librarygeek

2002-06-10T10:19:00.000-04:00

Well I finally got the job situation all worked out. More on that later. But now I'm in 'find an apartment and move' mode, hence the lack of posts. (If anyone knows of any vacancies in Providence, RI, let me know.) I'm headed down to Atlanta on Thursday, so if any of you will be there, let me know and we can chill.

2002-05-23T20:03:00.000-04:00

Developers Kit for Factiva

Factiva, a global news and business information provider, has launched Factiva Developer's Kit; an application-programming interface which allows developers to create customized applications that integrate Factiva's content and functionality into end-users' workflow systems

Factiva hops on the API bandwagon. It'll sure be interesting to see what all the hipster librarians do with all these API's.

2002-05-22T11:44:00.000-04:00

Position Details on HigherEdJobs.com - Virtual Information Librarians

Provide online reference services to students and employees from the 14 university State System of Higher Education of Pennsylvania (SSHE) and the public at large from home; retrieve information using a variety of electronic resources including Internet, CD-ROMs, and online databases; assist in marketing and public relations efforts to increase use; assist in the evaluation of new online reference and customer support techniques and software.

Be an academic librarian and never get out of your pajamas. Mansfield University may be on to something here. Though given the track record of Virtual Reference services i.e. no one uses them (yet), I'd be concerned about job security.

2002-05-20T20:50:00.000-04:00

/usr/lib/info Not much there yet, but I reckon I'll be visiting this page often enough.

2002-05-16T08:08:00.000-04:00

Excising Information

In the rush to secure the nation, government officials have once again looked to restricting access to information as a cure-all. We have statements from them decrying the availability of sensitive information and moaning that even pieces of non-sensitive information, when put together from disparate sources, could be transformed into sensitive data.

Interesting editorial on recent trends with regard to 'sensitive' information.

2002-05-16T07:55:00.000-04:00

Worthington Memory

Worthington Libraries are partnering with the Worthington Historical Society to build Worthington Memory. The goals of this collaborative project are to collect and preserve local history materials through the creation of a digital library, providing greater access to and enhanced public awareness of Worthington's rich history.

Nicely designed digital library (at least in my browser anyway). (Link boosted from the LITA listserv.)

2002-05-14T11:17:00.000-04:00

'Screen Language': The New Currency for Learning According to Seely Brown, there is a new kind of digital divide now and it is the divide between faculty and students. Faculty, stuck in yesterday's analog world, are confronted with students who arrive nicely fluent in digital technology and the virtues of hyperspeed. Students already have a handle on how to convey their emotional states electronically. It's up to adults to learn that vernacular, he said. Educators who create programs for adult learning and distance learning need to apply the vernacular and deepen and strengthen these new means of communication.

2002-05-14T10:58:00.000-04:00

Digital preservation strategies

While digital technologies are enabling information to be created, manipulated, disseminated, located and stored with increasing ease, preserving access to this information poses a significant challenge. Unless preservation strategies are actively employed, this information will rapidly become inaccessible. Choice of strategy will depend upon the nature of the material and what aspects are to be retained.Extensive bibliography on this topic.

2002-05-14T10:57:00.000-04:00

Mapping the Information Landscape

Librarians actually have a variety of information maps. They're kind of like those anatomy illustrations in an encyclopedia, with multiple see-through plastic overlays that one can superimpose on the outline of the human form. Which map we use will be determined by the kind of questions we're answering.

2002-05-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

Creating a Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections

A Digital Library Forum convened by the IMLS and working in collaboration with participants from the NSF's National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library program has released a Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections to serve as a resource for practitioners and funding agencies. This Framework pays particular attention to digitization collection practices that facilitate integration and aggregation of digital information resources developed by museums, libraries, and similar institutions.

Lots of good stuff over at First Monday.

2002-05-13T21:02:00.000-04:00

Semantic Web Metadata for e-Learning - Some Architectural Guidelines

Meta-data is the fundamental building block of the Semantic Web. However, the meta-data concept is too loosely defined to provide architectural guidelines for its use. This paper analyzes important uses of meta-data in the e-learning domain, from a pedagogical and philosophical point of view, and abstracts from them a set of fundamental architectural requirements for Semantic Web meta-data.

