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 Open Source interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:54:27 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://hhsmedia.blogspot.com/2009/11/fond-farewell.html Friday, 11.20.09 will be my last day here at Huntingtown High School. I will be taking on a new job which will allow me to explore Open Source Online Learning Management Systems that will let us provide classes for both students and teachers online throughout the state of Maryland. Every school in which I have worked has a special place in my heart, and HHS will be no different. I have learned so much from the HHS staff and students, and for that I thank you! I wish each and every one of you happiness and success in your future endeavors. Don't be afraid to embrace change and sieze opportunities that come your way. Remember that "keywords unlock information," and be a lifetime learner! My email address is the same, so if you need any help, feel free to email me at: voelkerc@calvernet.k12.md.us or follow me on twitter: voelkerc Proud to be a Hurricane,~Ms. Voelker (Source: Huntingtown High School Library Media Center) Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:00:00 +0100 795093 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/ERMqhjfd5aI/digitale-bibliotheekvernieuwing-een.html Frank Huysmans attendeerde mij zojuist op het rapport Een krimpend perspectief: Gemeentelijke bezuinigingen op openbaar bibliotheekwerk in de periode 2010-2013. Nadat ik dat document ook op Slideshare had gezet las ik het 'diagonaal' en scande ik het op bevindingen en aanbevelingen met betrekking tot digitale ontwikkelingen. In het persbericht (PDF) staat "Bezuinigingen bedreiging voor innovatiekracht openbare bibliotheken", dus ik was wel benieuwd in hoeverre bedreigde bibliotheken nadenken over bezuinigen door gebruik te maken van open source software en vrij beschikbare tools op het web, of door het inzetten van nieuwe media, in plaats van de traditionele en geldverslindende methoden en technieken. Het resultaat is, uhm, teleurstellend. Het enige dat ik lees over digitale ontwikkelingen in dit kader: Er is grote behoefte aan een snelle invoering van de digitale bibliotheek. Een landelijke catalogus en landelijk geregelde mogelijkheden voor het ebook bieden nieuwe mogelijkheden in het licht van de afnemende spreiding van de bibliotheekvoorzieningen.en: Tegelijkertijd zullen, wanneer de landelijke ontwikkelingen doorzetten, de digitale mogelijkheden toenemen en zullen gebruikers steeds meer gebruik kunnen maken van de digitale bibliotheek. Overigens geven bibliotheken aan te verwachten dat door de bezuinigingen juist de invoering van de digitale bibliotheek onder druk zal komen te staan."Goed, dat is het dus, voor wat betreft het nieuwe web en het nieuwe werken. De in aanbouw zijnde Nationale catalogus en 'iets met ebooks' worden als digitale kansen genoemd en verworden waarschijnlijk tot het nieuwe mantra in de beleidsstukken voor de komende jaren. Hebben we nu echt alleen de hoop op die dingen gevestigd, met z'n allen? Ondanks deze constatering is het rapport interessant leesvoer. Het geeft een aardig inkijkje in de dillema's waar veel bibliotheken mee worstelen. ... Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:22:00 +0100 868472 http://blogaboutmurphy.blogspot.com/2010/09/open-source-textbooks.html Are you interested in new alternatives to traditional textbooks? Take a look at some of these services. Connexions“Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. Our Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons "attribution" license.”Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources“The primary goal of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources is to identify, create and/or re-purpose existing OER as Open Textbooks and make them available for use by community college students and faculty."  The Community College Open Textbook Collaborative"The Community College Open Textbook Collaborative*, funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is a collection of colleges, governmental agencies, educational nonprofits, and other education-related organizations.The collaborative provides training for instructors adopting open resources, peer reviews of open textbooks, an online professional network, support for authors opening their resources, and other services." (Source: BlogAbout Murphy Library) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868518 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/krBD9MdGOF4/online-publishers-growing-display.html This is the latest post in our series on the future of display advertising. Today, director of product management Jonathan Bellack looks at our efforts to help online publishers generate more advertising revenue - Ed.For millions of online publishers—from the smallest blogger to the largest entertainment, news, e-commerce and information sites—online advertising revenue is vital. When publishers can maximize their returns, everyone benefits from more vibrant online content and websites. But the pace of change in the industry can be intimidating—how can a publisher keep up with what’s new, let alone grow their business?We believe that the new technology we’re developing to make display advertising work better will help to grow the display advertising pie for all publishers, by orders of magnitude. We shouldn’t be asking how publishers can eke another 5 or 10 percent out of display advertising in the next few years. We should be looking at how the industry can double or triple in size.We’ve previously described our three core display ad products for publishers:AdSense, which places the most valuable, relevant ads on our partners’ websites, without the publishers having to sell the ad space themselves;DoubleClick for Publishers, our ad serving platform, which maximizes the value of ad space that publishers have directly sold themselves; DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time auction marketplace, which maximizes large publishers’ overall returns, by "dynamically allocating" the highest value ad, whether directly sold, or indirectly sold through an ad network.I wanted to highlight the key principles guiding our future product innovations in this area, as we work to help all publishers maximize their online ad revenues.1. Making life more efficientFor most large publishers, directly sold ads (ads sold by their own sales force) comprise the vast majority of their ad revenues. ... Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867982 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/dpXlHNDDdpM/4068 OpenVBX: OpenVBX is a web-based open source phone system for business. tags: opensource voip phone The Guide DB TheGuideDB.com is a Search Engine. Search millions of guides. Find your guide to any topic. tags: search tutorials guide database documentation Yamli Translate Automatically translate as you type. tags: translate translation Your Twapper Keeper Archive your own tweets tags: archive twitter opensource Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (Source: What I Learned Today...) Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:35:47 +0100 867923 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/lOKzxRd12Qg/    1. Smashwords Smashwords continues to kick goals in self-publishing. In an increasingly crowded market, I just don’t think you can beat Smashwords for ease of use, price (you can’t do better than free), and distribution. Fling your words to Smashwords, and you’ll quickly end up with an ebook in multiple formats, playable on all devices, and distributed to iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store. Soon they’ll be adding Amazon to the already impressive list. The website could use prettying up, but this offering is the best one-stop-shop free solution out there. Other services include Lulu, Scribd, iUniverse and Amazon Digital Text Platform, but none of these has the reach, ease of use, low price, and cross-platform openness of Smashwords. NB: As an experiment, soon I’ll be self-publishing something I have up my sleeve, and monitoring both what distribution channel sells how much, and whether ebook beats pbook. More on that soon. 2. Pages ePub export via iWork Last week, Apple updated its popular iWork suite of applications,  allowing self-publishers to export their words in ePUB format from its Pages word processor. It was a small update – iWork 9.0.4 to be precise – but potentially an important one for publishing. There’s even a Pages template for use in creating an ePub document that you can get here. Given that Pages can now give you ePUB and PDF, this means you can spread your work everywhere, including Amazon’s Kindle Store (via their Digital Text Platform, above). Liza Daly, of digital publishing consulting firm Threepress Consulting, has a very thorough review on her blog. In it she delves all the way down into the CSS it creates and the OPF file. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:07:53 +0100 867550 http://www.slis.indiana.edu/careers/view_job_specific.php?job_id=7729 State: New Jersey Library Web Developer/Designer Princeton University Library Princeton, New Jersey Requisition #1000633 The Princeton University Library comprises a large central library and nine specialized libraries that are heavily used by an academic community of 6,400 students, 1,100 faculty members, and many visiting scholars. To support the diverse needs of its users, the Library holds some six million printed volumes, ranging from incunabula to current imprints, and provides access to many other records of human knowledge, such as ancient papyri and cylinder seals, modern literary manuscripts, and recently produced electronic databases and journals. The Library employs more than 300 professional and support personnel, complemented by a large student and hourly workforce. Please consult the Library Web site at http://library.princeton.edu/ for more information. Available: Immediately Description and Responsibilities: The Web Developer position will help the Library Web Development Manager on specific projects to deliver more library content and services to our users from our web sites. Specific projects may include designing new sites, or using new web services technologies to improve the user experience in discovering, searching, finding, or acquiring library materials and content. Additionally, the position will assist in implementing the Drupal CMS, customizing the interface for the latest version of the OPAC, and creating mobile ready versions of the library web site and catalog. Customization tasks for the new NextGen Discovery system will be a large component of the work. Projects will also likely include implementation of open source code created in other libraries, using various API's made available by Google, OCLC, or Code4Lib members, as well as various library vendors. This position will also be assigned other digital library projects as the need arises. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:20:04 +0100 867342 http://www.slis.indiana.edu/careers/view_job_specific.php?job_id=7762 State: New Jersey Library Web Developer/Designer Princeton University Library Princeton, New Jersey Requisition #1000633 The Princeton University Library comprises a large central library and nine specialized libraries that are heavily used by an academic community of 6,400 students, 1,100 faculty members, and many visiting scholars. To support the diverse needs of its users, the Library holds some six million printed volumes, ranging from incunabula to current imprints, and provides access to many other records of human knowledge, such as ancient papyri and cylinder seals, modern literary manuscripts, and recently produced electronic databases and journals. The Library employs more than 300 professional and support personnel, complemented by a large student and hourly workforce. Please consult the Library Web site at http://library.princeton.edu/ for more information. Available: Immediately Search Committee: (Princeton access only) Description and Responsibilities: The Web Developer position will help the Library Web Development Manager on specific projects to deliver more library content and services to our users from our web sites. Specific projects may include designing new sites, or using new web services technologies to improve the user experience in discovering, searching, finding, or acquiring library materials and content. Additionally, the position will assist in implementing the Drupal CMS, customizing the interface for the latest version of the OPAC, and creating mobile ready versions of the library web site and catalog. Customization tasks for the new NextGen Discovery system will be a large component of the work. Projects will also likely include implementation of open source code created in other libraries, using various API’s made available by Google, OCLC, or Code4Lib members, as well as various library vendors. This position will also be assigned other digital library projects as the need arises. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:20:04 +0100 867336 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/G8vyo5kh1B8/ Software um Screenshots zu erstellen gibt es ja wie Sand am Meer, ich nutze meist SnagIt in einer alten, damals kostenlosen Version. Ein weiteres kostenloses (Open Source) Programm mit ein paar Funktionalitäten zur Nachbearbeitung ist Greenshot. Wenn man es installiert hat, erscheint beim Druck auf die “Druck/Print”-Taste des Keyboards ein Cursor, mit dem man den gewünschte Ausschnitt markiert. Danach kann man im Bild Text, Markierungen, Pfeile usw. einfügen und es in verschiedenen Formaten abspeichern. Sehr empfehlenswert! (Source: netbib weblog) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:59:43 +0100 867473 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/08/29/neh-awards-new-digital-humanities-start-up-grants/ The NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants program has made 28 new awards. Here's an excerpt from the press release: American University — Washington, DC The Map of Jazz Musicians: an online interactive tool for navigating jazz history's interpersonal network Fernando Benadon, Project Director Outright: $49,777 To support: The development of an online tool to map connections and collaborations among American jazz musicians. Bank Street College of Education — New York, NY Civil Rights Movement Remix (CRM-Remix) Bernadette Anand, Project Director Outright: $25,000 To support: A series of workshops to plan the development of location-based smartphone applications about the African-American Civil Rights Movement based around sites in Harlem, NY. Boston University — Boston, MA Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities Jack Ammerman, Project Director Outright: $13,767 To support: A two-day meeting of humanities scholars, librarians, and computational analysis experts to consider how to improve existing cataloging software that attempts to better classify interdisciplinary humanities research. Brown University — Providence, RI A Journal-Driven Bibliography of Digital Humanities Julia Flanders, Project Director Outright: $49,659 To support: Development of a project led by the staff of Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ) to create, manage, export, and publish high quality bibliographical data across the digital humanities research domain. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867658 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/08/29/analyst-programmer-intermediate-at-georgia-state-university/ Georgia State University is recruiting an Analyst Programmer Intermediate. Salary: $42,707-$49,113. Here's an excerpt from the ad (vacancy number: 0601522): Reporting to the Web Services Librarian, the Analyst Programmer develops, maintains, and troubleshoots web based applications in support of University Library's goals. Responsibilities include scripting and programming for applications developed in-house, customization and enhancement of open-source and vendor applications, working with vendor or open-source Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and management of in-house databases. In addition, the Analyst Programmer develops end-user interfaces and dynamic forms for web applications using a variety of scripting languages and frameworks including PHP, JavaScript, CSS, XML/XSL, and RSS. This position works with project stakeholders as needed to further develop or enhance application designs or features. This position also works collaboratively with library Systems personnel to implement and configure web servers in support of web development activities, authentication technologies and server security. (Source: DigitalKoans) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867657 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/UshoguGGTBo/ Georgia State University is recruiting an Analyst Programmer Intermediate. Salary: $42,707-$49,113. Here's an excerpt from the ad (vacancy number: 0601522): Reporting to the Web Services Librarian, the Analyst Programmer develops, maintains, and troubleshoots web based applications in support of University Library's goals. Responsibilities include scripting and programming for applications developed in-house, customization and enhancement of open-source and vendor applications, working with vendor or open-source Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and management of in-house databases. In addition, the Analyst Programmer develops end-user interfaces and dynamic forms for web applications using a variety of scripting languages and frameworks including PHP, JavaScript, CSS, XML/XSL, and RSS. This position works with project stakeholders as needed to further develop or enhance application designs or features. This position also works collaboratively with library Systems personnel to implement and configure web servers in support of web development activities, authentication technologies and server security. (Source: DigitalKoans) Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:02:54 +0100 867318 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/BDfVISosX2s/ The NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants program has made 28 new awards. Here's an excerpt from the press release: American University — Washington, DC The Map of Jazz Musicians: an online interactive tool for navigating jazz history's interpersonal network Fernando Benadon, Project Director Outright: $49,777 To support: The development of an online tool to map connections and collaborations among American jazz musicians. Bank Street College of Education — New York, NY Civil Rights Movement Remix (CRM-Remix) Bernadette Anand, Project Director Outright: $25,000 To support: A series of workshops to plan the development of location-based smartphone applications about the African-American Civil Rights Movement based around sites in Harlem, NY. Boston University — Boston, MA Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities Jack Ammerman, Project Director Outright: $13,767 To support: A two-day meeting of humanities scholars, librarians, and computational analysis experts to consider how to improve existing cataloging software that attempts to better classify interdisciplinary humanities research. Brown University — Providence, RI A Journal-Driven Bibliography of Digital Humanities Julia Flanders, Project Director Outright: $49,659 To support: Development of a project led by the staff of Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ) to create, manage, export, and publish high quality bibliographical data across the digital humanities research domain. ... Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:01:59 +0100 867320 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/29/u-s-group-plans-a-digital-library-to-aid-north-african-research/ From the Article: To expand North Africa’s research capabilities, a project financed by the United States plans to connect the region’s universities and science institutes to a “digital library” that could eventually stretch from Morocco to Libya. The U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation, a nonprofit created by the U.S. government to promote international science programs, is leading the effort and is initially working with Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to increase their access to the latest international research, give scientists greater opportunities to collaborate, and hopefully bolster their scientific work and scholarly publishing. The foundation, which recently completed a similar virtual library in Iraq, is spending $1.5-million on the effort. The money is part of a $5-million grant awarded to the nonprofit by the U.S. Department of State to support scientific cooperation in the Middle East and North Africa. “The U.S. government has a renewed interest in science cooperation generally in order to solve a number of problems: environmental, economic, security,” says Eric Novotny, the foundation’s senior vice president. “And there’s a push toward engaging the Muslim world.” [Clip] One goal is to consolidate universities’ existing access to online journals, negotiating one subscription with each publisher. In addition, journal articles would be available in a single, unified index, making searches easier. Another goal is to increase the visibility of North African research. The plan is to establish an open-source system for Web publishing, which will make locally produced research available online, and to help local institutions set up peer-reviewed publications where none exist. Mr. Dunlap says the digital library’s interface will be in Arabic, English, and French. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 21:04:38 +0100 867310 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/5KG_-_16IwI/4050 OpenScholar A full-featured web site-creation package solely for the academic community. Scholars create web sites in seconds and can easily manage everything themselves (for free) tags: academic drupal opensource CMS CoLab | Open Source Science Designed for open and massively collaborative science. tags: science open opensource Lightspark Lightspark is a modern, free, open-source flash player implementation. tags: media opensource Boxee Movies, TV Shows and Video from the Internet on your TV. tags: media mediacenter tv opensource Contacts for Firefox With Contacts, we’ve enhanced your browser by making it aware of your online contacts and friend lists. You can then search and browse your contacts in the browser, and a website can ask for permission to access them through an API. tags: mozilla contacts opensource firefox KompoZer KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs. tags: opensource web-development web-design webdesign webdev Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (Source: What I Learned Today...) Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:37:27 +0100 867927 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/28/new-dspace-based-digital-repository-officially-launches-at-texas-tech-u-law-digital-repository/ Via the DuraSpace Blog: by Fang Wang, Digital Information Management Librarian, Texas Tech University School of Law Library After several months developing the collections, the Texas Tech University School of Law Library has announced the official launching of the TTU School of Law Digital Repository designed to save, store, archive, and share Tech Law’s digital materials, including research and scholarship of TTU Law faculty and students, institutional history, and more. The repository was initially launched at the beginning of 2010. It is built on DSpace, an open source digital assets management platform, enhanced with several value-added features unique to the law school. [Clip] Our nascent repository currently has over 900 records including the faculty scholarship collection. This is a comprehensive compilation of our faculty scholarship record. It includes a complete collection of our publications faculty produced while at Texas Tech. The collection contains almost 600 full text articles and links to individual articles on widely used legal databases such as Westlaw, LexisNexis, and HeinOnline. Social Science Research Network (SSRN) links also have been added. [Clip] The repository is a service of the Texas Tech School of Law Library. Access the Repository More in the Complete Blog Post Source: DuraSpace Blog (Source: ResourceShelf) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:29:28 +0100 866953 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/kgiQRfeM3PI/ From the Announcement: The American Council of Learned Societies’ Humanities E-Book has gone live with Koha. Eileen Gardiner, Director of ACLS Humanities E-Book, says, “ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) needed a secure and friendly environment in which to create and archive the MARC records that it distributes for its collection… Galen Charlton, VP for Data Services at Equinox, says, “I am pleased to welcome ACLS to the Koha community, and I take special note that they will be using Koha not as a traditional library but in support of their e-book MARC record distribution service. The flexibility of Koha and other open-source integrated library systems means that they are not just for physical libraries checking out physical books, but can be used and grow to support the virtual libraries of the world.” Humanities E-Book (HEB) is a digital collection of nearly 2,800 full-text titles offered by the ACLS in collaboration with twenty learned societies, nearly 100 contributing publishers, and librarians at the University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office. The result is an online, fully searchable collection of high-quality books in the Humanities, recommended and reviewed by scholars and featuring unlimited multi-user access and free, downloadable MARC records. HEB is available on- and off-campus through standard web browsers. Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, Koha is the first open source Integrated Library System to be used worldwide. The software is a full-featured ILS with a dual database design (text based and RDBMS) built to be library standards compliant. Access the Complete Announcement Via Resource Shelf Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:01:41 +0100 866622 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/uLJpJEP0Qy8/4049 Opencast The Opencast Matterhorn project is an enterprise-level, easy-to-install open source podcast and rich media capture, processing and delivery system. tags: podcast opensource Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (Source: What I Learned Today...) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:35:34 +0100 867928 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/27/humanities-american-council-of-learned-societies-humanities-e-book-goes-live-with-koha-will-be-used-to-distribute-marc-records/ From the Announcement: The American Council of Learned Societies’ Humanities E-Book has gone live with Koha. Eileen Gardiner, Director of ACLS Humanities E-Book, says, “ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) needed a secure and friendly environment in which to create and archive the MARC records that it distributes for its collection… Galen Charlton, VP for Data Services at Equinox, says, “I am pleased to welcome ACLS to the Koha community, and I take special note that they will be using Koha not as a traditional library but in support of their e-book MARC record distribution service. The flexibility of Koha and other open-source integrated library systems means that they are not just for physical libraries checking out physical books, but can be used and grow to support the virtual libraries of the world.” Humanities E-Book (HEB) is a digital collection of nearly 2,800 full-text titles offered by the ACLS in collaboration with twenty learned societies, nearly 100 contributing publishers, and librarians at the University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office. The result is an online, fully searchable collection of high-quality books in the Humanities, recommended and reviewed by scholars and featuring unlimited multi-user access and free, downloadable MARC records. HEB is available on- and off-campus through standard web browsers. Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, Koha is the first open source Integrated Library System to be used worldwide. The software is a full-featured ILS with a dual database design (text based and RDBMS) built to be library standards compliant. Access the Complete Announcement (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:54:31 +0100 866414 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ouseful/~3/7U_PVsBnJNA/ JUst before going away on holiday, I popped up a questionnaire asking for a little help working out what sort of impact – if any – I had on folk that could weave in to my promotion case for support… Thanks to all who took the time out to reply (it was very humbling:-) Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s a draft of the Case for Support, which I need to submit tomorrow. Whilst I haven’t been able to add direct quotes from the questionnaire responses – the word limit is set at 1500 words – your responses did inform what I wrote: some of the words are very heavily loaded and more densely packed, on occasion summarising whole responses… Tony Hirst – Case for promotion to Senior Lecturer My case for promotion is based around excellence in teaching and scholarship, with a strong theme of digital scholarship and community engagement. Teaching & contributions to the teaching system I have chaired three courses (production and presentation), and authored on four others, pushing the elearning agenda through technology and design innovation with a view to reuse. In 2000, I developed two units for T396 delivered via a novel electronic study guide, providing a unified browser-based interface to online, offline and CD-ROM content, and a mobile website for course alerts. This work identified issues relating to authoring content specifically for browser based delivery on desktop and mobile devices that have informed my work ever since. A major feature of my approach to the production of teaching materials relates to supporting reuse in other contexts. Whilst writing online material for the T184 robotics course, I commissioned several interactive browser-based activities that have been reused on courses such as TXR174, as well as for outreach. Using T184 software, I developed a range of activities for schools and OU regional Aim Higher/Widening Participation initiatives. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:55:39 +0100 866539 http://kairosnews.org/new-laws-to-fight-textbook-inflation There's a story up at studentpirgs.org about rising textbook costs and some news laws designed to fight it. Their calculations show that "textbook wholesale prices have risen more than four times the rate of inflation over the last two decades" and that new laws will force publishers to reveal their textbook prices to faculty. The article also points to open-source textbooks and the very popular textbook rental companies springing up all over the place. The commercial textbook publishers better get on that subscription-based electronic book bandwagon soon if they want to keep their high rises on the Avenue of the Americas. (Source: Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:47:58 +0100 865033 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibraryClips/~3/tgzHZi8EFUs/johnt Civilization Systems: On Creating Communities (Part 1) community evolution groups decisionmaking selforganisation technology dunbar altruism hierarchy Civilization Systems: Social Networks & The Social Organism - Healing the Breach http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/1010680650/the-ground-that-nurtured-the-social-network Civilization Systems: Civilization, Complexity & Collapse - The Search for Levers http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/1010716716/biological-altruism-and-markets Civilization Systems: The Foundations of Authoritarianism http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/1011106607/the-rise-of-authoritarianism-was-due-to Civilization Systems: Compensation & The Social Network http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/1011137750/scaling-society-and-cooperation Civilization Systems: How would hunter-gatherers run the world? (pssst... They Do!) http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/1011153690/from-social-network-to-authority-to-democracy-to A Game Theory Guide to Negotiations | Digital Tonto http://www.digitaltonto.com/2009/game-theory-guide-to-negotiations/#comment-1544 http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/1011239768/the-fuzziness-of-cooperation-and-self-interest Seven misconceptions about corporate social networking - SmartPlanet Retirees Help Keep Boeing's Knowledge Base No Context? No Collaboration. Goodbye, Google Wave | Pretzel Logic - Enterprise 2.0 FUMSI - Finding Expertise Inside the Organisation Lockheed Martin Launches Open-Source Social Networking Project - Application Development from eWeek Enterprise 2.0 and processes : what are we talking about ? (and why…) | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad The not-so-hidden cost of lost knowledge - Energy http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/1011462617/lost-knowledge Is information sharing a visceral need or a lucky good practice ? | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/1011538374/organisational-design-stifles-ego-altruism (Source: Library clips) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100 866010 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/16744 Location: Georgia State University Library, Atlanta GA Position Title: Analyst Programmer Intermediate Type of Position: Regular Staff Duties: Reporting to the Web Services Librarian, the Analyst Programmer develops, maintains, and troubleshoots web based applications in support of University Library's goals. Responsibilities include scripting and programming for applications developed in-house, customization and enhancement of open-source and vendor applications, working with vendor or open-source Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and management of in-house databases. In addition, the Analyst Programmer develops end-user interfaces and dynamic forms for web applications using a variety of scripting languages and frameworks including PHP, JavaScript, CSS, XML/XSL, and RSS. This position works with project stakeholders as needed to further develop or enhance application designs or features. This position also wor ks collaboratively with library Systems personnel to implement and configure web (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 865168 http://www.librarywebchic.net/wordpress/2010/08/25/lessons-in-creating-open-source-software/ Ed Corrado has a nice post entitled “Little Things Matter” on some key things that open source software creators should keep in mind. I agree with the spirit of what Ed says wholeheartedly. I can’t tell you how many times when I was an open source noob, I’d wonder what the heck the installation instructions were talking about or was frustrated because no one answered questions posted to the listserv. I suppose that is one of the reasons I thought “when I write a book on open source web applications that it will contain specific installation instructions”. Having written that book now, its not as easy as it might seem. I mean do I give step by step instruction on MySQL using the command line or MyPHPAdmin? Instruction for what OS? It is daunting for both people writing documentation and those using it. Which bring us to the point that Kathryn Greenhill makes in comment on a post by Roy Tennant which highlights the Ed’s commentary. Open source software means that users need to take an more active role than often people are used to taking. More than once at the end of a frustrating day working to get something installed properly, I’ve gone back in and edited software’s documentation wiki or sent an email with suggested changes. Better and more thorough documentation almost always comes from a community effort. To do this though one has to learn how to participate in an open source community. Learning how to participate is a ongoing process though because one may participate in new ways or in different communities over time. The idea though is that community members are able to build confidence over time by acquiring new skills. Case in point, there is a patch for a Drupal module I’d like to test, try and report back on. But I’ve never done that before. