The Continuing Rise of Text Reference Service…10.20.09

An excerpt from an important WebJunction program report from The place for Text Message Reference?

The recent WebJunction Digital Reference Summit (full archive and related resources) included a presentation by Alison Miller about the rise of text message reference services. At the beginning of the session we polled participants and discovered that just 17% of the nearly 200 in attendance were providing text reference services, but that’s sure to change.

Alison provided a wealth of data to illustrate the current trends in mobile reference services and referenced the nearly 100 libraries offering SMS (text) reference service listed on the Library Success Wiki…”

Cory Doctorow at Internet Librarian International 2009…10.19.09

Archive-It for Libraries from the Internet Archive…10.19.09

“Archive-It, a subscription service from the Internet Archive, allows institutions to build and preserve collections of born digital content. Through our user-friendly web application, Archive-It partners can harvest, catalog, manage, and browse their archived collections. Collections are hosted at the Internet Archive data center and are accessible to the public with full-text search…”

UX (User Experience) for Libraries…10.19.09

25 Tools : A Toolbox for Learning Professionals…10.29.09

25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

New – TextStream Print-On-Demand From Baker & Taylor…10.18.09

“Baker & Taylor, Inc. has announced at Frankfurt Book Fair the launch of TextStream, the company’s digital print services offering. TextStream provides publishers with a wide variety of print-on-demand and short-run digital replenishment services, saving them time and money while increasing their customer reach. TextStream is managed by Baker & Taylor’s Digital Media Services Group…

Baker & Taylor offers publishers the industry’s most comprehensive suite of digital services through best-of-breed partnerships with ebrary, LibreDigital and OverDrive. TextStream complements these services by providing additional ways for publishers to maximize revenues generated from their content, while lowering costs associated with warehousing, freight, inventory and product obsolescence.“

A Real iPhone Challenger Is About to Arrive…10.18.09

If the hype is correct: “All the things your phone doesn’t do, Droid Does. www.DroidDoes.com”

Librarians Have a Continuing and Important Role in the Evolving Information Age…10.18.09

Thanks to Stephen Abram for pointing out the following quote from Librarians still have vital role in the Web 2.0 era:

“‘The more info, the more important the info pro,’ said industry consultant Mary Ellen Bates. This reason and many others mean that librarians continue playing the role they have always played, as facilitators between information and end users.

Lifelogging Possible With New Camera…10.18.09

The following excerpt from New Camera Promises to Capture Your Whole Life is about the future trend of lifelogs:

“A camera you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by a UK-based firm.

Originally invented to help jog the memories of people with Alzheimer’s disease, it might one day be used by consumers to create ‘lifelogs’ that archive their entire lives.

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory…

For consumers, the gadget will provide an easy way to become a “lifelogger” – someone who attempts to electronically record as much of their life as possible. Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell has made his life an experiment in lifelogging, recording everything from phone calls to TV viewing, and uses a SenseCam wherever he goes.

‘What’s great about these kinds of memory technologies is that they can be very usable for ordinary people,’ says Henry Kautz, a computer scientist at the University of Rochester, New York, who works on technology to assist cognition.

‘Once you have that mass market, that brings the prices down.’ Eventually, he says, a SenseCam-like device could be part of an artificial memory used by ordinary people, just as they use notebooks and planners as memory aids today.”

Journal reference: Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, DOI: doi:10.1136/jnnp.2008.164251

Bib-Link goes mobile…10.18.09

News from Bib-Link:

“Today, the third birthday of Bib-Link, the international Linkportal to Libraries we will provide our Newsblog, our dictionaries and of course our Library-Links at a mobile version for mobilephones, smartphones and organizers for free* and without any barriers**.

*Of course the services of Bib-Link are for free. Please, consider that there could be tariff rates by your cellular mobile telephony provider. You will get more information at your provider. For minimizing your fees, we’ve designed this mobile Version of Bib-Link for lower download-traffic…”

Hooked on Attention…10.17.09

I thought this insight from Seth Godin was good and relevant to librarians everywhere to consider:

“Notice me”

If the new web has a mantra, that’s it…

Attention is fine, as long as you have a goal that is reached in exchange for all this effort.