2002-05-13T21:01:00.000-04:00

Residents of Alaska community love their tiny, packed library

Residents of this sportfishing mecca of 400 at the headwaters of the Kenai River prize their library like a gem, as precious as a sunny day at a secluded fishing hole.

2002-05-10T20:06:00.000-04:00

Alexandria Repository

Alexandria is Canada's first national repository for educational objects. It is the actualization of a vision to make digital educational materials readily available to students, researchers and educators across the country and beyond.

Clever project, nonclever name.

2002-05-09T12:51:00.000-04:00

Walt noted recently that certain library blogs are "becoming less and less frequent or fading away altogether" of which this here page is a bright shining example. Due mostly to two reasons. I've been busy trying to finish up final exams/projects so that I can graduate in a week or so and I've been trying to find a job (hire me!) so that I have a place to hang my hat after graduation.

But the bigger reason is the proliferation of the fab new blogs on the block coupled with exisiting blogs that continue to improve by leaps and bounds. By the time I get done reading them all (and I do read them all), I either don't have any time to post anything of my own, or someone else has already posted the things that I would have posted.

This is all to say that I haven't forgotten this here page, I've just been taking a little break.

2002-04-24T09:30:00.000-04:00

Rotten Links Hamper Learning

It's downright annoying to come across a broken link on the Web. And for a professor teaching a distance education course - or referring "traditional" students to an Internet resource - it can be a major problem.
Two researchers at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln tracked so-called link rot after they discovered that hyperlinks disappeared before they finished developing distance education courses.

Of course we all thought PURL's would solve all this right? Not so much. Anyone ever use CORC? Best practices dictate we should be using PURL's to catalog items, but anyone who has ever used CORC knows that they're few and far between. Why? Well I reckon it's because people are lazy. And if the so-called experts in these matters aren't using this (relatively) simple solution to what is and will continue to be a huge problem, how exactly can we expect Professor Smith to use it?

2002-04-18T18:15:00.000-04:00

Love and passion in the Reading Room

It has spawned more revolutions, incited more passion and created more art than just about any other place in the modern world. And it is a library. No, it is the library. For the past 150 years, the way to access that library was through the Reading Room at the British Museum.

2002-04-17T11:25:00.000-04:00

Who's Responsible For High Book Prices?

Why are book prices so high? Not just new hardcovers, which are mostly hovering -- for another five minutes or so -- just below $30. But have you noticed that even paperbacks, the thing that revolutionized the book business once-upon-a-time by virtue of being affordable, are now just as over-priced as everything else?

2002-04-17T11:20:00.000-04:00

AltaVista Tests "Paraphrase" Tool

AltaVista's new query refinement tool offers suggestions for improving your search terms. Also, the search engine is adding new content on a more frequent basis.

2002-04-17T11:17:00.000-04:00

Railway to sue Google over sabotage links

Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway operator, will today (Wednesday) file a legal suit against Google because the search engine provides links to a Web site that offers instructions on how to sabotage railway systems. Lawsuits against Yahoo! and AltaVista also are being prepared.

2002-04-16T11:08:00.000-04:00

Ship's Librarian : SUNY Maritime College,

The New York Maritime College of the State University of New York is seeking a qualified individual to be the librarian aboard the T. S Empire State VI during the 2002 Summer Sea Term. The Ship's Librarian is the sole professional information specialist serving aboard the training ship. He/she works on a full-time basis during the annual nine-week training cruise of the college. The Empire State VI departs from Fort Schuyler (Bronx, NY) on May 18, 2002 and returns to Fort Schuyler on July 18, 2002. The Ship's Librarian must report to the campus by May 15, 2002. The 2002 Summer Cruise includes the following ports: New Orleans (Louisiana); Dublin (Ireland); Bergen (Norway) and Freeport (Bahamas).

2002-04-11T17:54:00.000-04:00

U. of Michigan Cancels a Closely Watched Portal Project

The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor announced on Monday that it would close down its bellwether portal, my.umich.edu, on June 30, a little more than a year after offering the personalized Web space to its students. Campus officials say the university can no longer sustain such a complex and expensive software-development project on its own.

I reckon an open source solution would've helped a bit. I wonder what effect, if any, this will have on the myLibrary vs. myUniversity debate?