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:04:53 +0100 866370 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/tOTI7AEJgb4/ At the Berlin IFA trade fair PocketBook will be introducing 5 new ereaders. Here’s the rundown from their press release: Pro 602 and Pro 902: They differ from one another by screen size (6” and 9,7” accordingly) and by battery life (14 000 and 7 000 page turns accordingly). Technically both models are identical. They operate on Linux and they are equipped with WiFi and Bluetooth, both have a headphone connector. Internal memory capacity is 2 GB. Pro 603 and Pro 903: They operate on Linux and they are equipped with 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, a touchscreen (Wacom technology) and a stylus, both have a headphone connector. Internal memory capacity is 2 GB. They are upgraded versions of the above models. PocketBook IQ (pictured above): a color 7” TFT touchscreen, WiFi and Bluetooth. This device operates on Android 2.0. The release also mentions some interesting features of the line: - active content that makes working with text easier. For example, one can make notations, and selected parts of the text can be saved as an editable compendium. - PocketBook software is Open Source and users can program their own software and customized menus. There are already a lot of user-made apps and games, menus and logos. According to the release the company has 150 employees and sells over 50,000 devices each month. Their market share in the CIS is 43% and 5% worldwide, they say. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:26:51 +0100 864773 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/7fU3a5CCDzc/sixth-annual-summer-of-code-flexes-some.html Our sixth annual Google Summer of Code program has wrapped up and we want to highlight some of this year’s amazing participants and projects. Summer of Code offers students developers all over the world the chance to get paid to write code for open source projects as an alternative to a summer job.Kicked off in 2005, the Summer of Code has brought together more than 3,400 students with more than 200 open source projects from all over the world to create millions of lines of code. We work with several open source, free software and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects through three months of coding.There was some really awesome work done by more than 1,000 students from 69 countries in this year’s Summer of Code. Of those students, 6.5 percent were women representing 23 countries—six times higher than the estimated proportion of women in the open source community. Here are just a few of the women:25 reference manuals in her purse Ann Marie Horcher, an information systems security Ph.D. candidate at Nova Southeastern University was mentored by Docbook.org. Ann Marie worked over the summer to create an application that transformed a docbook file to epub format used in ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes and Noble Nook and the iPad. As a result of Ann Marie’s project, it’s now easier to move technical documentation to a portable format so she “can carry my 25 reference manuals for my project with me in my purse.” And now, so can everyone else.Check out Ann Marie’s YouTube video illustrating her work and its results here.Geophylogenies now displayed on Google EarthKathryn Iverson, a University of Michigan bioinformatics graduate student was mentored by National Evolutionary Biology Synthesis Center and wrote a library implemented in Java with KML to build geophylogenies—geographical evolutionary histories of organisms. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866216 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/16729 There's an open-source mobile browser detection code that we use at USM libraries which comes in a variety of flavors. Oddly enough it is called 'detect mobile browsers' and is available here: http://detectmobilebrowser.com/ BTW, it works great, and is updated with OS and device types all the time by the community of users. On Aug 25, 2010, at 10:08 AM, Thomas Bennett wrote: ----------------------------------------- Steven Turner Library Web Services Manager Information Services Librarian Associate Professor The University of Southern Mississippi Cook Library ----------------------------------------- email: steven.turner-aWCTzlnsAu4< at >public.gmane.org phone: 601.266.4066 ----------------------------------------- (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 865183 http://mcls.org/blog/?p=626 The following is posted on behalf of WiLS: WiLS is hosting two sessions on ERMes, the Open Source Electronic Resource Management System developed by William Doering of UW-La Crosse to help Galadriel Chilton help manage their campuses Electronic Resources.   The first session on September 10 is primarily intended for people who are interested in, but not currently using ERMes.  The second session on September 16 is an update for current users.  http://www.wils.wisc.edu/ September 10, 2010; 2:00-3:30 CDT Introduction to ERMes (Open Source Electronic Resource Management System) In spring 2008, William Doering created a basic ERM system (see flyer) to help Galadriel Chilton manage the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse’s Electronic Resources. Now in its third release, ERMes is used by nearly 43 libraries world-wide. In this informational session, Bill and Galadriel will share the history and goals of ERMes, discuss what ERMes can and cannot do, and answer participant questions about this freely available e-resource management tool. Register for free session. September 16, 2010; 2:00-3:30 CDT The New ERMes With the primary release of ERMes 2010.05 available, William Doering and Galadriel Chilton wish to provide ERMes users with an update of their ideas for this open source ERMS. Because their goal is to drive enhancements from user needs, this session will consist of a brief overview of future plans as well as significant time for discussion and questions. Please feel free to submit questions and discussion topics prior to the event (doering.will@uwlax.edu or chilton.gala@uwlax.edu). Register for free session. (Source: MLC Blog) Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:20:51 +0100 867591 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/smwm/~3/OrMehoUuj8A/making-library-slidecasts-in-slideshare.html The EAHIL2009 Workshop in Dublin had as motto : "Working with others: explore, engage, extend" While having drinks with Louise Farragher after the closing of the successful Workshop in Dublin, we talked about using the recordings that were taken of the Opening Session. At that time I still had the idea that there were also video-recordings, but it turned out to be "just" audio. Wouldn't it be great to be abled to listen to the actual voice and speech while seeing the slides and/or pictures of presentations afterwards? For all kinds of reasons, we did not get to really making it work. But now I finally got to it. With the use of Audacity, a free, open source software for recording and editing sounds, Powerpoint and Slideshare's Slidecast functionality, I created the first 3 Parts of the EAHIL 2009 Opening session and published them via the EAHIL2009 Slideshare account. The pictures used were taken from the Flickr EAHIL2009 Group Pool . If anyone objects in using their pictures for this project, he or she can contact me. Part 1: Mr. Paul Murphy & Ms. Suzanne Bakker Part 2: Mary Harney TD, Minister for Health and Children Part 3: Mr. Enda Connolly , Health Research Board Opening Ceremony EAHIL2009 (part 1) View more webinars from EAHIL2009. This item is automatically generated from the DIGICMB Blog of Guus van de den Brekel (Source: DigiCMB) Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867133 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Librarianinblack/~3/FE_H5_X34LA/lib-recommends-%e2%80%93-2010-08-18.html Is the Android sticker on my MacBook ironic? http://tweetphoto.com/39846912 Brilliant! RT @sxseventy Today I have invented the sarcasterisk*. It’s for typed sarcasm. Example: Sure, that sounds like a fantastic* idea. My first sarcasterisk* sarcasm: “Oh yes, library eBooks have very flexible* use policies & are easy* to download.” Ta-da! Ebook Summit Preview: At the Tipping Point http://bit.ly/9L9X9k If we believe this we must press library eBook licensing NOW. Via @ALA_TechSource: How Libraries Ensure Ongoing Freedom http://bit.ly/cYrTuX Niiiiiice! Bash that info overload! “Email Sucks. 5 Time Saving Tips” direct (via @kevinrose): http://bit.ly/a0p1aP Attention library geeks, nerds & dork! Check out the “Geek the Library” campaign – http://www.geekthelibrary.org/ More free eBooks! From @mashable: 10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers – http://mash.to/2rlVw Worth a read. The M Word – Free Ebook on Social Media Marketing (via @DigiLibraryBlog @ALALibrary @scstatelibrary): http://ow.ly/2qMHx A good recommendation from @s_francoeur If you miss the EtherPad service that allowed massive real-time document collaboration, try Sync.in. From @PierreTran: 50 Open Source Replacements for Really Expensive Software | Datamation http://bit.ly/cJb8g3 #opensource http://bit.ly/b4tiuG Libraries could totally use this on self checks & kiosks! Miracle Film Turns Any Surface into a Touchscreen (@mashable) http://mash.to/2r39d from @loriayre: New RFID stndrd uses ISIL codes 4 lib locations. US would have 2 use OCLC. Can nonmembers get codes? http://icio.us/5xykgb 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web – http://mash.to/2qVaI From @davidleeking: New blog post: Twitter Search Engines http://bit.ly/aFGrbB 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web (from @mashable) – http://mash. ... Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:25:10 +0100 866668 http://www.alatechsource.org/smart-libraries-newsletter/september-2010 This month’s lead story illustrates real-world examples of some broader industry trends and how they manifest themselves in areas like business and technology. The research for this article was a fascinating exercise in tracing the roots of products familiar today back to the earlier era of library automation history that spanned multiple continents. Through this story, we can also see the way that a product initially created for a specific library takes hold regionally, nationally, and internationally. It has been an interesting process to untangle the antecedent products and companies, the technology issues, and even lawsuits involved in the background behind the launch of a new library automation system named Evolve. --Marshall Breeding Also in this issue: Evolve ILS Launched by InfoVision Software Following OCLC Acquisition of Amlib Milestones in open source discovery products (Source: ALA Techsource) Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:05:55 +0100 866733 http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/002128.html I have mentioned Libguides a couple of times, which seem to be quite widely used. I have been interested recently to come across some other initiatives which aim to organize subject- or course-based library resources within a consistent content management environment which reduces custom effort. I enjoyed listening to Allie Flanary present about students and search strategies at the Orbis Cascade Alliance Worldcat Discovery Day. Allie works at the Portland Community College, where the event was held. The course guides she was using caught my eye and I went back later to see how they were put together. Here is the one for Fashion design, for example. I discovered that they use Library à la Carte, developed at Oregon State University: The Library à la Carte Content Management System (CMS) enables librarians to easily and quickly create dynamic web pages that integrate Web 2.0 features, such as chat and RSS feeds, with traditional library content, such as catalogs and article databases. Library à la Carte is a free open-source solution for libraries by libraries. A redesign of the NCSU Library website highlights course-related services. Among these are course pages (see one below) which include some general resources, some course-specific resources, and a link to a librarian. I was interested to discover that these were based on a home-grown framework, Course Views, which is described in an article in the Code4Lib Journal: The NCSU Libraries' Course Views project, along with a locally developed widget web service, improves course-based access to library collections and services by dynamically generating library course pages for all 6000+ courses at NCSU. By automatically generating custom content when possible and showcasing authored content when available, Course Views is able to achieve full course coverage without significantly increasing staff time to create and manage content. ... Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:33:53 +0100 866752 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/tDeI0RxUmwA/4038 Cinefx Cinefx is a suite of open source, cross platform media playback, encoding, visual effects and editing digital content creation tools. tags: opensource video editing OpenShot Video Editor Open Source Video Editor for Linux tags: ubuntu linux video editing opensource Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here. (Source: What I Learned Today...) Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:35:48 +0100 866089 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/SWwQRr2kPsg/over-gratis-freemium-en-luie.html Slideshare ontdekte ik in het najaar van 2006. Ik was toen onder de indruk van deze 'YouTube voor Powerpoints'. Onder de indruk ben ik nog steeds, het verschil met toen is echter dat het platform nu veel meer concurrenten heeft, zoals Scribd, Google Docs en Zoho. Het is, kortom, niet langer de enige website die ik bezoek, als ik op zoek ben naar voorbeeldpresentaties of documenten die ik in kan sluiten op Mijns Inziens. Nu Slideshare bekend heeft gemaakt dat het zal overstappen naar Freemium (een verdienmodel waarbij consumenten gratis, vaak door adverteerders gesponsorde producten krijgen, maar moeten betalen voor extra diensten of content) wordt er veel over het bedrijf en het model geschreven. Wat mij daarbij opvalt is dat veel mensen deze stap zien als een bewijs voor de theorie dat het concept gratis beperkt houdbaar is. Dat concept hééft ook de nodige beperkingen. Het is inderdaad niet houdbaar op het moment dat je een dienst of product levert, waar tientallen of zelfs honderden mensen tegen betaling aan werken of hebben gewerkt. Zodra 'brood op de plank' een rol speelt moeten er ook inkomsten gegenereerd worden, dat is niet zo ingewikkeld. Dat verandert echter niets aan het gegeven dat er ook vele duizenden diensten en producten ontwikkeld worden door samenwerkende liefhebbers. Klik je een uurtje een weg door Open Source-gemeenschap SourceForge, en je begrijpt wat ik bedoel. Toch vraag ik me, net als afgelopen zondag bij de betaalde websites van kranten, af hoeveel mensen er uiteindelijk bereid zijn te betalen voor hoeveel diensten. Als ik lees dat Ning (dat over een paar dagen helemaal niet meer gratis is) inmiddels 45.000 betalende klanten heeft weet ik niet goed wat ik daarvan moet denken. Zijn dat nu veel of weinig mensen, als je er vanuit gaat dat er tot op heden bijna 300. ... Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:29:00 +0100 864842 http://www.libology.com/blog/2010/08/16/wikipedia-lamest-edit-wars.html From the folks at Open Source Living comes a link to a Wikipedia page about… Wikipedia pages.  Specifically the Lamest Edit Wars on Wikipedia pages.  The list contains some thought-provoking debates, and some truly trivial arguments. Some highlights of debates that became a big deal in Wikipedia lore: Compact Disc or Compact disc? J.K. Rowling.  Rhymes with “rolling” or “howling”.  Apparently it doesn’t matter how she pronounces it. Color/Flavor vs. Colour/Flavour… etc. Star Wars:  Is the Death Star 120km or 160km in diameter?  Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker – one character or two?  Which came first, Episode IV or Episode I? Daylight Saving Time or Daylight Savings Time? Was Fred G. Sanford an “irascible curmudgeon” or merely “irritable”? Discuss…. (Source: LibrarySupportStaff.Org) Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:13:29 +0100 867178 http://www.libology.com/blog/2010/08/14/new-hybrid-ils-front-end.html A regional group of public libraries in Antwerp, Belgium have announced a new hybrid OPAC for their library software. They have merged WordPress with AquaBrowser to create a web presence with the capabilities they felt were most important for their libraries, notably local searching, faceted browsing, local news and announcements, and a fast, consistent design across all elements of the site and catalog. This isn’t the first time WordPress has been used as an OPAC front end.  