Congrats to ResourceShelf friend and colleague, Sarah Houghton-Jan (aka Librarian in Black), on the new look and feel of her site. It’s awesome. It also has a new url (www.LibrarianInBlack.net) of her site. Mega Kudos.
Btw, if you read Librarian in Black via RSS the feed is now at: feeds.feedburner.com/Librarianinblack.
Congrats again Sarah!
There’ll be no carhops on roller skates. And if you’re hankering for a burger and fries, forget it. But if it’s food for the mind you crave — books, music or movies — staffers at some of the Houston Public Library’s most congested branches will be happy to deliver your order right to your car.
The library’s new curbside service, HPL To Go, is being tested at the Looscan Neighborhood Library and the McGovern-Stella Link Library. If trials go well, the service will be extended to other “parking challenged” branches.
HPL To Go joins Info Quest, a program that allows users to text message queries to reference librarians, as the latest additions to the public library’s growing roster of services designed to engage 21st century library patrons.
Source: Houston Chronicle
See Also: Last Week We Posted About Library Text Messaging Services in San Jose and the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
See Also: Here’s a List of Other Libraries Participating in the InfoQuest Text Messaging Service
Hat Tip: Mobile Libraries
It’s always great to read when the press spends some time writing and/or talking about resources that are available from their local libraries.
In this article, Larry Magid, discusses ebooks and other multimedia materials that local public libraries offer at little or no charge. You’ll read about OverDrive, Sony, and the Amazon Kindle.
It’s great to see this type of coverage from such a well-known tech writer, tv. and radio reporter.
OK, I’ll be a stickler. A quick mention of the thousands of ebooks* NetLibrary provides to many libraries (including public libraries) would have been nice. But, let’s not get to greedy. (-:
* At the beginning of August, NetLibrary passed the 200,000 book mark.
Source: San Jose Mercury News
The first in a series of online videos that show how librarians are actively improving and managing their libraries and content repositories has been posted on You Tube. Best Practices Television (BPTV) consists of three-minute interviews with librarians who are part of the ScienceDirect Development Partner Program. These objective, user-generated “webisodes” are intended for use by librarians, research administrators, directors and content managers in their daily working lives.
The first webisode features a subject librarian from Pepperdine University in California who gives some useful tips on how to align faculty with the library.
Access Elsevier YouTube Channel
See Also: Scopus TV (via YouTube)
Seven videos are currently available.
Source: Science | Connect
Innovative software developed in Europe that makes it easier to organise, search and navigate collections of digital images will soon be available to media agencies, photographers and, potentially, anyone trying to keep up with photo-happy Facebook or Flickr friends.
The ImageNotion software, which is expected to go on sale next year, takes a user-friendly approach to semantic image annotation and search, a technology that links the content of photos to concepts so as to make the images understandable by computers.
Such systems have typically required end users to use a manually developed ontology – a lexicon of predefined concepts used to assign machine-readable semantic meaning to information – and then train the software to correctly annotate different images. For example, an apple would need to be defined in an ontology for fruit and then photos of apple trees could be tagged as such.
The ImageNotion system strips away much of that complexity for the end user, combining semantic annotation with a variety of other technologies, from text mining and object recognition to face detection and face identification, in order to permit many more images to be accurately annotated with little or no user intervention.
“When you mention ontologies to most people they just switch off. A photographer, an image agency employee or a web user doesn’t want and shouldn’t have to learn how the technology works, they just want to be able to use it,” explains Gabor Nagypal, who oversaw development of the ImageNotion software as technical and scientific coordinator of the EU-funded IMAGINATION project. “Because of that, our goal has been to make the technology transparent and intuitive to use,” he adds.
Source: ICT CORDIS (via ACM TechNews)
4.6 million digitised books, maps, photographs, film clips and newspapers can now be accessed by internet users on Europeana, Europe’s multilingual digital library (www.europeana.eu). The collection of Europeana has more than doubled since it was launched in November 2008 (IP/08/1747). Today the European Commission, in a policy document declared as its target to bring the number of digitised objects to 10 million by 2010. The Commission also opened a public debate on the future challenges for book digitisation in Europe: the potential of the public and private sector to team up and the need to reform Europe’s too fragmented copyright framework.