2002-04-10T10:01:00.000-04:00

Web standards not an oxymoron

It's time to say goodbye to the days of the wild west of Web development and say hello to building sites based on standards and valid code.

2002-04-10T09:44:00.000-04:00

Trial version of ebrary available from March 1

ebrary offers an affordable solution for desktop delivery of valuable books and other documents from 100 leading publishers. The unique new service enables you to offer an unlimited number of patrons simultaneous access to authoritative titles in key subject areas? the majority of which were published within the past two years. Best of all, ebrary integrates with existing catalogue systems (OPAC) and other digital resources. ebrary is continuously growing its online collection in key subject areas, and will provide regular content updates at no additional cost.

2002-04-10T09:43:00.000-04:00

Dialog Introduces NewsRoom

In the Olympian struggle among purveyors of online news sources, there are two measurements that people use to score performance: the number of sources included in a database and the completeness of the file. Dialog Corp. has just upped the ante in the number-of-sources competition by announcing it will put 6,500 news and business titles into one database that will be titled NewsRoom. The database, which was scheduled to launch March 1, will be exactly the same on Dialog, DataStar, and Profound.

2002-04-09T22:50:00.000-04:00

Virginia Tech Police Seize and Search a Professor's Computer in Vandalism Case

Some faculty members at Virginia Tech say they're worried about their privacy and their intellectual-property rights following an incident last week in which campus police officers seized a professor's computer to search it for an e-mail message about a vandalism incident.

2002-04-09T13:26:00.000-04:00

Mix equal parts of open source idealism, digital photography, php and mysql and you get The Open Photo Project. I think I still like istockphoto better, but hey, the more the merrier right?

2002-04-02T21:10:00.000-05:00

All apologies for the lack of posts lately. I'm deeply entrenched in the process of a.) getting a job and b.) preparing for my comprehensive exams on Saturday. I hope to get back in to the swing of things soon enough. (Besides with all the great new(ish) weblogs coming along these days, there are plenty of other places to get your fix.)

2002-04-01T15:18:00.000-05:00

Public libraries to test digital service

An experiment in digital publishing will take a step forward this week, with six regional library systems scheduled to begin testing online research services from start-up Ebrary.

2002-03-28T22:22:00.000-05:00

Sno-Isle to offer 24-hour Internet aid

For example, if you connect with a librarian at 3 a.m., you may be chatting online with someone in Los Angeles. But at 4 p.m., your connection may be with a Sno-Isle librarian.

2002-03-27T20:10:00.000-05:00

That's a lot of ~~Birtiney~~ ~~Britannie~~ ~~Brtney~~ ~~Brittnyey~~ Britney

The data below shows some of the misspellings detected by our spelling correction system for the query [ britney spears ], and the count of how many different users spelled her name that way. Each of these variations was entered by at least two different unique users within a three month period, and was corrected to [ britney spears ] by our spelling correction system (data for the correctly spelled query is shown for comparison).

2002-03-27T12:53:00.000-05:00

One of the best Error 404: File not found experiences I've ever had.

2002-03-27T10:03:00.000-05:00

Experts urge race against time to unearth last secrets of Herculaneum’s lost library

Behind them could lie a lost treasure trove of Roman scrolls, scholars say, part of the celebrated lost library of the Villa of the Papyri. However, a unique chance to recover great classical masterpieces, lost to humanity for 2,000 years, could fall victim to flooding or a new blast from the volcano Vesuvius, they warn. The leading names of ancient Greek and Roman studies in Britain and the United States are pleading for urgent action before it is too late.

2002-03-27T10:01:00.000-05:00

Talking Books delivers 'freedom'

Reaves said four years ago one of her eye doctors told her about the Texas State Library and Archive Commission's Talking Books Program. The program lends both books and magazines on tape to people with physical, visual and learning disabilities as a library would, but with one additional service.

2002-03-24T21:04:00.000-05:00

The folks over at kuro5hin.org are discussing ALA vs. CIPA. Join the fray.

2002-03-24T21:02:00.000-05:00

The folks over at kuro5hin.org are discussing ALA vs. CIPA. Join the fray.

2002-03-23T22:10:00.000-05:00

Learn with BOOK (Link inspired by SIGIA-L)

2002-03-23T10:59:00.000-05:00

Advanced Google Search Operators (Link boosted from the brand spankin' new google weblog.

