traditional Cataloging Will Remain + Still Believes in Structured Data + End of Intellectual Structures Rooted in the Limited of the Physical World–David Weinberger + Humanizing the Catalog (ie. recommendations) + Library Catalogs are Not Links or Search Engines + LibraryThing Gets Twice as Much Traffic as WorldCat.org + Consider Open Source Products + Social Cataloging Can be a Way for Libraries to Join Web 1. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:41:39 +0100 823887 http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2010/03/05/the-mind-of-the-researcher-daniel-russell-akla10.html Daniel Russell, Google Search Quality & User Happiness 2010 Alaska Library Association Conference, opening keynote speaker Lewis & Clark left without a decent map it’s a complicated world out there and you don’t want to end up like the Donner Party (hey, go that way; it looks good) what does the current information map look like? let’s be adventurers but keep our eyes and minds open did a demo of Google Earth cost to put the flyover together = $0 and four minutes of time Google will crawl it within 48 hours when Lewis & Clark published about their trip, it took 10 years we see the world differently, and the library isn’t what it used to be stacks are no longer a core competence — the information landscape has radically changed 1200 exabytes of new content are generated each year (1.2 yottabytes if that helps or 1.2 billion terrabytes) 3.6 zetabytes per person per year (mostly music and video) libraries don’t have to curate and manage that — it stream to you text words per pseron per year = .1% of that total the good news is that the amount of reading per person per year has gone up by 3X since 1980 (primarily due to internet access); happening online, not print so need to develop new skills and new literacies showed Google Books can click on the places in a book and travel to all of them can actually recapitulate Huck Finn’s journey down the river LoC has 10 terabytes of text data or .01 petabytes he has 2 LoCs at home an exabyte = 50,000 years of DVD or 10 billion copies of The Economist (there aren’t enough trees in Alaska to print them all) we’re supporting this renaissance of access to print culture at the same time we’re expanding online content 1. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:23:16 +0100 823913 http://jobs.nasig.org/?p=709 Technical Services Coordinator Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois ANNOUNCEMENT OF PROFESSIONAL OPENING Available Summer 2010 POSITION: Library Technical Services Coordinator, full-time, twelve month, tenure-track faculty appointment in a collective bargaining unit. Position reports to the Associate University Librarian for Systems, Technical and Access Services. SALARY & BENEFITS: Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience. Comprehensive benefits package including health, dental and vision benefits, 24 days vacation and participation in the Illinois State Universities Retirement System. RESPONSIBILITIES: Coordinates technical services functions and staff in a broad range of activities related to acquisitions, cataloging and the management of electronic resources. Participates in the management of library systems related to technical services. Performs complex original and adaptive cataloging of all formats. Assists in the development and oversight of unit processes for OPAC authority control, database maintenance, and other catalog enhancements. Participates as part of the collective Technical Services Team in the ongoing assessment of policies and procedures across all technical services units. Supervises and trains 7.0 FTE technical services staff. May serve as subject specialist in designated area. Participation in professional organizations, service in library and university governance, and appropriate research/creative activities are expected and required for tenure. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: ALA accredited MLS degree and a second master’s degree. Evidence of 5+ years progressively responsible experience in technical services, including acquisitions, cataloging, serials and e-resource management. Recent supervisory experience managing one or more technical service units. Demonstrated knowledge of current standards, best practices and emerging trends in technical services. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:01:55 +0100 823930 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/05/academy-awards-online-searchable-databases-from-ampas-academy-of-motion-picture-arts-sciences/ The 82nd Annual Academy Awards take place on Sunday, so we thought it’s a good time to share several searchable databases worth knowing about. Actually, they’re not only worth knowing about for ready reference but these databases might be valuable to a variety of researchers. Access to all of these resources is free. First, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the organization that puts on the Oscars) has its own Academy Awards Database. The Academy Awards Database contains the record of past Academy Award winners and nominees, including Scientific and Technical Award winners. Basic and advanced search options are available as well as an option to browse statistics. Second, is the Motion Picture Credits Database Every year the Academy gathers credits from films hoping to qualify for the Academy Awards. Compiled and verified by the film’s producer or distributor, these credits also include production and releasing companies, MPAA ratings, running times, Los Angeles release dates, color, language, song titles, source authors and source material. Third, the Academy Awards Acceptance Speech Database This database contains the full text of the speech the award winner made on stage as they accepted their Oscar. Do you remember Joe Pesci’s six word speech after he won the 1990 Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Goodfellas? Finally, two databases that will be of greatest interest to researchers in the Los Angele-area. The Motion Picture Scripts Database This database is an inventory of the motion picture script holdings of six Los Angeles-area libraries. It is limited almost exclusively to the screenplays of produced films; that is, films which were actually made. The only exception is the inclusion of a few published scripts of unproduced films. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:34:06 +0100 823890 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14544 Technical Services Coordinator (Northeastern Illinois University) Duties include: Coordinating functions and staff in a broad range of activities related to acquisitions, cataloging and the management of electronic resources. ALA-accredited MLS, a second master’s degree and evidence of 5+ years progressively responsible experience in technical services are required. Applications must be based on the entire position description and qualifications at http://library.neiu.edu/aboutthelibrary/jobs.html. (Source: Latest ALA Job Listings) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:40:01 +0100 823586 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Spellboundblog/~3/KPAfzESaBus/ While smart folks over at NARA are thinking about the preservation strategy for digitized 2010 census forms, I got inspired to take a look at what we have preserved from past censuses. In specific, I wanted to look at posters, photos and videos that give us a glimpse into how we encouraged and documented the activity of participation in the past. There is a dedicated Census History area on the Census website, as well as a section of the 2010 website called The Big Count Archive. While I like the wide range of 2010 Census Posters – the 1940 census poster shown here (thank you Library of Congress) is just so striking. I also loved the videos I found, especially when I realized that they were all available on YouTube – uploaded by a user named JasonGCensus. I am not clear on the relationship between JasonGCensus and the official U.S. Census Bureau’s Channel (which seems focused on 2010 Census content), but there are some real gems posted there. For example, in the 1970 Census PSA shown below we learn about the privacy of our census data: “Our separate identities will be lost in the process which is concerned only with what we say, not who said it”. We are shown technology details – complete with old school beeping and blooping computer sounds. (NOTE: this video is also available on Census.gov, but I saw no way to embed that video here – hence my cheer at finding the same video on YouTube) For the 1960 census, a PSA explains the new FOSDIC technology which removed the need for punch-cards. With the tagline ‘Operation Rollcall, USA’, the ad presents our part in “this enterprise” as cooperation with the enumerators. In the 1980 PSA the tag line is ‘Answer the Census: We’re counting on you!’ and stresses that it is kept confidential and is used to provide services to communities. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:42:40 +0100 824430 http://medinfo.netbib.de/archives/2010/03/05/3658 Endlich mal eine Umfrage, die meine Vermutungen bestätigt , insbesondere über nicht zeitgemäße DRM-Geschäftsmodelle á la Elsevier oder UTB. HighWire Presents Findings from eBooks Librarian Survey. 138 Bibliothekare aus 13 Ländern wurde von HighWire über ihre Meinung zu Onlinebüchern befragt. Die 5 wichtigsten Ergebnisse: Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. (siehe dazu auch unsere Umfrage zu Mehrwertbüchern) Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. Warum macht HighWire sowas? “We don’t think there’s enough concrete information out there to advise our publishing partners as they form their strategies in ebook publishing,” says HighWire’s Director, John Sack. “Many have tried a number of different distribution avenues and are now looking to have more hands-on control of their ebooks programs. We are working to help them find the best means of doing that.” Wie geht es weiter? HighWire is also conducting one-on-one interviews with students and faculty to determine their needs and expectations. Through a series of interviews, surveys and data collection activities throughout 2010, HighWire will continue to help their scholarly publisher customers understand the evolving needs of libraries and individual readers. Umfrage im Volltext [via liblicense] Related posts Wie entwickelt sich der Markt für Lehrbücher? Lehren aus den USA (0) Springer White Paper on eBooks in Libraries (0) Elsevier’s StudentConsult II (0) What we achieved by promoting our E-Books (0) What do faculty and students really think about e-books? (0) (Source: medinfo) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:24:37 +0100 824872 http://santafelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/03/fantastic-fiction.html One of the most frequently asked question I hear at the Reference Desk is: “what comes next in this series?” Often you can open to the front and see a listing of the books, and very often you will be able to search by the series title in our catalog, but another option is a great site about books and authors called Fantastic Fiction.This site, which comes out of England, is a great way to see what series a particular author has written—and in what order you should read the books—get some information about the author (including a picture), as well as some suggestions on who else you might like if you enjoyed this author’s books. It also has lists of upcoming books, most popular books and specific genres. I find it very user-friendly.by KS @ LF (Source: ICARUS... the Santa Fe Public Library Blog) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 823647 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/03/04/unintended-consequences-12-years-under-the-dmca/ The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. Here's an excerpt from the announcement: EFF today released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. This is the sixth update to the report, which aims to catalog all the reported instances where the DMCA's ban on tampering with DRM have been abused to stymie fair use, free speech, and competition, rather than to attack "piracy." Congress enacted the DMCA's ban on bypassing DRM at the urging of entertainment industry lobbyists who argued that DRM backed by law would quell digital copyright infringement. Of course, 12 years later, that exactly hasn't worked out. Nor is it likely to ever work out. But lots of industries have recognized that these provisions of the DMCA are good for