Librarians: Masters of the info universe CNN librarian Kerith Page McFadden works at her desk in Washington. It's National Library Week; past library workers include world leaders and a famous lover"Star Wars" creator George Lucas has his own research library on his Skywalker Ranch.The chief librarian of Basra, Iraq, removed 30,000 books from library before it was destroyedA librarian found one of Beethoven's final compositions at Palmer Theological (CNN) -- Librarians, information specialists, knowledge managers or whatever title a librarian might have -- their skills are in high demand. And so in their honor during National Library Week, we enjoy the following tidbits of information. Famous people who were librarians FBI Director J. Librarians are techno-savvy Librarians don't just use books anymore. At a time where anyone can Google just about anything, librarians don't just find information, they find the correct information -- and fast. Filmmaker's library Librarians influence our culture and society Librarians are heroic
The trouble with Google Books - Laura Miller Depending on who you ask, Google Books — the pioneering tech company’s ambitious plan to “digitally scan every book in the world” and make them searchable over the Web and in libraries — is either a marvelous, utopian scheme or an unprecedented copyright power-grab. The people who can claim to fully understand the Google Books Search Settlement — the resolution of a class-action suit filed against the company by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers — may be as few as those who comprehend the theory of special relativity. But everyone seems to agree that Google Book Search represents a revolutionary boon to scholars, especially people embarked on specialized research but without ready access to a university library. Nunberg, a linguist interested in how word usage changes over time, noticed “endemic” errors in Google Books, especially when it comes to publication dates. What is metadata? Metadata is data about a text or work. Yes. You’re absolutely right.
Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars - The Chronicle Review By Geoffrey Nunberg Whether the Google books settlement passes muster with the U.S. District Court and the Justice Department, Google's book search is clearly on track to becoming the world's largest digital library. No less important, it is also almost certain to be the last one. Google's five-year head start and its relationships with libraries and publishers give it an effective monopoly: No competitor will be able to come after it on the same scale. Nor is technology going to lower the cost of entry. That realization lends a particular urgency to the concerns that people have voiced about the settlement —about pricing, access, and privacy, among other things. Doing it right depends on what exactly "it" is. But we're sometimes interested in finding a book for reasons that have nothing to do with the information it contains, and for those purposes googling is not a very efficient way to search. Start with publication dates. How frequent are such errors?
How Can Libraries Use the Cloud? Tame The Web I’ve been using Apple’s .mac service for years, since 2001 as a matter of fact. The recent upgrade from .Mac to MobileMe has garnered a lot of press for the problems, breakdowns and failures of the service meant to “push” data to my iPhone, my Macs and to the service itself, described as a “cloud.” Luckily I haven’t had much issue with the upgrade/switchover. I will say, however, that I think for a couple of weeks in July some emails I sent took a long time to get where they were going as did some I received. Apple is trying – as are other companies – to tie into this idea of cloud computing. For more, don’t miss Robin Hastings’ presentation “Collaborating in the Cloud” at Slideshare So, we’ve reached a time when much of my data could be stored in other places and accessed from anywhere. (Thanks Will, your post reminded me I’ve had this in draft for awhile!) What do the next 5,000 days of the internet look like?
How Government Data Can Improve Lives - Economic View Take data that you and I have already paid a government agency to collect, and post it online in a way that computer programmers can easily use. Then wait a few months. Voilà! Not surprisingly, San Francisco, with its proximity to Silicon Valley, has been a pioneer in these efforts. Another example involves weather data produced by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Several other departments in the Obama administration are looking to expand the use of such techniques. Now the administration is pushing to use this concept as a tool for regulation, and as a method of avoiding more heavy-handed rule making. Two cases are under discussion right now. First, the Department of Transportation is considering a new rule requiring airlines to make all of their prices public and immediately available online. The airlines would retain the right to decide how and where to sell their products and services. Another initiative has been proposed by the .
Digital Age is Slow to Arrive in Rural America As the world embraces its digital age — two billion people now use the Internet regularly — the line delineating two Americas has become more broadly drawn. There are those who have reliable, fast access to the Internet, and those, like about half of the 27,867 people here in Clarke County, AL who do not. For many here, where the median household income is $27,388, the existing cellphone and Internet options are too expensive. The above is from an article in the the NY Times about the lack of connectivity in most of rural America. Length piece, but this portion about the library is of particular interest: Gina Wilson, director of the Thomasville Library, oversees 11 terminals with lightning-fast Internet access.