2002-03-21T17:08:00.000-05:00

Instructional Design Standards for Quality Online Courses

More than a year ago, MVU began developing rigorous standards to guide the design and evaluation of online course quality. Based on decades of research and the work of the best minds in the field of Instructional Design, we have recently completed a comprehensive set of standards that can now be used to design and evaluate online courses.

This is about as in depth as you could get I imagine. (link boosted from lucdesk

2002-03-19T13:17:00.000-05:00

Organize, collect, share your books with Singlefile

Singlefile is an easy-to-use web-based service that helps you organize the books you own, the books you are reading, the books you've read and the books you want to read.

2002-03-16T19:49:00.000-05:00

Are Search Engines Biased

After all, search engines are just computer programs, and the people who create these programs have opinions and biases of their own. Not only that, the fundamental concept of identifying the "best" results for a particular query inherently requires that some sources of information be given preferential treatment over other sources. We wouldn't be happy with search results without this filtering and culling.

2002-03-16T19:45:00.000-05:00

Science mags go high-tech

But effective Jan. 1 of this year, the university no longer receives the print versions of those journals. It has become the first research university in the country to rely instead entirely on an electronic format for storing Elsevier publications.

2002-03-16T19:44:00.000-05:00

Network of online librarians can provide answers, 24/7

If you're bogged down trying to find the answer to a question, now you don't need to look any further than your own computer screen. With the introduction of Q and A New Jersey, a new Web site, people with pressing queries can have their answers in real time on the Internet.

2002-03-16T19:41:00.000-05:00

US pledges books to Afghanistan

The US has just given 20,000 books housed in the American cultural centre in Kabul to the city's newly-refurbished university library.

2002-03-14T12:22:00.000-05:00

Mark Anderson has moved his lending library to booklend.net. Go borrow a book.

2002-03-12T20:19:00.000-05:00

In my (seemingly) neverending quest for employment, I was checking out VTLS Inc.'s site. They have no jobs for me, but they had two links which are pretty interesting. In the upper right hand corner is a link that says "Can I still use the old site?" Clicking on this link brings you to the version of the site before the redesign. On the bottom of the page is a link which says "preview". Clicking on this link takes you to what I assume is the next gernation of the site. (Near as I can tell, the only diff is a fancy new logo.)

It's an interesting concept, allowing access to the past, present and future of a sites design. If only I could get my own future sorted . . .

2002-03-12T19:45:00.000-05:00

Boxes and Arrows is live. Into usability/info architecture/experience design/et cetera? It'll be worth your while. I promise.

2002-03-11T23:39:00.000-05:00

Requirements for a Web Ontology Language

This document specifies usage scenarios, goals and requirements for a web ontology language. An ontology formally defines a common set of terms that are used to describe and represent a domain. Ontologies can be used by automated tools to power advanced services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents and knowledge management.

Ran across this while validating some pages I've been working on.

2002-03-11T23:37:00.000-05:00

Web Sites That Heal

The first purpose of this article is to explain the true causes of linkrot. The second purpose is to outline a new way to solve the linkrot problem.

2002-03-11T14:20:00.000-05:00

Prospero v 2.0 is available for download.

Prospero 2.0 builds upon the success of it's previous version has grown to become a self-contained Internet Document Delivery (IDD) system. As an IDD client, Prospero 2.0 allows libraries to use the Internet toexchange
high quality ILL documents. As in all previous versions, Prospero 2.0 still allows direct to patron delivery.

2002-03-09T10:25:00.000-05:00

IPRC : the Independent Publishing Resource Center, Portland, Oregon, USA I bet you wish your town had one of these. Go ahead and start one.

2002-03-09T10:18:00.000-05:00

Final Chapter for a Cold War Relic

Researchers, Russophiles and spies made their way to Victor Kamkin Inc., which for decades collected and sold books detailing every aspect of life and history in the Soviet Union, all in their original Russian. A little more than 1 million bound volumes were in the last inventory, taken two years ago. Workers there estimate there could be nearly 2 million books and other published materials today. On Monday morning, Montgomery County sheriff's deputies are expected to receive the entire collection at the county incinerator.

2002-03-05T17:32:00.000-05:00

Isn't it about time for a new issue?

