December
-
December 23. Photoblogggers of the world unite -
at photoblogs.com
-
December 19. Anne Clyde is a professor of social
science at the University of Iceland (home
page), webmaster of School libraries
online, author of a new book
(expensive) on blogs and libraries. Her lecture
materials on the same topic are free.
Roddy MacLeod from Herriott-Watt University gives a full update on
RSS in the library context - in "RSS:
Less hype, more action".
And from the well-known Chronicle
of higher education comes Arts
& Letters Daily - it would be a full-time job following all
the juicy bits and pieces referred to. I liked the attack on Derrida
though - his interpretations are rather more complicated than necessary.
- December 18. I have a definite feeling that the flow
of web news is more intense than usual these weeks.
Is that an end of the year effect? Get the good stuff out before Christmas?
Google is bursting with initiatives (and money) - more on those later.
| Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort
when you have forgotten your aim. Santayana (1863-1952) |
- Today I signal FreePint
- " a network of 71 822 information researchers globally"
- as an interesting model for a profession-specific online community-and-portal.
You can read about a string of recent
books for information professionals and order the ones you like
- and can afford - from Amazon (UK).
November
- November 20. For most users Google offers much faster
and more convenient ways of finding information than ordinary libraries
do. The quality control is weaker - but most users do not care. They
are satisficers, not optimizers. Convenience is king.
With Google scholar (beta),
Google moves deeper into the academic field. My prediction: Students
and journalists will love it. Teachers will both hate and love it -
depending on what it does to their students. Scholars proper will add
it to their tool box , but not rely on it for deep research.
Google is undermining traditional ways of using libraries. Google
can not be stopped by invocations. It must be recognized as a force
and included in our strategies. Google can only be managed by new
forms of instructional design that include teachers, librarians and
academic managers.
Google is a creature of information science: golem
and Gollum at once. As Pogo
says: We have met the enemy and he is us.
More at: Web
Search--Google
Big News: "Google Scholar" is Born
By Shirl Kennedy and Gary Price
-
November 19. - ‘We need to get librarians
on to this list of creative people — to have young people queuing
up to work for libraries because they’re vibrant, contemporary,
socially powerful places,’ More - much more - at CILIP.
A
reflective librarian`s bookshelf.
- CILIP = The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
is Great Britain`s central library (++) organisation, with more
than 20 000 members.
- November 15. Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker were
both present at the conference Digital
& Social in Bergen. In 2002 they published the excellent article
Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research
tool (PDF)
-
| Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Japanese error message |
November 14. Exciting special issue on digital
libraries from Journal of digital information (no.
5, 2004). This electronic, peer-reviewed journal seems to have a very
decent publication
policy as well: - Authors retain copyright, providing more flexibility
and fewer restrictions than many publishers impose.
- November 8. From the consumer`s point of view information
is a public good: it does not - like a cake - diminish
by being shared. But producing good information takes
time and effort.
- The web offers completely new ways of producing and accessing
information. The institutions set up in the past to balance the
needs of producers and consumers (copyright), need to be re-equilibrated.
- Prolonging the old system will provide super profits to the biggest
owners (like big publishers), who can reduce their costs and increase
their sales at the same time. Developing new institutions take time
- but is feasible. Follow Open
Access News.
- November 7. For librarians, Wikipedia is
a very interesting experiment. One of the main purposes of libraries
is quality control of texts. Both public and academic libraries provide
"reader`s advisory services". Wikipedia has a new approach
to quality, based on self-regulating networks rather than hierarchical
editorial control. Read more about it - in Wikipedia`s replies
to common objections.
- November 6. Wiki collects quotes
in many languages.
- November 5. Libraries 2040. Seven
libraries of the future. (PDF). From Scandinavian Public Libraries
Quarterly.
- November 4. The joint public and academic
San Jose library offers a variety of reference
channels - including immediate assistance online - 24 hours a day, 7
days a week! Whaddya know?
- November 3. Oslo University College is developing
professional links with China.
- November 2. Any attempt to reform the university
without attending to the system of which it is an integral part is like
trying to do urban renewal in New York City from the twelfth story up.
Ivan Illich
- November 1. Mary Ellen Bates
- supersearcher
October
- October 23. Does the new, commercial, SMS-based answering
service 82ask threaten the reference
services of the world?
September
- September 21. Ross Shimmon - Secretary General of
IFLA - says: A
library is a collection of materials. I would prefer: - a bundle
of services. A library is what it does.
- September 15. Kenney, Anne R. et al. (2003). Google
Meets eBay. What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative
Information Providers.
- September 11. Important article on chat reference:
To
Chat or Not to Chat (Part 2) by Steve Coffman and Linda Arret.
August
- August 22. From real history tests: - The Greeks
were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history.
The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a young female moth.
- August 20. 1315-1500. Lecture
on web resources for theatre studies, Centre for Ibsen Studies, University
of Oslo.
- August 19. The mission of the Evergreen
Library Project is to facilitate accessibility to books, periodicals,
multimedia resources and other technology to promote information literacy
and critical thinking in the Chinese middle and high school curriculum.
More
...
- August 18. TILT.