other things—like impeding scientific research and legitimate competition. The Unintended Consequences report collects these stories, including oldies like Lexmark's effort to block toner cartridge refilling and new cases like the lawsuit against RealDVD. Other new additions to the report include Apple's use of the DMCA to lock iPhone owners to Apple's own App Store for software, Apple's DMCA threats against Bluwiki for hosting discussions about iPod interoperability, and Texas Instruments' use of the DMCA to threaten calculator hobbyists trying to write their own operating systems. Related Posts Google Book Search Settlement Hearing Transcript "Academic Author Objections to the Google Book Search Settlement" "The Long and Winding Road to the Google Books Settlement" Lessig: "For the Love of Culture: Google, Copyright, and Our Future" "Google Book Search and the Future of Books in Cyberspace" (Source: DigitalKoans) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:03:40 +0100 823998 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/Nipa8yWvzQY/ The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. Here's an excerpt from the announcement: EFF today released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. This is the sixth update to the report, which aims to catalog all the reported instances where the DMCA's ban on tampering with DRM have been abused to stymie fair use, free speech, and competition, rather than to attack "piracy." Congress enacted the DMCA's ban on bypassing DRM at the urging of entertainment industry lobbyists who argued that DRM backed by law would quell digital copyright infringement. Of course, 12 years later, that exactly hasn't worked out. Nor is it likely to ever work out. But lots of industries have recognized that these provisions of the DMCA are good for other things—like impeding scientific research and legitimate competition. The Unintended Consequences report collects these stories, including oldies like Lexmark's effort to block toner cartridge refilling and new cases like the lawsuit against RealDVD. Other new additions to the report include Apple's use of the DMCA to lock iPhone owners to Apple's own App Store for software, Apple's DMCA threats against Bluwiki for hosting discussions about iPod interoperability, and Texas Instruments' use of the DMCA to threaten calculator hobbyists trying to write their own operating systems. Related Posts "Looking for Fair Use in the DMCA's Safety Dance" Jonathan Band’s Testimony on the DMCA Film Clip Compilation Exemption Library of Congress Releases Audio Files of Washington DMCA Exemption Hearings “The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books” (Source: DigitalKoans) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:03:24 +0100 824233 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/04/new-report-highwire-presents-findings-from-ebooks-librarian-survey/ From the Summary (2 pages; PDF): The survey was conducted as part of HighWire’s ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly ebook market. The results and accompanying analysis draw together the input of 138 librarians from 13 countries. The responses underscore the significant growth librarians expect in ebook acquisitions and point to their current preferences and possible trends in this evolving area. The survey data was analyzed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s Head Biology Librarian, and the report presents his perspective on what his librarian colleagues had to say about ebooks + Simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features. ? Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. ? While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. ? DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. + Users tend to discover ebooks through both the library catalog and search engines. + While users prefer PDFs, format preference will likely change as technology changes. + DRM seems to hinder ebook use for library patrons; ability to print is essential. + The most popular business model for librarians is purchase with perpetual access. HighWire is also conducting one-on-one interviews with students and faculty to determine their needs and expectations. Through a series of interviews, surveys and data collection activities throughout 2010, HighWire will continue to help their scholarly publisher customers understand the evolving needs of libraries and individual readers. Access the Full Text of the Report (38 pages; PDF) Source: Highwire Press Hat Tip: Gerry M. (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:38:50 +0100 823492 http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2010/03/library-anywhere-write-up-on-ala.php Library Anywhere, our upcoming product that provides a mobile catalog (both mobile web and native apps) for any library, just got an excellent write-up on the ALA TechSource blog: LibraryThing Delivers Mobile Access to Library Catalogs.The article, by Marshall Breeding, will also appear in the March 2010 issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter.Breeding says of Library Anywhere,"With the high level of functionality and the low pricing, this competition will lower the threshold for mobile technology into the reach of almost any library."We're certainly excited about Library Anywhere, and are busy at work on it. We'll have more to show off soon! (Source: Thing-ology (LibraryThing's ideas blog)) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:09:00 +0100 823938 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/griffey/~3/8b8QlIkBhRE/ I’m spending part of my morning looking through tech specs on various desktops and laptops for use as exemplars for our new building. Finding, deciding, and then sending links to our architects  for the systems I’m interested in, so that they can track down heat loads and such for HVAC calculations. Tell me…which of the following URLs shows a company that cares about User Experience: Dell Studio One http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/desktops/desktop-studio-one-19/pd.aspx?refid=desktop-studio-one-19&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~desktop-studio-one-19_anav_1~~ Lenovo C Series http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=00C718E6D6AB498383A1A2F8DFF428C3 Apple iMac http://www.apple.com/imac/Similar Posts: Further thoughts on Intellectual Property Laptop? Hack of the week: Dropbox Thinking about the catalog WP2 categories = broken? (Source: Pattern Recognition) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:29:01 +0100 824494 http://eprints.rclis.org/17841/1/opac_2.0.pdf Por: Ortega, MarisaAbstractEl OPAC ( On Line Public Access Catalog ) de una biblioteca es una herramienta esencial para los usuarios. En los últimos años, con el auge de las tecnologías participativas que son herramientas surgidas por el uso de la web social, se ha pensado en utilizarlas y aplicarlas a las bibliotecas para comunicarse, formar e informar , integrar al usuario en los servicios. Como consecuencia aparece el OPAC 2.0 u OPAC social: la transformación del rígido catálogo tradicional en uno más familiar para el usuario, un catálogo que aprovecha las ventajas que ofrece la web. El nuevo cambio, es la implementación de las tecnologías 2.0 permitiendo una mayor reutilización de sus contenidos y la participación de los usuarios.Este concepto ha sido estudiado con anterioridad por muchos autores y se puede entender como la aplicación de las tecnologías y las actitudes de la web 2.0 al catálogo bibliográfico. Es importante justificar la necesidad de este tipo de aplicaciones e identificar qué puede aportar la web a los OPAC. En este trabajo se realiza una reflexión acerca de lo que hoy debería ser el catálogo en línea de una biblioteca y no lo que realmente es en la mayoría de los casos: una caja de búsqueda con algunas posibilidades hipertextuales cuya filosofía está basada en una tradición bibliotecaria básicamente conservadora. La evolución de los OPACs se quedó estancada con la aparición de la Web e incluso sufrió un fuerte retroceso respecto a los sistemas existentes a comienzos de los 90. Sorprendentemente no se ha hecho casi nada en cuanto a su diseño aún a pesar de la extraordinaria evolución sufrida en la World Wide Web desde 1995. Una vez revisadas las propuestas actuales y los modelos existentes y en base a la bibliografía, se analizarán las funcionalidades deseables de un OPAC 2.0. Texto completo en: http://eprints.rclis.org/17841/1/opac_2.0.pdfRincón del Bibliotecario (Source: infoesfera.com) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:26:00 +0100 823366 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14535 Cataloger Needed (Multi-Cultural Books and Videos, Michigan) Cataloging Librarian for Multi-Cultural Books and Videos Multi-Cultural Books and Videos is the one of the leading sources of foreign language material in North America. We are looking for a cataloging librarian who will join our team to provide libraries and educational institutions bestselling books, popular movies and chart topping music. We will be at the 2010 PLA Conference in Portland, OR (Booth 747) for interviews. Duties: - The Cataloging Librarian is responsible for the creation of original and adaptive Library of Congress MARC cataloging records for books and media. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:30:03 +0100 823258 http://ddc.typepad.com/025431/2010/03/dewey-breakfast-at-pla-2010.html Please join us for the Dewey Breakfast/Update at the PLA National Conference 2010 on Thursday, March 25, 7:00–8:00 a.m., Doubletree Hotel Portland, Oregon Room. To keep you up to date with all matters Dewey, we will have presentations on the new WebDewey 2.0 (the development of which is coming along nicely) and on applications of our linked data web service dewey.info (with an exciting real-live demo of how the service has been implemented using mobile devices to support multilingual access into a public library’s catalog). There will also be an open discussion period—bring those burning Dewey questions and suggestions! If you haven’t done so already, please register for the Dewey Breakfast/Update here. See you soon in Portland! (Source: 025.431: The Dewey blog) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824179 http://www.comarmsblog.com/2010/03/looking-for-childrens-book-check-out.html By Tony Buzzeo  and Sacheko Yoshikawa Tess has the adventure of her life, from Time Out! When a misbehaving girl finds herself in-charge of a T-rex in the library, she discovers what all of those sayings about 'watching out,' and 'being careful' are for. The art is colorful and playful, and the book gives a lesson without making it seem like its giving one. The story is about the rules of the library, and about all the wonderful things that can be found there. For pre-schoolers and kindergartners. Weezer Changes the World by David McPhail Weezer is a dog who is struck by lightening and is granted the power of great intelligence. He cures diseases and works toward world peace. When he's struck by lightening again, he's changed back into a normal dog. However, his goodness has touched others, and they vow to continue on with Weezer's good works. By Jim Arnosky. The biggest threat to manatees is humans. In this story, a manatee is hurt by a boat. It's saved by humans as well, who rehabilitate the manatee and take care of her and her pup until she is ready to go back in the wild. This story teaches care and respect for the natural world, and the consequences of human actions. It can be a good conversation starter to begin teaching kids about conservation. Check out a list of our new books, by category, HERE. If you have a title or author, try using our online catalog. (Source: CARL Book Beacon) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:15:00 +0100 823239 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/03/03/osu-library-begins-lending-kindles/ I’ve always assumed that when it came to lending e-books that Libraries would need to find a method to share the digital files housing the books in question. That the e-book files would distributed to the user’s reader, and then deleted once the lending period was finished. While things may eventually work that way in the future, I’d like to share a very interesting service being pioneered at Oregon State University where the pre-loaded Kindle hardware is the item being circulated. Students are invited to spend up to $20 on any item in the Amazon Kindle store; items which become part of the Library’s e-catalogue, and gradually indexed using Library Thing.  