2002-03-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

Open Road

Open Road is a cyber-based radical lending library for the Portland, ME area. The website helps folks share their informational and knowledge resources with the Portland Community in order to help bring about radical social, political, and economic change. This is done now by listing our materials at a common location (this Web Site!) for the public to browse. Each lender chooses what to lend, and what the policies for borrowing are.

More from the DIY library front.

2002-03-04T12:02:00.000-05:00

Wireless Community Networks - Texas State Library

This guide offers a beginner's look at the process of using radio frequency wireless technology to connect the computer networks of two or more local public organizations?school districts, public libraries, municipal and county offices, and others. Such links provide a way to share access to high-speed Internet connections and other electronic resources.

2002-03-04T10:48:00.000-05:00

The Top Librarian Personalities On The Web The results are in.

2002-03-03T18:49:00.000-05:00

Impaired served by audio books unit

They're unabridged books on audio tape and they're delivered to your home, free, if you have a visual or physical impairment that prevents you from reading a regular book. The service is part of the Lee county library system and is administered through the national library service for the blind and physically handicapped, a division of the library of Congress.

2002-03-03T18:41:00.000-05:00

Digital Domesday Book lasts 15 years not 1000

It was meant to be a showcase for Britain's electronic prowess - a computer-based, multimedia version of the Domesday Book. But 16 years after it was created, the 2.5 million pound BBC Domesday Project has achieved an unexpected and unwelcome status: it is now unreadable.

Neoluddites rejoice!

2002-02-26T09:27:00.000-05:00

Long-Term Preservation of Digital Material

This thesis describes the creation of an archive for retaining digital artefacts. Substantial decisions and measures to prevent the perishing of the collections are discussed. These include the selection, acquisition, storage, long-term preservation, and usage of the objects, as well as considerations on economic and legal aspects. The Austrian On-Line Archive is presented in detail and compared with other international initiatives in this field.

2002-02-26T09:26:00.000-05:00

Content-Based Multimedia Information Handling: Should we Stick to Metadata?

Paul Lewis, David Dupplaw and Kirk Martinez discuss retrieval and navigation as ways of accessing multimedia information and the use of content as an aid to these activities. They ask whether content-based techniques are really making a useful contribution or whether we should restrict ourselves to the use of metadata.

2002-02-26T09:21:00.000-05:00

UNC gets $530,000 to create 3-D, digital rare book library

Paul Jones, ibiblio.org director and supervisor of the new project, said he believes the 3-D library will be the first of its kind on the Web. Previous attempts to convert library collections into digital form have often resulted in flat, two-dimensional images that leave out key elements, including paper texture and graphical information, he said. The 3-D digital library will enhance these components of rare books and historic documents, giving readers the sense that they are actually handling the books.

I don't think I'll ever quite understand the seemingly (to me anyway) blind pathos to recreate the analog out of the digital.

2002-02-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

Risks Prompt U.S. to Limit Access to Data

Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has gone to what academics, lawmakers and civil-liberties proponents describe as unprecedented lengths to control the dissemination of information in the name of national security, escalating the debate over how to balance protection with the public's right to know.

2002-02-14T16:36:00.000-05:00

Use Triple-I? NOBLE Swap Shop

These resources were developed for NOBLE member libraries and our shared Innovative Interfaces system. Field group tags, scopes, indexing, etc., are specific to our system. Other Innovative Interfaces libraries may freely copy, borrow, and adapt any of this material for use with their own system.

2002-02-13T17:05:00.000-05:00

What if Harry Potter 5 Was an E-Book? Interesting discussion over at Slashdot.

2002-02-13T13:15:00.000-05:00

Big Brother is watching you read

Increasingly, the government is demanding that bookstores reveal what books their customers have purchased. Bookstore owners and privacy advocates say that's scarier than a Stephen King novel.

2002-02-13T13:14:00.000-05:00

School in heart of tech country teaches without PCs

But Swallowtail students won't study how computers work, learn to use a keyboard or perform research on the Internet until they graduate from eighth grade and move on to high school. Still, about one-third of Swallowtail's 53 students come from families that earn their money designing computers or working closely with technology.

I've mentioned the works of Clifford Stoll before, but this article reminded me that they bear repeating.

2002-02-12T18:42:00.000-05:00

Eastern Europe is in the house y'all!

