Archive for the ‘Search News’ Category

How About an iPhone/iTouch Front-End App for Google Wave? It’s Here!

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

Yes, we already posted about a new iPhone/iTouch app today (NASA Images) but like they say, one iPhone App deserves another, especially on the weekend.

Here’s an iPhone/iTouch app that some people have been asking for.

It’s a “very simple” front-end for Google Wave from company named Waveboard. It’s not an official Google product.

The price? 99 cents. So, if you don’t like the app and/or don’t see a need for it (or Google Wave in general), you’re not out a great deal of $$$.

According to the iPhone/iTouch home page for Waveboard is allows you to:

+ Shake your phone with the app running will provide access to reload or logout features.
+ Have website links shown in an integrated browser
+ Allows pages can be “handed off” to Safari
+ Have the option to use landscape view

Perhaps the most interesting and useful feature in this release is push notifications. This page and the embedded video shows that it’s a fast and simple operation to get everything running.

Here’s an overview:

From the outset, Google Wave “push” is only available if you use the Mac version of Waveboard (free)

You’ll need

1) An app named Prowl which can do a bunch of things beyond Waveboard installed on both your iPhone.The Prowl home page shows many positive comments from well-known iPhone app reviewers. It costs $2.99 and even if you give up on Waveboard, as we said a moment ago, Prowl has several other uses.

2) You’ll also need either Growl (for Macs) or Growl for Windows. Both applications are free.

So, if you just want to test Google Wave on iPhone/iTouch you can spend $.99 and be up and running in no time. Of course, you’ll also need one a Google Wave login.

If you want to enable Google Wave push notifications (only available at this time for Mac), it’s another $2.99 and a few more minutes of your time. It’s really not difficult.

This is very cool! Push notifications (using Prowl and Growl) are also available for Google Voice (1), Google Voice (2), and Twitter.

The October, 2009 Issue of the IFLA Journal is Now Available

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

Access the Complete Issue (35.3) (PDF)

This Issue (full text online, free) includes:

+ Editorial: Reading, Information Literacy and Professional Development

+Reading Sources and Reading Spaces in Honduras

+ Information Literacy and Scholarly Investigation: a British perspective

+ Our Space: professional development for new graduates and professionals in Australia

+ Open Access Repositories in Computer Science and Information Technology: an evaluation

+ The Library Services to People with Special Needs Section of IFLA: an historical overview

Access the Complete Issue (35.3; PDF)

Source: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions

UK: Results of a Contest to Create Innovative Applications Using Library Data

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

From the Announcement:

Figures showing everyday use of a university library are the unlikely stars of a JISC-funded competition showcasing innovative approaches to presenting library data.

The winning entrant, an undergraduate computer scientist, created an imaginative ‘book galaxy’ showing books as stars in the galaxy of library resources accessed by University of Huddersfield students and staff – scroll down this page to see it.

Note: You can try Book Galaxy at the bottom of this page.

Alex Parker’s space-age entry presents library data in three different ‘galaxy’ views where library books are represented as moving stars that change speed and location according to how popular they are within a given course. They also join together in constellations to show books on connected topic, while orbited by meteors representing the courses of the students using those books

[Snip]

Starry-eyed Alex, a University of Southampton student, admits that he was “amazed” to hear the news of his winning entry. He explains: “The main reason I entered this competition is that I think that doing a keyword search and presenting lists of books to users is not always the best way to find what you want in a library, especially if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. I had an idea that if you linked similar books together in a ‘web’ and did that for every book in the library interesting patterns would emerge.

[Snip]

Other entries include an application which suggests a subject course based on the books you’ve enjoyed reading, a facility for sharing your reading list with others, and way of finding out which books students on a given course have taken out, as well as how much they’ve saved by using the library rather than buying them.

