Ramblings, citations and "brainwaves" of a college librarian in Toronto. 475 square feet refers to the size of my home, not the size of my office or library.



Yahoo Online Lyric Library


Yahoo has added the lyrics to 400 000 songs (9000 artists from 100 music publishers), to its music library. It is claimed to be the web's largest legally licensed database of lyrics. Its a good start but will need to be much bigger if it is going to compete with rogue sites.


Banning a Type


Seems folks want to ban Comic Sans type. Who knew type could be so offensive?


Podiobooks; Podcast Audio Books


Like audio books? Like podcasts. Here is a mashup of the two.



We knew it was bad...PEW told us how bad it is!


Steven Levy Book: Perfect Thing


The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness. Great read.

Quotes for self.
"Digital technology gathers, shreds and empowers all at once. Mix, mash, rip, burn, plunder and discover..." pg 4.

"When anyone can get hold of previously unattainable b-sides of 1950's singles, live cuts from long out of print concert complications, and whispered about but seldom heard gems from top artists moonlighting under pseudonyms, it's an Everest-level challenge to construct a collectioon that blows someone else's mind" pg 25. On playlist battles on dates, trains, classrooms.

Podcasting in higher education is about time shifting lectures, TiVo'g their courses pg. 245


OPAC Via Mobile Phone


Ball State University has their OPAC ported to Cell phone. Check it out. I like the idea of simplicity in presentation/searching vs the new front ends (PRIMO, ENDECA) being conceived for library systems.



Students and staff at the University of Wales, Swansea, are borrowing half as many books as they did five years ago, a study there shows.

My library is off about 10% but that is only because enrollment is up maybe 20%.


dwarfURL


dwarfURL

It takes the short URL idea and adds a nifty additional feature: it tracks click stats! You add a password to your URL to get this working.


LibraryThing for Libraries!


From the LibraryinBlack:

"LibraryThing for Libraries is composed of a series of widgets, designed to enhance library catalogs with LibraryThing data and functionality. The achievement is that the widgets require NO back-end integration. Just add a single Javascript tag, and one tag for every widget you want to display and we do the rest."


Video IM Reference Service


Ohio University is experimenting with Video Virtual Reference. See this ppt from Char Booth. I'm floored.


http://www.myxertones.com


Want to dj your own ringtones? Heres a way.


http://twitter.com


This tool mashes up instant messaging, RSS, and texting. So far this is THE hyped tech of 2007. I'm watching to se what libraries do with it. There's talk of pushing library account alerts to phones via texting.



"CBS News fires producer for plagiarism: "We were horrified," CBS News spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said. "It was almost verbatim." A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal.
An editor for The Wall Street Journal called CBS News to point out the similarities of the April 4 notebook item to Zaslow's article, headlined "Of the Places You'll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?" The pieces talk about how libraries are seen differently by children from their parents."

LIS News


Indexes to Archives Via Mashup


Darlene Fichter keyed me into this neat mashup used to provide a finding aid for an archive of aerial photos. I love it!



Center for Digital Education and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC)found:

Large colleges - 7,500 students or more:

1st: Florida Community College, Jacksonville, Fla.
2nd: Community College of Rhode Island, Warwick, R.I.
3rd: St. Petersburg College, St. Petersburg, Fla.
4th: Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kan. (tie)
4th: Montgomery County Community College, Blue Bell, Pa. (tie)
5th: Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, Va.
6th: Miami Dade College, Miami, Fla.
7th: Sinclair Community College, Dayton, Ohio
8th: Macomb Community College, Warren, Mich.
9th: Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, Md.
10th: Delta College, University Center, Mich.


Mid-sized colleges - between 3,000 and 7,500 students:

1st: Indian River Community College, Fort Pierce, Fla. (tie)
1st: Laramie County Community College, Cheyenne, Wyo. (tie)
2nd: Darton College, Albany, Ga.
3rd: York Technical College, Rock Hill, S.C.
4th: Aims Community College, Greeley, Colo.
5th: Harford Community College, Bel Air, Md.
6th: Catawba Valley Community College, Hickory, N.C. (tie)
6th: San Juan College, Farmington, N.M. (tie)
7th: Walters State Community College, Morristown, Tenn.
8th: Carl Sandburg College, Galesburg, Ill.
9th: Cedar Valley College, Lancaster, Texas
10th: Howard Community College, Columbia, Md. (tie)
10th: Lake Land College, Mattoon, Ill. (tie)