However, the substantial progress made with Europeana also brings to the surface the challenges and problems linked to the digitisation process. At the moment, Europeana includes mainly digitised books which are in the public domain and are thus no longer protected by copyright law (which extends to 70 years after the death of the author).
For the moment, Europeana includes, for legal reasons, neither out-of print works (some 90% of the books in Europe’s national libraries), nor orphan works (estimated at 10 – 20% of in-copyright collections) which are still in copyright but where the author cannot be identified.
Europeana also shows that licensing of copyright-protected material in Europe still takes place under a very fragmented legal framework. Earlier this year a French aggregator had to withdraw photographs from Europeana, since it only had the right to disseminate the material on French territory.
To address all these issues, the Commission launched today a public consultation on the future of Europeana and the digitisation of books that will run until 15 November 2009. Questions the Commission asks include: How can it be ensured that digitised material can be made available to consumers EU-wide? Should there be better cooperation with publishers with regard to in-copyright material? Would it be a good idea to create European registries for orphan and out-of print works? How should Europeana be financed in the long term?
Source: EU
Mr. Lu, who is 47, left Yahoo 14 months ago, but now finds himself once again leading the charge against Google. This time, he is backed by a patron that vows to spend even more than Yahoo did on the mission: Microsoft.
Source: NY Times
See Also: For More Analysis of the NY Times Article, Make Sure to Read Greg Sterling’s Post from Search Engine Land.
See Also: Microsoft’s Lu on Bing: ‘A First Step’ (BusinessWeek; May 28. 2009)
More than a third of consumers in Western Europe will access the Internet using their mobile phones by 2014, according to a research report published by Forrester Research on Monday.
According to the study, mobile Internet adoption is set to grow to 39 percent in Western Europe in 2014 from 13 percent in 2008.
“The recession is forcing many consumers to reduce their spending, but they aren’t cutting out their mobile subscriptions altogether,” said Forrester analyst Thomas Husson. He said Internet-centric phones and flat-rate data plans stimulated mobile internet adoption.
This Website provides data on the cost of sending and receiving small amounts of money from one country to another. Called remittances, these international transfers are often initiated by migrant workers. The aggregate cash flows and the number of participants are enormous. In fact, the World Bank estimates that remittances totaled $397 billion in 2008, of which $305 billion went to developing countries, involving some 190 million migrants or 3.0% of world population. The money received is an important source of family (and national) income in many developing economies, representing in some cases a very relevant percentage of the GDP of the receiving countries. The site covers 134 “country corridors” worldwide. The corridors studied flow from 14 major remittance sending countries to 72 receiving countries, representing around 60% of total remittances to developing countries.
The research and publication of remittance pricing worldwide serves four important purposes: benchmarking improvements, allowing comparisons among countries, supporting consumers’ choices, and putting pressure on service providers to improve their services.
Source: World Bank
The observance of Halloween, which dates back to Celtic rituals thousands of years ago, has long been associated with images of witches, ghosts, devils and hobgoblins. Over the years, Halloween customs and rituals have changed dramatically. Today, many of the young and young at heart take a more light-spirited approach. They don scary disguises or ones that may bring on smiles when they go door to door for treats, or attend or host a Halloween party.
Source: U.S Census Bureau
Resource of the Week — Database: Sheet Music Plus
By Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy, Editors
Gary posted this item earlier in the week and, judging by the attention it received, we thought it was worth reprising it as a Resource of the Week. Among other things, we think it could be a very useful reference desk tool.
From a San Francisco Business Times article:
One of the company’s secrets is the sheer volume of music they offer — more than 555,000 titles. The company’s added about 100,000 titles in the last 18 months, plus they’ve collected data on all of their titles, and created a searchable database of printed music. That helps the company when its trying to move into new markets, such as music teachers. In fact, Sheet Music Plus signed up 17,000 music teachers for a rebate program.David Jahnke is vice president of national sales at Hal Leonard, a music publisher that has 140,000 titles at the Sheet Music Plus store. He says that Hal Leonard is the exclusive print provider of Disney, EMI, Universal and Rogers and Hammerstein, to name a few, so if people want sheet music from any of those sources they have to buy Hal Leonard.