Source: JISC

Semantic Web: Can Your Computer Read a Web Page Without Your Help? Soon it Might

Friday, November 6th, 2009

From the Post:

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web format, and the organization that keeps the standards of the Web, the World Wide Web Consortium, have recently been promoting the idea of making the Web machine-readable, or a Web of data. What does that mean? After all, at least in one sense, the Web is already being read by a machine — namely your own computer — when you surf the Web.

The article goes on to provide an example of what might happen if you were travelling for business or pleasure. This use of the semantic web comes from Dean Allemang, chief scientist at Semantic Web consulting firm TopQuadrant.

Source: GCN Tech Blog

See Also: Dean Allemang’s Weblog, S is For Semantics

GAO — National Archives: Progress and Risks in Implementing its Electronic Records Archive Initiative

Friday, November 6th, 2009

National Archives: Progress and Risks in Implementing its Electronic Records Archive Initiative (PDF: 154 KB)
From Highlights (PDF; 45 KB):

NARA has completed two of five planned increments of ERA, but has experienced schedule delays and cost overruns, and several functions planned for the system’s initial release were deferred. Although NARA initially planned for the system to be capable of ingesting federal and presidential records in September 2007, the two system increments to support those records did not achieve initial operating capability until June 2008 and December 2008, respectively. In addition, NARA reportedly spent about $80 million on the base increment, compared to its planned cost of about $60 million. Finally, a number of functions originally planned for the base increment were deferred to later increments, including the ability to delete records and to ingest redacted records. In fiscal year 2010, NARA plans to complete the third increment, which is to include new systems for Congressional records and public access, and begin work on the fourth.

Source: Government Accountability Office (David A. Powner, director, information technology management issues, before the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform)

David Ferriero Confirmed by U.S. Senate as 10th Archivist of the United States

Friday, November 6th, 2009

From the Announcement:

Today, the United States Senate voted to confirm David Ferriero as the 10th Archivist of the United States. Mr. Ferriero was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries and is a leader in the field of library science. Mr. Ferriero, who was nominated by President Obama on July 28, 2009, will succeed Professor Allen Weinstein who resigned as Archivist in December 2008 for health reasons. Deputy Archivist Adrienne Thomas is serving as the Acting Archivist until Mr. Ferriero assumes his duties.

As the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL), Mr. Ferriero was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating the four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public library system in the United States and one of the largest research libraries in the world. Mr. Ferriero was in charge of collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions.

The announcement goes on to provide additional information about Mr. Ferriero’s as well as background about NARA.

Source: NARA
Hat Tip: Debra Bade

Research from Europe: A New System Preserves the Right to Privacy in Internet Searches

Friday, November 6th, 2009

From an ACM TechNews Summary

Researchers from Rovira i Virgili University, Autonoma of Barcelona, and Oberta of Catalonia have developed a system that protects the privacy of Internet search engine users through a new computer protocol. “It is a model based on cryptographic tools, which distort the profile of users when they use search engines on Internet in such a way that their privacy is preserved,” says Rovira i Virgili University’s Alexandre Viego. The researchers note that there are systems that provide anonymous navigation, but say their system provides a significant improvement in response time over anonymous systems, though it still delays searches slightly. The new protocol has already been tested in both closed research center intranets and on the Internet, and the results have made the researchers optimistic about a global implementation model. The researchers are currently working on the development of a final user version, and believe that it will soon be easy to integrate the system into the major platforms and browsers.

Read the Complete News Item

Source: AlphaGalileo

Digital Preservation: ACM Will Partner with Portico and CLOCKSS for Preservation of Its Digital Library Resources

Friday, November 6th, 2009

From an Announcement:

ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery) announced today that it is providing its institutional library customers with advanced electronic archiving services to preserve their valuable electronic resources. These services, provided by Portico and CLOCKSS, address the scholarly community’s critical need for long-term solutions that assure reliable, secure, deliverable access to their burgeoning digital collection of scholarly works. ACM is offering these services to protect the vast online collection of resources in its Digital Library (DL), which are used by over 1 million computing professionals and students worldwide.