The Scriblio project has been around for several years.  Other projects that provide catalogs similar to AquaBrowser are The Social OPAC (SOPAC) and VuFind. There is no mention of what ILS software is running in the background, but the hybridization of these two capable and solid OPAC enhancers is a positive step.   I suspect that we will be seeing an increasing number of front-end designs in the future, especially if developers increase the usability for both the patron and the libraries by combining the strengths from multiple projects. found on Open Source Living, via Nicole Engard (Source: LibrarySupportStaff.Org) Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:56:18 +0100 867179 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/mleggott/loomware/~3/R70lM8vweus/upei-web-of-science-and-knowledge-for-all.html There has been a great deal of interest in the last few days in an article that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week. Since it is about open access to knowledge, it seemed unfortunate to me that the article is behind a fee wall, so I have copied the text below, based on the assumption that the Chronicle is actually interested in facilitating a discussion around this issue. (I had to get a colleague to send me the article since I do not subscribe.) Might I suggest to the Publisher that they move the article outside the fee wall as a nod to the importance of access to knowledge. The Knowledge for All Proposal (about which I will write more in the coming weeks) is available on the Robertson Library Website : http://library.upei.ca/k4all. Hot Type: Canadian University Hopes to Lead Fight Against High Subscription Prices U. of Prince Edward Island By Jennifer Howard Famous for mussels, serenity, and as the setting for Anne of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island, the smallest of Canada's provinces, seems an unlikely hotbed of revolution. But at the University of Prince Edward Island, the province's only university, a bit of scholarly-communication revolt is stirring. On June 15, the university librarian, Mark Leggott, released a campus letter to let the faculty know the institution would not be renewing its subscription to the Web of Science database. Mr. Leggott's letter cited several reasons for the decision: "a challenging fiscal climate," a required three-year contract with price increases every year, a weaker Canadian dollar that would make those increases even harder to bear. But here are the real fighting words: "Any subscription increase in these challenging times is difficult, but an increase of 120 percent is simply not acceptable," Mr. Leggott wrote. ... Sat, 14 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866336 http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/2010/08/cfp-music-information-retrieval-mir.html CFP: Music information retrieval (MIR) special issue (OCLC Systems & Services) OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives(OSS:IDLP) will be publishing a special issue on music information retrieval (MIR) and libraries. The editor is looking for articles that articulate the planning, development, testing, systems work, marketing, etc. related to MIR, as well as the challenges of providing access to MIR materials. Articles can be of any length, and figures and screen shots are encouraged. OSS:IDLP is a peer-reviewed journal.If you are interested in contributing, please send the editor your name, a short proposal of the topic, and a tentative title for the article. Deadline for proposals is September 1, 2010. Articles would be due to the editor by February 1, 2011. Any questions and proposal should be directed to the editor, not to this listserv. Thank you.Dr. Brad EdenEditor, _OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives_Associate University Librarian for Technical Services and Scholarly CommunicationUniversity of California, Santa Barbaraeden@library.ucsb.edu (Source: A Library Writer's Blog) Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866354 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogs/distlib/~3/ltYNyBfXEzU/mark-leggott-vs-the-world.html The title is an homage to the soon-to-be-released movie based on the Canadian Scott Pilgrim comic book series, which you should read. So Mark Leggott, University Librarian at the University of Prince Edward Island, is making some waves in  the mainstream press.  In the Toronto Star: Canadian librarian leads worldwide digital revolt for free knowledge. On the CBC: University to bypass expensive database. Earlier in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Hot Type: Canadian University Hopes to Lead Fight Against High Subscription Prices. An important clarification on that article from the Canadian Research Knowledge Network: Open Letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education (PDF) and in his own words: UPEI, Web of Science and Knowledge for All. It's really nice to see so many of the commenters on these posts seeming to at least partially understand the issues and agree with the approach. In a nutshell, Mark is fed up with constant price increases for research databases, and has dropped one of the biggies, Web of Science, from the list of databases to which his university subscribes.  Instead, he and Amanda Stevens (I don't know her) have proposed the Knowledge for all Project, which audaciously proposes "to engage the international academic library community to collectively create a universal citation index to all of the world's past and current scholarly journal literature.  The tool will be accessible to all via the web and will be called Knowledge for All." Mark's actually got a positive track record with big shifts like this.  In 2008 he dropped the commercial Sirsi Unicorn Integrated Library Service (ILS) like a hot potato in favour of open source alternative Evergreen. It'll be interesting to see how it progresses.  Off to quiz our licensing librarian on the issue... (Source: The Distant Librarian) Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864908 http://www.alatechsource.org/smart-libraries-newsletter/july-2010 Qualifying Qualities for Tech Partners This newsletter often spotlights the companies that provide technology-related products and services to libraries. It’s a diverse group of organizations, including large international companies, large non-profit membership organizations as well as medium-sized and small firms. The ownership and business models also vary. Some base their offerings on proprietary products as others promote open source software. Some trace their roots to the pioneering days of library automation while others emerged more recently. As libraries make strategic technology decisions, one of the important components involves assessing the qualifications of these organizations. I don’t have an inclination in favor of or against any of these business configurations, but libraries need to look carefully for the qualities that identify an organization as a worthy technology partner. Given that libraries tend to stay with their automation product for more than a decade, these decisions will have a long-term impact. --Marshall Breeding Also in this Issue SirsiDynix Evolution: Recent Developments in the Context of Broad Corporate Strategies (Source: ALA Techsource) Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:46:28 +0100 866735 http://www.alatechsource.org/smart-libraries-newsletter/may-2010 Maintaining a Balance I find that one of the key challenges in covering the field of library technology is finding the right balance and perspective in both the selection and the development of the stories that you write. It’s important to highlight emerging trends, especially when they have some potential to make a broad impact, but it’s just as important to place any new developments in the context of the routine activities of the broader industry. In this current phase of the evolution of the library automation industry, for example, we’re seeing a lot of activity involving open source ILS products. For the last five years, an increasing number of libraries have adopted the open source approach, and there have been many interesting stories as this relatively new niche of the industry has unfolded. Still, this niche remains small relative to the entirety of the library automation industry. The library automation marketplace totals over $500 million in annual revenue per year; I estimate the open source portion of that at no more than $5 to $7 million. --Marshall Breeding Also in this Issue Reshaping the Open Source ILS Sector OCLC Reshapes its Content Strategy as it Expands WorldCat Local Discovery Linda Hall Library Selects Voyager SkyRiver Update WordPress for Library 2.0 and Beyond: Other Uses and Future Possibilities (Source: ALA Techsource) Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:38:25 +0100 866737 http://www.alatechsource.org/smart-libraries-newsletter/april-2010-0 The Business Side of Library Automation I think that a library’s approach to technology should be more about partnerships than procurements. Acquiring a new technology product isn’t necessarily just about the current snapshot of its features and functionality, but also about the alignment between the library’s strategic directions and that of its technology partners. It’s important to know as much as we can about these organizations in terms of business stability, commitment to the industry, and especially about their broad vision for library technology and the roadmap of where their products are heading. Given my perspective that we should look to our technology providers as partners, I think that the configuration of the businesses involved with libraries is a very important thing to consider. The library automation industry today includes some companies owned and managed by their original founders. Others have involvement with external private equity or venture capital investors. One of the major players is a non-profit membership organization. The size of these companies ranges from small firms employing only a handful of individuals to global companies with hundreds of employees. Some have a business model based on software license fees while we’re now seeing several that provide services surrounding open source software. An increasing number of library-oriented tech companies favor delivering their products through software-as-a-service. I don’t presume that any of the models are necessarily superior to the others—there are differences in the relative advantages and disadvantages of each one. --Marshall Breeding Also in this Issue Management Buy-out at Polaris Ex Libris consolidates, a Bit Business Developments on the Open Source Front WordPress for Library 2.0 and Beyond (Source: ALA Techsource) Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:23:48 +0100 866738 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ouseful/~3/mO9b53arzfo/ Chatting over possible use cases for digress.it in a meeting at UKOLN yesterday, it struck me that there are at least three different roles we might expect a commentable document to play in a open discussion context: draft document – in which comments are solicited on different parts of a document, with a view to producing a revised version of the document that takes into account the various comments made on the commentable version of it. For example, the publication of draft standards (e.g. British Standards – commentable drafts) or draft policy documents (e.g. Leicester University social media policy). Users may be able to see the consequences of comments by comparing final versions of the document with the orginal commentable version, and the comments associated with it. consultation document – in which issues are discussed and a series of consultation questions asked, often embedded within the various sections of the body of the document. For example, HEFCE REF Consultation. If a summary of responses is provided around the consultation, along with a review of what actions were taken that relate back to the consulation questions, commenters will be able to judge whether or not their comments appeared to influence the direction of post consultation outcomes. guidance document – in which comments may be round around guidance either requesting or providing clarification of particular points, or collecting examples of how others have practically implemented guidance. For example, COI Guidance on open source software. This sort of document can act as a hub for aggregating practical advice implementing guidance. In contrast to the previous two document/comments, the comments thermselves can become a means of sharing practical advice around the guidelines, and may effectively deliver practical guidance themselves. ... Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:01:26 +0100 866547 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Elsua/~3/AWtk6cxmSGs/ Earlier on today, on my blog post around 10 Reasons NOT to Ban Social Media in Organisations I was eventually sharing a number of different arguments as to why social computing within the enterprise is a worth while effort to pursue further. Those arguments were trying to provide a reply to the original resource that stated why some businesses out there may not be that open and receptive, just yet, to social networking. So I thought in this blog entry I would continue to pick things up and share some further insights, specially around a number of those headings picked up by this meme itself. Namely, it’s about controlling the message, employees will goof off, social media is a time waster and employees can’t be trusted. How do I plan to continue the conversation? Well, with a little help of my friends, of course! In the past, you would remember how I have been talking about a special group of KMers, right? A bunch of really smart, witty, incredibly insightful, thought-provoking, passionate and rather enthusiastic people about the topics of Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Learning and Social Networking. Yes, that’s right! That talented group of great thinkers! Well, every Tuesday at noon EDT they get together on Twitter (I try to join them as many times as I possibly can), pick up a topic and a moderator and they embark, in my opinion, on some of the most interesting and exciting conversations you can have around on the Internet at the moment, covering various different areas, but perhaps with a special focus on KM itself, after all. Like last week’s, around the topic of "Let go of Control; Encourage and Monitor", moderated by my good friend, and KM extraordinaire, Stan Garfield. ... Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:59:18 +0100 866213 http://www.librarian.net/stax/3297/now-thats-how-you-do-a-foss-press-release/ The Howe Library in Hanover NH has just moved their ILS to Evergreen. They sent out a very cool press release. Here is the first paragraph. In a technology move designed to cut taxpayer costs, Howe Library is pleased to announce it has moved its entire bibliographic catalog and circulation system to Evergreen, an open-source integrated library system used by hundreds of libraries nationwide and in Canada. Moving to Evergreen will save considerable taxpayer dollars, primarily in annual service fees and upgrades. Talk about upbeat! Instead of saying “Hey we’re going to have some downtime.” or “Here is all the new stuff you need to know.” they focus on the things that will affect everyone, lower fees and stable trusted software. Nice work team. Here’s the press release, now linked on their site. (Source: librarian.net) Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:06:09 +0100 867451 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BabyBoomerLibrarian/~3/7croJuJuXwE/idsconf10-ids-technology-cool-tools-new.html August 4, 2010 -- Wednesday Session #1 (11:00 am - 11:50 am) • IDS Technology: Cool Tools & New Ideas The IDS Technology Advisory Group (TAG) will present various tech-related enhancements they’ve developed for all members of the IDS Project, which include: ILLiad 8 Addons, Peer Reviewer and more! We’ll also share some of our plans for future developments. Time permitting; there may even be some lightning talks for you to share anything you’ve done! TAG: http://idsproject.org/About/TAG.aspx  TAG Bios: Adam Traub (St. John Fisher College, Chair), Mike Curtis (Broome Community College), Nathan Fixler (SUNY Office of Library & Info. Services), Corey Ha (Geneseo), Mike Mulligan (Upstate University Health System), Adam Perry (Oneonta), Kevin Reiss (City University of New York), Mark Sullivan (Geneseo). Tweet From First session of the day... Cools Tools and New Ideas #IDSCONF10 ChUbByPhIL peer reviewer script #IDSCONF10 BillDrew4 Mark Sullivan - assorted addons ideas?  #IDSCONF10 BillDrew4 ALEPH add-on #IDSCONF10 BillDrew4 get ALIAS info on a tab for licensing #idsconf10 BillDrew4 http://erm.library.nd.edu CORAL  - no knowledgebase Open Source ERM #IDSCONF10 BillDrew4 Not all those that wonder are lost. - Tolkien  #IDSCONF10 BillDrew4 Posted via email from Bill Drew - BabyBoomer Librarian (Source: Baby Boomer Librarian) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:51:00 +0100 864884 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BabyBoomerLibrarian/~3/J0zBe9hQkIM/idsconf10-making-smart-choices-data.html August 3, 2010 -- Tuesday Session #3 (2:50 pm - 3:40 pm) • Making Smart Choices: Data Driven Decision Making in Academic Libraries (Joint Session: Collection Development and Administrators) Though librarians are swamped with data from hundreds of sources, most of us have little time to gather that information, and even less time to think about what those numbers mean. This is unfortunate, because these data can often tell us a tremendous amount about how our students and faculty use our libraries and what they think about libraries and library collections. Just a little bit of time with these data can force us to rethink how we run our libraries. This session will explore some of the ways in which we can use data to change the way we build collections to better serve our users. Tweet From Now in the Auditorium: Michael Levine-Clark returns for Making Smart Choices: Data-Driven Decision Making in Academic Libraries #idsconf10 oodja Three case studies:  1.  