…
Jahnke also finds Sheet Music Plus’ comprehensive database useful because it’s made for everyone’s catalogue. When he goes to a music store, he often sees the employees looking on Sheet Music Plus to figure out who publishes what.
+ Use the advanced search interface to search for sheet music.
+ On the home page, you can browse by artists and composers.
Museums and Libraries Meet Lifelong Learning Needs for 21st Century
In the 21st century, workers and students need more diverse skills to compete in a global economy. The Obama Administration has called for the development of 21st century skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity. At the same time the capacity of cultural institutions to engage the public in innovative learning experiences has created a new dynamic for delivering library and museum service. Libraries and museums that adapt to these changes are playing a significant role in delivering 21st century skills to learners of all ages.
As part of its mission to engage libraries and museums, community stakeholders and policy makers at the national, state and local level in a concerted effort to meet the educational, economic, civic, and cultural needs of communities, IMLS is releasing Museums, Libraries and 21st Century Skills. The website provides a quick online assessment for libraries and museums to evaluate their readiness to engage the public and to deliver 21st century skills, a downloadable pdf of a report and in-depth assessment matrix for library and museum practioners and policy makers.
+ Museums, Libraries, and 21st Century Skills
Source: Institute of Museum and Library Services
About a month ago we posted an article containing a database compilation with salary information for public employees in 22 states.
On Sunday, a large database with this type of information for over 134,000 public employees in California [64 government entities as of today] went live online.
You can access the database here and search by:
+ Name
+ Public Entity
+ Total Pay
+ OT Pay
An advanced search interface is also available.
From an Editors Note:
Today[Sunday], we are launching a searchable online database with the salaries of more than 134,000 public employees — people paid with taxpayer money. The database is the result of work done by more than two dozen Bay Area News Group reporters around the region. Although we include 64 governmental entities, we plan to continuously update the database as we obtain more salary information. Providing this type of information supports our belief that government transparency is vital to democracy. Indeed, the Contra Costa Times filed a lawsuit in 2004 based on this belief. In a state Supreme Court case decided in our favor in 2007, 11 judges agreed. The result is one of the most comprehensive local government salary databases ever compiled in California.
Source: Inside Bay Area
The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) announced today that they received almost 2,200 applications requesting nearly $28 billion in funding for proposed broadband projects reaching all 50 U.S. states and territories and the District of Columbia. This is the first round of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding aimed at expanding broadband access and adoption to help bridge the technological divide and create jobs building Internet infrastructure, with $4 billion available through loans, grants, and loan/grant combinations.
The Recovery Act provided a total of $7.2 billion to NTIA and RUS to expand access to and adoption of broadband services. Of that funding, NTIA will utilize $4.7 billion to deploy broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas in the United States, expand public computer center capacity, and encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service. RUS will invest $2.5 billion to facilitate broadband deployment primarily in rural communities. Approximately $2.4 billion from RUS and up to $1.6 billion from NTIA is available in this first grant round.
Applications came in from a diverse range of parties including state, local, and tribal governments; nonprofits; industry; anchor institutions, such as libraries, universities, community colleges, and hospitals; public safety organizations; and other entities in rural, suburban, and urban areas.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Secretary Napolitano Announces New Directives on Border Searches of Electronic Media
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced new directives to enhance and clarify oversight for searches of computers and other electronic media at U.S. ports of entry—a critical step designed to bolster the Department’s efforts to combat transnational crime and terrorism while protecting privacy and civil liberties.
…
The new directives address the circumstances under which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can conduct border searches of electronic media—consistent with the Department’s Constitutional authority to search other sensitive non-electronic materials, such as briefcases, backpacks and notebooks, at U.S. borders.The directives, available at DHS.gov, will enhance transparency, accountability and oversight of electronic media searches at U.S. ports of entry and includes new administrative procedures designed to reflect broad considerations of civil liberties and privacy protections—measures designed to ensure that officers and agents understand their responsibilities to protect individual private information and that individuals understand their rights.
Searches of electronic media, permitted by law and carried out at borders and ports of entry, are vital to detecting information that poses serious harm to the United States, including terrorist plans, or constitutes criminal activity—such as possession of child pornography and trademark or copyright infringement.