Far better than being noticed:

• Trusted
• Engaged with
• Purchased from
• Discussed
• Echoed
• Teaching us
• Leading”

Cloud Computing and Google’s Data Liberation Front…10.17.09

Excerpted from Pack Up Your Data and Leave Whenever You Want, The New Rule of the Cloud:

There’s a certain level of trust that goes along with using a cloud-based web application. You upload your photos and your documents so you can access them everywhere, but you also trust that you’ll be able to pull those photos and documents down any time you want.

It sounds like a perfectly reasonable assumption, but many web-based services make it difficult for you to export your data. Worse, they’ll charge you a fee for the privilege. Some offer APIs — a bonus if you’re technically astute, but a solution that leaves the average user short on options.

To prevent such headaches, Google recently launched the Data Liberation Front, an initiative within the company to ensure every one of its products has a clear, easy option for users to export their data in bulk and take their business elsewhere.

Leading this project is Brian Fitzpatrick, an engineering manager at Google. Brian and his team launched an educational website at dataliberation.org…”

Library Journal 2009 Librarian Placements & Salary Survey Results…10.17.09

From the Library Journal 2009 Librarian Placements & Salary:

Who Can Participate in Open Source…10.17.09

Here are some good diagrams about who can participate in open source from if writing is a muscle, this is my gym:

Wolfram Apha Mobile API…10.17.09

The Programmable Web reported on the new release of Wolfram Alpha‘s API:

“Wolfram Alpha, the up-and-coming ‘answer engine’ that we reported on back in May, has just released an API that developers have been awaiting since this spring. The new RESTful API provides access to the vast stores of data and computational knowledge available through the Wolfram Alpha project…

Perhaps one of the most visible uses of the API will be a new iPhone app being developed by the Wolfram Alpha team. The API provides results in XML format, and there are severallanguage bindings available, including Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, and .Net. (C++ and Java coming soon). The API allows developers to send a web request with the same query string used in Wolfram Alpha’s query box. It is not a ’small’ API, which you can tell via the 34 page Reference Guide (PDF)…”

Google Wave Video Demonstration With “Pulp Fiction” Movie Clip…10.16.09

Disclaimer:

I don’t care for the “colorful” language in the following clip from the movie Pulp Fiction but the video shows a little of how Google Wave can be used. The creator of the video said, “I used Pulp Fiction to show features, usability, and overall functionality for an audience that has yet to see Google Wave.  It’s engaging and fun…”

“Google Editions” – Google’s Online Store to Deliver Electronic Books to Any Device with a Web Browser…10.16.09

From Bookseller.com:

“Google is poised to launch its ‘buy anywhere, read anywhere’ digital books programme Google Editions simultaneously in the US, UK and Europe within the first half of next year.

Speaking at the Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt, Amanda Edmonds, Google’s director of strategic partnerships, said the programme would be rolled out by June. Edmonds said one of the strengths of Google’s offering was that once bought, the e-book would exist in a ‘cloud library’, which could be accessed from potentially any device, including laptops, ‘smart phones’ or e-readers. ‘As long as you can get onto the library, you can access it,’ Edmonds said. ‘All books will live in the same library, so it doesn’t matter where you buy it or where you read it.‘

Once a book has been accessed on a given device, a cached version will exist, making it possible for readers to access the book offline. ‘There’s a really complex set of offerings out there for the consumer. Our concept is that it should be open: they shouldn’t have to pick the device, software or retailer,’ said Edmonds…”

“Why Should a Library Use Twitter? Because the Customers Are!”…10.15.09

Here is an an excellent post titled Why Should a Library Use Twitter? Because the Customers Are! by the Civil Librarian who works for the Sacramento Public Library:

“I’ve mentioned before how much fun I’m having participating in the development of Sacramento Public Library’s online presence (largely via our Twitter and Facebook accounts) and something just happened that only reinforces my belief in social networking as a boon to our efforts both to broaden and make more meaningful our contact with our library users. At the end of the day today, I was browsing through the latest results from the RSS feed from my Twitter search for the word ‘library’ within 25 miles of Sacramento. I came across this tweet from @brownthumbmama:

