YouTube’s Great New Feature…06.12.09

Helpful information about YouTube changes from Mashable!’s YouTube Just Became the TwitPic of Video ”YouTube has just added a small feature with big implications: the ability to link your Twitter(), Facebook(), and Google Reader() accounts to YouTube and automatically send out an update as soon as you upload a new video.

This means a whole lot more YouTube notifications in the streams of your favorite social sites. Similar to how TwitPic() has become the de facto tool for sharing pictures on Twitter, YouTube() has just positioned itself as the way to share video inside of status updates.

Granted, sharing YouTube videos is already immensely popular on these services, and not especially difficult, but now it can be done all in one-click, on a page that millions of people already visit every day to upload videos to the Web…”

Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook…06.12.09

Bing Search Tips…06.11.09

Here are some useful tips on using Bing from Stephen E. Arnold at Beyond Search:

“…Tip 1: to see what’s hot in feeds. Enter this string in front of your query: “feed:”. The resulting query looks like this: “feed:Cleveland +”business information”.

Tip 2: this is a direct match for the “other guy’s” syntax. To locate only Adobe PDF documents you use this string in front of your query: “filetype:” The resulting query looks like this: “filetype:ppt +sharepoint”.

Tip 3: this is another direct match for the “other guy’s” syntax. To locate only documents within a particular Web site you use this string in front of your query: “site:” The resulting query looks like this: “site:search +arnoldit.com

Tip 4: this tip is essential if you are looking for hits from a little known or unpopular site like the National Railway Retirement Board. To determine if a Web site is in the Bing index, enter this string in front of your query: “url:”. The resulting query looks like this: “url:marad.gov”

Tip 5: this tip is popular with the goslings who enjoy online music. To locate hits on sites that have links to specific filetypes, precede the query with the string “contains:” The resulting query looks like this: “contains:mp3”

Tip 6: Boolean operators are available. Use “+” for AND and  “-“ for NOT.

Remember to put bound phrases such as ‘White House’ in quotes to minimize false drops.

We think the system has some useful features. You can get other tips for running bings on the new Microsoft system at these locations:

• Help for the system is in tiny gray type at the foot of the Bing splash page. You can go directly to the online information pages by clicking here.
• MalekTips has some useful tips here.
• Digital Inspiration has some interesting tips here. I quite liked tip 1 so the full Bing is available to users where access may be limited in some way…

Top 4 Websites to Create Free Websites Instantly…06.10.09

Here is an excerpt from a useful post from MakeUseOf.com – Top 4 Websites to Create Free Websites Instantly

“There are times when you need a simple, well-designed web page, but you don’t want to put the effort into creating the necessary code and formatting…

They are especially useful for Internet marketing, but also for the following uses:

• Simple one-page promotional sites for a product or service
• A simple Internet page for your online resume
• A one page article on a current controversial topic, allowing visitors to respond with their own opinions
• A one page tribute to a lost loved one
• A perfect solution for someone with zero web design skillsIf you do choose to use the following free services, keep in mind that there’s one major downside. The ease with which they provide sites also leads to an entire plethora of absolutely ugly, horrendous, MySpace-like web pages that should never, ever be published on the Internet. Now, with that said, if you know what you’re doing – you can create some pretty cool websites with the following tools…

BlinkWeb is one of those rare sites that offers something for free without any gimmicks or loopholes. The website that you end up with doesn’t have any major drawback other than the fact that your site is a subdomain of BlinkWeb…

Squidoo is one of the most popular web page creation services that’s taking ‘instant websites’ to a whole new level. Squidoo is sort of the ‘Associated Content’ of website design, in that each site you build is a lot like an article, and it’s also a part of the larger Squidoo social network. Squidoo calls each page a ‘lens,’ and each lens essentially consists of various elements that you’ve chosen to put together into a single page…

Like Squidoo, WetPaint is a very cool community that seeks to provide wiki-like websites where the entire community can edit your page, but no one needs to know any programming language. Once you create your page, if you configure it so that the public can edit it, the page is immediately live even while you’re editing. There are some cool features like the ability to upload photos or add video – but the real power behind this free service is that you can essentially create a collaborative community page where everyone can provide input…

