Visualizing the Internet…03.13.10

Download Nielsen top 100 sites spreadsheet (Jan ’10)

From the BBC:

“Explore this interactive graphic to find out which are the biggest sites on the internet, as measured by the Nielsen company. This feature is part of SuperPower, a season of programmes exploring the power of the internet.

The data used to generate the interactive treemap visualisation was collected by the Nielsen company and covers the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, US and Australia. The figures represent unique users for the month of January 2010…”

Digitization Program Planning Update…03.13.10

I thought I would start a running commentary on this blog on the creation of our digital libraries in my new position as digital/electronic librarian.  Our large-scale digitization program planning is coming along well.

The physical facility will be completed in a week or so.  An area of 37′ x14′ has been dedicated to house the program and staff.  One BookDrive Pro book scanner has been installed and another one has been ordered.  We can envision eventually having 3 in operation.  Once we get the bugs out of the image capture software, we should be up and running on a pilot test program.  The selection of and decision to purchase the hardware was made by the IT Dept. before I was hired.  After researching other options, I probably would have chosen differently but we will work with what we have been given. The IT Dept. is trying to work with Atiz tech support to resolve the image capture software issues.  An alternative may be to have our in-house staff write proprietary software.

In preparation, I have reviewed the “best practices” of several universities who have been pioneers.  The work at Cornell University has been particularly helpful.

This week we started working on a digitization workflow plan to accommodate scanning, image processing (automatic and manual) & quality control, archiving, OCR (using OmniPage17) for searchable text files, metadata capture (Dublin Core plus) & review, output to appropriate/selected formats, i.e., .jpeg, .txt, .pdf, etc. to digital collections, and final QC & output to the web.  We reviewed really nice software packages that have all of this worked out, i.e. Opus3 from the Digital Library Systems Group (Image Access, Inc.) which works with Bookeye Planetary Scanners.

We are planning to have multiple search options for visitors.

After reviewing the inventory of our physical objects currently on-hand to be scanned, I began creating relevant subject bibliographies to expand our collections…to be continued by the Lone Wolf Librarian.

BTW, I contacted a dean of a prominent SLIS (School of Library and Information Science) program which is advertising for faculty to lead a new digitization certificate program to learn about their planned program and proposed courses on the subject.  It will be interesting to see if I get a response.  Right now I’m learning by personal research and application by doing.

HathiTrust Update…03.13.10

The latest issue of the HathiTrust Newsletter is now online.

Text a Librarian Mobile Donations Initiative for Libraries…03.13.10

How is Business Using Social Media…03.12.10

Found at Stephen’s Lighthouse

Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing – March 18 –EDUCAUSE Webinar…03.12.10

iPad Pre-Orders Begin Today @ 5pm PST…03.12.10

QR Codes, StickyBits, & Mobile Technology for Libraries…03.12.10

Excerpt from Jason Griffey’s ALA TechSource posting Annotating the Real World:

“Over the course of the last year, there has been a lot of discussion about the interaction between the real and the virtual via mobile phones, specifically about using barcodes as a unique identifier that can be read by a mobile phone’s camera. In Japan and other countries, it is very common to see this sort of thing done via a type of code called a QR Code, a form of 2 dimensional barcode. There are lots of places online where you can create your own QR Code, and many phones come with the ability to read them built in. For smartphones with applications stores, like the iPhone App Store or Android Market, there are many barcode reading apps to chose from.

Some libraries are playing around with QR Codes and other methods of annotating the real world via digital metadata. One tool that I just discovered is called StickyBits, and it takes a different model that I find really interesting. Instead of concentrating on linking physical objects to a single virtual place or information, StickyBits allows people to attach content to a given barcode, and have others see it. It’s a form of tagging, but instead of tagging via terms, the user is tagging with any digital information they want: audio, video, photo, or text. For instance, a user could use StickyBits to tag a book with a video review.

Even more interesting is the fact that multiple people in multiple locations can attach multiple objects to the same barcode. It’s a method of harnessing the best of the network effect, with the additional benefit of extending the tagging to any object with the same barcode. For example, it would only take one person attaching a video review to the barcode of a bestseller to make that review available to everyone who happens to pick up a copy of that bestseller anywhere. It not only distributed creation of content, but zero-lag distribution of content across real objects. This model could be used by existing library services like Librarything to attach digital objects to books pretty quickly…”

For more on QR Codes, search this blog for many other relevant posts using this mobile technology in libraries.

Trends & Technology Timeline 2010+ Redux…03.12.10

This infographic is worth a closer look and some thought.  Click on the image for a larger inspection.