Bulletin December 2008/January 2009 Bulletin, December 2008/January 2009 Explaining Free and Open Source Software by Scot Colford Scot Colford is web services manager at the Boston Public Library. He can be reached by email at scolford<at>bpl.org Communicating the benefits and limitations of free and open source software to the less technically experienced can be (to say the least) challenging, so before attempting to do so, the smart professional will prepare himself or herself with three things: A thorough (but concise) description The ability to correct misconceptions A list of open source applications an organization can (and may already) benefit from. What It Is In the introductory technology course I teach for graduate LIS students at Simmons College, students usually grasp the concept of compiled software (vs. scripting) fairly easily, so I often approach the topic of open source as a metaphor. Imagine that it's your job to buy a cake for a co-worker's birthday. The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
State of the indy music industry looks rosy, so why all the doom-and-gloom about music? TuneCore's Jeff Price has a six-part series analyzing the financial state of the music industry from the point of view of an independent artist. Price offers compelling reasons to believe that although the labels are experiencing a severe downturn, artists as a group are earning more than ever, thanks to the Internet. I have a feeling that the record industry's rejoinder to this would be, yes, more artists are earning some money from their music, and all told, there's more money going to artists than ever before, but there are fewer opportunities for an artist to sign up to a label like ours that controls so much of the distribution channel that we can guarantee large sums of money for these lottery winners. In other words, the music industry today is much less winner-take-all, with the benefits diffused to a larger pool of artists at the expense of the few who did so well under the old system. The State of The Music Industry & the Delegitimization of Artists (via EFF Deep Links)
39;s Blog: The Half-Life of Digital Formats I've argued for some time that there are no longer any plausible scenarios by which a format will ever go obsolete if it has been in wide use since the advent of the Web in 1995. In that time no-one has shown me a convincing counter-example; a format in wide use since 1995 in which content is no longer practically accessible. I accept that many formats from before 1995 need software archeology, and that there are special cases such as games and other content protected by DRM which pose primarily legal rather than technical problems. Here are a few updates on the quest for a counter-example:The question arose during discussions at the Dutch National Library in September. The fact that we have not observed an instance of format obsolescence in the last 15 years allows us to make a rough estimate. We have seen no obsolescence in the past 15 years. Another way of looking at this is to realize that we can never be sure that whatever we do now to prepare for format obsolescence will work.
What I want LIS students to know Every fall, a new group of graduate students arrives in the classroom on their way to becoming librarians and information professionals.Each group is full of energy and ideas, and ready to take on the world. Each student believes in the power of information, even before they fully realize the power that information holds. Every person is willing to make sacrifices in order to reach his/her goal. While the wide-eyed "this is awesome" attitude remains during the semester, it often becomes tempered as students attend to the details of their classes and their lives as graduate students. With that as a backdrop, this is what I want LIS students to know (no matter where in the world you are)... You have selected a noble professional, no matter what name you use to describe it. Yes, what we call ourselves is in flux. Your coursework won't teach you everything you need to know. Every information professional you meet during your graduate program is a person who can connect you to a job.
A renaissance rooted in technology: the literary magazine returns When was the last time you looked out of the window when sitting on a bus? With the internet now in the palm of our hands, it's so much a part of our daily lives that it permeates our every spare second, taking up the time and energy that we once used to read books. If the novel is struggling in this new environment, what of literary magazines? Long extinct? The opposite: literary magazines are getting popular again. What's going on? "Some literary magazines have grown precious to the point where the humour and liveliness has long since evaporated," says Craig Taylor, editor of Five Dials, the literary magazine published by Hamish Hamilton. Damian Barr, who runs the Shoreditch House Literary Salon, recognises this too: "The conversation about reading and writing is open to more people than ever before, though rarefied heights – the LRB and TLS – remain." By contrast, Five Dials (mission statement: "Be inclusive. Could we be in a place now where technology has brought us full circle?
Steve Jobs and "the bicycle for the mind" I enjoyed this extensive interview with John Sculley about his time at Apple (he was CEO from 83-93) because of 1) his insight into Steve Jobs' way of thinking, 2) his willingness to talk about his mistakes, and 3) his insights about business in general...he gives Jobs a lot of credit but Sculley is clearly no slouch. Some high points: [Jobs] felt that the computer was going to change the world and it was going to become what he called "the bicycle for the mind." On the small size of teams actually building products: Normally you will only see a handful of software engineers who are building an operating system. People think that it must be hundreds and hundreds working on an operating system. Sculley was president of Pepsi before coming to Apple: On why he should not have been hired as Apple's CEO: The reason why I said it was a mistake to have hired me as CEO was Steve always wanted to be CEO. After Jobs left, Sculley tried to run the company as Jobs would have:
10 Online Slang Dictionaries To Learn Jargon & Street Language That’s the story with a lot of street-speak and jargon. Slang words don’t mind that they are not a part of Webster’s or Roget’s. It is just a matter of time before they get hauled up from the streets and into the pages of a regular dictionary. There are some we know and say each day. In the last case at least, let these ten slang dictionary websites help you to look up slangs and jargons that are the order of the day. Urban Dictionary “˜Defenestrate’ is a word Microsoft won’t include in its dictionary. Wiktionary Wiktionary, just like its mother publication Wikipedia, is a completely user contributed and user editable online dictionary. Check out the in-depth look Steven took when pitched the The Wikipedia Dictionary (Wiktionary) vs. Double-Tongued Dictionary The journey from jargon to a recognized word may be a long one. Unsuck It I thought that “˜rainmaker’ referred to the Red Indian who could appease the rain gods. Word Spy If iPod oblivion doesn’t get you, qwerty tummy will. Twittonary