Could a library buy used books instead of new?  #idsconf10 oodja could a library buy used  books instead of new? research question 10 years ago...  #idsconf10 cyriloberlander I'm pretty sure that Michael Levine-Clark is my new Library God #idsconf10 librarianross Used copies of in-print academic books-Choice (11 listings per title, avg discount 26%), NYT Notable Books (32 lpt, avg disc 34%) #idsconf10 oodja Conclusions:  Most recent books were available user/discounted #idsconf10 oodja NY times notable books used for analysis - 320 titles, 34% average discount, most listed at 11 sites. #idsconf10 cyriloberlander RT @oodja: The ideal model- user-driven purchases + special collection development #idsconf10 kepitcher Huge discounts may still not balance out savings of vendor approval plans, but definitely do for firm orders #idsconf10 oodja Case study #2:  What do users really think about ebooks?  #idsconf10 oodja At U. ... Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:25:00 +0100 864888 http://www.teleread.com/2010/08/04/google-waves-goodbye-to-google-wave/ Google appears to be abandoning development on Google Wave. The collaboration project many derided as a solution in search of a problem apparently never found the userbase Google had hoped for, perhaps because its user interface never managed to approach the user-friendliness of other Google projects such as Gmail or Google Reader. Writes Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow, on the Google Blog: Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave. I did manage to use it for a couple of TeleRead interviews, and for a story outlining project, but it’s just not the sort of thing that lends itself to obvious uses—unlike Etherpad, the collaborative text editor produced by a company that Google absorbed last year, ostensibly to add its developers to the Google Wave development team. I wonder if the Etherpad dev team will return to working on their previous project, now open-sourced with numerous mirrors. Hmm, that’s kind of ironic when you think about it. In purchasing and killing the company that made it, open-sourcing it as a byproduct, Google may have given Etherpad the very widespread adoption that it hoped for but never managed to achieve in Wave. (Found via Gizmodo.) Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:40:34 +0100 864732 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/sPHt1WZNGnQ/ Google appears to be abandoning development on Google Wave. The collaboration project many derided as a solution in search of a problem apparently never found the userbase Google had hoped for, perhaps because its user interface never managed to approach the user-friendliness of other Google projects such as Gmail or Google Reader. Writes Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow, on the Google Blog: Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave. I did manage to use it for a couple of TeleRead interviews, and for a story outlining project, but it’s just not the sort of thing that lends itself to obvious uses—unlike Etherpad, the collaborative text editor produced by a company that Google absorbed last year, ostensibly to add its developers to the Google Wave development team. I wonder if the Etherpad dev team will return to working on their previous project, now open-sourced with numerous mirrors. Hmm, that’s kind of ironic when you think about it. In purchasing and killing the company that made it, open-sourcing it as a byproduct, Google may have given Etherpad the very widespread adoption that it hoped for but never managed to achieve in Wave. (Found via Gizmodo.) Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:40:34 +0100 864662 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/04/google-waves-goodbye-to-google-wave-company-is-ends-development-as-standalone-service/ It just didn’t work out like many (especially Google execs) would have wanted. All of the discussions, demos, books, presentations and more just didn’t help create a demand (not sure about a need) for Google Wave. This afternoon, the company announced they’re ending development of Google Wave as a standalone service. If anything, it’s a reminder that Google is a business and as you’ll read in a moment, they need people to adopt and use the product or service not just a couple of time to try it out but make it part of their life online. To some degree it’s a reminder that no product or service is safe regardless if it comes from a start-up or Google. That’s a challenge especially for info pros who want to inform and teach users how to utilize these resources only to see them disappear. From the Google Announcement: Official Google Blog: We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code. But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:16:14 +0100 864673 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DepravedLibrarian/~3/xBEKt8HtDuI/ Harvard U. Institute Unveils Software That Helps Build Academic Sites – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education The open-source software, OpenScholar, seeks to make building and customizing Web sites simple and straightforward, even for academics who aren't tech-savvy. (tags: couseware learning) (Source: Depraved Librarian) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:05:59 +0100 866598 http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/2010/08/trb-90th-annual-meeting-january-23-27.html TRB 90th Annual Meeting, January 23-27, 2011 - Call for Poster ProposalsCall TitleSearch, Discovery and Current Awareness: New and Innovative Uses of Online Research Tools in Transportation Research and ImplementationSponsoring CommitteeABG40 Committee on Library and Information Science for Transportation (LIST)Call DescriptionThe Committee on Library and Information Science for Transportation invites you to submit proposals for a poster session focusing on new and innovative uses of practical online search, discovery and current awareness tools that can give modern transportation professionals a competitive edge. Posters will be displayed at the TRB Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, January 2011.BackgroundExtending a theme begun with LIST’s 2006 presentation session on wikis, blogs, RSS and podcasting, and continued in 2007, 2008, and 2009 with LIST sessions on the application of Web 2.0 social media technologies, the committee is issuing a call for posters related to new and innovative uses of online research tools as they relate to search, discovery and current awareness in transportation. This poster session is designed to complement this year’s LIST-sponsored workshop titled “The Right Tool for the Job: Search, Discovery and Current Awareness Tools, Tips and Tricks for Busy Transportation Professionals.” While the workshop will provide a high-level overview and will focus specifically on TRB and Google tools and ways they can be used to find high-quality transportation information, the poster session will allow presenters to explore specific tools and specific techniques in great depth. This poster session is not limited to TRB and Google tools.DescriptionThe poster session will focus on new and innovative uses of tools and techniques that can be used by transportation professionals to save time and improve the work effectiveness of professionals who must quickly search for, find and ultimately make decisions based on reliable information. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866364 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/aSZyyQIeeWY/update-on-google-wave.html We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users’ lives. Last year at Google I/O, when we launched our developer preview of Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even “playback” the history of changes—all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops.We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code. But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866238 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/16641 Many of these conference sessions deal with reference-based technologies, e.g., open source tools, mobile technology, online courses, virtual reference; I thought some of you on this list might be interested. -------------------------------------------------------------- Amigos Library Services Presents Online Conference: Reference < at > Your Library Registration Now Open!! Amigos Library Services will present a one-day online conference "Reference < at > Your Library <http://referenceonline.amigos.org/> " on August 31st. The conference will include sessions focusing on how mobile technology (may) impacts reference, embedding reference librarians in online classes, and determining whether technology is a burden or a blessing. "This conference is entirely online, which makes it an affordable alternative for many librarians to participate in a time where many library budgets continue to shrink," says Laura Kimberly, Amigos Continuing Education Services Manager. "Amigos is pleased to offer an event that librarians (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864610 http://nnlm.gov/pnr/dragonfly/2010/08/03/opensource/ Kitten Goggles! by fiatlux on flickr Open source software is often described as being free as in free kittens, not free lunch. Sure, you can use it, enjoy it, and even customize it without paying a cent, but who’s going to maintain it? Do you have someone with the systems knowledge and programming skills to really make it work for you? Librarian and open source advocate Nicole Engard recently shared two very useful slide presentations. The first presentation addresses some common questions about open source, including: Concerns about quality, security, and support The role of the developer community in quality control and innovation How open source software is being used by businesses and libraries The second presentation, embedded below, gives 54 examples of open source software products: web authoring tools, media players, room schedulers, citation managers, library catalogs, digital repositories, and much more. Take a look and discover something new. At NN/LM PNR, we take advantage of a number of open source products. The blog you’re reading now runs on the WordPress platform. We use Moodle when we teach online classes. Our internal web pages are built using MediaWiki. If you’ve taken our class about podcasting, you learned how to use Audacity to record and edit audio. Last year, we wrote about the UW Health Sciences Library’s use of DimDim for remote reference consultations. Last April, we hosted an online presentation by Lorena O’English about Zotero, an open source bibliographic citation manager. How are you using open source software in your organizations? Please share in the comments. (Source: Dragonfly) Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:10:48 +0100 867521 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/X65rxARg6CY/ The new bookless/electronic engineering library opened yesterday in Palo Alto, CA. Here’s the announcement from yesterday and a look at their web site. Much More in an Article (Published Last Week) in Stanford News: The Engineering Library’s move from the Terman Engineering Center to the new Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center was an opportunity to do more than just haul books from one building to another – and the librarians jumped at the chance to create a state-of-the-art library. “It’s going to be gorgeous,” said Helen Josephine, head librarian for the Engineering Library. “There’s a lot of new technology going into this. “We’ve been working on this for the last three years – we’re anxious to get in and get going. I’m really excited about it. I can’t wait to show it off to the students,” she said. She’ll get that chance when the library opens on Aug. 2, with a campus-wide invitation to tour the new engineering center and library on Sept. 8. The new library at the Huang Center will be less than half the size of its predecessor at Terman – about 6,000 square feet compared with the earlier 16,000 (and that’s not counting footage from the physics and computer science libraries that have merged into the new library as well). The revamped library will have a completely electronic reference desk with four Kindle 2 wireless reading devices. It will be the first on campus to have a self-checkout and book security system; by this fall, it also will have 15 ebook readers that library patrons may take home like regular books. Librarians will not be staffing a desk to help students and faculty, said Josephine, “but we’ll be more available when they need us.” Available, that is, through email, online chatting and Facebook. An online journal search tool called xSearch will scan 28 online databases, a grant directory and more than 12,000 scientific journals. ... Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:46:26 +0100 864395 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/08/03/articlevideo-stanford-u-opens-new-bookless-engineering-library-blacklight-deep-web-part-of-the-mix/ The new bookless/electronic engineering library opened yesterday in Palo Alto, CA. Here’s a blog post from yesterday about the new Terman Engineering Library and a look at their web site. Much More (including a video) in an Article (Published Last Week) in Stanford News: The Engineering Library’s move from the Terman Engineering Center to the new Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center was an opportunity to do more than just haul books from one building to another – and the librarians jumped at the chance to create a state-of-the-art library. “It’s going to be gorgeous,” said Helen Josephine, head librarian for the Engineering Library. “There’s a lot of new technology going into this. “We’ve been working on this for the last three years – we’re anxious to get in and get going. I’m really excited about it. I can’t wait to show it off to the students,” she said. She’ll get that chance when the library opens on Aug. 2, with a campus-wide invitation to tour the new engineering center and library on Sept. 8. The new library at the Huang Center will be less than half the size of its predecessor at Terman – about 6,000 square feet compared with the earlier 16,000 (and that’s not counting footage from the physics and computer science libraries that have merged into the new library as well). The revamped library will have a completely electronic reference desk with four Kindle 2 wireless reading devices. It will be the first on campus to have a self-checkout and book security system; by this fall, it also will have 15 ebook readers that library patrons may take home like regular books. Librarians will not be staffing a desk to help students and faculty, said Josephine, “but we’ll be more available when they need us.” Available, that is, through email, online chatting and Facebook. ... Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:36:14 +0100 864251 http://www.libology.com/blog/2010/08/02/one-possible-oclc-solution.html I am going to be very presumptuous and put forth a possible solution to the OCLC situation. Ready? Divide OCLC in two. One entity, which we will call OCLC.org (just to keep from having to make up some name for one of them) will encompass the bibliographic collective of thousands of libraries worldwide. Membership fees will be the primary source of income for this non-profit organization.  They will serve as a repository of bibliographic records and collective resources available to members at minimal or no cost.  Minimal would mean the amount needed to recoup the expense to provide whatever services.  OCLC.org would truly be a non-profit organization. OCLC.org could be governed by a board made up of member library representatives, voted in by general election.  It could hold conventions every few years to debate the charter and map the future of the collective. The bibliographic records contained in the WorldCat database would be licensed with minimal restrictions, primarily to ensure that more restrictive licensing could not be imposed upon them by others.  A license such as the Creative Commons ShareAlike could be a starting point for discussion. Recognizing that the data contained within the records is part of the Public Domain would encourage the organization to search for funding models that didn’t include paying piecemeal for records. A means of searching, adding, editing, and retrieving records would need to be maintained, but cataloging services and software would be outside the scope of the organization.  Software such as xISBN and xISSN would be a good fit for the database, especially since the complete WorldCat API would be open and available to all, and services like these would add to the value of the collection. An OPAC-like interface such as WorldCat.org may, or perhaps may not, be necessary. ... Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:27:19 +0100 864516 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/08/02/last-weeks-digitalkoans-tweets-2010-08-01/ Emerging Technologies Librarian [NASA Langley Technical Library] http://icio.us/1mkeqq # Publisher argues free access to research violates administration's transparency initiative http://icio.us/n1rk34 # Clearing up some confusions [Federal Research Public Access Act] http://icio.us/fh4kl3 # Lessons From 20 Years of Current Cites http://icio.us/utuaiw # National Leadership Grants , July 2010 Planning Grant Announcement http://icio.us/fzika2 # An Insider's View of the WIPO: Interview with Janice T. Pilch, UIUC http://icio.us/a4czii # Public Access to Federally-Funded Research Hearing Page with Testimony http://icio.us/kjaxfy # In Testimony, Publishers Say Public Access Bill Would Undermine Copyright, Scholarly Journals http://icio.us/gzfd0f # Now Available: Prepared Testimony (Full Text) From “Public Access to Federally Funded Research” Hearing http://icio.us/yjnt4o # Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (July 30, 2010) http://bit.ly/bZlKtK # Technology Librarian [Dexter District Library] http://icio.us/frhidf # Worth the Wait – installment #1 http://icio.us/b2hcwx # Automated Accessibility Analysis of PDFs in Repositories http://icio.us/vc2gve # Kindle 3 vs Nook, Sony Reader http://icio.us/khri3i # Kindle 3 Insights http://icio.us/0vwk01 # Breaking Down the 2009 DMCA Rulemaking, Part 1: Victory for Vidders http://icio.us/d0cvqh # American Physical Society Makes Journals Free–In U.S. Public Libraries http://icio.us/brabcy # University of Ottawa Press goes Open Access http://icio.us/5zrkkd # Emerging-technology expert calls for open access to academic knowledge http://icio.us/4lzvur # Congressional Hearing Over Public Access Filled With High Drama http://icio.us/bhcboo # Consultant for COILS (Colleges of Ontario Integrated Library System Group) http://icio.us/3ei2ce # Witness List for the Hearing entitled, "Public Access to Federally-Funded Research" http://icio. ... Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864255 http://www.libology.com/blog/2010/08/01/practical-open-source-for-libraries.html Nicole Engard has posted the slides for one of her presentations: Practical Open Source Software for Libraries (part 2) View more presentations from Nicole C. Engard. (Source: LibrarySupportStaff.Org) Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:22:33 +0100 864519 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/1Hdj3MlD09Q/ Emerging Technologies Librarian [NASA Langley Technical Library] http://icio.us/1mkeqq # Publisher argues free access to research violates administration's transparency initiative http://icio.us/n1rk34 # Clearing up some confusions [Federal Research Public Access Act] http://icio.us/fh4kl3 # Lessons From 20 Years of Current Cites http://icio.us/utuaiw # National Leadership Grants, July 2010 Planning Grant Announcement http://icio.us/fzika2 # An Insider's View of the WIPO: Interview with Janice T. Pilch, UIUC http://icio.us/a4czii # Public Access to Federally-Funded Research Hearing Page with Testimony http://icio.us/kjaxfy # In Testimony, Publishers Say Public Access Bill Would Undermine Copyright, Scholarly Journals http://icio.us/gzfd0f # Now Available: Prepared Testimony (Full Text) From “Public Access to Federally Funded Research” Hearing http://icio.us/yjnt4o # Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (July 30, 2010) http://bit.ly/bZlKtK # Technology Librarian [Dexter District Library] http://icio.us/frhidf # Worth the Wait – installment #1 http://icio.us/b2hcwx # Automated Accessibility Analysis of PDFs in Repositories http://icio.us/vc2gve # Kindle 3 vs Nook, Sony Reader http://icio.us/khri3i # Kindle 3 Insights http://icio.us/0vwk01 # Breaking Down the 2009 DMCA Rulemaking, Part 1: Victory for Vidders http://icio.us/d0cvqh # American Physical Society Makes Journals Free–In U.S. Public Libraries http://icio.us/brabcy # University of Ottawa Press goes Open Access http://icio.us/5zrkkd # Emerging-technology expert calls for open access to academic knowledge http://icio.us/4lzvur # Congressional Hearing Over Public Access Filled With High Drama http://icio.us/bhcboo # Consultant for COILS (Colleges of Ontario Integrated Library System Group) http://icio.us/3ei2ce # Witness List for the Hearing entitled, "Public Access to Federally-Funded Research" http://icio. ... Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0100 864024 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/mm7IVm6_Pz8/visualising-urban-geographies-scotland.html "The central aim of Visualising Urban Geographies is to bring together historical data provided by Professor Richard Rodger with historical maps provided by the National Library of Scotland. This partnership will create an online resource allowing new insights into the spatial character and historical development of Edinburgh. The objective is also to enable others - students, academics and the public – to use new open source tools for related web-applications to reveal the spatial characteristics of their own cities. The project team (Richard Rodger, Chris Fleet and Stuart Nicol) is a partnership between the University of Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland. The team will re-use existing research data obtained originally from the census, property registers, occupational and business addresses in directories on Edinburgh relating to the period c.1820-1940. this will be used to develop and test a methodology intended to side-step the need for historians and occasional users to learn Geographical Information Systems (GIS)" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:45:55 +0100 863862 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=200_Text_vs-_Free-_You_Do_the_Math- Two founders of Sun Microsystems have created two nonprofits to bring open-source textbooks to kindergarten through high school classes.Full st (Source: pligg - all) Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:00:09 +0100 863736 http://www.lisnews.org/200_text_vs_free_you_do_math Two founders of Sun Microsystems have created two nonprofits to bring open-source textbooks to kindergarten through high school classes. Full story (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Sat, 31 Jul 2010 21:37:48 +0100 863824 http://lisnews.org/200_text_vs_free_you_do_math Two founders of Sun Microsystems have created two nonprofits to bring open-source textbooks to kindergarten through high school classes. Full story (Source: LISNews.org) Sat, 31 Jul 2010 21:37:48 +0100 863615 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/P111otAW-hM/3978 I was teaching a webinar this morning on Open Source for Libraries. Before it started, Beau started scratching at my legs for me to pick him up. So I put him in my lap and he decided the laptop was a good place to rest his head.   That’s my baby boy! (Source: What I Learned Today...) Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:27:23 +0100 863389 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freerangelibrarian/~3/S9z6RlmZVb0/ Innovative Interfaces and its joined-at-the-hip cataloging-company SkyRiver have teamed up to sue OCLC for monopolistic practices. I read the complaint end-to-end today and you can read my somewhat tame, won’t-you-be-my-neighbor assessment on the Chronicle of Higher Ed. My more passionate, from-the-heart assessment: OCLC is a galumphing behemoth, often clumsily distant from its own kith and kin, with chronic governance issues, a deficit of social acumen, and a palpable mistrust of its membership. But OCLC is our behemoth–yours and mine. If we are going to have a worldwide catalog, it’s going to be a behemoth. Better it be a behemoth that needs to be not-so-gently bumped toward transparency and member participation than a for-profit behemoth in it for itself. Not only that, but I found myself growing indignant over III’s repeated claim that OCLC users are forced to take part in development of their own products. If there is one solid value I acquired during my time working for a vendor supporting open-source software, it is that participating in the development of the tools I use is a strong positive (and I have yet to feel compelled to participate in product design–if anything, we have to ingratiate ourselves into the process). Co-design is good for me and it is good for the developers and it is good for LibraryLand.  What exactly is III saying–that we are too stupid to participate in the design of the tools we use? My more pragmatic assessment: when you see a lawsuit over competing technologies, you can be sure some technology is jumping the shark. ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:54:25 +0100 863311 http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/2010/07/purl-community-site-moves.html I've always had a soft spot for PURLs. They never caught on like I thought they should have. However, they are still around and you can keep up with community news at Google Code now.The PURL Open Source Software community site at purlz.org has been migrated from Zepheira's servers to Google Code. Accordingly, the mailing lists hosted at purlz.org are also migrating to a Google Group.Please read this message carefully to avoid missing mail!The purlz.org DNS domain will redirect to the Google Code site, but you may wish the direct URL in case of any DNS migration issues. It is: http://sites.google.com/site/persistenturls/The direct URL for the new Google Group is: http://groups.google.com/group/persistenturls-> Please subscribe! All new messages will go there. No new messages will be sent to the purlz.org mailing lists! (Source: Catalogablog) Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 863554 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=801 The following panelists will help us explore the ins and outs of group collaborations during “Yours, Mine, Ours: Leadership through Collaboration“: Rob Stein, CIO, Indianapolis Museum of Art Collaboration Trials and Triumphs: ArtBabble, Steve, etc. Tom Garnett, BHL Director, Smithsonian Institution Collaboration Trials and Triumphs: Biodiversity Heritage Library John F. Helmer, Executive Director, Orbis Cascade Alliance Collaboration Trials and Triumphs: Northwest Digital Archives & Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) As with our previous panel on local solutions, the specific projects serve as exemplars for collaboration strategies which the audience will be able to apply to realizing their own ambitions. Speaking of which, we’ve made sure to have some time on the agenda where attendees can explore the implications of what they’ve heard in smaller group settings (see the Birds-of-a-Feather slots on Day 2). During online registration, people vote for specific topics they’d like to see covered in these facilitated discussion settings, such as single search (local), digital preservation (group) or open access (global). Here’s some background on group collaborations: Group Solutions - Common Interest “We work together because we have common interests.” Moving beyond the single institution, collaboration across organizational boundaries occurs when there is a common interest. A group of motivated individuals or institutions bands together to work on an issue they would have found difficult or impossible to solve in isolation. Many collaborative grant-funded projects fall into this category: a finite number of players tackle an issue that vexes participants in their own local contexts. Because the local benefit of this type of collaboration can be readily perceived, common interest collaborations are generally accepted as a way to achieve broad outcomes. ... Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:47:11 +0100 864044 http://gnomicutterance.livejournal.com/48474.html I'm grateful to the Free Software movement. I don't deny that the movement, the FSF, and the GNU Project have changed the world for the better. But every time I actually interact with Free Software people, I end up contemplating violence. (Note: I'm distinguishing Free Software from Open Source here; be aware that the link I'm giving here is to a Richard Stallman rant.)In this thread "A Call to Arms" on the GNU mailing list, Eric Johansson desperately tries to bring sanity to a discussion about enabling Free Software to interact helpfully with proprietary accessibility tools (in this case, Dragon NaturallySpeaking). And time after time, Richard Stallman derails the conversation. When Johansson tries to explain about the poverty of many people with disabilities, Stallman counters with Billions of people today are too poor to [use computers] and To lack money is unpleasant, but it does not mean you have lost your freedom. (Contrast being broke with being in jail.) When Johansson explains that Free Software is currently something completely unavailable to dictation users, Stallman reports Our goal is to eliminate proprietary software. Towards that end, we have to teach people it is bad. We cannot do that and simultaneously suggest a "solution" that includes NaturallySpeaking -- that is a non-starter here. He thus completely ignores Johansson's larger point, which is that you can't teach people that proprietary software "is bad" if you take away a system that works for them and replace it with one that doesn't.But the kicker. My God, the kicker:Responding to Johansson's assertion Let's say I bought into the philosophy. I would get rid of my computer because a free system that I can't use is fundamentally useless, Stallman retorts "Can't use" is such a strong statement that I wonder if it is another exaggeration, Even if you have no hands, there are other ways to input besides dictation. ... Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:11:49 +0100 863207 http://www.lisnews.org/talk_digital_divide_hacker039s_conference Jessamyn West, librarian and open-source advocate discusses The Digital Divide at the latest Hackers on Planet Earth conference in NYC. If you follow the LIS blogs (there are many!) you will have often read Jessamyn West who runs http://www.librarian.net/ Video of the talk (and many other interesting talks about technology) are available at: http://hattorrents.com/ (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:44:36 +0100 863837 http://www.slis.indiana.edu/careers/view_job_specific.php?job_id=7654 State: International The California Digital Library’s Digital Special Collections (DSC) team is seeking a programmer analyst to help build and provide access to a world-class collection of historical and primary source materials. We need your expertise to uncover and share the remarkable, one-of-a-kind collections held in California’s cultural institutions and to create an engaging online environment for research, teaching, and exploration. About the position: The programmer analyst will provide development and operations support to our three core services—the Online Archive of California, Calisphere, and UC Shared Images—with a focus on further developing systems for contributing digital content. We are committed to helping institutions of varying sizes and technical infrastructure expand access to their collections within California and across the world. The programmer analyst will also help enhance end-user services to provide innovative access to those collections. Specific projects may include: • Developing a statistics reporting system that meets internal and contributor needs • Building out a user interface for contributing content • Supporting the ingest and display of new content streams, such as audio and video • Creating new tools for both content contributors and end-users to meet expanding user expectations The programmer analyst will also be responsible for keeping “an ear to the ground” for potential new tools and services by monitoring technology trends and investigating their viability and potential incorporation into DSC services. DSC continually seeks new and creative ideas, and this position has the potential to make a real difference in how we work and what kinds of features we offer our constituents. Who we’re looking for The ideal candidate for this position will possess both a high degree of technical competence and a passion for improving systems through programming, research, and collaboration. ... Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:10:05 +0100 862986 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/07/28/next-gen-kindle-available-at-end-of-august-lower-price-lighter-and-50-faster-page-turns/ Here’s the Official Announcement from Amazon.com + Prices: $189 (3G and Wi-Fi) or $139 (Wi-Fi Only) They’re now available for pre-order. Ship date is August 27, 2010. + “New electronic-ink screen with 50 percent better contrast than any other e-reader.” + “21 percent smaller body but screen size stays the same.” + Lighter (8.7 ounces) + 50% Faster Page Turns + More storage (up to 3,500 books) + Graphite color option + Free 3G wireless access. Available in more than 100 countries. In other words, if you’re traveling you still might be able to download content. + Twitter and Facebook integration + New (Built-In) Open Source Web Browser. Will offer a “reader” view (removes material surrounding article making it easier) like what’s available on Safari and on other browsers using Arc90’s Readability. + Text to Speech and more. Much More in the Complete Announcement Source: Amazon.com See Also: The company also announced plans for a UK-localized version at £109 and £149, respectively, as well as a UK e-book store. Video tour available. (via Engadget) + Amazon introducing cheaper, thinner, faster Kindle (via Seattle Times) + In Price War, New Kindle Sells for $139 (via NY Times) Two of the most compelling aspects of the iPad — a color display and touch screen — are elements that some customers have been yearning for on the Kindle. Keep waiting, Mr. Bezos said. “There will never be a Kindle with a touch screen that inhibits reading. It has to be done in a different way. It can’t be a me-too touch screen,” he said. Earlier this year, Amazon bought Touchco, a start-up specializing in touch-screen technology, but current touch-screen technology adds reflections and glare and makes it hard to shift one’s hands while reading for long periods of time, he said. Color is also “not ready for prime time,” Mr. Bezos said. (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:34:49 +0100 863002 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibraryCloud/~3/qZ1x8Fm7yrY/ala2010-capitalizing-on-technology-lirt.html The Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) sponsored session Capitalizing on Technology: A Teaching Technology Fair, featured librarians discussing technologies they currently incorporate into instruction. With technologies ranging from open source software to free online resources, this panel had a little something for everyone. After the initial presentations were complete, individual presenters were available at tables stationed throughout the room; participants had an opportunity to discuss specific technologies with panel members (great idea!).I'm always looking for a way to enhance my LibGuides and the IRC web site and blog, so these technologies engaged my interest. I've used Prezi and Wallwisher, have heard of but not used Animoto, and XtraNormal is a new resource option for me.AnimotoXtraNormalPreziWallwisherAfter following up on a couple of individual presentations this evening via the LIRT conference site, I sent out a few email questions to panel members hoping for additional information. A short library video created a year or so ago highlighting library resources is in need of updating, it may be a good place to start with Animoto. (Source: Library Cloud) Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:07:00 +0100 864097 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TameTheWeb/~3/LsY4Y1gfRA8/ I was recently interviewed for an email blast for ILI2010. Hope to see you in London in October! Here’s the text: Internet Librarian International continues to provide pertinent resources and support for today’s information environments. With the shifting emphasis on information provision; constantly-evolving methods for delivering it; increased demands from users; and tighter than ever budgets, we asked Advisory Board member, Michael Stephens, for his views on the future for library technologies and more … Read the full Internet Librarian International programme here. I would have to say the advent of participatory technologies has been the single most important technology development for librarians in the last 5 years. Call it the social Web, social networking, 2.0, mobile technology, whatever, but the importance is four-fold: – The tools/technologies have allowed people to interact in ways online that go beyond simple one way publishing. – It’s created a sense of community for many people. Look at all the various communities we can participate in online just in our profession. – These technologies allowed for the creation of Learning 2.0 from Helene Blowers and the people at Charlotte Mecklenberg Library. My current research focus is on the impact and benefits of “23 Things” and what happens in libraries after the completion of the program. – I see this as the advent of DIY Culture with technology. Open source solutions have put high end development of content and community sites in the hands of everyone Amplify these with what location-aware services are enabling for people and physical spaces and you have a powerful connector. I am fascinated by the power there is in adding data and knowledge to geographic spaces, turning a community into a large collaboration space. ... Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:24:01 +0100 862852 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/commissaresse/~3/F3h19w0SWFU/library-mashups Mashups zijn webapplicaties die de inhoud van twee of meer bronnen samenbrengen tot één nieuwe, originele toepassing. Slim gebruikt kunnen ze bibliotheekwebsites en -catalogi meer dynamiek, een grotere zichtbaarheid en betere functionaliteit geven. Populaire mashups maken gebruik van kaarten – denk aan Google Maps – of remixen foto’s, video’s, RSS feeds, enz. In Library mashups laat Nicole C. Engard een schare gerenommeerde early adopters aan het woord. Jenny Levine, Darlene Fichter, Tim Spalding, John Blyberg, Karen A. Coombs, Joshua Ferraro en vele anderen implementeerden voor hun bibliotheken of organisaties jaren geleden al een of meerdere mashups. In hun getuigenissen proberen ze de lezer vooral te overtuigen van het gemak om met mashups aan de slag te gaan. Er vallen grootse dingen te verwezenlijken, ook zonder veel tijd, budget en personeel. Toch is het boek in zijn geheel beschouwd veeleer iets voor de gevorderde: behoorlijk wat bijdragen baden in terminologie en technische details. Na het lezen van dit werk zullen begrippen als API, web service, REST, SOAP, AJAX, microformats, RDF, linked data, JSON, SOPAC en SRU geen geheimen meer hebben. Ook geeft het een heldere kijk op een aantal inspirerende projecten zoals biblios.net Web Services, WorldCat Affiliate Services, The Repository Mashup Map en The LibraryThing API. Let wel, dit is niet iets voor een strandvakantie. De hoofdstukken dienen bij voorkeur geconsumeerd achter een rustig bureau met een computer erop. Door de vele schermafbeeldingen en kopieerklare codefragmenten die in het boek te vinden zijn, leent het zich bij uitstek tot onmiddellijk uitproberen. Zo overtuigt het onder meer om meteen met de mashup editor Yahoo! Pipes aan de slag te gaan. Voor de creatie van mashups geldt immers dat men al doende leert. Uiteraard bestaan mashups enkel bij de gratie van sites die hun data publiek beschikbaar stellen. ... Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:07:00 +0100 865322 http://www.labrujulaverde.com/wordpress/patches-welcome-recursos-para-contribuir-a-wordpress/ Peter Westwood ha lanzado un nuevo e interesante recurso dirigido a todos aquellos que quieran contribuir al desarrollo de WordPress. Se llama Patches Welcome y es un blog donde podemos encontrar información, tutoriales, entrevistas, etc. relacionados con el desarrollo de nuestro cms favorito. Welcome to “Patches Welcome”, I hope to make this site a friendly centralised place to curate and link content on how to contribute to the WordPress family of open source projects and also make it easy for new contributors to connect with mentors and find tutorials. Si te ha gustado el post puedes votarlo en bitacoras.com para que otros puedan descubrirlo © Guillermo Carvajal para La Brujula Verde, 2010. | Permalink | 1 Comentario | Guardar en Delicious (Source: La brujula verde) Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:13:45 +0100 862624 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=15396 Director, Online Library Environment (University of Virginia) The University of Virginia Library seeks a strong technical leader for the position of Director of our "online library environment," a comprehensive suite of tools and services to provide access to the Library’s physical and digital collections. We seek candidates who can successfully architect and implement solutions providing faculty and students a cohesive, innovative environment for accessing information used in research, teaching, and learning. Environment: The University of Virginia Library (http://www.lib.virginia. ... Sat, 24 Jul 2010 02:35:02 +0100 861781 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/07/22/national-library-of-australia-web-services-traffic-rises-above-2-5-billion-in-2009/ From the Article The National Library of Australia (NLA) has more than doubled its web services traffic to reach more than 2.5 billion hits in 2009. Speaking at the CIO Summit 2010 in Sydney, NLA assistant director of general information technology, Mark Corbould, attributed a lot of the organisation’s success to the use of open source solutions. In 2006 across all of its online assets including the public catalogue and the Trove search engine, the NLA had half a billion web server requests. This jumped in 2008 to over one billion and last year hit more than 2.5 billion billion in 2009. [Clip] Speaking at the CIO Summit 2010 in Sydney, NLA assistant director of general information technology, Mark Corbould, attributed a lot of the organisation’s success to the use of open source solutions. “We are now probably the highest ranked cultural institution in Australia in terms of our web presence,” Corbould told the summit attendees. [Clip] In April the NLA unveiled its Trove search engine that was built on an open source platform. The search engine provides access to more than 90 million items about Australians and Australia, sourced from more than 1000 libraries and cultural institutions across the country [Clip] The Trove project’s team of five developers used SOLR 1.4, which internally uses Lucene 2.9, for the main bibliographic search database and the web page archive, and MySQL 5 for managing all data relationships. Access the Complete Article Source: Computerworld Australia (via gartz5846,Twitter) See Also: Last week, Trove announced user Forums (Beta) See Also: Trove FAQ (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:59:17 +0100 861405 http://sites.menashalibrary.org/2010/07/22/wilsworld-2010-electronic-texts-and-the-evolving-definition-of-librarianship/ WilsWorld 2010: Electronic Texts and the Evolving Definition of Librarianship By Eric Lease Morgan Enormous opportunity in libraries Must evolve first & adapt to environment Find is not the problem that needs to be solved Indexes not databases – databases suck at search Go beyond find and help patrons use and evaluate content More full-text content – open source and licensed Collect online free resources like free classic books and blogs- bring in locally Analyze them, add value Enable people to do things against the text – Digital Humanities Computing Must visualize content – word clouds (Source: Sites and Soundbytes) Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 862865 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/07/21/first-annual-report-of-three-year-study-researchers-of-tomorrow/ From a British Library Announcement: Emerging findings from the first annual report of a major three-year study into the information seeking behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students shows that there are striking similarities between students born between 1982 and 1994 and older age groups. Researchers of Tomorrow was commissioned by the British Library and JISC to establish a benchmark for research behaviour, against which future generations can be measured – and also to provide guidance for librarians, information specialists and policy makers on how best to meet the research needs of Generation Y scholars. Researchers of Tomorrow Web Site Selected Findings Generation Y students and older students concur on a number of areas. + Open access and open source – like students of other ages, Generation Y researchers express a desire for an all-embracing, seamless accessible research information network in which restrictions to access does not restrain them. However, the annual report demonstrates that most Generation Y students do not have a clear understanding of what open access means and this negatively impacts their use of open access resources, so this is an area to be followed up in the next year. + Networked research environment – both Generation Y and older students express exasperation regarding restricted access to research resources due to the limitations of institutional licenses. This is born from a sophisticated knowledge of the networked information environment and students regularly speak favourably about sector-wide shared services and resource sharing. The research indicates, however, potentially interesting and important divergences between Generation Y and older doctoral students; for example, where students turn for help, advice and support and attitudes to their research environment. ... Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:35:05 +0100 861408 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/6266 BERKMAN CENTER FOR INTERNET & SOCIETY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY Upcoming events and digital media // July 21, 2010 [1] [TUESDAY 7/27] Berkman Center Luncheon Series: "The Tension between User-centered Design and E-government Services" with Nalini Kotamraju, University of Twente, Netherlands (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2010/07/kotamraju) [TUESDAY] BERKMAN LUNCHEON SERIES on THE TENSION BETWEEN USER-CENTERED DESIGN AND E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES ================================================================================== 7/27/10, 12:30 PM ET, Berkman Center Conference Room @ 23 Everett St., Cambridge, MA RSVP is required for those attending in person to Amar Ashar (ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu) This event will be webcast live Topic: "The Tension between User-centered Design and E-government Services" Guest: Nalini Kotamraju, University of Twente, Netherlands E-government services throughout the world have been plagued by lower than expected rates of adoption by individuals and institutions. A lack of user centricity in e-government services design and development has been identified as a primary reason for this slow adoption. Even when governments involve users or potential users in their design process, the resulting e-government service is often not user-centered. Drawing on our involvement with PortNL, an integrated e-government service for expatriates in the Netherlands, we suggest that a fundamental tension between the needs of users and those of governments is at the core of governments difficulty in creating user-centered services. User-centered design prioritizes the needs of users, supporting their approach to tasks and information-seeking, as well as advocating for the importance of users needs even, when necessary, over the needs of service builders. In an e-government context, however, the service builders represent governments, not companies. ... Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:53:28 +0100 861268 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/e3Xvc2S2ej0/bookliberator-project.html BookLiberator is a set of free software and hardware to digitize books: it lets you photograph all the pages in a book without harming the book. The resulting images can be processed with free, open source software to make user-friendly files in a variety of formats (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:15:44 +0100 861255 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=U-S-_Public_Libraries_Using_Open_Source_CMS_%AB_Adventures_in_--- As part of my dissertation, I have made a Google Map charting the U.S. public libraries using open source CMS which can be accessed here: http://bit. (Source: pligg - all) Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:00:16 +0100 861167 http://sites.menashalibrary.org/2010/07/21/wilsworld-2010-opening-whats-closed/ Needed a single identity, a brand Provide a unified user experience “information not location” Eliminate silos Phase 1: The Bandaid Force brand onto the site Provide consistent navigation Identify duplicated content Think of selves as one Gateway page Standard navigation toolbar on every library page Lots of user surveys and studies; focus groups & advisory groups One question survey – why did you come here today? Focus on users not staff opinions What users said: Wanted toe told what was important – offer guidance Did not want have to know where to start Single interface and design No lists of links Searching and browsing: Find Bar Design Principles Ubiquitous and persistent find function Clear visual hierarchy Hip, clean, contemporary look Show off our treasures Tell our news Reveal things that aren’t known about us Large spotlight section No software coats, but hardware like servers was purchased Did not use SOPAC Open source – preference for building over buying Still live in vendor- driven environment Reacting to feedback Conducting usability work Added quick links to the site Adding mobile interface Formed new User Experience Dept Participatory design Printout of gateway page – offer likes, dislikes and additions (Source: Sites and Soundbytes) Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 861376 http://hurstassociates.blogspot.com/2010/07/free-or-open-source-software.html Recently, Andrew Stawowczyk Long from the National Library of Australia posted a message to the IMAGELIB discussion list about this free image to PDF batch converter that he had written. (He noted that is seems to work well, but has not been tested extensively.)  That makes me wonder if there is other free or open source software that people are developing for digitization programs and where it is all housed.  Is there a repository for this stuff somewhere?  If you were trying to find free or open source software for your program where would you look?This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. (Source: Digitization 101) Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 861329 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Digitization101/~3/PBxe1NfmAuM/free-or-open-source-software.html Recently, Andrew Stawowczyk Long from the National Library of Australia posted a message to the IMAGELIB discussion list about this free image to PDF batch converter that he had written. (He noted that is seems to work well, but has not been tested extensively.)  That makes me wonder if there is other free or open source software that people are developing for digitization programs and where it is all housed.  Is there a repository for this stuff somewhere?  