“By partnering with Portico and CLOCKSS, we are able to meet a growing demand in the library community for a trusted, reliable third-party archive, and to ensure that digital collections remain accessible to future scholars, researchers, and students,” said Scott Delman, ACM Group Publisher. “Scientific discovery and the educational process are not possible without reliable access to the accumulated scholarship of the past and secure preservation of the scholarly record, and these agreements are a clear step forward with the relationship between the ACM and the library community.”

By investing in long-term digital preservation of content, ACM’s aim is to make it easier for libraries to accelerate their transition away from print and free up resources invested in print collections in favor of new and innovative electronic products and services.

Much More After a Click
(more…)

Twitter Begins Work to Improve Relevance of Trending Topic Searches

Friday, November 6th, 2009

A post on the Twitter Blog says that the company is beginning to “experiment” to improve the relevance when you run a search on a trending topic by returning “higher quality” and thereby more useful results.

The improvement won’t be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results.

Trending topics on Twitter can be found on the Twitter home page or, if you’re logged in, you can find them in the right column below the search box.

Remember, today’s blog post is specifically about Twitter’s own search engine.

Source: Twitter Blog
Hat Tip: Search Engine Land

Don’t Forget

Many other Twitter search tools are available. Four examples are Collecta, OneRiot,tweetzi, and the new Twitter search tool from Bing.

On the Definition of the 21st Century Academic Library

Friday, November 6th, 2009

From the Article:

“Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” said Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University. “Kaput. Finito. And we need to move on to a new concept of what the academic library is.”

Thorin prefaced her comments by saying that for the purposes of the debate she would be taking an extreme position on the fate of libraries. But her argument tapped into theories about the obsolescence of libraries — traditionally defined — that have grown along with the emergence of Web-based reference tools, e-books, digitized and born-digital content, and other technologies that some see as changing essential library functions.

“The scientists have mostly gone online with their library needs,” Thorin said. “Cutting-edge scholars in the humanities are building new disciplines and online environments are are, in effect, libraries themselves; they are diffuse, collaborative, non-hierarchical, always changing.”

[Snip]

Richard E. Luce, director of university libraries at Emory University, countered that just because libraries are transitioning from print to online does not mean they will cease to be libraries.

“The issue is really about library as place, whether you need the bricks and mortar,” Luce said. “So let’s look at that.” Why did thousands of college technologists come to Educause? “To interact with one another — to talk, to collaborate, to think, to communicate, to be with one another,” he said. “Isn’t that what we do in our best libraries?”

The library still is, and will continue to be, the centerpiece of a campus, Luce said. The history of libraries, he said, has been marked by evolution: They were founded as places where materials were collected and stored. Then they shifted their focus toward connecting clients with resources. Then, with the addition of creature comforts such as coffee shops, they became “experience” centered, effectively rendering student unions obsolete.

Access the Complete Article

Source: Inside Higher Ed
Hat Tip: Library Stuff

New Video on Web Archiving

Friday, November 6th, 2009

From the Description:

Web content changes all the time. If we don’t save that content before it disappears, a major part of our cultural history will be lost.

The Library of Congress is working to provide permanent access to web content of historical importance. It selects websites for collection, requests permissions from the website owners, addresses the technology of collecting websites and preserves the websites and makes them available.

This video examines those four challenges.

Access the Video (embedded here)

A text transcript is also available (PDF)

Source: National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program

Lists: Agenda Setters: Top 50 Most Influential Individuals in Worldwide Technology and IT Industries

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Overview ||| Complete Special Report

There are six lists available. The primary list is Agenda Setters. Other lists can be accessed via the down menu at the top of each list.

+ Top Agenda Setters (The Primary List) (Sir Tim Berners-Lee #1)

+ Top Business Leaders (Steve Jobs #1)

+ Top Entrepreneurs (Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams #1)

+ Top Politicos (Richard Thomas #1)

+ Top Techies (Werner Vogels #1)

+ Top Visionaries (Sir Tim Berners-Lee #1)

Each entry also contains a profile.