Drustvo bibliotekarjev Ljubljana As near as I can tell, this is some sort of Slovenian library portal/blog. Most of the translators out there did a terrible job, but I'm assuming they have nice things to say. Anyone care to translate?

2002-02-12T11:31:00.000-05:00

All Hail Creative Commons / Stanford professor and author Lawrence Lessig plans a legal insurrection

In a boon to the arts and the software industry, Creative Commons will make available flexible, customizable intellectual-property licenses that artists, writers, programmers and others can obtain free of charge to legally define what constitutes acceptable uses of their work. The new forms of licenses will provide an alternative to traditional copyrights by establishing a useful middle ground between full copyright control and the unprotected public domain.

2002-02-10T19:52:00.000-05:00

A new chapter for libraries / Preference for online research has its price

Academic libraries were once hushed, austere temples dedicated to study and research. No more.
Now students largely ignore the stacks of books, instead congregating with lattes and even Krispy Kremes while they work on group projects. The fortress- style reference desk is on its way out, with librarians joining students at the computer, teaching them the ins and outs of online research.

2002-02-10T19:48:00.000-05:00

Independent libraries are gaining momentum

HAVANA - The holes in her roof are patched with sheets of zinc. A Santeria altar is displayed under the television in one corner of her cramped living room. And in the other, Yolanda Triana Estupian, a former preschool teacher, busily gives her neighbor a manicure.
Improbable as it may seem, Triana Estupian's home is the setting for one of the fastest-growing sectors of Cuba's limited civil society: independent lending libraries. She has only about 250 books arranged on two wooden shelves, and most are decidedly apolitical, including beautifully illustrated children's stories, novels and poetry.

2002-02-09T16:59:00.000-05:00

University libraries to create one of the worlds largest online databases.

Called the Text Analysis Portal for Research, the libraries will combine their electronic databases, which include legal documents, stories in aboriginal languages, rare poetry, oral statements and Old English texts.

2002-02-07T17:25:00.000-05:00

BAILANDO Project: Flamenco

The rapidly expanding size and complexity of information collections necessitates new interfaces for exploring, searching, and understanding their contents. The Flamenco project investigates how to effectively incorporate large category hierarchies into information access user interfaces.

2002-02-07T17:11:00.000-05:00

web copy style guide

2002-02-07T16:58:00.000-05:00

Non-library related: Forwarding Address: OSX Having recently made the switch, I'm glad these folks are out there.

2002-02-07T16:53:00.000-05:00

artbomb.net
Reviews of graphic novels. If you're into that sort of thing.

2002-02-04T11:33:00.000-05:00

JoDI: Journal of Digital Information
The current issue focuses on metadata.

2002-02-04T09:04:00.000-05:00

Evaluation of open source software for libraries.

2002-02-01T19:42:00.000-05:00

OCLC's secret back door? Too cool.

2002-02-01T07:50:00.000-05:00

From Aristotle to the 'semantic web'

Most of the content of today's world wide web is designed for humans to read, not computers to manipulate. Alan Gilchrist explores the principles of classification and indexing that underlie the concept of the 'semantic web', which might one day lead to much more accurate and targeted automatic searching and retrieval than is possible at present.

2002-02-01T07:49:00.000-05:00

Archive CD Books Project

The Archive CD Books Project exists to make reproductions of old books, documents and maps available on CD to genealogists and historians, and to co-operate with libraries, museums and record offices in providing money to renovate old books in their collection.

2002-02-01T07:48:00.000-05:00

Search for tomorrow

A Rutgers team has created a competitor for Web search king Google. But can it take hold in the age of the Internet bust?

2002-01-30T15:42:00.000-05:00

Free Speech In Kingston, watch what you say

When it comes to presenting a variety of perspectives about global issues, especially the Middle East, some viewpoints are much more welcome than others. Consider the case of former state representative Rod Driver, whose February 20 talk at the Kingston Free Library was abruptly canceled (and then reinstated) because of his sympathy for the Palestinians.

This library is right next door to my house. I'm looking at it right now. Weird convergence of virtual and reality. (Link boosted from newpages)

2002-01-30T13:58:00.000-05:00

In continuing the open source flavor here today. . . . OSSNLibraries software projects and webliography

2002-01-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

Open Source and Libraries: An Interview with Dan Chudnov Good interview with smartypants Chudnov.