In my own humble opinion, Weebly is the best service to create free websites instantly. Why? Well, Weebly isn’t just free, it’s ad free and it offers more tools and features than the other sites. The interface on Weebly also offers drag-and-drop, but there are more items to choose from such as the basic toos like text and images, multimedia content like a photo gallery or embedded YouTube player, a variety of revenue generating widgets and useful miscellaneous features such as forms, a feed reader and even a simple forum…”

Librarians – Hone or Learn Presentation & Speaking Skill Tomorrow…06.11.09

You can attend this program from the Princeton Public Library VIRTUALLY tomorrow (June 12):

What is it about:

“Pres4Lib2009 Camp IS

• a presentation camp for library speakers and trainers
• a series of informal gatherings and lightning talks to share ideas, technologies, and discussions around how to deliver effective presentations
• an opportunity for presenters and trainers (and those interested in presenting and training) in the library community to network and share their tips, technologies, best practices, and experiences
• an unconference which will include open space “birds of a feather” breakout discussions groups to foster discussions around how to deliver effective presentations
• a chance to become a better presenter/trainer
• a way to develop your presenting/training toolbox..

How You Can Attend Virtually?:

“YES, I can’t be there, but I want to CONTRIBUTE

• We are accepting screencasts, powerpoints, blog posts, live webcasts for Pres4Lib (two per lightning talk session). Let us know if you would like to be a LIVE virtual presenter.
• Looking for one or two good people willing to liveblog for the group sessions. Contact Janie if you are attending or willing to liveblog.
• Make suggestions to us about what you’d like to see (or hear, or taste) at Pres4Lib2009 (and 2010)
• Twitter:Be sure to tag tweets with #pres4lib when talking about anticipation or participation about pres4lib

  • Tweet early and often about Pres4Lib

  • Make mention of Pres4Lib in your presentations, social circles, social networks, and coffee klatches.

YES, I can’t be there, but I want to FOLLOW ALONG

• We will be livestreaming the lightning talks and battle deck demo! Stay tuned for details.
• Twitter: Be sure to follow and tag tweets about Pres4Lib with #pres4lib
• Facebook: Join the FaceBook group for Pres4Lib
• Live Video
  • Ustream (with chat capability and twitter stream) http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pres4lib09“

Library Classification – The Free Decimal Correspondence…06.10.09

In case you are like me and haven’t heard about it, here is information about the relatively new Free Decimal Correspondence classification from the Everybody’s Libraries blog from John Mark Okerboom, “digital library architect and planner at the University of Pennsylvania”:

“…The Free Decimal Correspondence, or FDC for short, is a set of decimal numbers ranging from 000 to 999[.9999...], each associated with a particular subject, discipline, or group of subjects and disciplines.  It’s intended to be  reasonably compatible with existing and commonly used library decimal classifications and subject headings, but also as freely usable and adaptable as possible.

You can view or download it from this page…

Among other things, the FDC is considerably briefer than the DDC, with less detail and almost no editorial apparatus. It doesn’t include many of the subjects that DDC does.  It associates different terminology in many cases with the numbers than the DDC, and is not guaranteed to be compatible with present-day DDC.  (In particular, we have not consulted the DDC itself when preparing the FDC, except to identify unassigned numbers to skip over in the FDC.) We have made some attempt to be compatible with DDC, however…

I released the first version (0.01) on Public Domain Day, January 1, 2009, and have made some other releases since, the latest (0.05) on on May 16, 2009. As noted above, this version gives complete coverage down to the unit level.  There’s still some room for augmentation, though; for example, to include specific subjects that might be common in present-day libraries and institutional repositories but that aren’t defined at the unit level.

I don’t plan to provide long-term maintenance or support for FDC, however.  But since it’s public domain, anyone else is welcome to further revise, adapt, and support it…”

7 Inexpensive Library Workshops Online this Summer…06.10.09

This is from the Library Professional Development blog featurine the following inexpensive, online, library workshops:

“…1. Jobs and Employment Reference on the Web: Core Tools for Librarians
Syllabus: http://www.kovacs.com/jobscoretools.html – Register:http://www.kovacs.com/register.html
$50 – 5 hours

2. Beyond Boolean: Effective Web Reference Strategies
Syllabus: http://www.kovacs.com/bb.html – Register: http://www.kovacs.com/register.html
Free but requires registration.

