Professional Reading Shelf
Public Libraries–United Kingdom
Source: Kable’s Government Computing
Go the library online
From the article, “The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has said an internet visit counts as a trip to the library. The DCMS has defined its position in a new set of public library standards, published on 25 October 2004. It says that efforts to develop an advanced standard for virtual or remote access to libraries have been put on hold due to technical issues, but that it expects the standards to evolve on a ‘rolling basis’…In the meantime, it advises authorities to report the number of visits as one for every time an external user connects to a networked library resource, including a website, for any length of time or purpose. This is regardless of the number of pages viewed.”

We’re glad to see (it makes sense) that the use of web-based tools and services that UK public libraries offer will now be considered “visits” to the libarary. It aligns well with our thinking that we need to demonstrate that the world of the library resources and the help of a librarian extends beyond the walls of a library building.

See Also: Direct to New Public Library Standards
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Data-Mining–Humanities
Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Mellon grant to fund project to develop data-mining software for libraries
“The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is funding the two-year, nearly $600,000 multi-institutional project, which John Unsworth, dean of Illinois’ Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS), will lead. In his winning project, titled ‘Web-based Text-Mining and Visualization for Humanities Digital Libraries,’ Unsworth expects to produce software “for discovering, visualizing and exploring significant patterns across large collections of full-text humanities resources in digital ibraries and collections.” The collections he’s focusing on are at Illinois, Indiana University, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina, Tufts University, the University of Virginia and other universities. In traditional ’search-and-retrieval’ projects, scholars bring specific queries to collections of text and get back more or less useful answers to those queries, Unsworth said. ‘By contrast, the goal of data-mining, including text-mining, is to produce new knowledge by exposing unanticipated similarities or differences, clustering or dispersal, co-occurrence and trends.’”
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Scholarly Publication–Latin Americans
Source: National Science Foundation (via DocuTicker.com)
Latin America Shows Rapid Rise in S&E Articles
From the press release: “The number of science and engineering (S&E) articles credited to Latin American authors almost tripled in the 13-year period from 1988-2001, significantly outpacing authors of other developing regions in the world. The output of Latin American authors grew by about 200 percent, by far the highest rate of increase during the period.”
+ Read the report [PDF]
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Wikipedia
More on the Wikipedia
More press for the Wikipedia. Noted UK info pro and search guru, Phil Bradley is quoted. He says, “‘Theoretically, it’s a lovely idea,’ says librarian and internet consultant Philip Bradley, ‘but practically, I wouldn’t use it; and I’m not aware of a single librarian who would. The main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window.’” As I’ve said before, one of these days (when I find some time) I’ll share my Wikipedia experience. I’ll also remind you that several years ago we read about how the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) was going to be the greatest directory that man ever created. Today, well, it’s not what was promised (and that’s putting it mildly). Finally, I (Gary) would like to briefly comment on a quote from journalist and author Dan Gillmor. He says, “I don’t think anyone is saying Wikipedia is an absolute replacement for a traditional encyclopedia. But in the topics I know something about, I’ve found Wikipedia to be as accurate as any other source I’ve found.” That’s fine Dan, as a journalist you understand something about info quality/authority and REALIZE that other tools exist and where to find them. However, what about all of the Wikipedia users who consider it THE source. Seems like another example of why teaching info skills is so important. Also, since anyone can download Wikipedia data and have it included in a web engine, how do we know that the site owner is constantly downloading the updates and changes?
See Also: ResourceShelf’s Steven Cohen shares some thoughts on LibraryStuff
See Also: Editors Coming to Wikipedia?
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Open Access
Source: ARL
Just Released, FAQ: Enhanced Public Access to NIH Funded Research
Written by ARL’s Prue Adler, Associate Executive Director, Federal Relations and Information Policy

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