+ CBP Border Search of Electronic Devices Containing Information
(PDF, 10 pages – 4.87 MB)
+ ICE Border Searches of Electronic Media (PDF, 10 pages – 453 KB)
+ Privacy Impact Assessment: Border Searches of Electronic Information
(PDF, 51 pages – 6 MB)
Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Firefox Plug-In Frees Court Records, Threatens Judiciary Profits
Access to the nation’s federal law proceedings just got a public interest hack, thanks to programmers from Princeton, Harvard and the Internet Archive, who released a Firefox plug-in designed to make millions of pages of legal documents free.
Free as in beer and free as in speech.
The Problem: Federal courts use an archaic, document-tracking system known as PACER as their official repository for complaints, court motions, case scheduling and decisions. The system design resembles a DMV computer system, circa 1988 — and lacks even the most basic functionality, such as notifications when a case gets a new filing. But what’s worse is that PACER charges 8 cents per page (capped at $2.40 per doc) and even charges for searches — an embarrassing limitation on public access to information, especially when the documents are copyright-free.
The Solution: RECAP, a Firefox-only plugin, that rides along as one usually uses PACER — but it automatically checks if the document you want is already in its own database. The plug-in’s tagline, ‘Turning PACER around,’ alludes to the fact that its name comes from spelling PACER backwards. RECAP’s database is being seeded with millions of bankruptcy and Federal District Court documents, which have been donated, bought or gotten for free by open-government advocate Carl Malamud and fellow travelers such as Justia.
And if the document you request isn’t already in the public archive, then RECAP adds the ones you purchase to the public repository.
Source: Wired
Hat tip: JM
A new database for Irish genealogy and research was yesterday released online by the National Library of Ireland.
The free searchable version of the April 1911 family census contains information from the 32 counties and is searchable using any combination of name, surname, age, sex and place
It gives access not only to a database of information but to images of the original census forms which would have been handwritten by the head of the household.
The project, which has so far taken three years of work, has information which is much more personal than the online census release by the CSO earlier this year.
In June, the results of every census conducted in Ireland from 1926 to 1991 were made available online to the public for the first time.
Source: IrishTimes.com
A new tool that for the first time allows people to easily see how climate change will directly impact their states shows America’s heartland will suffer the greatest jump in temperatures over the next century – with some states potentially heating up more than 10 degrees F, according to an analysis by The Nature Conservancy.
The state-by-state, country-by-country temperature projections are part of a new tool called Climate Wizard that allows people to use an interactive map to explore past and projected climate change data on their computers. With Climate Wizard, users can zoom in on any location to quickly see how temperatures and precipitation may change by month, season or year under different emission scenarios.
Source: Nature Conservancy
Wolfram Alpha, the “computational knowledge engine” developed by Mathematica, will soon allow its dynamic search results to be queried and mashed up in a variety of new ways.
According to the Guardian, Wolfram will be opening its curated data to be queried via an application programming interface, or API. Currently, you can view results in a browser, export them as a PDF, or “play” them using a Mathematica plug-in. The ability to use the data on other sites and for other means, such as computations in spreadsheets, is appealing, if not earth-shattering.
Source: News.com
See Also: Wolfram Alpha to open data feeds (via The Guardian)
At the moment, Alpha generates results that you can see on the website, export as a PDF or “play” using a Mathematica plug-in. Soon, Wolfram will be opening up its curated data that can be queried using an API, Conrad Wolfram said. This will provide yet another source of data that you can use to create projects and mash-ups with the information that we [The Guardian] provide at the Data Store. Alpha may not be a generalised search engine, but it is something very powerful.
Hat Tip: P.W.
…Thomson Reuters has been dealing with another change in its market. Thanks to the rise of the internet, today’s traders are more familiar with clicking their way through YouTube than memorising a complicated series of codes for using Reuters’ trading screens and information feeds.
“You see very different behaviour from a 25-year-old just out of the London School of Economics to a 55-year-old who has been trading for the last 25 years,” said Wenig.
“People who grew up with Google have totally different expectations of how to interact with information and media. We can’t ignore that.”
Source: The Sunday Times
Subscribe to the
ResourceShelf
Newsletter »
Also check out DocuTicker, a compendium of 'grey literature' (reports published by government agencies, think tanks, research institutes and other public interest groups) available for free on the web.
You are currently browsing the ResourceShelf blog archives for August, 2009.