3. Powerful Web Reference Strategies
Syllabus: http://www.kovacs.com/powerfulreference.html – Register:http://www.kovacs.com/register.html
$50  – 5 hours

4. Basic Legal Reference on the Web: Core Tools for Librarians
Syllabus: http://www.kovacs.com/legcoretools.html – Register: http://www.kovacs.com/register.html
$50  – 5 hours

5. Basic Business Reference on the Web: Core Tools For Librarians
Syllabus: http://www.kovacs.com/buscoretools.html – Register:http://www.kovacs.com/register.html
$50 – 5 CE from the MLA

6. Basic Medical Reference on the Web: Core Tools for Librarians
Syllabus: http://www.kovacs.com/medcoretools.html – Register:http://www.kovacs.com/register.html
$50 – 5 CE from the MLA

7. Evaluating Medical Information on the Web
Syllabus: http://www.kovacs.com/mlaceeval.html – Register: http://www.kovacs.com/register.html
$50 – 5 CE from the MLA…”

OCLC’s Cloud Computing for Libraries – Ramifications…06.10.09

OCLC seems to jump from one pan on the fire to the next this year. Let me point out below the Library 2.0 gang post Library System Suppliers View of OCLC Web-Scale about their most recent interesting podcast about another recent and potentially controversial announcement. It is worth a listen when you find the time.

“In last month’s show there was some speculation as to what reaction there would be from the organisations that supply ‘traditional’ library systems to the OCLC announcement of their web-scale, cloud computing, library system initiative.

In an attempt to answer that speculation I took the unusual step of bringing together a specific set of Library 2.0 Gang members from that community as against our usual open house of whoever is available.  The result was an interesting conversation between Ex Libris’ Carl Grant, Nicole Engard from LibLime, Talis’ Rob Styles and newcomer from Axiell, Boris Zetterlund…”

Library 2.0 Gang 06/09: Library System Suppliers view of OCLC Web-scale [00:50:35m]: Download

Social Libraries and the Growing Need for Social Librarians…06.10.09

There is a good INMAGIC post - When Libraries Go Social, Role of Librarians Becomes More Important Than Ever – that articulates the current and expanding roles of librarians as our professional and technological world continues to evolve which is excerpted here:

“When we talk about the trend towards social libraries, one of the next major questions on librarians’ minds is, What’s going to happen to me? How is my role affected? The answer has a bright outlook, because with social libraries comes the need for social librarians.

It’s a role that calls upon core skills of content management, organization, and tech savvy, and asks librarians to take them to a new level, making the role more important than ever. We’ll explore it more below in our latest Social Libraries 101 course.

In a social library, librarians continue to manage diverse information provided by content publishers, including business, scientific, technical, and community information (traditional, vetted content). But patrons are allowed to add tags, comments, and ratings (social content), which increases content quality, as we discussed last week.

A librarian is needed to oversee content development, maintain structure, and manage this content community. The social librarian assumes the crucial role of information organizer and moderator, managing both vetted and social information. Social librarians monitor and modify taxonomies as patrons browse and categorize information on their own. They sit at the center of the knowledge repository, and manage the knowledge community and its assets, such as by ‘weeding and feeding.’…

New Google Language Translation Tools Including Crowdsourcing…06.10.09

TechCrucnch post Google Translation Tool Kit: Translation Meets Crowdsourching highlights an interesting and potentially useful new Google release:

“Only a handful of blogs picked up on Google’s fresh Translator Toolkit, which the company launched yesterday by means of a blog post, but this new service really deserves a second look, if only because Wikimedia apparently sees the tool as something that could “change the way Wikipedia grows in other languages”.

You can read an extensive review of the product over at Google Blogoscoped, but here’s the gist:

Google Translator Kit enables anyone to upload documents for a variety of formats (HTML, Microsoft Word, Rich Text, OpenDocument Text and Plain Text), enter the URL for a file on the web or input a direct link to a Wikipedia article or Knol entry. After submission, the text that requires translation is automatically translated in the back-end and subsequently featured in a so-called ‘Workbench’, neatly placing the resulting text in the target language next to the original…

Google will search their translation memory for previous, human translations of the uploaded segment and show the translations in the Search Results tab. Color-coded segments will depict ‘exact’ matches and ‘partial’ matches, so you can edit the text based on the memory as well as previous, human translations. In addition, you can use the computer-generated translation in the Computer Translation tab to jump-start the translation of your current segment…

Besides the self-learning ability of the toolkit, the service also makes it incredibly easy for people to collaborate on translations, bringing a human, crowd-sourced touch to the automated process of Google’s Translate service.”