Lists from previous years can be found on the about half way down on the right side under the header, “Agenda Setters Past.”

Source: Silicon.com

Open Book Alliance Releases Baseline Requirements for Revised Google Book Settlement Proposal

Friday, November 6th, 2009

On Monday (November 9th), a revised proposed settlement (aka Settlement 2.0) from Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publisher will be released. The Open Book Alliance (OBA) has posted on its web site what they call “baseline requirements” for the Settlement 2.0.

The Special Libraries Association and The New York Library Association are members of the OBA.

From the Blog Post:

The Open Book Alliance is issuing the following baseline requirements that the new settlement proposal must meet if it is to achieve those critical objectives. These requirements reflect the collective expression of concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice, authors, publishers, academics, libraries, foreign nations, state Attorneys General, consumer advocacy groups, and many others, and thus we think it appropriate to review the revised settlement within this framework.

[Snip]

+ The settlement must not grant Google an exclusive set of rights (de facto or otherwise) or result in any one entity gaining control over access to and distribution of the world’s largest digital database of books.

+ Authors and other rights holders must retain meaningful rights and the ability to determine the use of their works that have been scanned by Google.

+ The settlement must result in the creation of a true digital library that grants all researchers and users, commercial and non-commercial, full access that guarantees the ability to innovate on the knowledge it contains.

+ All class members must be treated equitably.

+ The settlement cannot provide for competition by making others engage in future litigation.

+ Congress must retain the exclusive authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to set copyright policy.

+ All rights holders impacted by the settlement must have a meaningful ability to receive notice, understand its terms and opt-out.

+ The parties that negotiated the settlement must live under the terms to which they seek to bind others, rather than their own separately negotiated arrangements.

Access the Complete Blog Post

Source: Open Book Alliance

See Also: Press Review: Judge Chin Sets Nov. 9 Deadline For Revised Google Book Settlement (via ResourceShelf, October 7, 2009)

Factiva Expanding Web Presence in Wall Street Journal Professional Edition

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Barbara Quint writes:

The primary attraction for the new Wall Street Journal Professional Edition [an online resource] lies in its incorporation of Factiva content. The service will integrate content from 17,000 Factiva sources with WSJ.com content to create news flows covering key industries, companies, etc. Users will also be able to search a 1-year archive of Factiva and a 2-year archive of WSJ.com content. The price will run $49 a month or about $600 a year; that [our emphasis] will include access to full-text articles for no additional transactional pricing, unlike the $2.95 per article paid under most other Factiva subscriptions. The product has already launched with enterprise customers and will launch for consumers in January 2010.

Much More in the Complete Article including a Screenshot of the WSJ Professional Edition

Source: Info Today NewsBreaks

MLA to Include International Bibliography in the Summon Web-Scale Discovery Service

Friday, November 6th, 2009

From the Announcement:

The Modern Language Association (MLA) has signed an agreement with Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest, to include [its] MLA International Bibliography in the Summon web-scale discovery service. The agreement enables the Bibliography to be discoverable through the Summon service…

The MLA International Bibliography provides a subject index to print and electronic books, articles and web sites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Coverage includes literature from all over the world–Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. Folklore is represented by folk literature, music, art, rituals, and belief systems. Linguistics and language materials range from history and theory of linguistics, comparative linguistics, semantics, stylistics, and syntax to translation. Other topics include literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater), history of printing and publishing, rhetoric and composition, and teaching. Compiled by the staff of the MLA Office of Bibliographic Information Services with the cooperation of more than 100 contributing bibliographers in the United States and abroad, it presently includes over 2.2 million records with 72,000 books and articles added annually.
(more…)

New Briefing Paper from UKOLN: An Introduction to Microformats

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

A new addition to the very excellent collection of briefing papers made available by UKOLN.