From 2010+ 10 Trends: Predictions & Provocations

Truth About the Twitterverse…03.11.10

Excerpted from Mashable!:

“A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active.

The study looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: an active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people, and had tweeted at least 10 times. By that definition though, only 21% of Twitter users are active users.

There’s a great deal of interesting data in the breakdown. Only 26% of Twitter users had 10 followers or more by December 2009, while only 40% were following 10 people or more (in fact, a majority of Twitter users, 51%, were following less than five people).

In terms of tweets, the report estimates that 34% of Twitter users hadn’t tweeted even once, while a whopping 73% of Twitter’s users tweeted less than 10 times. That means nearly all of the tweets on the social network were coming from about 1/4 of the userbase. Power users dominate.

Barracuda Labs also analyzed Twitter’s growth over time, and the numbers are consistent with previous reports that show while Twitter grew like wildfire in early 2009, it has dramatically slowed down in recent months…”

New – A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation…03.11.10

“Authored by members of the MetaArchive Cooperative, A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation is the first of a series of volumes describing successful collaborative strategies and articulating specific new models that may help cultural memory organizations work together for their mutual benefit.

This volume is devoted to the broad topic of distributed digital preservation, a still-emerging field of practice for the cultural memory arena. Replication and distribution hold out the promise of indefinite preservation of materials without degradation, but establishing effective organizational and technical processes to enable this form of digital preservation is daunting. Institutions need practical examples of how this task can be accomplished in manageable, low-cost ways…”

More on Gaming in Libraries…03.11.10

The Hyperlinked Community Library…03.10.10

FREE Online Roundtable Discussion – The Future of Libraries, Books and Reading…03.20.20

Monday, March 29, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 1:00 Central, noon Mountain, 11:00 a.m. Pacific, and 7:00 p.m. GMT:

FiLBeRt Roundtable Discussion: The Future of Libraries, Books, and Reading

The shared futures of libraries, books, and reading seem very hazy at present. Join us for a monthly, lively, informal discussion of new developments, challenges, and opportunities. It’ll be a roundtable, so everyone is welcome to chime in. If it’s a FiLBeRt discussion, it’s going to be nutty!

Host: TAP Information Services

Location: OPAL Auditorium

Ed Batista on “Safety, Trust, Intimacy”..03.10.10

Here is an excerpt from a very good post from Ed Batista “Safety, Trust, Intimacy“:

“In my capacity as a Leadership Coach at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, I work regularly with groups of MBA students whose purpose is to help the members learn, become more self-aware (and more aware of others), and change their behavior in order to achieve their goals more effectively…

1) Every group’s experience is rooted in a set of initial conditions: How and why were we assembled?  What will our first meeting be like?  What will we discuss there? These initial conditions form the foundation for all subsequent ‘layers’ of the group dynamic.

2) The foundational qualities that define every group are the levels of safety, trust and intimacy: Safety =  A belief that we won’t get hurt.  Trust = We mean what we say and we say what we mean. Intimacy = A willingness to make the private public.

3) When safety, trust and intimacy are established, these qualities support the actions that lead to greater success as a group: experimentation, risk-taking and a willingness to be vulnerable.

4) When we feel able to experiment, take risks and make ourselves vulnerable, our ability to learn, to increase our self-awareness (and our awareness of others) and to change our behavior in order to achieve our goals more effectively increases dramatically.

5) The process of building one layer upon another occurs in a unique context—so in addition to asking whether learning and change are taking place, we also need to assess how the group’s context supports (or inhibits) the development of the underlying layers in the group dynamic…”

(Here’s a 10-slide PowerPoint version [268 KB] of Ed’s post.  Read his whole post.)

New Google Book Settlement Status Infographic…03.09.10

From the Centered Librarian:

“Now that the ‘Fairness Hearing’ on the Google Books Settlement has occurred, it is up to Judge Chin to decide whether the proposed settlement is ‘fair, reasonable and adequate.’ The chart below attempts to diagram some of the possible paths forward.”

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEWING

Google Public Data Exploring – Data Visualization…03.09.10

“Data visualizations for a changing world

​The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. You don’t have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own comparisons, and share your findings…”

Tim Berners-Lee: “The year open data went worldwide”…03.09.10

Toronto Public Library Releases Beta Version of New Website…03.09.10

“Toronto Public Library is developing a new website. What you see at beta.torontopubliclibrary.ca is the test version of the new website, which we have made available so our customers can try it out and give us their feedback. All the data in the beta site is live – the status of materials (checked in, checked out) is in real time and anything you do (placing holds, changes in your account) is real. You are also seeing live programs and blog posts. If you like what you see, we encourage you to use it. This is very much a beta, so many sections are under development and some content areas are incomplete. Please go to our existing website if you’re looking for current library information such as policies and library board and service information..”