Virtual Earth Becomes Bing Maps…06.10.09

Goodbye Virtual Earth, Hello Bing Maps from the Programmable Web blog shares Microsofts changes in its recent transition from Virtual Earth to Bing:

“It’s been a short time since Microsoft announced the release of Bing, their next generation search platform (with its own Bing API). Along with the name change, several of Microsoft’s product offerings have also rebranded, including two core mapping products: Live Search Maps and Virtual Earth. This means that Virtual Earth API will be no more — it is now officially called the Bing Maps API (we’ve added a new Bing Maps API profile)…

…we can expect to see Bing Maps proliferate across Bing (and Microsoft) properties over time. There is a video on the Bing Maps Blog that includes an interview with Erik Jorgensen, Corporate VP of MSN, discussing some of the changes included in the rebranding.”

Kindle DX Comparison…06.10.09

Here is an interesting excerpt from a new Wired.com post titled Supersized Kindle DX Makes E-Reading Easy for a Supersized Price:

“Another Kindle? It seems that it was only four months ago that we saw a new version of Amazon’s e-reader. In fact, it was only four months ago the Kindle 2 arrived on February 9. What’s the June release have that the February one doesn’t?

Size seems to matter to the folks at Amazon. While the Kindle 2 has a 6-inch (measured diagonally) e-ink screen — roughly the area of a mass-market paperback book — the DX’s 9.7-inch screen resembles a page from a typical hardback. Put another way, the DX flaunts 2.5 times more display space. More text on a page means more lines and, if you prefer, a bigger font, without having to turn the page as often. What does that mean for you? It’s easier to read via the DX.

Best of all, the DX was engineered not to feel big. Virtually the same thickness as the Kindle 2, the 19-ounce heft won’t tax your wrists. Its keyboard is actually a little smaller than the Kindle 2′s, so almost all of the DX’s front surface is covered by the screen. This feels less gadgety, more tablety. It’s very comfortable to hold, and as with the Kindle 2, the DX becomes invisible once you become entranced by an author’s spell…

The most glaring hindrance of the DX is its price. It costs $490…

By elegantly supersizing the Kindle — and ramping up its ability to read files — Amazon has improved the best all-around e-reader available. But the hefty price tag doesn’t fit Jeff Bezo’s stated philosophy of getting the best value for his customers.”

Librarian – The Obsolete Man?…06.10.09

Many thanks to Library Attack for pointing out the great and in many ways powerful “The Obsolete Man“ episode of The Twilight Zone with Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver about a librarian “who is deemed ‘obsolete’ by a dystopian future.”

It’s extremely interesting to me that the aforementioned librarian also 1) believes in God and 2) has as his most valuable possession a Bible. [I often forget we  Americans, in 1961, including those in the theater and librarians, weren't  as "intelligent", "enlightened" and "politically correct" as they are today. ]

Regardless of your position, you can enjoy “The Obsolete Man” on several levels – even if it is from 1961.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Is a Twitpocalypse Near??…06.06.09

According to the Programmable Web blog:

“Within the next few days, some applications and mashups based on the Twitter API may behave unpredictably or even crash – at least that’s the warning given by Canadian software company WhereCloud’s Twitpocalypse website. This impending ‘Twitpocalypse,’much like the famous Y2K bug of 2000, is based on a data processing limitation.

Every tweet in Twitter’s system is uniquely identified by an integer value. For example, the system’s very first public tweet, ‘just setting up my twttr,’ by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, is tweet number 20 (presumably tweets 0 through 19 were used for testing). The maximum signed 32-bit integer value for most database applications is 2,147,483,648. This is a huge value, but the accelerating popularity of Twitter means has the amount of tweets is rapidly approaching this limit. If third party application developers haven’t designed their Twitter clients to store tweet IDs using something like the less restrictive unsigned 64-bit integer data structure, users might start seeing strange errors, such as tweets listed in the wrong order – or worse, applications not working at all...”