‘Email fr library: books are in! Go to library: closed today for staff training. #FAIL‘

Yes, it’s true, the Library was closed for our annual Staff Training day. We did our best to notify folks in advance via signage, our website, and postings both on Twitter and Facebook. Nonetheless, not everyone got the message and we had at least one disappointed customer. Not cool! In the best tradition of using Twitter to engage our customers, I responded with an apology that @brownthumbmama kindly retweeted. Nice. Even nicer, though, was what I discovered when I clicked through to her profile, saw the link to her blog and was treated by this absolutely awesome tribute presumably referring to Sacramento Public Library! Even the comments on the post left by other readers are positive about the Library.

Besides the pleasure of seeing the community’s fondness for the Library on display, I love this because it gives credence to the notion that its important for the Library to work at developing our online presence. There are lots of folks ‘out there’ online talking about us; by participating in those discussions we learn more about our users while having the opportunity to respond within the online network of library users when someone has a less-than-perfect library experience.“

FREE – A Complete Guide to Google Wave…10.15.09

In case you missed this post from May 2009, there is A Complete Guide to Google Wave available.

Neilsen Report – Average U.S. Internet Usage, Combined Home & Work, Month of September 2009 10.15.09

Jason Griffey – librarians and real time web…10.15.09

“…Trends, Transformations & Change in Libraries”…10.15.09

Comebacks for Excuses for Not Using Twitter…10.15.09

Here is some useful information from The Five WORST Excuses for Not Using Twitter:

“…Check out these five worst excuses for not using Twitter, along with some snappy comebacks you can throw back at them:

1. ‘I don’t use Twitter because I don’t have anything to say.’


I hear this one from my friends all the time. They seem to feel like they need to have some kind of message, some sort of goal in mind, when they sit down to use Twitter. This couldn’t be farther from the truth – if you have a reason to open your mouth (besides eating and heavy breathing) you have a reason to use Twitter. On the off-chance that your friends are so uninteresting that they really don’t have anything to say, that’s OK too – with Twitter you can just listen. If they don’t have anything to say AND they don’t have anything that they’re remotely interested in hearing about…you might want to find more interesting friends.

2. ‘I don’t use Twitter because you can’t say anything meaningful in 140 characters.’


On the contrary, some of history’s most meaningful statements have been ‘tweetable.’ Briefly reviewing some of the most famous quotations and famous sayings will show that the drastic majority of them are 140 characters or less. Why? Because pithiness and brevity go hand in hand. When my friends tell me “you can’t say anything meaningful in 140 characters” I tell them, “If it takes more than 140 characters to convey the main idea, it probably wasn’t as meaningful as you thought it was.”

3. ‘I don’t have time to use Twitter.’


Now that’s just silly. Most of us are fairly capable typists; sending a tweet, even a full 140-character tweet, takes us around 30 seconds (and that includes proofreading). Even if you’re jabbing at an iPhone with chubby fingers, we’re still talking about one or two minutes here. Reading Tweets takes even less time, and tweets aren’t like newspaper articles – you can stop reading them whenever you want. They’re short. If people say they don’t have time to use Twitter, what that probably means is that they don’t think Twitter is worth spending any time on – and that’s a different topic altogether.

4. ‘I don’t use Twitter because I’m not interested in hearing about what people are eating for breakfast.’


I’m so tired of hearing this one. Whoever started the rumor that Twitter is all about telling the world that you’re “making a sandwich” should be thrown to the zombies. Briefly reviewing the last 50 of my followers’ tweets, there is not a single one about what people are eating. Those fifty tweets cover a wide variety of topics – what books people are reading, the usage and meaning of the word “obtuse,” the best/worst action movies, Billy Mays’ recent appearance on South Park…but nothing about making a sandwich. There was one about a guy trying to do his laundry after drinking heavily, but that was about the closest it got.

5. ‘I don’t use Twitter because it’s a waste of time.’