If you were trying to find free or open source software for your program where would you look?This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. (Source: Digitization 101) Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 861260 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/web2learning/YOVk/~3/eamUlbXQdnk/3955 This came across with a few of my mailing lists today and I thought you’d all be interested: I am conducting a survey for my dissertation which looks at the changing role of the public library website. It also explores the role that open source content management systems play in this change. If you work for a public library and have migrated your web content from a static HTML environment to an open source CMS, I kindly request approximately fifteen minutes of your time to complete a ten-question survey. I have been reaching out to a number of libraries directly, so if I have already contacted you regarding this matter please ignore this message. The survey can be accessed by following this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5VX7F8Q Further information on the project and the way data will be handled is available here: http://notepad.cc/share/rkeH3HBhOz Regards, Michael Pawlus (Source: What I Learned Today...) Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:56:01 +0100 861638 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/16594 Hello, I am conducting a survey for my dissertation which looks at the changing role of the public library website.  It also explores the role that open source content management systems play in this change. If you work for a public library and have migrated your web content from a static HTML environment to an open source CMS, I kindly request approximately fifteen minutes of your time to complete a ten-question survey.  I have been reaching out to a number of libraries directly, so if I have already contacted you regarding this matter please ignore this message. The survey can be accessed by following this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5VX7F8Q Further information on the project and the way data will be handled is available here: http://notepad.cc/share/rkeH3HBhOz Regards, Michael Pawlus (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 861083 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/07/18/vufind-1-0-released/ VuFind 1.0 has been released. VuFind is an open source resource discovery system. Here's an excerpt from the announcement: VuFind's long beta period is now over. Today, VuFind 1.0 has been released. In addition to improved stability, the new release includes several features missing from the previous release candidate: flexible support for non-MARC metadata formats, a mobile interface, Dewey Decimal support, integration with Serials Solutions' Summon, and more! (Source: DigitalKoans) Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 861417 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/8DnUxmwQ49s/ VuFind 1.0 has been released. VuFind is an open source resource discovery system. Here's an excerpt from the announcement: VuFind's long beta period is now over. Today, VuFind 1.0 has been released. In addition to improved stability, the new release includes several features missing from the previous release candidate: flexible support for non-MARC metadata formats, a mobile interface, Dewey Decimal support, integration with Serials Solutions' Summon, and more! (Source: DigitalKoans) Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:05:18 +0100 861185 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ouseful/~3/M08YSdIgry8/ How many times have you been to a meeting or a workshop within your institution where group discussions result in flip charts and posters that are used as part of a “reporting back” activity, and then are taken away at the end of the day for who knows what reason? Way back when, in a real-time computing course I think, I was introduced to the notion of an “atomic transaction”. As Wikipedia succinctly puts it: “atomicity: a property of database transactions which are guaranteed to either completely occur, or have no effects.” Now I’m not saying that meetings completely occur and have no effects, but many of them do seem to be atomic in that what happens in the meeting stays in the meeting, to paraphrase another well known saying… In a handful of recent posts, I’ve started thinking about how we can soften the boundaries of meetings so that they can become part of a wider – and ongoing – “conversation”, rather than being activities that are located in a very specific time and place (e.g. Amplified Meetings and Participatory Deliberation…, Using WriteToReply to Publish Committee Papers and Backchannel Side Effects – Personal Meeting Notes). That is, there are now weveral ways where we can widen the availability of papers and discussions both in terms of time (extending the period of time over which participants can draw on and contribute back to meeting resources) and reach (i.e. making it possible for me people to contribute). Examples of how we might do this include: - annotating documents using commenting platforms such as WriteToReply and JISCPress; - capturing backchannel comments and interlacing them with meeting reports or using them as video or audio captions. ... Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:04:22 +0100 860709 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/3HRMqIwl2Fw/vufind-out-of-beta-with-10-release.html VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include: * Catalog Records * Locally Cached Journals * Digital Library Items * Institutional Repository * Institutional Bibliography * Other Library Collections and Resources VuFind is completely modular so you can implement just the basic system, or all of the components. And since it's open source, you can modify the modules to best fit your need or you can add new modules to extend your resource offerings (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:50:20 +0100 859898 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibraryCloud/~3/gz-4Bn8I2Y4/call-for-papers-jildder.html From "inbox" this morning, here is a call for papers from the Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserves. Generally speaking, I tend to post more conference and workshop information, but several years ago my first article was published in this journal and since then an article published by fellow blogger Betsy Blankenship, I think it's a great opportunity to share.Call for Papers: JILDDERThe Routledge/Taylor & Francis peer-reviewed Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve (JILDDER) has merged with Resource Sharing & Information Networks and is now accepting articles for Winter and Spring publication. Of particular interest to JILDDER are articles regarding resource sharing, unmediated borrowing, electronic reserve, cooperative collection development, shared virtual library services, digitization projects and other multi-library collaborative efforts including the following topics:cooperative purchasing and shared collectionsconsortial delivery systemsshared storage facilitiesadministration and leadership of interlibrary loan departments, networks, cooperatives, and consortiatraining, consulting and continuing education provided by consortiumuse of interlibrary loan statistics for book and periodical acquisitions, weeding and collection management selection and use of cutting-edge technologies and services used for interlibrary loan and electronic reserve, such as Ariel, Illiad, BlackBoard, Relais and other proprietary and open-source software copyright and permission issues concerning interlibrary loan and electronic reserveaspects of quality assurance, efficiency studies, best practices, library 2. ... Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:34:00 +0100 860610 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/07/14/associate-director-sulair-enterprise-systems-programming-at-stanford-university/ The Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources are recruiting an Associate Director, SULAIR Enterprise Systems & Programming. Here's an excerpt from the ad: The person in this position provides management and oversight of the SULAIR enterprise systems, and provides process leadership in quality assurance and software/systems development and implementation in collaboration with Digital Library Systems and Services (DLSS) and Academic Computing Services (ACS). He/she will work within SULAIR and with other organizations within and outside of the University to ensure compliance with internal and external protocols, maximize efficiencies and synergies in software development, and integrate content, software and functionalities between systems within and outside of our domain. The position directly manages a course management system (CourseWork, based on Sakai, an open source application), and an integrated library management system (Sirsi’s Symphony). As systems under development mature into enterprise services, it is anticipated that additional components may be added to the scope of this position. Such actions would be taken on a case-by-case basis after consultation with involved parties. Duties include coordination with other units in SULAIR, with other organizations at Stanford, and with vendors as necessary. Primary engagement will involve work with DLSS on quality assurance and software/systems development involving digital library and digital archive initiatives. The Associate Director will participate in these developments as a QA and software development process lead and, where appropriate, help manage the transition of programs from a development environment to a production environment. (Source: DigitalKoans) Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 859939 http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/2010/07/vufind-10-released.html Today, VuFind 1.0 has been released.In addition to improved stability, the new release includes several features missing from the previous release candidate:Flexible support for non-MARC metadata formatsA mobile interfaceDewey Decimal supportIntegration with Serials Solutions' SummonDynamic "recommendations modules" to complement search results with relevant tipsHere is the description of VuFind from their home page.VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include:Catalog RecordsLocally Cached JournalsDigital Library ItemsInstitutional RepositoryInstitutional BibliographyOther Library Collections and ResourcesVuFind is completely modular so you can implement just the basic system, or all of the components. And since it's open source, you can modify the modules to best fit your need or you can add new modules to extend your resource offerings. (Source: Catalogablog) Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 859870 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/k5G-FWjUFTs/ The Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources are recruiting an Associate Director, SULAIR Enterprise Systems & Programming. Here's an excerpt from the ad: The person in this position provides management and oversight of the SULAIR enterprise systems, and provides process leadership in quality assurance and software/systems development and implementation in collaboration with Digital Library Systems and Services (DLSS) and Academic Computing Services (ACS). He/she will work within SULAIR and with other organizations within and outside of the University to ensure compliance with internal and external protocols, maximize efficiencies and synergies in software development, and integrate content, software and functionalities between systems within and outside of our domain. The position directly manages a course management system (CourseWork, based on Sakai, an open source application), and an integrated library management system (Sirsi’s Symphony). As systems under development mature into enterprise services, it is anticipated that additional components may be added to the scope of this position. Such actions would be taken on a case-by-case basis after consultation with involved parties. Duties include coordination with other units in SULAIR, with other organizations at Stanford, and with vendors as necessary. Primary engagement will involve work with DLSS on quality assurance and software/systems development involving digital library and digital archive initiatives. The Associate Director will participate in these developments as a QA and software development process lead and, where appropriate, help manage the transition of programs from a development environment to a production environment. (Source: DigitalKoans) Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:02:37 +0100 859718 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/07/14/associate-director-sulair-enterprise-systems-programming-at-stanford-university/ The Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources are recruiting an Associate Director, SULAIR Enterprise Systems & Programming. Here's an excerpt from the ad: The person in this position provides management and oversight of the SULAIR enterprise systems, and provides process leadership in quality assurance and software/systems development and implementation in collaboration with Digital Library Systems and Services (DLSS) and Academic Computing Services (ACS). He/she will work within SULAIR and with other organizations within and outside of the University to ensure compliance with internal and external protocols, maximize efficiencies and synergies in software development, and integrate content, software and functionalities between systems within and outside of our domain. The position directly manages a course management system (CourseWork, based on Sakai, an open source application), and an integrated library management system (Sirsi’s Symphony). As systems under development mature into enterprise services, it is anticipated that additional components may be added to the scope of this position. Such actions would be taken on a case-by-case basis after consultation with involved parties. Duties include coordination with other units in SULAIR, with other organizations at Stanford, and with vendors as necessary. Primary engagement will involve work with DLSS on quality assurance and software/systems development involving digital library and digital archive initiatives. The Associate Director will participate in these developments as a QA and software development process lead and, where appropriate, help manage the transition of programs from a development environment to a production environment. (Source: DigitalKoans) Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:02:33 +0100 860509 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/6255 BERKMAN CENTER FOR INTERNET & SOCIETY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITYUpcoming events and digital media // July 14, 2010[1] [MONDAY 7/19] ICT and Civic Engagement in Nigeria: the 2011 Presidential Election and Beyond (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/07/nigeria)[2] [TUESDAY 7/20] Berkman Center Luncheon Series: "Entrepreneurship: where are all the women and minorities?" with Vivek Wadhwa of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and contributor to TechCrunch & BusinessWeek.com (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2010/07/wadhwa)[MONDAY] ICT AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN NIGERIA==================================================================================7/19/10, Abuja, NigeriaVisit the main website for this event, which includes registration, the agenda, and more information: http://www.e-nigeria.org/The objective of this ongoing series is to stimulate discussion of, engagement with, and reflection upon the role and uses of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in civic engagement. We will specifically examine and advocate around the upcoming 2011 Nigerian presidential election, exploring ICTs as environments to educate, discuss, deliberate, choose, and act. The meetings will draw on relevant experiences from Nigeria, the rest of Africa, and elsewhere around the world, bringing together thought leaders, practitioners, activists, and citizens, with a particular focus on civil society actors.Of particular interest are the various ways in which ICTs can be enabling key functions of democracy, including how they help people to access and share relevant news and information, organize and coordinate activity, and generate and utilize data. While these endeavors are always important in the drive to create transparent and accountable government and rich civic engagement, they are perhaps never more essential as in the period around (and including) elections, where they represent a unique resource. ... Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:52:58 +0100 859622 http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/2010/07/call-for-articles-ideas-journal-call.html Call for articles & ideas - Journal call for papers from Library Hi Tech NewsLibrary Hi Tech News (LHTN), is actively seeking submissions. LHTN is an established (1984+) print and online monthly journal that quickly publishes articles of interest to our international readership. The journal’s major focus is on developments in library technology. Although not formally peer reviewed, LHTN is indexed in Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Scopus, INSPEC, Current Index to Journals in Education and others. Published by Emerald Publishing Group, LHTN is interested in articles of varying lengths, reports from relevant conferences, and case studies of library use of technology. The editors will work with authors that are new to LIS publishing, and those who are seeking outlets for reporting on practical uses of IT in libraries. Publishing your article in LHTN can be “a place to start,” analogous to a “poster session in print” and does not preclude publishing a more fulsome piece in a peer-reviewed journal at a later date. Readers consider LHTN the source to hear what’s coming next in terms of technology development for academic and public libraries. ... Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 860596