Wolfram Alpha UPDATED…06.09.09

Mashable! reported today Wolfram Alpha Releases Its First Major Update

“….the first major update to Wolfram Alpha is here, and the list of changes and improvements is quite long. Here it is in its entirety:

* Additional linguistic forms for many types of data and questions
* More comparisons of composite properties (e.g. ‘US military vs. UK’)
* Combined time series plots of different quantities (e.g. ‘germany gdp vs population’)
* More complete handling of government positions (e.g. ‘chancellor’, etc.)
* Updates to country borders for India, China, Slovenia, Croatia, and others
* Updates to naming for certain politically sensitive countries and regions
* Additional subcountry regions (e.g. ‘Wales’); many more to come
* Additional support for current and past fractional timezones (e.g. ‘Iran time’)
* City-by-city handling of U.S. states with multiple timezones
* Updates to certain European currencies (e.g. for ‘Cyprus’ and ‘Slovakia’)
* Some additional historical events; many more to come
* Additional probability computations for cards and coins (e.g. ’2 or 3 aces’)
* Additional output for partitions of integers (e.g. ‘partitions of 47′)
* Implicit handling of geometric figure properties (e.g. ‘ellipse with area 6 and major axis 2′)
* Additional support for Mathematica 3D graphics syntax
* Additional support for stock prices with explicit dates
* Support for planet-to-planet distances and ‘nearest planet’, etc.
* Extra information when comparing incompatible units (e.g. ‘ergs vs. newtons’)
* Improved linguistic handling for many foods (e.g. ‘love apple’)
* More mountains added, especially in Australia
* Support for many less-common given names (e.g. ‘zebulon’)
* More ‘self-aware’ questions answered (e.g. ‘how old are you’)
* More consistent handling of sidebar links to Wikipedia, etc…”

FREE August 13, 2009 Online Conference for ALL Librarians…06.09.09

NO FEES – NO DUES – NO TRAVEL

ALL Librarians Can Support & Participate

OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) is planning something special:

Thursday, August 13, 2009 beginning at noon Eastern Time, 11:00 a.m. Central, 10:00 a.m. Mountain, 9:00 a.m. Pacific, and 4:00 p.m. GMT:

OPALESCENCE: A Free Online Conference for All Librarians

Has your travel budget dried up? Still want that conference experience of fresh ideas, lively conversations, and networking with colleagues?

Participate in OPALESCENCE, a free online conference for all librarians and fellow travelers. We’re planning a series of interesting and informative presentations and discussions spread over a two-day period. Watch this space for more announcements.

Host: TAP Information Services

Schedule of Events: OPALESCENCE Conference Schedule (coming soon)

Australian University Library – Mobile Catalog…06.09.09

Bibliothekia‘s post today Library on Your iPhone – Go AirPac discusses Australia’s Deakin University Library going mobile:

“…On Monday last week I blogged in despair that there appeared to be no Australian Libraries putting their portals / catalogues onto a mobile (read iPhone) platform.I should have looked at Deakin University Libraryin Geelong Victoria. While the Deakin iPhone platform does not appear to be as snazzy (Snazzy is a highly technical term describing both technical functionality as well as end-user experience) as the mobile platform used by Orange County Library in Florida USA; good on Deakin for giving it a go. Orange County seems to have the edge over Deakin in that they have already linked in video content as well as a calendar into their Library’s mobile platform.

For those interested in the nuts and bolts of it all, Deakin is using the same Airpac platform as that used by Orange county. Airpac in case you don’t know is delivered by Innovative Interfaces. Deakin is promoting it’s mobile platform via its main library portal so check it out.

Deakin was one of the first Australian Universities to set up a presence on Facebook…”

Library and Information Professionals – Learn How to Teach Online FREE…06.09.09

The Web-based Information Science Education blog is offering a FREE online course “Introduction to Online Pedagogy” described as:

“… a free, on-demand training workshop designed for faculty and doctoral students in library and information science with little or no experience teaching online who wish to develop their skills in teaching online courses. Those who have more experience in online teaching are also welcome to participate.”

Here is an excerpt from the post On-Demand Website Has New Home New Content:

“…Learn how to teach online on your own time! WISE Pedagogy offers an open-access training experience for its Introduction to Online Pedagogy workshop. Learn effective teaching practices anytime, at your own pace, without the necessity of enrollment in a program or adhering to a semester schedule. Interact with other learners/instructors via linked forums for pedagogical discussion, course development exercises, and continuing your education in new developments for distance learning.

A Certificate of Completion is available to those who finish the workshop and participate in each exercise.

Introduction to Online Pedagogy is a free resource for LIS instructors, students, and professionals from beginners to seasoned instructors looking for new ideas in online instruction.