Tell that to #iranelection. A significant portion of the rest of the world takes Twitter seriously – why wouldn’t you? All that saying it’s “a waste of my time” does is make you look ignorant – which you’re not, or you probably wouldn’t be my friend in the first place….”

U.S. Search Engine Rankings – SEPTEMBER 2009 – comScore…10.15.09

No surprises here.  comScore says, “Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in September with 64.9 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (18.8 percent), and Microsoft Sites (9.4 percent). Ask Network captured 3.9 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 3.0 percent….”

The Details on the New Barnes & Noble E-Reader…10.14.09

From Gizmodo today:

“Barnes and Noble‘s late to e-books. But the company’s new gadget—first seen here—should address the weaknesses of all other readers with screens evoking a Kindle and an iPhone. A source from within reveals the first photos and details.

The Barnes and Nobles e-reader project, set to be revealed next week, has been under development for years, with several devices of varying size and capability in the pipeline. First rumors said it would have a color e-ink screen. Then people said it didn’t. They were both kind of right: The layout will feature a black and white e-ink screen like the Kindle has—and a multitouch display like an iPhone underneath other…”

“GoWeb3D Augmented Reality on Layar Reality Browser”…10.14.09

Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Libraries…10.14.09

Marketing specialist Seth Godin’s blog posting today Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage is relative to libraries and all organizations.  Here are the highlights:

“…So, what to do?

• You can own something that’s hard to copy…
• You can race down the pricing and scale curve, so it’s cheaper for you to do what you do because you have a head start.
• You can create switching costs, so that the hassle and cost of moving to a cheaper competitor is so great, it’s just not worth it.
• You can build a network (which can take many forms–natural monopolies are organizations where the market is better off when there’s only one of you).
• You can build a brand (shorthand for relationships, beliefs, trust, permission and word of mouth).
• You can create a constantly innovating organization where extraordinary employees thrive…”

Unique Digital Artist – Alejandro Mendoza…10.14.09

[Click on image for larger version]

Twitter and the Lone Wolf…10.14.09

Since inquiring minds want to know, my Twitter account is LoneWolfMLS.

I prefer other means of communication normally, but I do find it frequently useful.

BTW, the Lone Wolf will be incommunicado much of today – more postings tomorrow.

FREE – The New “Free Agent” Learner – Blended Librarians webcast…10.14.09

From the Library Professional Development blog:

Steven Bell and John Shank, co-founders of the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community and their guest, Julie Evans, invite you to join the next webcast, “Coming Soon to Campus: The New “Free Agent” Learner – Are You Ready?” on Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 3 pm. Eastern.

Event Description:

The dynamic profusion of emerging technologies, both in school and out of school, is propelling today’s K-12 students to make new demands on education institutions for technology-rich learning experiences and environments. Enabled, empowered and engaged, this next wave of students is bringing to college their own set of objectives for 21st century learning. Get a first hand glimpse into the activities, values and aspirations of tomorrow’s students through this webinar presentation by Project Tomorrow CEO, Julie Evans…

Although this event is free, advance registration is required to reserve a virtual seat. If you are already a member of the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community here is a link into the Learning Times Network that will get you to our Community and the registration page: http://home.learningtimes.net/library?go=2256149

If you need to join the Blended Librarians Online Community in order to register (no fee to join):

1. Go to the Blended Librarian website at http://blendedlibrarian.org

2. Click on the “Join” button on the home page of Blendedlibrarian.org and follow the instructions.

3. After you receive confirmation of your Learning Times account you can return to this email message and use the link above for registered members of Learning Times. Click on the link, and then register on the next page (you may need to scroll down to see the register button).

4. We recommend that those participating in the webcast obtain a microphone or headset in order to make use of the VoIP technology that allows conversation between the speakers and participants. A microphone or headset is not required to participate.

5. Please plan on allowing yourself sufficient time to log in to the webcast on Oct. 22, 2009. If it is the first time attending a Learning Times event it may take a few extra minutes to log on to their Elluminate webcasting software. Once you have registered for the event you may wish to try the “test room” to make sure your computer is set up and ready to go the day of the webcast.