NEW PictureIt Rare Book Reader…03.09.10

From the University of Michigan:

“It is my pleasure to announce the public debut of PictureIt Rare Book Reader (http://www.lib.umich.edu/pictureit). A collaborative effort between several Library units, the product is now available for shared use after 18 months in development.

PictureIt is a web-based animation program that gives users the sensation of turning the pages of digitized rare materials that would be otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to view or obtain. Volume 1 of John James Audubon’s Birds of America was selected as the inaugural PictureIt book for a few reasons. Foremost, the eight volume set has special meaning as the first purchase for the Library by the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan. As well, the University of Pittsburgh had already digitized all volumes of the Birds of America set and was willing to share the images with us. And finally, the illustrated plates of this set were intricately completed, making them as much art work as scientific work. Volume 1 of Audubon’s Birds of America was also selected for the first PictureIt book because its complex images demonstrate the product’s embedded magnification tool which allows users to get up-close and view the details of each illustration.

While the Library is excited to share Volume 1 of Audubon’s Birds of America within the University of Michigan community, the scope of the PictureIt project is much larger….”

First iPad Commercial…03.08.10

Growth of the Internet Infographic…03.08.10

From Mashable!

More on Gaming and Libraries…03.08.10

FREE Webinar: Gaming & Libraries…03.07.10

From 8bitlibrary (“the gaming in schools and libraries blog”):

“Gaming: All Libraries & All Ages will be a webinar highlighting collection development and advocacy issues that all libraries deal with when implementing (or planning to implement) video games into library collections and services.

Attendance will be fun and free. There will be an interactive chat box for the entire session, and the event will be presented as an un-conference collaboration.

All you have to do to attend is go to URL tinychat.com/8bitlibrary on March 13th at 1:00pm EST. We’ll have about 45 minutes of webinar time, with plenty of time after for chatting and collaborating. We hope you can be there.

An RSVP is not necessary, but there is a Facebook event which you can RSVP to here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10150110150540521

Also, don’t forget to add 8bitlibrary.com’s feed to your RSS Reader, and during the webinar be sure to follow the hashtag#8bitweb on Twitter…”

Library of Congress Monthly “Wise Guide”…03.07.10

About the monthly Wise Guide from the Library of Congress:

“History’s mysteries, hidden treasures, fascinating facts, scintillating stories … the Library of Congress has a little bit of everything. We uncover the best each month on the Wise Guide to loc.gov—your entry into one of the world’s most extensive websites that is sponsored by the world’s largest library. And, it’s all free and available to people around the world.

The Library’s holdings range from prints, photographs, films, audio recordings, maps, manuscripts, music and digital materials to (of course) books. We are also a place that sponsors concerts, lectures, dance performances, film screenings and poetry readings. All this and more will be featured on the site. So, take a look, play around and be inspired by the wonderful world of the Wise Guide

Popular Science Magazine Archives Online with FREE Access…03.07.10

From Popular Science:

“We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It’s an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology’s incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

In the future, we’ll be adding more advanced features for searching and browsing, but for now, enter any keyword into the box below and dive in…”

Small Library Management…03.07.10

Social Networking and Its Impact on Libraries…03.07.10

The Future of Open Access in Scholarly Publications and Research…03.06.10

Google Preparing the Index Internet in Real Time?…03.06.10

From The Next Web:

“In a move that might rewrite the entire search market, Google is rumored to be creating a system that will let allow web publishers to submit content to Google for search indexing in real-time.

This of course follows the introduction of PubSubHubBub by Google, a tool to move syndicated content in real-time to aggregators. PubSubHubBub has become a hit among publishers looking to get their information into the market as quickly as possible.

This move by Google, if it comes to fruition, would be a super-PubSubHubBub, not just moving your content into Google Reader at light speed, but also into the hands of the tens of millions of people searching Google every few hours. It would be a bigger move towards a real-time web than Twitter will ever be.

Of course, this would give Google a strong leg up on Bing, and would tie internet publishers even tighter to the internet giant. Many already depend on Google Analytics and Feedburner in their publications Now with PubSubHubBub and the new tool, publishers not working on a Google platform would still be using Google tools to publish…”