Three modules, about 30 minutes each, on information retrieval for students
- from the University of Texas.
- August 8. A nice summary
- with graphics - of The Reflective Practitioner: Foundation of Teamwork
& Leadership
| If you're going through hell, keep going.
~Winston Churchill
|
July
- July 28. Access for
everybody! The public library in Ask reports to the annual meeting
of the Association of Hungarian
Librarians - Miskolc.
- July 26. SMIL is a new inter-Nordic portal for health
information. More
...
- July 25. In Finland, I read, The Ministry of
Education’s recommended norm is one library professional per 1,000
population. Source.
Happy Finns ...
- July 24. The Dutch are dreaming about libraries
in 2040. Happy Dutch ...
- July 22. UK public libraries abandoned by 2020? BBC
reports
- July 21. The Library History Round Table
of the American Library Association exists to facilitate communication
among scholars and students of library history, more
...
- July 16. Bonnie Skaalid (1999!). Web
design for instruction remains a friendly and sensible intro.
- July 12. Steven Kreis has written a very nice introduction
to the study of history: The
history guide - revolutionizing education in the spirit of Socratic
wisdom.
- July 11. As teachers and students turn
to the web, plagiarism becomes a plague. More than 250 firms sell ready-made
papers - see Internet
paper mills. We write excellent term papers for really cheap
prices. More ...
.
- July 10. The Google dance: Once a month, and
totally unannounced, Google has a major shift in it's rankings. This
is when Google "tweaks" is algorithm. More
...
- July 3. Within a decade, most travel bookings
are likely to move online says The Economist in
its reports on digital
travel.
- July 2. New essay: Enter
the dragon. From print to web in library education. Contribution
to Festschrift for Wanda Pindel, Cracow.
June
- June 20. The internet still remains capable of
producing surprises. New services can leave people wondering how they
ever managed without them. The most notable of these is the search engine.
The Economist. A
perfect market. A survey of e-commerce.
- June 19. More quotes from history tests: In the
first Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and
threw the java. The games were messier then than they show on tv now.
- June 18. A second-class intellect, but a first-class
temperament. Said about Roosevelt.
May
- May 28. Going abroad - until June 17.
- May 20. It`s guru time! Graphical presentation of
data : Edward Tufte =
Usability : Jakob Nielsen.
- May 19. Studying too hard? Leave it to the experts
- at Guaranteed Papers.com:
- We don't hire any non-native English writers from developing
countries who will work for less than minimum wage and ultimately
shows in the quality of the paper you receive. That is why some
Pakistani sites can charge you such a low price?
- Who do you think writes their papers? Don't gamble with your
education - leave it to the experts...
- May 15. From real history tests:
- Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.
- He was a actual hysterical figure as well as being in the
Bible. It sounds like he was sort of busy too.
- May 15. Bitesize - an e-Learning project from the
BBC.
- The online service Bitesize
covers the main subjects and breaks the syllabus down into ‘bitesize’
portions for revision, together with tests and tips. It is complemented
by TV programmes and books. Bitesize was used by around nine out
of ten 16-year-olds taking exams in 2003.
- May 9. Al-Ahram evaluated the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
in a series of articles
in 2003.
- May 4. What happens in scientific publishing? Follow
the
Money Trail - says the Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries
(ASA)
- May 3. Wide enough
for libraries? is a new paper, for the conference Professional
Information on the Internet, Kraków, Poland 31st May - 1st
June 2004.
April
- April 10. A US professor explains
the how and why of his class. The subject is the Ancient Middle East,
but the principles are universal.
March
- March 29. Free pictures? Wikipedia has the best overview
of public
domain resources that I have seen.
- March 23. Two years ago I met a dedicated reader
in Bergen.
- March 14. Report from
teaching visit to Cracow March 6-13.
February
- February 27. In the United States, librarians from
MARS make a useful selection of Best Free Reference Web Sites:
2003
- 2002
- 2001
- February 25. Google is chased by competitors like
Teoma
- - Instead of ranking results based upon the sites with the
most links leading to them, Teoma analyzes the Web as it is organically
organized — in naturally-occurring communities that are about
or related to the same subject.
- February 24. Follow the news - with Google News
Alerts (beta).
- February 10. Reference around the clock: KnowItNow24x7
is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- February 6. Brandeis University offers library
intensive courses. Students are expected to use the library intensively,
and librarians participate in the teaching.
- February 5. What is aqua regia? Transhumance? Or
paraphernalia? Try Google
Glossary. Also:
- February 4. Kenney, Anne R. et al. (2003). Google
Meets eBay. What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative
Information Providers. D-lib magazine.
- February 3. The (excellent) Swedish journal Human
IT has a nice collection of links to the title
pages of free, electronic journals in the field of library and information
science.
- February 2. What are libraries for? Focus on the
user, not on the product. Not information, but solutions. Not books,
but worlds. This is the SUV
Idea (from Library world)
January
- January 8. With friends like these,
who needs enemies? (Tip from Helge
Ridderstrøm).
- January 4. Three thousand Daumier woodcuts, one million
dollars to the library - and healthy beef kabobs. More
news from Brandeis University.
[2005] - [2004][2003]
[2002] |