An Introduction to Microformats (Briefing Paper 71)
The link is to a MS Word Document. When the HTML becomes available we will link to it. At the present time the HTML link is incorrect.

This document provides an introduction to microformats, with a description of what microformats are, the benefits they can provide and examples of their usage. In addition the document discusses some of the limitations of microformats and provides advice on best practices for use of microformats.

Review the Entire List of Briefing Papers from UKOLN

New Research Paper from Stanford InfoLab: A Dynamic Navigation Guide for Webpages

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Ed. Note: One thing that we used to do more of on ResourceShelf was to occasionally link to new and hopefully interesting research papers that we came across . Granted, the papers could sometimes get very technical (even for the editors) but those readers who could read the technical content appreciated the material while non-techies could get a good idea about the research by reading the abstract and usually the first several paragraphs of the paper. So, let’s restart this feature again with a new paper the InfoLab at Stanford Univesity.

A Dynamic Navigation Guide for Webpages (4 pages; PDF)
by Jawed Karim and Ioannis Antonellis and Varun Ganapathi and Hector Garcia-Molina
Note: This version of the paper has been submitted for publication

Navigating websites is often a frustrating process: Website visitors, despite their widely varying and individual information-seeking needs, must contend with static, general-purpose link structures that have been set in place by website owners. Because many visitors tend to browse for the same content, they are individually repeating the same navigation activity. Visitors would benefit from being able to take advantage of the collective search and discovery work that has already been performed by other visitors. Although many attempts have been made to improve website navigation by tapping into the “wisdom of the crowds”, the currently available approaches suffer from maintenance, usability, and user interface integration issues. We present a navigation guide for websites that provides visitors with helpful suggestions based on their browsing activity and the browsing activity of prior, similar visitors. Our navigation guide does not require any downloads, can be easily added to websites by website owners, and automatically remains up-to-date.

Sections of the Paper Include:

+ Introduction
+ Current Methods
+ The Wisdom of Crowds
+ A Dynamic Navigation Guide
+ How it Works
+ Related Work
+ Conclusion and Future Work

Source: Stanford InfoLab

“New Librarianship”–Slides, Audio, and Screencast of R. David Lankes Keynote @ Charleston Conference

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

The always interesting and though provoking, R. David Lankes from Syracuse University, gave a keynote address at the Charleston Conference today. An abstract, his slides, audio and and a screencast (with audio) of his address are already available on his site.

The title of the keynote is, “New Librarianship.”

Abstract:

The best days of librarianship are ahead of us. However, to get there the field must step back, refocus, and reexamine our core principles. We as a profession have become so focused on the trees of standards and process that we are now at risk from missing the larger forest of opportunities. This talk will present a view of a new librarianship, one focused on knowledge and action instead of artifacts and collection. The presentation will look beyond the trends of today’s technologies to a durable new librarianship that focuses on innovation, leadership, and service.

+ Direct to Slides (PDF)

+ Direct to Audio (MP3)

+ Direct to Screencast (Audio and Video)

See Also: R. David Lankes Bio

Source: Virtual Dave…Real Blog

See Also: If you’re looking for a summary and “flavor” from the presentation, LJ provides coverage. Of course, from what we heard, there is plenty of audience laughter.

Cool! Digitizing and Creating Virtual Archives in 3Dt

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

From the EurekAlert Announcement:

If you don’t have the time to travel to Florence, you can still see Michelangelo’s statue of David on the Internet, revolving in true-to-life 3D around its own axis. This is a preview of what scientists are developing in the European joint project 3D-COFORM. The project aims to digitize the heritage in museums and provide a virtual archive for works of art from all over the world. Vases, ancient spears and even complete temples will be reproduced three-dimensionally. In a few years’ time museum visitors will be able to revolve Roman amphorae through 360 degrees on screen, or take off on a virtual flight around a temple.

Source: Eurekalert
Hat Tip: AMIA Net

See Also: Much More About the Project via the 3D-CONFORM Web Site