Click here to access the on-demand website: http://introductiononlinepedagogy.pbworks.com/

For more information, please contact Anne McKinney.”

Comparing Mobile Data Syncing Services…06.09.09

Since mobile devices, especially smart phones, are here to stay and becoming almost universal in some places, the posting  How the Different Mobile Data Syncing Services Stack Up from TechCrunch is important:

“As the phones in our pockets become our second computers, it will become increasingly important to sync data between the two. Not just emails, but contacts, calendars, photos, music, apps, browser bookmarks, files, and more. Nearly every Web phone out there comes with at least some sort of rudimentary syncing app. Apple has MobileMe, Nokia has Ovi, Palm has Synergy, Blackberry has Internet Services, and Microsoft has My Phone.

An open-source competitor to all of these is Funambol. The startup evaluated all of the syncing services and scored them based on criteria such as how many kinds of data each one supports, cost, usability, and number of supported devices. (Full study embedded at bottom of post). It came up with a score for each out of a maximum of 40. Naturally enough, Funambol scored the highest, but if you throw that out you end up with the list below (with accompanying scores)…”

UTS Library Student Videos…06.09.09

Here are some entertaining library promotional videos from Australia’s UTS as related in the Libraries Interact blog:

“The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Library recently gave students the chance to win $1,000 in the UTS LIB:Flicks 2009 competition.

Students submitted short videos (less than 2min) to promote UTS Library services and resources to new undergraduate students…”

Twitter Growth Stops…06.09.09

Mashable! post The Web in Numbers: Twitter’s Phenomenal Growth Suddenly Stops has some food for thought:

“…While YouTube is attracting an ever increasing audience, andFacebook is still growing fast, Twitter’s growth has suddenly stopped, at least according to the numbers from Compete.

We’ve been covering the steep, steep curve of Twitter’s increasing visitors for the last couple of months, and it was obvious that it could not go on forever. However, seeing Twitter’s growth flatline with only a 1.47% increase (up to 19,728,619 monthly visitors) is surprising, especially since Twitter-mania has all but stopped. Monthly visits to Twitter, however, have increased by a healthy 6.99%, up to 134,536,240. Of course, Compete’s numbers are not guaranteed to be fully accurate, but they are confirmed by the numbers from Quantcast, for example. It will be interesting to see how Twitter performs in the following months…

Twitter does, however, have some nice numbers to show; according to Nielsen Online, total minutes spent on Twitter rose by a staggering 3712% from April 08 to April 09. In the same period, total minutes spent on Facebook increased 699% year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009…”

iPhone Plan for Smart Phone Domination with $99 Version…06.08.09

You [and maybe even I] can have an iPhone now for $99:

TechCrunch iPhone update:

“Alongside its unveiling of the new iPhone today at the WWDC keynote in San Francisco, Apple also unveiled a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the smartphone market: A cheaper iPhone.

This new iPhone will be the iPhone 3G. While the newly released iPhone 3GS will offer more storage, and presumably a faster processor, more RAM and faster download speeds, this iPhone will have the same specs as the last one. But what you get for this is one hell of a price: $99…”

Librarians and Mobile Technology…06.08.09

Here are some thought-provoking comments from Karen Coombs at the University of Houston Libraries on mobile technologies and librarians:

“…I wonder sometimes if libraries are paying enough attention to these issues when it comes to mobile technologies. Most of the mobile efforts that I’ve seen at libraries thus far have been focuses on making library content, services and resources available to users with mobile devices. There seems to be little investigation going on into how the way deploying mobile technologies to library staff impacts our ability to serve users. Certainly deployment of mobile tech changes the nature of the relationships between librarians and faculty. Also there were occasions when it seemed that mobile tech changed the way in which librarians were able to collaborate with one another. Our pilot seemed to indicate that there are significant advantages and benefits to providing library staff with mobile technologies. As a result, more mobile devices will be deployed here over the next year. I hope that the library continues to examine the ways in which this technology changes the work of librarians and library staff.”

Apple Leads Smart Phone Market & Reveals New 3GS iPhone…06.08.09

TechCrunch reports today:

“…Apple has just announced yet another milestone for its popular App Store: 50,000 applications are now available in the store. The announcement was made at the WWDC event in San Francisco, alongside the news that Apple has sold some 40 million iPhones and iPod touches.