Small colleges - less than 3,000 students:

1st: Patrick Henry Community College, Martinsville, Va. (tie)
1st: Tompkins Cortland Community College, Dryden, N.Y. (tie)
2nd: Central Wyoming College, Riverton, Wyo.
3rd: New River Community College, Dublin, Va.
4th: Western Nebraska Community College, Scottsbluff, Neb.
5th: Blue Ridge Community College, Weyers Cave, Va. (tie)
5th: Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Worthington, Minn. (tie)
6th: Delgado Community College-West Bank Campus, New Orleans, La.
7th: Mount Wachusett Community College, Gardner, Mass.
8th: Central Lakes College, Brainerd, Minn.
9th: Kirtland Community College, Roscommon, Mich.
9th: Panola College, Carthage, Texas
10th: Mid-Plains Community College, North Platte, Neb.

I'll be keeping an eye on them...


Best Google Maps Mashups


News Map
Select any country in the world and up pops a live feed of relevant articles from Yahoo News.

PediaX
It's a cartographic flyover of Wikipedia — as you mouse across Earth, the map fills with markers for any place or landmark that has a Wikipedia entry. Click 'em to bring up a brief description.

Flood Maps
Wondering whether you'll own beachfront property once the last ice sheet melts? This site uses NASA topographical data to show how coastlines will look with each meter of sea level rise.


Fast Food Maps
Pick any big city and let your mind reel at the concentration of franchised french fries. Then chart a course to the nearest In-N-Out burger.

Safe2Pee
When nature calls a transgendered one, this site answers with the location of gender-neutral restrooms in selected US and Canadian cities.

Gmaps Pedometer
OK, anyone who tracks their distance to four decimal places needs to chill out. But it's pretty cool to find out how much ground you cover in your daily run.

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The ACRL Research Committee developed the top ten assumptions after surveying member leaders and conducting a literature review. A panel representing community and liberal arts colleges, research university libraries, as well as an observer of the higher education environment reacted and commented upon the assumptions at the ACRL National Conference.

1. There will be an increased emphasis on digitizing collections, preserving digital archives, and improving methods of data storage and retrieval. [I disagree. The novelty will wear off. The good stuff people want is all under copyright protection.]

2. The skill set for librarians will continue to evolve in response to the needs and expectations of the changing populations (student and faculty) that they serve. [What does this mean? We need more IT skill sets, and we've been saying that for 10 years now. I don't see "old guard" staff upgrading their IT skills.]

3. Students and faculty will increasingly demand faster and greater access to services. [they want what we can't deliver. Every movie, song, image, text, available for download. Movies and muisc remain off limits.]

4. Debates about intellectual property will become increasingly common in higher education. [in Canada, it is a barrier to teaching]

5. The demand for technology related services will grow and require additional funding. [technology needs staffing too, where's the money going to come from when education is already unaffordable for so many?]

6. Higher education will increasingly view the institution as a business.
[okay, lets start charging students and faculty for article downloads. 5$ a pop seems reasonable. Vendors are you listening? Credit card scholarship here we come!][retention is more important than graduating quality work]

7. Students will increasingly view themselves as customers and consumers, expecting high quality facilities and services. [this is already a problem with this entitled mindset generation. Just because you pay does not mean you get good grades or pass.]

8. Distance learning will be an increasingly common option in higher education and will co-exist but not threaten the traditional bricks-and-mortar model.[ and it will be taught by temps and students will not have access to brick and mortar libraries]

9. Free, public access to information stemming from publicly funded research will continue to grow. [until the government realizes they can charge for access]

10. Privacy will continue to be an important issue in librarianship.



The students claim that Tutor.com is infringing their copyright and benefitting financially from their work. Read more in the Washington Post.



Alot of non-fiction books are fattened up to be economically viable. People often buy a book for only one or two chapters of interest. eBooks have the ability to make the 50 page book economically viable, possibly changing what gets published. we're already seeing this from trade and professional associations. $30 50-100 page PDF eBooks.

Just as music listeners have moved away from albums to buy single songs, non-fiction book buyers will move away to buying chapters, and in time changing publishing to something that resembles "monographic articles".

What libraries will do with these I'm not sure. Right now they will not let us host them, due to an absence of TPM/DRM, so we print, bind and catalogue. Sad but true.


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