2002-01-28T12:28:00.000-05:00

Afghan books are lost treasures, librarian says

Seddiqui, former director of the Afghan public libraries, knows that with each successive regime over the past 20 years, more of Afghanistan's prized books, manuscripts and documents have been pillaged, burned or sold to foreigners.

2002-01-28T12:27:00.000-05:00

Library branches out with new location inside mall

2002-01-28T12:21:00.000-05:00

Office Of The Future > New Way To Work Though written with the workplace in mind, it isn't very hard to make the leap from office to library. As such, this article contains some interesting ideas that will certainly have implications for the library of tomorrow.

Among the heady ideas: sensors that detect when you get to the office and cue software to alert colleagues you're available to talk; microelectromechanical systems that render super-sharp images on displays the size of a wall, working in tandem with tablet computers that network to a shared-team display; and business software that learns the relationships among the words and phrases people use.

2002-01-28T12:14:00.000-05:00

Geekbait returns as Libronaut. Be sure to check out the library section.

2002-01-28T12:02:00.000-05:00

The Database Culture of The Postmodern From the new Marginal Librarian.

2002-01-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

jessamyn's up for a bloggie. Go vote, and do your country proud. (scroll down to the 'best topical weblog' section)

2002-01-21T19:06:00.000-05:00

If all goes according to plan, I'll be graduating a couple of months. As such, I've begun thinking about getting a job. Much as I'd like stay fully ensconsed in the ivory tower of Library School, I doubt my loan officer would approve. As such I've created a little resume/portfolio type thingy, and I ws hoping you all would do me a favor and check it out. Tell me what you think, if you find any typos, if it looks like crap in your browser, if you would add/subtract this or that to the resume, whatever. Please don't worry about hurting my feelings with your comments. I'd rather have my pals (yes I'm talking about you) have a laugh at my expense than someone responsible for hiring me. And to those of you who read this page who are responsible for hiring, what's it gonna take to get me in your library?

2002-01-21T10:44:00.000-05:00

State's digital library helps student research

A state-run database of information is catching on with students from first-graders to doctoral candidates.The iCONN digital library, which started operating in the spring, has logged over a half million hits, said Sharon Brettschneider, a development director for the Connecticut State Library.

2002-01-20T16:15:00.000-05:00

FBI Advises Security Review Of Web Content

The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center on Thursday advised providers of water, energy, transportation, finance and other critical infrastructures to evaluate the content of their Web sites from a security perspective.

2002-01-20T14:30:00.000-05:00

U-C IMC Library

Log of interesting sites for U-C IMC (Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center) media creators and other researchers and community members.

2002-01-19T19:13:00.000-05:00

Moving WebWord >Information Architecture for the Rest of Us The purpose of this article is to explain information architecture in a very simple and clear manner. If you have been confused about information architecture and what it is all about, this is exactly the article you should read. An analogy is used to get at the core concepts and several useful examples are provided.

2002-01-19T19:12:00.000-05:00

Nine Rules for Good Technology

Today's educational technology is like a Rube Goldberg contraption. Enter any technology-enabled classroom or other facility, and you will see a mish-mash of computers with associated wires, video displays, modems, ITV, CD-ROM libraries, tapes, and more. To use this technology effectively and avoid being distracted by the usual malfunctions and dense manuals, teachers must spend a lot of time in the classroom themselves.

2002-01-19T18:56:00.000-05:00

Are you down with open source? Involved in education? opensourceschools.org

2002-01-18T23:13:00.000-05:00

MoreSmarter Read it.

2002-01-18T23:09:00.000-05:00

Apparently this page is the best place to find totally free pictures of naked firemen. Anti-thesaurus, here I come.

2002-01-18T13:04:00.000-05:00

Library should be haven for all

They wear as much dirt as clothing, which is their right. They smell, which is their right. They have access to weapons, which is their right. On Tuesday, one of them stabbed another visitor in the children's room, which of course was not his right. Mindful that libraries are just about the only places in America that bring together homeless and housed, young and old, educated and not, City Librarian Rick Ashton on Wednesday reminded the public they're also usually safe. Nationally there are only one or two serious attacks in libraries each year, he said.