The total collection is 57 titles, with the Library lending a grand total of 5 Kindles.  Still in the experimental stage? Of course, but it’s also incredibly inspiring in terms of Libraries & innovation. There were probably two big obstacles to getting this service into operation: 1) complying with Amazon’s guidelines, and 2) budget.  For number one, Amazon doesn’t allow for lending of digital titles, so the Library was smart enough to do an end-around and marry the reader device to the content.  Technology is becoming increasingly disposable, so why not? [As an aside, this isn't the most cost effective strategy now, but one can imagine how dropping tech prices may make this a solid tactic in the future.] The second hurdle was probably budget – as in, they had little to no budget to get the program off the ground (I don’t know, just a guess).   But if you consider how bootstrapped this service  is, you’ll see how they’ve almost ‘guerrilla marketed’ their test offering into production. What’s the cost here? perhaps two or three thousand dollars?  If budgets were holding back this group, they certainly found a way to get things started. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:16:26 +0100 824454 http://mulford.utoledo.edu/mblog/?p=2056 by Janice Flahiff National Nutrition Month® is a nutrition education and information campaign sponsored annually by the American Dietetic Association. The campaign is designed to focus attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits. Initiated in March 1973 as a week-long event, “National Nutrition Week” became a month-long observance in 1980 in response to growing public interest in nutrition. The American Dietetic Association, through the public pages of its Web site, strives to provide accurate information for wise food and related lifestyle choices.  The section includes Diet Reviews, Nutrition [information] For Life, and Food and Nutriton Topics. The Health Professional section includes some free resources, mostly in the areas of policy and the scope of  registered dietician practice. Looking for more nutrition information? Consider searching the UT catalog with Diet as a subject heading, consulting the Mulford Library’s Full Text Resources (as Nursing Consult and NetLibrary), and searching OhioLINK medical and health databases as PubMed and CINAHL. General information geared toward the public may found through links at the Consumer Health Library Guide. MedlinePlus, Health Information (US National Institutes of Health), and Intelihealth are a few great places to start. Please do not hesitate to contact Mulford Library Reference Assistance with your research and information needs! (Source: Mulford Library Blog) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:24:43 +0100 823248 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/03/new-open-knowledge-working-group-on-open-bibliographic-data/ Jonathan Gray from the Open Knowledge Foundation has an informative blog post about a new working group that will focus on open bibliographic data. Gray writes: In the past few weeks there have been a number of developments related to opening up bibliographic metadata. At the end of January we blogged [as did ResourceShelf] about (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:49:25 +0100 823171 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechsourceBlog/~3/eW46LUgaYsY/librarything-delivers-mobile-access-to-library-catalogs.html This article appears in the Match 2010 issue of Smart Libraries Newsletter, available for purchase here. -Dan Freeman One of the most interesting mobile applications demonstrated at the ALA Midwinter Meeting came from outside the ILS vendors. LibaryThing, a company that has found a niche in adding value to existing library catalogs, has created a mobile app that can be used with almost any of the major automation platforms, allowing a broad range of libraries to create a mobile presence at a very low price. LibraryAnywhere, developed by LibraryThing, provides an inexpensive solution for libraries to engage their users with mobile devices. It includes features that will enable libraries to offer mobile users access to their online catalogs, including the ability to search the library’s collection and to perform services such as viewing currently charged items and to requesting or renewing materials. It’s designed to be a functional mobile online catalog with a reasonable set of features. No mobile interface offers the full set of capabilities found in full-fledged Web versions, but they attempt to focus on the features most needed and that can be operated through the more limited controls and keyboards of mobile devices. LibraryAnywhere also helps mobile users discover the libraries participating in the service. Features expected in subsequent versions include the ability to return search results in response to queries submitted through a simple SMS text message. LibraryThing designed LibraryAnywhere to work regardless of the automation system used by the library and for library users with all types of devices. It currently supports most of the major integrated library systems, including SirsiDynix Symphony, Horizon and Dynix sites using the HIP online catalog, Millennium from Innovative Interfaces, Destiny and InfoCentre from Follett Software Company, Voyager from Ex Libris, Polaris, and Alexandria. It also supports a wide range of mobile devices. ... Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:11:23 +0100 824684 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ohiou/dxIf/~3/-5f4J-uRcaM/ I got a question today from someone doing research on the basics of urban planning.  Here are some resources that I would recommend for researching the topic of urban planning, city planning, or urban renewal. Encyclopedia articles Gale Virtual Reference Library  (http://www.library.ohiou.edu/find/dictencyc.html , first link at the top of that page) When the Database opens, just search for urban planning, and you get some good encyclopedia articles from multiple sources. Journals, magazines, and trade publications The links below will take you to the record in Alice, our online catalog, where you will need to open the individual journals and search for topics, or simply browse issues.  You might also search in the publications for things like “trends”. Journal of Urban Planning and Development Landscape and Urban Planning Journal of Urban Design City Cities Environment and Planning International Journal of Urban and Regional Research International Planning Studies Associations and other websites American Planning Association Photo Courtesy of Sebastian Nieldlich on Flickr. 1. Gale Virtual Reference Library (http://www.library.ohiou.edu/find/dictencyc.html , first link at the top of that page) a. When the Database opens, just search for urban planning, and you get some good encyclopedia articles from multiple sources. 2. Some specific journals, magazines, and trade publications. You will need to open the individual journals and search for topics, or simply browse issues. You might also search in the publications for things like “trends”. a. Journal of Urban Planning and Development http://alice.library.ohiou.edu/record=b3723369~S1 b. Landscape and Urban Planning http://alice.library.ohiou.edu/record=b3723536~S1 c. Journal of Urban Design http://alice.library.ohiou.edu/record=b3723365~S1 d. City http://alice.library.ohiou.edu/record=b3717354~S1 e. Cities http://alice.library.ohiou.edu/record=b3717352~S1 f. Environment and Planning http://alice. ... Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:02:17 +0100 824678 http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2010/03/march-legacy-mob-uss-california.php After the success of cataloging the 1963 White House Library, we've made it into a monthly thing.This month, starting at 12:00 noon EST Wednesday, March 3, and continuing for 24 hours, we're going to be cataloging the on-board library of the U.S.S. California, as it was in 1905.This California's library catalog were written up and published by the Government Printing Office, and has been scanned by the Internet Archive. Designed to serve the California's 830-odd officers and men—the libraries were separate—it offers a unique view of the navy of the time, and of the country. The ship, then rechristened the San Diego, and its library, went to the bottom of the ocean in 1918, the victim of a German U-boat. Six sailors died.Check out the talk threadJeremy has set up a wiki pageAll see the USSCalifornia library as it developsThe "Legacy Mob" is an amalgam of two LibraryThing inventions:The Legacy Library, where members catalog famous or notable past collections, like that of Jefferson, Hemingway or the Massachusetts Bay Colony.The Flash-Mob Cataloging, where members show up to catalog a small collection, like the Rhode Island Audubon or St. John's Church in Beverly, MA (Source: Thing-ology (LibraryThing's ideas blog)) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:56:00 +0100 823939 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/LGe3oAjDMSM/reading-harvard-views-of-readers.html "What do John Keats's Shakespeare, Wordsworth's library catalog, and Victor Hugo's commonplace book have in common with primers and spellers and other historical materials on learning to read? Each item is among the 1,200 books and manuscripts - comprising more than 250,000 web-accessible pages - now discoverable online in Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History. Developed by Harvard's Open Collections Program with generous support from the Arcadia Fund, Reading is an online exploration of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading as reflected in the historical holdings of the Harvard Libraries" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:05:30 +0100 822921 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/8mTvn-zx9Wc/abraham-sutzkever-obituary Last great Yiddish poet and a defender of his languageFew mastered the intricacies of Yiddish with the passion and aplomb of the last great poet of the language, Abraham Sutzkever, who has died aged 96. Sutzkever's work, which focused on his experiences of the Holocaust, was translated into 30 languages. He rescued Yiddish texts during the second world war, and for six decades battled to revive a Yiddish literary tradition when most of its European speakers had perished.Sutzkever felt himself "stung with song by a fiery bee" in his youth. He was born in Smorgon, an industrial town in Tsarist-ruled White Russia. Jews suffered pogroms as the town passed between Russian and German control during the first world war. Sutzkever's father, a rabbi by training, moved the family to Omsk, in Siberia, and re-established his leather-crafting business, but died at 30. His father's death coloured the budding poet's early verse.By 1921, Sutzkever had moved to Vilna (now Vilnius, capital of an independent Lithuania). His exposure to Polish poetry at high school profoundly influenced his earlier work. Vilna had now blossomed into the hub of a vibrant secular Yiddish cultural renaissance.Siberia inspired his 1936 epic poem, Sibir, full of child's-eye-view imagery, of stars blown by the wind, moonshine and icy rivers, and the fire ceremonies of the Kyrgyz people, whose language he learned. Marc Chagall, a friend, illustrated a 1953 edition of Sibir, his etchings mirroring Sutzkever's words. In 1936, the visiting Austrian novelist Joseph Roth "discovered" Sutzkever, and the next year the Yiddish Pen Club published his first volume of poetry, Blond Dawn. The titles of his verse, such as In the Knapsack of the Wind and Gypsy Autumn, reflect his transcendental love of nature.In June 1941, the Nazis overran Vilna, killed 5,000 Jews and corralled survivors into two ghettos. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:56:06 +0100 822899 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arlisnap/~3/Avf1JMQQFw0/ via VRA-L: Dear colleagues, This year, St. Lawrence University is working on a grant-funded project to create a digital image collection of artwork by contemporary Nigerian artists. I am looking to... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] (Source: [ArLiSNAP]) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:47:25 +0100 823389 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/qRCfsVj-KSM/ In this sixth post in my Kindle “shakedown” series, I find that the Kindle shakes and falls when it comes to note-taking. Reading my first book on the Kindle, I was satisfied with the way it let me highlight text. The functions for entering and editing notes were also acceptable. One immediate limitation I found was that notes must be linked to a particular location in the text. When I wanted to jot down a general note, I improvised by creating a general notes section at the beginning of the text. Jumping back to it was a bit of a pain. It is possible that a reader will never want to do another thing with their notes, other than view them again on some future re-reading of the book. Good old-fashioned marginalia. If so, that reader may be satisfied with the Kindle’s note-taking functions. Many readers like myself make notes so we can do something with them: homework, research, a book review, or a journal entry. These tasks require copy-pasting the notes into other files, operations not easily performed on a Kindle.In order to use the notes, I had to find a way to transfer them to my computer. I plugged the Kindle into my computer and inspected the files on its disk. Each book is associated with an “.azw” file, Amazon’s protected file format. You can open the file with the free Kindle for PC software. I was delighted to see the book content with highlights and notes neatly lined up beside it. I then discovered that I could not copy-paste from it! Furthermore, the software is tied to my purchased books. I cannot use it to view other files I may have read on the Kindle, nor does it show my newspaper subscription. The Kindle has an unprotected file, “My Clippings.txt”, in which I found the highlights and notes for all my books and subscriptions. I could copy-paste this content. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:30:24 +0100 822830 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/02/online-databases-four-searchable-databases-about-women%e2%80%99s-history-and-position-of-women-in-society/ These databases are provided by the Institute for Women’s History (Aletta) located in Amsterdam. Content is in English, Dutch, or both languages. Databases (All Free to Access and Search) 1. Mapping the World of Women’s information Service For anyone looking for more information on the situation of women in a specific country, the Mapping the World of Women’s Information Services database is a good place to start. It contains addresses and information on more than 400 women’s information centers from around the world. 2. Websites on Women The Websites on Women database contains 2,000 Web addresses of websites that deal with women’s issues 3. Articles Since 1988, Aletta has maintained a catalog of articles on women’s rights and empowerment and women’s history. The catalog includes articles from Dutch and foreign periodicals and professional journals and currently contains thousands of titles – a growing number of which can be read directly online. 4. Photographs and Posters The image archive at Aletta contains more than a hundred years of women’s history in the form of photographs and posters. The majority of the archive is available online and can be ordered in digital format. Links to several other databases (primarily Dutch language content or only available to members) but still worth a search or two). Some material is available for purchase. Source: Alleta (via Twitter) (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:49:31 +0100 822854 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/02/metadata-more-important-than-ever/ by Laura Dawson From the Column: Whether it’s “semantic” search or a more traditional browsing hierarchy, search technologies rest on metadata. Tags, definitions, clarifications (“when we say ‘porcelain’ we mean fine china, not toilets”) are all necessary to guide users to the information they want. [Snip] In my career, I’ve seen lots of publisher-generated metadata. There’s a reason why NetRead, Eloquence, and other data-scrubbing services exist. There’s a reason why Ingram, Bowker, and Baker & Taylor have departments of data editors who normalize and standardize that data. There’s a reason why librarians spend countless hours re-cataloguing titles for WorldCat. [Snip] But good metadata IS publishers’ responsibility, fundamentally. They can outsource that responsibility, but ultimately it does all come back to the publishers. As our digital landscape explodes – as web search becomes not just one way but THE way readers find what’s next on their reading lists – metadata only becomes more important. Access the Complete Column by Laura Dawson Note from ResourceShelf: Placing an item into the database (independent of type) with quality metadata makes it easier for the end user, librarian, customer, etc. to get it back out of the database in a timely and efficient manner. In some cases good metadata plus a good database can allow the searcher to learn enough about the contents of a book/eBook, dvd, etc. to make a decision about (do or don’t I want it?) the material without having to touch the actual item. Finally, we all know that for many users, it the item is not accessible on the first page of results (especially when web searching) it might as well be invisible. Only so many items can be in the first five or ten results. In many cases, the Invisible Web of 2010 is as large or larger than the one Gary and Chris Sherman wrote about nearly nine years ago. Source: Digital Book World (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:16:19 +0100 822855 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/9Wd8-8Xap7M/madison-selected-for-margaret-mann.html "The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is announcing that Olivia Marie A. Madison, dean of the library, Iowa State University, is the recipient of the 2010 Margaret Mann Citation presented by its Cataloging and Classification Section (CCS). The award will be presented on June 27, at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2010 American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The Mann Citation, recognizing outstanding professional achievement in cataloging or classification, includes a $2,000 scholarship donated in the recipient's honor by OCLC, Inc. to the library school of the winner's choice. Ms. Madison has chosen the University of Missouri School of Information Science & Learning Technologies, Library Science Graduate Program to be the recipient of this year's scholarship award" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:16:45 +0100 822777 http://www.slis.indiana.edu/careers/view_job_specific.php?job_id=6945 State: Florida Assistant Head of Cataloging & Metadata Services The University of Miami Libraries seeks a nominations and applications for an Assistant Head of Cataloging & Metadata Services to provide leadership and guidance in planning and managing database maintenance, authority control, and copy-cataloging activities in the University Library to ensure the quality of its resource discovery tools. The incumbent hires, trains, and supervises 6 FTE supporting staff in cataloging and quality control and may also participate in original cataloging of print/online materials in a variety of formats, as well as provide descriptive metadata for digital collections. *UNIVERSITY: *The University of Miami is one of the nation’s leading research universities in a community of extraordinary diversity and international vitality. The University is privately supported, non-sectarian institution, located in Coral Gables, Florida, on a 260-acre subtropical campus. The University comprises 11 degree granting schools and colleges, including Architecture, Arts and Sciences, Business Administration, Communication, Education, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Music, Nursing, and Marine and Atmospheric Science (www.miami.edu). *THE LIBRARY: *The University of Miami Libraries (www.library.miami.edu) rank among the top 50 research libraries in North America with a collection of over 3 million volumes, 74,000 current serials, and over 64,000 E-journal titles. The Otto G. Richter Library lies in the heart of the Coral Gables campus and serves as the central library for the University. Other University of Miami libraries include the Paul Buisson Architecture Library, the Judi Prokop Newman Business Information Resource Center, and the Marta & Austin Weeks Music Library, and the Marine and Atmospheric Science Library. The campus also has independent medical and law libraries. ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:50:02 +0100 822597 http://www.librarystuff.net/2010/03/01/now-online%e2%80%94reading-harvard-views-of-readers-readership-and-reading-history/ Harvard Library Newsh – “What do John Keats’s Shakespeare, Wordsworth’s library catalog, and Victor Hugo’s commonplace book have in common with primers and spellers and other historical materials on learning to read? Each item is among the 1,200 books and manuscripts—comprising more than 250,000 web-accessible pages—now discoverable online in Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History. Developed by Harvard’s Open Collections Program with generous support from the Arcadia Fund, Reading is an online exploration of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading as reflected in the historical holdings of the Harvard Libraries. Visit the collection at http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading. (Source: Library Stuff) Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:14:56 +0100 822583 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogjunction/~3/nVvZ4BlDPSo/ Thanks to everyone who attended our first-ever online conference last month, especially those attendees who took a few minutes to respond to our post-event survey. The main goal for this conference was to give a conference experience to those who would are not able to attend other conferences due to budget issues or other resource constraints. We also wanted to give members an opportunity to try out online learning, social tools, and to collaborate with colleagues from across the miles. Finally, we wanted to pilot the online conference format to evaluate its effectiveness and see if it is something that we could conceive of doing more frequently. I think we can safely say that we met our goals across the board. Here’s what we learned: Of the 1160 people who registered, most were from public libraries (47%) and academic libraries (29%), and more than half serve populations of fewer than 25,000 people. We also had students and unemployed professionals in attendance. The top 5 states in terms of attendance were Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, California, and Minnesota. There were also 39 people from outside of the U.S. who registered. Average attendance at each of the 10 sessions was 291 people. Some folks went to just a few sessions, while some attended every session. We also heard from libraries who set up a room for multiple staff to watch and listen. The top responses to our survey question about what went well was that the in-session chat area was informative and engaging and that technical issues were fixed quickly. Also noted were that the presenters were knowledgable and prepared, that session timing was managed well, and that audience participation was excellent. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:37:48 +0100 824195 http://www.cla-net.org/weblog/2010/03/san_francisco_p.php After two years of planning and design, San Francisco Public Library is pleased to unveil its new Web site at sfpl.org. The new site is intended to be more user friendly and inclusive; it provides a variety of formats to locate online information from SFPL. For example, the online catalog of materials, with a query box located in the upper right hand corner of the Web site, enables patrons to search for materials using either the classic catalog or the new Explore catalog which leverages Web 2.0 technology to offer more items related to a search. "Among the major new enhancements to our Web site is the ability to offer a wealth of online resources and information to our diverse community, thanks to translated versions of web pages in Spanish and Chinese," said City Librarian Luis Herrera. SFPL staff devoted time to studying the needs of its patrons and the development of Web 2.0 features and then worked with Desite Design, a San Francisco web development firm, to execute and deploy the new online presence. The overall site offers a more modern display of information intended to keep library patrons and online visitors better informed about the variety of collections, programs, services and calendar of events provided by San Francisco Public Library. New links enable all to obtain quicker access to information such as dynamic listings of events linked by branch or by series of interest. Links on each event page make it easier to share information from the calendar. Users also can learn about current highlights at the library through a series of rotating spotlights on the home page. Online visitors can find information about the branches in the SFPL system by clicking to a dedicated page for each branch. The site also offers Library podcasts and videos and new photo gallery features. To enhance the user experience, the site is programmed with print settings that avoid wasting paper and the ability to change text size for readability. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:56:32 +0100 822915 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14470 Chinese Content Specialist (East View Information Services Inc., Minnesota) East View Information Services (EVIS) is a leading provider of native and translated foreign language information products and services, including Russian, Chinese, Arabic and Ukrainian databases, print periodicals, books and microforms. EVIS serves all geographies and many market segments, including academic institutions, government organizations, corporations and public and federal libraries. EVIS seeks an experienced library professional that can represent East View’s interest with its vital Chinese partners and content. We require a high energy, detailed-oriented team player with excellent communication skills as well as the ability to handle multiple and changing priorities. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:30:01 +0100 822405 http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2010/03/400000-ltfl-reviews.php We now have over 400,000 reviews vetted and available for LibraryThing for Libraries. (Last June we hit 300,000, so over 100,000 reviews have been added in the past 8 months—not bad.)400,000 is a lot of reviews. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, for example, has 117 reviews. Now you probably don't need to read over 100 reviews. But if a popular book gets that many, then the more obscure books in your catalog could have 20, 10, or 5 reviews. LTFL reviews cover the bestsellers but they also reach down the long tail.The LTFL Reviews Enhancement also comes with blog widgets and a Facebook application allow your patrons to show off their reviews—and their love for your library—where they "live" online.The Reviews Enhancement is currently available for Horizon, iBistro, Webvoyage, Voyager 7, Koha, Evergreen, WebPac, WebPac Pro, and Polaris 3.6. We're always expanding this list, so if your OPAC isn't one of these, email abby@librarything.com and we can work on adding support for it.For more information, email me (abby@librarything.com). For ordering information, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—877-340-2400 or Peder.Christensen@bowker.com. (Source: Thing-ology (LibraryThing's ideas blog)) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:47:00 +0100 823941 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/4Vr8Av1IEcg/3609 Christy Confetti Higgins a Cybrarian at Oracle started the morning with her talk entitled ‘Embracing New Measures of Value: Integration and Collaboration at Sun Microsystems.’ Christy talked to us about integrating information from outside sources into inside sources. The approach they took was to maximize dollars spent, repurpose content, and leverage social media. One example of this is that they pulled in their own Twitter feed to the Information Services Wiki. Another example she gave us was from their learning portal. On this main page they included a feed of books from Safari and Books24/7 (I wonder if the reason the library catalog is excluded is because limitations in the software …). In addition to pulling data in, they used social media to connect with employees. They have both a public and an internal blog. Using the RSS feeds from these blogs they were able to then pull in feeds based on tags into the wiki (so if the post was about financial information it could be on the financial page of the wiki). Another use of social media was to create a community for the engineers called the “Read Community” this way the engineers could share what they were reading with their colleagues – this comes back to one of the topics from yesterday brought up by Cameron – we learn a lot from the resources our colleagues are reading and sharing with us. With this tool they not only had the engineers sharing information, they were also able to take the recommendations that were shared and put them on a Safari Books Reading List and pull that out with an RSS feed and post that to the wiki. (What I’m hearing is that RSS is central to nearly everything they do! Which backs up what I keep telling librarians – you need to offer at least one RSS feed on your site so people can use and re-mix your content. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:59:44 +0100 823153 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/BlvJy13UjYQ/university-of-michigan-library-to-bid.html "Nothing lasts forever. So it will be said about the University of Michigan Library's card catalogs when they are removed from their home in the bowels of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library on March 8. Twelve and a half million volumes strong, the card catalog has been in disuse for more than 20 years, ever since the university established the MIRLYN electronic catalog in 1988. By 1991, every book in the library system had been catalogued onto MIRLYN, and the card catalogs were a relic of the past. 'I'm sad to see them go,' said Paul Courant, U-M's Dean of Libraries. 'This is truly the end of an era. But it is time to move on.'" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:25:57 +0100 822420 http://centeredlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/03/wordnik-redefining-dictionary.html Wordnik was founded in 2008 by Erin McKean, former editor in chief of American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. Wordnik enhances the traditional dictionary experience by allowing anyone interested in the meaning of words to participate in their definition. To supplement Wordnik's catalogue of words pulled from six different dictionaries and thesauri, including The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and The Century Dictionary, language enthusiasts can make suggestions for the inclusion of any word among the thousands that are omitted from print resources each year due to space limitations—and even submit invented words for consideration.In addition to definitions, Wordnik offers users a wealth of unique data, including information about how a word is being tweeted, examples of related words that often appear in its context, and its value in Scrabble points. Like Thinkmap's Visual Thesaurus, another interactive online resource, which creates word maps, Wordnik uses visual elements to offer users innovative ways to conceive of language. Many definitions feature images from Flickr, Yahoo's photo-sharing site, that show how words are used in tags and captions, and also display charts that show how often the word has been used over time.Here is a delightfully entertaining presentation at TED by Erin in which she redefines the dictionary. I love her statement that "Paper is the enemy of words." (Source: The Centered Librarian) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824173 http://drakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/03/leisure-reading-suggestions.html Yes, it's a busy time of year, middle of the semester and all that. Sometimes the best thing to do when busy is to take a break if at all possible and to just relax, have a little fun. One way might be to sit back with a good novel, maybe a cup of coffee from the library cafe, and lose yourself for an hour or two in a story. Here are some suggestions for good reads from abebooks.com, the big used/rare bookdealer site. (We do have most of the books mentioned in their article, check our catalog to locate them.) (Source: Drake Memorial Library) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 823537 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/15902 "Nothing lasts forever. So it will be said about the University of Michigan Library's card catalogs when they are removed from their home in the bowels of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library on March 8."   Full text at:   http://www.annarbor.com/news/university-of-michigan-library-to-bid-farewell-to-card-catalogs/   Bernie Sloan (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 822513 http://www.libology.com/blog/2010/02/28/accent-folding.html A List Apart has been a steady source of thought-provoking inspiration over the years, not only from a website building perspective, but also because much of what they publish crosses boundaries and impacts other projects and interests in my life. Their current article, Accent Folding, greatly impacts library data in general, and library catalogs in particular.  It deals with the issue of Unicode and pattern recognition, namely how one creates search tools that allow for variations in how words containing accents, stress marks, and other non-ascii characters.  The most succinct example: There is no excuse for your software to play dumb when the user types “cafe” instead of “café.” The article presents methods of “normalizing” text to allow for proper matching, and should be read by anyone who gets to deal with library data for reports and searching aids.  If you know how to use regular expressions, you will likely be in for a treat. The other example they present, this time to demonstrate the limitations of accent folding, uses Japanese to illustrate just how differently the same data can be presented: These four sentences all say “Children like to watch television” in Japanese: Kanji: 子供はテレビを見るのが好きです。 Hiragana: こども は てれび を みる の が すき です 。 Romaji: kodomo wa terebi o miru noga suki desu. Cyrillic: кодомо ва тэрэби о миру нога суки дэсу. Even if you don’t end up applying this directly to your work, the information in this article will help your appreciation for the challenges contained within your data, and how tough it can be to make it “just work” sometimes. (Source: LibrarySupportStaff.Org) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:40:47 +0100 822408 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/vekxeSn8fFk/ OCLC Research has released Over, Under, Around, and Through: Getting Around Barriers to EAD Implementation. Here's an excerpt from the announcement: This report frames obstacles that archivists have experienced adopting Encoded Archival Description (EAD). It also suggests pathways to help archivists get out of the ruts, around the roadblocks and on the road to success. Written by Michele Combs from Syracuse University, Mark A. Matienzo from Yale University, Lisa Spiro from Rice University and Merrilee Proffitt from OCLC Research, the objective of the report is to communicate EAD's value as a key element of successful archival information systems and help archivists overcome potential barriers to its implementation. This work is an output of the Barriers to Using EAD project undertaken by OCLC Research and the RLG Partnership. Related Posts "Capture and Release": Digital Cameras in the Reading Room "The Practice and Perception of Web Archiving in Academic Libraries and Archives" Creating Catalogues: Bibliographic Records in a Networked World OCLC Releases Networking Names Report OCLC: A Symposium for Publishers and Librarians (Source: DigitalKoans) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:01:13 +0100 822383 http://lisnews.org/dress_other_reasons “Dress for Other Reasons” R. Lee Hadden LeeHadden@aol.com Many people have made tons of money by writing "dress for success" books. Here is my "dress for other reasons" for librarians, which you can take or leave as you wish. I have often mounted on my soapbox and spouted off about dressing “as a librarian” on discussion lists. Some fashions are to make it easier and safer for the librarian to do their job. Other styles of clothing are worn as fashion statements. Or to define class or position or authority. As you can see from the following post, I am no expert on fashion, or men’s and women's clothing, but I have watched librarians at work for a number of years and have drawn some conclusions about their work attire. Men have more choice in clothing styles than women do, since men's clothing is more closely tied to profession rather than class. Among working men, you can line up a number of them and easily identify the lumberjack, the banker, the cowboy, the sailor, the librarian, the construction worker, the school teacher, the steel maker, the watch repairman, etc. fairly well by their outfits, fashions and tools. Men fit more comfortably in a variety of guild uniforms than women do. The men are interchangeable, but the uniforms are not. Women's clothing styles reflect more economic and regional attributes, although this is also slowly changing. Clothing styles for women in the south, northeast, Midwest and west are all slightly different, and often can be easily told apart. However, in academia, women do have several different fashion traditions to call upon. General rules: women who have to reach up high to get books, stoop low or bend over book return chutes frequently should consider pants instead of dresses for modesty's sake. Shorts should not be worn by public service staff except for relaxed Fridays or costume days or special work days. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:36:20 +0100 822270 http://freegovinfo.info/node/2918 Thanks to some documents reported to FGI's Lost Docs Blog last month, the Lost Docs blog has a new category that needs explaining. The category is called "Explanation Needed." GPO lost docs receipts submitted to lostdocs.freegovinfo.info will be assigned this category if: 1) Cataloging records exist for both tangible (Paper and/or microfiche) and online versions of the item submitted that were added to the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) earlier than the datestamp on the lost docs receipt. 2) The catalog record for the tangible version indicates that GPO cataloged the tangible version within five years of the publishing date of the item. We have a five year limit because GPO Acquisitions staff have indicated they rarely have success in finding depository copies of tangible items more than five years old. We at FGI don't insist that GPO distribute a tangible item when that item is solely available in an online format, but when a tangible item is available and fits the program, it should be distributed. GPO's policy on dissemination, SOD 301, states (emphasis mine), "When the product is available both online and in a tangible format, GPO will disseminate the online version to depository libraries. Tangible versions will be offered as well, budget permitting." Hopefully this means that most of the time the budget will permit this. If an item wasn't distributed for budget reasons, GPO should note this in the print record. Until the non-distribution of these tangible items is explained and obviously noted in the cataloging record for a given item, it will keep the "Explanation Needed" tag. However, we will also continue to tag such items as "false positive" since we believe the primary focus of "lost docs" is documenting government publications that have escaped the National Bibliography GPO is required to maintain and because people do have access (at least for now) to the online version. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:49:54 +0100 822430 http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/itbloggingsection/2010/02/mobile-multitouch-uis-and-the-library.html The latest gadget people are frothing over/poo-pooing is Apple's iPad, a 9.7" screen tablet device which is not available for purchase yet. Regardless of what you think of that specific tablet, a number of vendors are coming out with multi-touch tablet devices and Windows 7 does support multi-touch.The D.C Public Library has already developed a free iPhone app in early 2009 which lets users search their catalog, and they've made the code available for other libraries to use, so libraries do have some experience dealing with multi-touch interface on a smaller screen. But a larger screen means more real estate for gestures as opposed to controls taking up space - what will this mean for developing mobile apps for the library? And a low-cost device might be an easier pitch than something like a Microsoft Surface - even though libraries are doing cool things with those as well. (Source: Blogging Section of SLA-IT) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:45:10 +0100 824316 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/4OfzfIDQj8Q/3596 This year’s NFAIS conference was opened by Clay Shirky. He started by giving us a 5 word synopsis of his book Here Comes Everybody — Group Action Just Got Easier. He then when on to a story about the power of social networks. HSBC (a bank in the UK) in 2007 decided they were going recruit new clients (graduate students and undergrad students). They offered these students accounts with an overdraft that had no fees associated with it. Then in the summer they took back their plan to offer the account with no penalties for overdrafts and said they were going to charge $140 per overdraft. They said you have 30 days to get your money out before we charge you. The idea was that college students are all over the world in the summer and won’t be around to throw a fit. But a college student found out about it and published it on Facebook. The bank didn’t realize that these students were still connected even though they were spread out. In the end HSBC changed their mind. This wasn’t because the students were unhappy – it was because they were unhappy and organized. Clay then went into talking about 3 information issues. Volume of Information When the printing press turned into the mechanical object we know today, books were able to be printed 300x faster than a scribe could pen the book. When a new tech comes along, previously impossible things become possible. Abundance breaks more things than scarcity does – when the web first became viable newspapers thought this was great! They could send out text and images for free and reach more than just their local customer base – they can reach people worldwide. ... Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:15:41 +0100 823157 http://www.librarystuff.net/2010/02/28/university-of-michigan-library-to-bid-farewell-to-card-catalogs/ AnnArbor.com – “Nothing lasts forever. So it will be said about the University of Michigan Library’s card catalogs when they are removed from their home in the bowels of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library on March 8. Twelve and a half million volumes strong, the card catalog has been in disuse for more than 20 years, ever since the university established the MIRLYN electronic catalog in 1988.” (Source: Library Stuff) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:00:54 +0100 822156 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/3AOBIvw59SA/ * Support for the Teclast K3 and Elonex e-book readers * Add ‘Recently Read’ category to catalog if Kindle is connected when catalog is generated * When adding PRC/MOBI files that are actually Topaz files, change detected file type to Topaz * MOBI Output: If the SVG rasterizer is not avaialbale continue anyway * News download: When using the debug pipeline options, create a zip file named periodical.downloaded_recipe in the debug directory. This can be passed to ebook-convert to directly convert a previous download into an e-book. * Add Apply button to catalog generation dialog Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. var showHover=false; (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:10:10 +0100 822163 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Library_of_Michigan39s_eLibrary_Catalog_MeLCat_Celebrates_Five_--- Requested materials are then delivered to the individual's local public school, or academic specialty library within two to seven days-much more quic (Source: pligg - all) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:00:30 +0100 822194 http://lisnews.org/reaching_frosties By Molly Skeen Some people use and support the public library, no matter what. They visit the library regularly, borrow books, take the kids to story time, join the Friends, and visit new libraries on vacation. Let's call them the Fans. At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who never use the library, no matter what. They have their reasons. We could call these the Frosties. Between the two extremes, there's a broad range of library use patterns. Here are some numbers taken from a 2006 study titled Long Overdue: A Fresh Look at Public and Leadership Attitudes About Libraries in the 21st Century. When asked how many times they visited a library in the previous year, survey respondents replied with these frequencies: Not at all - 27% 1-5 times - 15% 6-10 times - 11% 11-25 times - 16% How can we convert library Frosties to Fans? And how can we engage the people who use the library once a year to use it more often? I'm convinced that a great many of the Frosties have needs and interests that could be met at the library, but they are simply unaware of specific services that could help them. Take Joe Frosty – a busy guy who works full time, takes the family camping, and likes to tinker with his car. He never uses the library, but maybe he would if he knew that his library provides access to EBSCO's Auto Repair Reference Center on its web site. Joe's son Jason is in middle school. He loves comics, but can only afford to buy one or two a month with his allowance. Jason doesn't know about the library's extensive manga collection. And there's Grandma Frosty, recently diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease. She'd like to spend more time reading, but watches daytime tv instead. Granny doesn't know about the large print and audio books she could be borrowing from her library. Most libraries do an excellent job of outreach and publicity for special programs. ... Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:44:03 +0100 821984 http://lisnews.org/social_order_libraries “Balan whispered to the Wart, “Colonel Cully is not quite right in his wits. It is his liver, we believe, but the kestrel says it is the constant strain of living up to her ladyship’s standard. He says that her ladyship once spoke to him from her full social station once, cavalry to infantry, you know, and that he just closed his eyes and got the vertigo. He has never been the same since.” T. H. White. The Once & Future King. One of the questions that comes up frequently, especially among librarians applying for their first or second job, is the question of social status. While we may not understand it, we all recognize it, especially when it is applied to us. Mostly it is seen when a librarian attempts to change the type of job he or she does in a library. "It doesn't surprise me that there are problems of going from one aspect of librarianship to another. It violates class rules in libraries, and upsets the social order. Actually, there is an unnamed but very strongly identified pecking order in the class of librarians. Why are people getting so upset over this problem? Passions are heated because the stakes are so small. Actually, social settings are set up rather like a water fountain, with a number of different library jobs floating at the top, but fewer identified ones at the bottom." While few people can agree about who all should be at the top, everyone agrees about who should be stuck in the bilge on the bottom. Like the definition of a lady, which few people can define but whom everyone knows who isn't one, librarians are set into a social hierarchy of class and station. So here is my definition of the library pecking order based on my own limited library experiences. Individuals may disagree somewhat, but those who disagree the most probably are either set at the top of the list, or haven't had to look for a new job recently. Within this hierarchy, there is some slack. ... Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:11:57 +0100 821986 http://community.livejournal.com/libraries/947356.html By which I mean the physical card catalog, with the drawers.I recently purchased an old Library Bureau card catalog, which was in kind of rough shape. I had it restored, but the guy who did the restoration (Jeff Sparks, in Bryan Texas -- I cannot recommend him enough -- you can see before and after shots on my livejournal) couldn't match the pull that was missing or the knobs for the card catalog rods. Does anyone know where I might be able to source them? There appear to be two rod systems, but a single type of pull: I know card catalogs have gone the way of the dodo, but if anyone knows anything about this catalog or how I might find the missing hardware (or miracle of miracles has a pull or some rods lying around I could buy) I would greatly appreciate it. (Source: Library Lovers' LiveJournal) Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:36:02 +0100 823243 http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6720609.html?rssid=191 MSU's Haka says cost prohibitive; Temple's Alford, OCLC board chair, and OCLC's De Rosa defend shared model (Source: Library Journal News) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:45:51 +0100 821683 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/26/position-paper-e-books-and-isbns/ E-Books and ISBNs: a Position Paper and Action Points from the International ISBN Agency (3 pages; PDF) From the Paper: Since its creation in the late 1960s the purpose of the ISBN has been to facilitate book supply chains which by their very nature will evolve and create new demands over time. In the digital environment, it has become less clear how supply chains will develop and, because of that, there has been uncertainty amongst some publishers of the role of ISBN in this market. One of the principles of ISBN has been that it identifies a unique product (e.g. an edition of a book). This has facilitated discovery and acquisitions, and enabled e-commerce, distribution and aggregation of product information, and sales data reporting. The ISBN standard, ISO 2108, has always required that different product forms of a publication, where these are made separately available, be assigned separate ISBNs. When the standard was revised in 2005, there was considerable discussion about the appropriate level of granularity for electronic publications. It was agreed that the same rules that had been applied to printed books should also apply to e-books and the current edition of the ISBN standard, ISO 2108:2005, therefore reads: “Each different format of an electronic publication (e.g. ‘.lit’, ‘.pdf’, ‘.html’, ‘.pdb’) that is published and made separately available shall be given a separate ISBN.” In the view of the International ISBN Agency this rule is as important for e-books as it is for different formats of printed books, especially where the trading models involve multiple partners. Access the Complete Paper Source: International ISBN Agency Paper Hosted by Book Industry Study Group (BISG) (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:53:50 +0100 821819 http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/002060.html As authors are recognised as resources to be discovered, managed, ranked, and tracked, an interest in names and identifiers will continue to grow. A focus on research evaluation, reputation management, publication management drive this, as well as general information management issues in a web environment. Historically, national libraries have managed names within their jurisdictions. The LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control recognized that this was a partial activity, partial in two ways. First, a national approach may not make sense in a networked world: national scale policies and coverage do not work very well at webscale. Individual files are incomplete, and there is overlap between files, sometimes with different versions of names being established and so on. And second, we are interested in many more names than are captured in the cataloging process: some researchers, for example, may only publish articles and not get captured in authority work. Working with several national libraries we manage the VIAF project which is a response to the first of these issues. As part of the VIAF process we match and link names across national authority files. This resource is then made available in several ways. The second issue represents a different sort of challenge. We have recently seen two initiatives of importance emerge in the name identifier space, ISNI and ORCID. How the relationship between these evolves remains to be seen: they involve different players and starting motivations. OCLC is participating in each and we look forward to working with VIAF data to further their goals, and in turn to see how VIAF data might be enriched or extended in the process. My colleague Thom Hickey - who manages VIAF - has a brief article about the project in a recent issue of NextSpace. (Source: Lorcan Dempsey's weblog) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:53:02 +0100 822225 http://www.cla-net.org/weblog/2010/02/san_bernardino.php SAN BERNARDINO - The Grand Opening & Ribbon Cutting for the new Cal Aero Preserve Academy Branch Library will take place on Saturday, March 6, starting at 9:30 am. The new branch at 15850 Main St. in Chino is a joint-use facility in cooperation with the Chino Valley Unified School District. The 6,440-square-foot facility will be open to students only during school hours. The library then opens to the public and is managed by county library personnel from 3:30 to 8:00 pm Monday through Thursday and from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm on Saturday. The branch will be closed to the public on Friday and Sunday. The new branch includes ten public-access computers and four catalog computers. Special areas have been set aside for children and for young adults. The opening day collection comprises some 12,000 items, a number enhanced by contributions of books and other materials from other branches in the county system. The branch also features two special-purpose rooms, one for textbooks only and the other for a Friends of the Library used bookstore. The library's décor has been chosen with care to reflect the name and unique heritage of the facility. The children's area is dominated by an aircraft-themed fantasy illustration mural nearly 18 feet wide. The computer area features two large photographic murals that depict famous aircraft from the 1930s through the 1950s, including the P-38 Lightning, the P-51 Mustang and the F-86 Sabre Jet. Several of the "READ" posters on branch walls feature other airplanes, including the Boeing P-26A Peashooter, which - like most of the other photographed planes in the branch - is part of the collection at the neighboring Planes of Fame Museum at Chino Airport. Museum vice president and general manager Bill Hamilton notes that the museum's P-26A is one of only two still in existence, with the other being housed at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:51:53 +0100 822916 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/26/oclc-research-and-alise-recipients-of-2010-library-and-information-science-research-grants-announced/ From the Announcement: OCLC Research and the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) have awarded 2010 Library and Information Science Research Grants to Louise Spiteri of Dalhousie University and Laurel Tarulli of Halifax Public Libraries; Hsin-liang Chen and Barbara Albee of Indiana University; and Besiki Stvilia and Corinne Jörgensen of Florida State University. Here’s a Small Amount of Info About Each Person Who Has Been Award the Research Grant and Their Research Project: + Louise Spiteri, Ph.D of the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University and Laurel Tarulli of Halifax Public Libraries will conduct research to examine and compare how library users access, use, and interact with two social discovery systems used in two Canadian public library systems. The objective of the study, “The Public Library Catalogue as a Social Space: Usability Studies of User Interaction with Social Discovery Systems,” is to provide important insight into the design or modification of social discovery tools to ensure they provide the best user experience. + Hsin-liang Chen, Ph.D. and Barbara Albee, of the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, will examine the implementation of an open source library automation system (Evergreen) in Indiana public libraries and its impact on library users in the project, “Impact of Open Source Library Automation System on Public Library Users.” The expected significant outcomes of this project are to identify: benefits library users receive from the implementation of the open source library automation system, library users’ interests in using the OPAC to discover shared library collections, and whether the consortia library collections gain more usage by library users due to the implementation of the open source library automation system. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:45:41 +0100 821823 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Nsu8l6vI_pw/rene-descartes-stolen-letter 150 years after it was stolen from France, a letter by René Descartes has been discovered at Haverford CollegeA letter by René Descartes that was stolen over 150 years ago has been discovered in a small American college by a Dutch scholar.Dr Erik-Jan Bos stumbled upon a mention of the letter of 27 May 1641 – an intense exchange between the French philosopher and his friend Marin Mersenne about the publication of Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy – in a description of the Charles Roberts Collection at Haverford College library following a Google search last month. Bos contacted the college, which is just outside Philadelphia, and, working with its head of special collections John Anderies, determined that it was an authentic, previously unknown letter by Descartes.The densely written, four-page letter was one of thousands stolen by Count Guglielmo Libri, secretary of the committee for the general catalogue of manuscripts in French public libraries, in the 19th century. Libri was later sentenced in absentia for the robberies, but had already sold the documents to collectors in England. It is assumed that the letter then changed hands several times before it was given to Haverford by the widow of Charles Roberts, who had collected thousands of autographs over his lifetime, in 1902.Experts say the letter reveals that the Meditations were originally conceived along different lines, with Descartes asking Mersenne to completely eliminate three texts from the work. "The reason for those changes is that a French visitor has convinced Descartes of the good intentions of Pierre Petit (1598−1677), who had been very critical of part four of the Discourse – criticism about which Descartes was extremely upset," explains Bos on the University of Utrecht website, where he calls the letter "an invaluable addition to our understanding of the life and works of Descartes". ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:17:47 +0100 821713 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/NAg3SL4zuZI/good-time-to-be-old I can't imagine why an ageing society is something to celebrateThe prime minister has invited me to a reception in Downing Street next week for "celebrating our ageing society". Although, having just turned 70, I am clearly "ageing", I cannot imagine why I have been asked. Nor can I imagine why an ageing society is something to celebrate. In fact, as everybody knows, our ageing society is a worry. Only yesterday I read two reports in the newspapers on this subject. One said that more than 100,000 British workers were forced to retire last year at 65, although they couldn't afford to and didn't want to; the other said that by the middle of this century people will have to wait until 70 for their state pensions if the country is going to be able to afford to pay them. One might conclude that now is a grim time to be getting old.But this is not a widely voiced opinion. It is more fashionable to maintain that the old have never had it so good, or been healthier, happier and more vigorous. This seems to have been borne out by a survey this week showing that the average person is happiest at the age of 74. Having asked 21,000 men and women how happy they were at different moments in their lives, analysts found that after about 30 years of mounting discontent from their mid-teens onwards, they perked up in their mid-40s and became more and more cheerful until they reached their peak of happiness at the age of 74. Writing in G2 on Tuesday, Dame Joan Bakewell, the government-appointed voice of older people, seemed to accept this finding and put it down to a "falling away of all the things that blight our happiness when we're younger: ambition, competitiveness, stress, unfulfilled dreams and hopes".That, indeed, is what we all hope will happen to us in old age, but alas we can't count on it. Not everyone is granted serenity with the years. I know almost as many anxious, dissatisfied and insecure old people as I do contented ones. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:00:04 +0100 821507 http://www.librarian.net/stax/3172/possibly-the-best-library-hoax/ “Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist…. [W]hen he died on September 1, 1839 he possessed only fifty-two books, but each of them was absolutely unique. His heir, not sharing the old man’s passion for book collecting, arranged for an auction to sell off the library” Compelling no? The auction really happened, the rest of it is made up, the creation of a local antiquarian, having a bit of a practical joke. Read more at blacksundae, or see the auction catalog, itself a rarity, on Google Books. (Source: librarian.net) Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:49:59 +0100 822520 http://lisnews.org/individual_and_collective_paths_fixing_what%E2%80%99s_broken_our_libraries Whether you graduated from college just a few years ago or many, the likelihood is that most of what you learned is hazy at best or gone completely. Such is the case with much of my college experience, but every so often I recall something memorable. One course in particular, the exact name didn’t make it into my long-term memory, dealt with the theme of individualism versus collectivism in American culture. Through literature and history we explored how our nation grew from a mix of rugged individualism and collective action. On one hand we celebrate the lone frontiersman who forged paths into the wilderness taming it along the way, while we also portray ourselves to the world as the great melting pot experiment in which our many cultures blend and work together to create a great union. It is a unique dualism to be sure. The themes from this course are memorable owing to their simple truth, but also because the evidence of the tension between the individual and the collective surrounds us and constantly emerges as a source of strain in our lives and dysfunction in our organizations. We want to be free to pursue our own interests, but we have commitments to our families. We seek individual attention, but we understand the importance of giving credit to the community. And in our libraries, as individuals or departments we occasionally want to do what we want, and sometimes we forget that we are part of a larger collective we call “the library”, and that we have a responsibility to put the larger entity ahead of our personal satisfaction. In order for the collective to succeed each individual must take personal responsibility to make sure the greater good is served. Every library has something that’s broken. If everything works flawlessly at your library, call me, I want to come see it. For the rest of us it’s important to pay attention to what’s broken and to fix it. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:41:59 +0100 821762 http://www.lisnews.org/individual_and_collective_paths_fixing_what%E2%80%99s_broken_our_libraries Whether you graduated from college just a few years ago or many, the likelihood is that most of what you learned is hazy at best or gone completely. Such is the case with much of my college experience, but every so often I recall something memorable. One course in particular, the exact name didn’t make it into my long-term memory, dealt with the theme of individualism versus collectivism in American culture. Through literature and history we explored how our nation grew from a mix of rugged individualism and collective action. On one hand we celebrate the lone frontiersman who forged paths into the wilderness taming it along the way, while we also portray ourselves to the world as the great melting pot experiment in which our many cultures blend and work together to create a great union. It is a unique dualism to be sure. The themes from this course are memorable owing to their simple truth, but also because the evidence of the tension between the individual and the collective surrounds us and constantly emerges as a source of strain in our lives and dysfunction in our organizations. We want to be free to pursue our own interests, but we have commitments to our families. We seek individual attention, but we understand the importance of giving credit to the community. And in our libraries, as individuals or departments we occasionally want to do what we want, and sometimes we forget that we are part of a larger collective we call “the library”, and that we have a responsibility to put the larger entity ahead of our personal satisfaction. In order for the collective to succeed each individual must take personal responsibility to make sure the greater good is served. Every library has something that’s broken. If everything works flawlessly at your library, call me, I want to come see it. For the rest of us it’s important to pay attention to what’s broken and to fix it. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:41:59 +0100 821690 http://www.lisnews.org/librarian%E2%80%99s_dilemma_three_articles_consideration_ddc_and_its_utility_public_libraries by Bruce A. Sullivan Part I: Summary The current debate over the continued utility of the Dewey Decimal System in public libraries seems to hinge on one assertion, as articulated by Michael Casey: “Dewey, no matter how good for librarians needing to locate a book fast, is simply not suited to a popular collection intended more for browsing than research” (Casey 19). Resultantly, a number of small public libraries, notably Maricopa County Library District in Arizona, Rangeview Library District in Colorado, and Frankfort Public Library in Illinois, have adapted standards designed by booksellers (indeed, for booksellers) to their collections. These BISAC standards allegedly facilitate browsing, giving the library patron a more user-centered, as opposed to professional-centered, experience. Hence, library professionals face what Barbara Fister, writing for Library Journal, has called, “The Dewey Dilemma.” On one hand, librarians wish “to retain Dewey’s precision and its ability to identify a specific shelf location” (25). On the other hand, “Many librarians feel BISAC’s relative simplicity and user-friendly language have an advantage over Dewey’s complexity” (22). Library users, regardless of their purposes for visiting the library, want to feel empowered; Fister’s article indicates both that many librarians feel Dewey could be improved with category signage and catalog metadata, and also that many patrons (over 50 percent) feel that call numbers are too complicated to use (see 24, “Chart 1” and “Table 1,” respectively). Solutions to the dilemma seldom involve dropping Dewey altogether. Darien Library’s Kate Sheehan states, “We wanted to retain the findability of Dewey while encouraging and enabling browsing. We clumped similar areas of Dewey together in eight broad categories, which we call glades” (qtd. in Fister 24). ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:01:07 +0100 821691 http://lisnews.org/librarian%E2%80%99s_dilemma_three_articles_consideration_ddc_and_its_utility_public_libraries by Bruce A. Sullivan Part I: Summary The current debate over the continued utility of the Dewey Decimal System in public libraries seems to hinge on one assertion, as articulated by Michael Casey: “Dewey, no matter how good for librarians needing to locate a book fast, is simply not suited to a popular collection intended more for browsing than research” (Casey 19). Resultantly, a number of small public libraries, notably Maricopa County Library District in Arizona, Rangeview Library District in Colorado, and Frankfort Public Library in Illinois, have adapted standards designed by booksellers (indeed, for booksellers) to their collections. These BISAC standards allegedly facilitate browsing, giving the library patron a more user-centered, as opposed to professional-centered, experience. Hence, library professionals face what Barbara Fister, writing for Library Journal, has called, “The Dewey Dilemma.” On one hand, librarians wish “to retain Dewey’s precision and its ability to identify a specific shelf location” (25). On the other hand, “Many librarians feel BISAC’s relative simplicity and user-friendly language have an advantage over Dewey’s complexity” (22). Library users, regardless of their purposes for visiting the library, want to feel empowered; Fister’s article indicates both that many librarians feel Dewey could be improved with category signage and catalog metadata, and also that many patrons (over 50 percent) feel that call numbers are too complicated to use (see 24, “Chart 1” and “Table 1,” respectively). Solutions to the dilemma seldom involve dropping Dewey altogether. Darien Library’s Kate Sheehan states, “We wanted to retain the findability of Dewey while encouraging and enabling browsing. We clumped similar areas of Dewey together in eight broad categories, which we call glades” (qtd. in Fister 24). ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:01:07 +0100 821549 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PegasusLibrarian/~3/CBnG7k1y904/argh-serial-review-literary-journals-tough-choices.html It’s time for our biennial serial review. This one feels kind of like being kicked when down because we did a big review to sync up Carleton and St. Olaf last winter, and then we did a voluntary cut last spring when the stock market decided to have a bigger say than usual in our collection development projects. I only have to review the serials that were originally requested by the library (as opposed to those requested by departments, of which there are many), and only those that fall within the areas I serve (so literature, languages, music, American Studies, and linguistics). And this time around we have to make cuts again. And this time around we’ve already cut the low-hanging fruit so pretty much everything we still subscribe to is stuff I’d like to continue to subscribe to. So last time around I came up with some criteria that really helped, and this time I’m having to come up with newer, less definitive criteria. Today’s project was literary journals. We subscribe to several, six of which fall under my care, none of which I wanted to cut, some of which I have to cut. The two that we’ve had since the Beginning of Time I’m keeping, just on principle (well, and because they’re good). These are Contemporary Review and Granta. For the rest, I’m checking the catalogs of our peer institutions, reading reviews in Ulrich’s, paging through recent issues, reading their web sites, and generally mourning the fact that I even have to decide. I’m also rankling a little at the current model for journal subscriptions that make paying for bundled packages so much easier than paying for individual subscriptions, but make backing out of bits and pieces of the bundle impossible. If I need to cut, I’m cutting the stuff we actually selected rather than the fluff that’s padding those bundles. What a pain. Like Unlike (Source: Pegasus Librarian) Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:12:53 +0100 821457 http://blogs.library.ualberta.ca/libnews/?p=1802 exhibition runs February 15 to May 15, 2010 Bruce Peel Special Collections Library Marginated is a seventeenth-century word meaning ‘provided with marginal annotations.’ This unique exhibition illuminates evidence of reading and handling for a century’s worth of books. Curated by Sylvia Brown and John Considine with the assistance of Amie Shirkie This splendid exhibition is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue (available for $25.00 at the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library). For hours and more information, please call 780-492-5998 or email bpsc@library.ualberta.ca. (Source: Library News) Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:00:43 +0100 821841 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14490 Reference Librarian (Miami International University of Art and Design, Florida) The Reference Librarian is responsible for providing reference, research and information literacy instruction to the campus community, using library materials in all formats. Will assist faculty, students and staff in development of research skills as well as teach patrons how to use the Library’s integrated catalog. Incumbent must assure that the EDMC philosophy: quality services to clients; development, growth, involvement, and recognition of employees; sound economic principles; and environment which is conducive to innovation, positive thinking and expansion - is considered in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of this position. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:45:02 +0100 821353