This follows Apple hitting its 1 billionth app download in April, and 35,000 apps later that month. The platform shows no sign of slowing down and that’s bad news for rivals, including the new Palm Pre, which launched on Saturday with about 49,981 fewer apps.

Apple went on to show off some of the iPhone 3.0 features — there are over 100 new ones, and over 1,000 new APIs. Unfortunately, it looks like MMS support in the U.S. won’t be available until later this summer — an AT&T hold up, apparently. As we already heard previously, cut, copy and paste will be in 3.0 — something desired by many users for a long time…

The new “Find My iPhone” feature drew cheers. If you lose your iPhone anywhere and have a MobileMe account, you can find exactly where your iPhone is on a map on the web. You can also ping your iPhone remotely, which puts out an alert noise to show where it is. And if it is really stolen, you can now send a remote wipe command, to delete everything on the phone…”

Solo Librarians Division 2009 Conference Schedule…06.08.09

Here is the upcoming schedule for the Solo Librarians Division of the Special Libraries Association annual conference in Washington, D.C. from the DSOL Conference Blog:

“Saturday 6/13

8:00AM-12:00PM: CE: Best Practices for Information Services: Achieving Operational Excellence (Conv. Ctr. 305)

Sunday 6/14

12:00PM-1:30PM: Solo Librarians Divison Board of Directors (Conv. Ctr. 205)

Monday 6/15

9:00AM-10:30AM: Diversity in Leadership: Generation X – The Changing Paradigm in a Knowledge-Based Society (Conv. Ctr. 144A)

1:30PM-3:30PM: SPOTLIGHT SESSION - How Do You Move Up the Ladder If There Is No Ladder to Climb? (Conv. Ctr. 145A)

3:30PM-5:00PM: The New Face of the Special Librarian: Embedded Librarians (Conv. Ctr. 143C)

8:00PM-10:00PM: Solo Librarians Division Open House (Renaissance Washington DC Hotel, Congressional Hall C)

Tuesday 6/16

7:00AM-8:30AM: Annual Diversity Leadership Development Breakfast (Ticket 700, Conv. Ctr. 202B)

11:30AM-1:00PM: Solo Librarians Division Business Meeting Luncheon (Ticket 810, Conv. Ctr. 149)

1:30PM-3:00PM: Preparedness for Info Pros: Lessons Learned from Recent Disasters (Conv. Ctr. 141)

8:00PM-10:00PM: Government Information, Petroleum & Energy Resources, and Solo Librarians Division Open House (Sewall Belmont House, 144 Constitution Ave. NE)

Wednesday 6/17

8:30AM-10:00AM: Spotlight Session – Creating Groupies: How to Add Value, Make Yourself Irreplaceable, & Beat the Pants Off of Google (Conv. Ctr. 145A)”

Special Librarian Identities & Special Libraries Association Contributed Papers…06.08.09

(Click on image for larger version)

The above is an interesting representation of the data about special librarians and how they identify themselves from “The Changing Terrain of Special Librarianship: A Report from the Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science (WILIS) Study” by Deborah Barreau, Joanne Marshall and Susan Rathbun-Grubb, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The following are papers were submitted to the 2009 annual Special Libraries Association 100th anniversary conference being held June 14-17 in Washington, D.C.:

Contributed Papers
SLA 2009 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO
Washington, D.C., USA

“Adapt, Leverage and Communicate (Part I)
Monday, 15 June, 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Moderator: Brandy King, Center on Media and Child Health, Harvard University

“The Changing Terrain of Special Librarianship: A Report from the Workforce Issues in Library and Information Science (WILIS) Study”
Deborah Barreau, Joanne Marshall and Susan Rathbun-Grubb
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Science Research: Journey to a Thousand Sources”
Abe Lederman
Deep Web Technologies

“From Information to Inspiration: How Libraries Can Shape the Future of Diversity by Connecting People and Building Community”
Judy Bolstad, Lucia Diamond, Lillian Castillo-Speed, Teresa Mora, Ty Johnson and Susan Wong
University of California, Berkeley

Adapt, Leverage and Communicate (Part II)
Tuesday, 16 June, 9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Moderator: Chris Mulready, Boeing

“Saving Special Libraries in a Recession: Business Strategies for Survival and Success”
Arlene Fletcher, Mary Franklin, Joyce Garczynski, Glynnis Gilbert, Sara Mathis, and Ping Wang
University of Maryland

“Federal Government Information Goes Social? Inspiration from Change.gov”
Kim Lyall
NASA Center for AeroSpace Information

“From Information Chaos to Usability: Using a Content Management System to Manage Information and Connect with Users”
Adam Hudson
University of Southern California

Adapt, Leverage and Communicate (Part III)
Wednesday, 17 June, 8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Moderator: Justine Wheeler, University of Calgary

“Navigating through Turbulent Times: How the Corporate Special Library and Brand Communications Work Together to Forge a Path for the Future”
Jill Heinze and Kimberly Kortash
Affinion Loyalty Group

“Mad Maps: A Revolution in Geographic Information Dissemination and Use”
Daniel Holmes
Yolo County (Calif.) Flood Control and Water Conservation District

“Reflecting the Corporate Strategy: MITRE Information Services Clusters”
Jeanne Slater Trimble
MITRE Corporation”

©2009 Special Libraries Association. All rights reserved.

Twitter Usually Ends Up As “One-Way Micro-Broadcasting”…06.08.09

A very interesting posting from TechCrunch On Twitter Most People Are Sheep: 80 Percent of Accounts Have Fewer Than 10 Followers reveals the following important information:

“…A full 80 percent of Twitter accounts have fewer than 10 followers, according to an analysis of seven million Twitter accounts provided to TechCrunch by Web security firm Purewire (which operates TweetGrade). What’s more, 30 percent have zero followers…

The fact that an estimated 32 million people around the world visited Twitter.com alone in April certainly indicates that there is something going on there. It just may be that Twitter really isn’t as much about two-way micro-conversations as it is about one-way micro-broadcasting. Indeed, a recent Harvard Business School study suggested that the top 10 percent of Twitter users produce more than 90 percent of all Tweets.

Here is how Purewire breaks down activity on Twitter by number of followers, followings, and Tweets:

Followers
Accounts with 0 followers: 29.4%
Accounts with 1 to 9 followers: 50.9%
Accounts with 10 or more followers: 19.7%

Followings
Accounts following 0 people: 24.4%
Accounts following 1 to 9 people: 43.4%
Accounts following 10 or more people: 32.2%

Tweets
Accounts with 0 Tweets: 37.1%
Accounts with 1 to 9 Tweets: 41.0%
Accounts with more 10 or more Tweets: 21.9%…”

“Greenstone” Digitial Library Open-Source Software Update…06.08.09

Thanks to DigitalKoans for their update on the open source digital library software Greenstone, ”suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM”:

“A beta release of the EmeraldView front-end to the Greenstone digital library software is near completion. The current code is available via a Subversion checkout. A demo is available.

Here’s an excerpt from the project home page:

We are aiming to solve several key weaknesses of the stock front-end:

• Greenstone’s cryptic URLs of unusual size are a fail for user comprehensibility, search engine crawlers, bookmarking, etc. . .
• Though extensive customization of the display is possible, there are some stopping points where modification of the C++ source is required.
• The customization that is supported is via a system of micro-templates referred to as macros. This system is so heavily nested and cross-referenced that it is very difficult to conceptualize how any given page is generated.

Delaware Library Catalog “Collects” Websites…06.08.09

The Delaware Library Catalog post We Also “Collect” Websites from Delaware Division of Libraries in partnership with Delaware libraries relates their sharing of librarian internet bookmarks:

“…Most library websites do publish a list of internet resources- usually ones that are very reliable, persistent links to reference resources of one kind or another- and there are a few librarian-managed websites that try to evaluate and categorize websites (here and here). One of the things we’ve done for the last year or so at the Division of Libraries is ‘collect’ current and new websites through an online bookmarking service called Delicious.com. Librarians who have access to the DDL account can bookmark informative and useful websites while they are searching for information, and add them to a list accessible to all of the other librarians in the state, as well as users. Based on the index terms assigned by the recording librarian, these sites are then added to a continuously updated ‘librarians links of the day’ list on the main Delaware Library Catalog portal site (it’s ‘below the fold’ a little bit, so you have to scroll down to see it!).

Most of these internet resources are keyed to current events or notable dates and anniversaries- they may not be here in ten years but they are useful right now- and the most recent topics for resources include the 40th anniversary of the Apollo Mission, various resources related to the Memorial Day commemorations, and the H1N1 flu virus.”

“Using a barcode scanner with Google Book Search”…06.06.09