DrWeb's Domain

Digital Downloads Growing at Public Library | NBC San Diego

via www.nbcsandiego.com

View more videos at: http://nbcsandiego.com.

"The downtown San Diego Public Library is just a tip of the iceberg in the book world these days. Where library shelves still feel the weight of pages of information, a computer inside displays virtual rooms full of digital reading."

Travel Posters - from Boston Public Library

via www.flickr.com

Love these old posters.. colorful, fun, retro, nostalgic all...

Achieving a collaborative FDLP future (#FDLP) | Free Government Information (FGI)

Note: This post is a longer response to a recent comments left on the LJ article written by Jim A. Jacobs and Melody Kelly.

via freegovinfo.info

COLUMN ONE: Students sample the large shelf of California literature - latimes.com

The Golden State's reputation as a fantasized place of new beginnings and harsh disappointments — expressed in the writings of Steinbeck, Twain, Didion and Mosley, among others — is being explored on college campuses across the nation.

via www.latimes.com

Crime novelist, Spenser creator Robert B. Parker dies at 77 - washingtonpost.com

Robert B. Parker, 77

Crime novelist, Spenser creator Robert B. Parker dies at 77

By Patricia Sullivan

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Robert B. Parker, 77, a popular and prolific author of hard-boiled American crime fiction who was best known for the 37-book Spenser series, which became an ABC television show in the 1980s, died Jan. 18 at his writing desk at home in Cambridge, Mass. The cause of death was not known, but his longtime agent, Helen Brann, said it appeared to have been a heart attack.

via www.washingtonpost.com

HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books

HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books
by Barbara Quint
Posted On October 22, 2009

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With all the controversy still swirling around Google Books and its post-settlement offerings, an alternative route to the millions of digitized books and journals supplied by leading Google Book Search library partners has arrived. The HathiTrust (www.hathitrust.org) is a collaboration of 25 research libraries already participating in Google Book Search to produce a shared digital repository for preservation and access to a curated collection. By mid-November, the HathiTrust Digital Library will have a full-featured, full-text search service for 4.3-5 million items. The searches will retrieve bibliographic citations and page references, including those for in-copyright books. Content will extend beyond the digitized copies of books returned to early library partners by Google. HathiTrust is pushing to acquire other digitized special collections from its members, as well as making arrangements for opening access to university press books.

via newsbreaks.infotoday.com

The relationship between public libraries and Google: too much information

The relationship between public libraries and Google: too much information


This article explores the implications of a shift from public to private provision of information through focusing on the relationship between Google and public libraries. This relationship has sparked controversy, with concerns expressed about the integrity of search results, the Google Book project, and Google the company. In this paper, these concerns are treated as symptoms of a deeper divide, the fundamentally different conceptions of information that underpin the stated aim of Google and libraries to provide access to information. The paper concludes with some principles necessary for the survival of public libraries and their contribution to a robust democracy in a rapidly expanding Googleverse.

Tennant: Digital Libraries: Sony Edges Kindle on Library Integration

Posted by Roy Tennant on August 25, 2009

As seen in Engadget today, and reported by Macworld, Sony is moving to integrate access to library purchased ebook licenses. From Macworld:

On Tuesday Sony also announced the launch of Library Finder, a new feature of the eBook Store developed in cooperation with OverDrive, which helps users locate e-book content at their local library. Public libraries working in cooperation with OverDrive can offer e-books to be checked out onto a Sony Reader using a valid library card; the library sets the duration of the loan. When the checkout period expires, the book simply expires as well, so users aren't dinged late fees.

For an example of the range of content available to Sony ...Read More

via www.libraryjournal.com

Basics for Beginners: Getting Started with Social Media Tools

Basics for Beginners: Getting Started with Social Media Tools

This online seminar was recorded and can be accessed by clicking on the link to the right, along with the PowerPoint presentation. Please post additional questions to the TechSoup Community forums for a special day-long online asynchronous (not live) event.

via cc.readytalk.com

Reprint agreement will make U-M rare books widely available

Reprint agreement will make U-M rare books widely available.

July 21, 2009
Reprint agreement will make U-M rare books widely available

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The University of Michigan will make thousands of books that are no longer in copyright—including rare and one-of-a-kind titles—available as reprints on demand under a new agreement with BookSurge, part of the Amazon.com group of companies.

The agreement gives the public a unique opportunity to buy reprints of a wide range of titles in the U-M Library for as little as a few dollars. As individual copies are sold on Amazon.com, BookSurge will print and bind the books in soft-cover form.

ACRL | Talkin’ ‘bout my generation: Exploring age-related resources

ACRL | Talkin’ ‘bout my generation: Exploring age-related resources.

INTERNET RESOURCES
Talkin’ ‘bout my generation: Exploring age-related resources
C&RL News, July/August 2009, Vol. 70, No. 7
by Sidney Lowe and Susie Skarl

In the past few years, as technology has radically changed how we find and use information resources, library staff have begun to notice significant generational differences in the information-seeking behavior of library patrons. These frequent observations at the reference desk and in library instruction classes planted the first small seeds of our interest in this topic. Internet sites and online articles about generational differences are plentiful and focus on a wide range of subjects, such as learning styles, social behaviors, moral values, technological skills, marketing, communication, and workplace performance.

Generational categories are based on the time period in which a person was born, and there are variations in how they are labeled. For example, people who were born prior to World War II have been referred to as the “Silent Generation,” “Veterans,” “Radio Babies,” or “Traditionalists.” Some sources cite five separate generations, but most refer to only four. Depending upon which resource one is perusing, the generations are roughly represented as:
1) Traditionalists (born 1927–45),
2) Baby Boomers (1946–64),
3) Generation X, or Gen Xers (1965–80),
and 4) Generation Y, or Millennials (1981–2000).

My Info Quest, Text Reference Service, Launches

My Info Quest, Text Reference Service, Launches.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Kitty Pope
Alliance Library System 309-694-9200 ext. 2101
Email: kpope@alliancelibrarysystem.com
DATE: July 20, 2009

My Info Quest TXT 4 ANSWERS: International Collaborative Text Reference Service Launches today
East Peoria, July 16, 2009

It's official! People are now sending more text messages than they are making cell phone calls. Librarians are aware of the popularity of texting and are ready to take their professional services to cell phones. Starting today, patrons of approximately 50 libraries from all over the US will be able to text a question to (309) 222-7740 and a real, live librarian will respond within minutes. The service is free of charge, but standard text messaging rates do apply.
...
For more information about My Info Quest and for a list of participating libraries, check out http://www.myinfoquest.info/

Online catalogue of books is the library that never closes | Technology | The Guardian

Online catalogue of books is the library that never closes | Technology | The Guardian.

The library that never closes
The Open Library hopes to unite the net and the printed word by creating a web page for every book.

by Bobbie Johnson, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 July 2009 18.15 BST, Article history

The internet's relationship with books, it is fair to say, has been a tumultuous one. Ever since the digital revolution started changing our relationship with information, the printed word – one of the most successful technologies in history – has been on the back foot.

Amazon has altered the face of the industry twice – first in the 1990s by changing the way books are sold and then, more recently, the way they are consumed, with its Kindle electronic book reader. Google has caused its own earthquake in the print world with its Book Search scheme – a plan to suck the text of millions of books into its search engine that has raised the hackles of publishers and authors alike.

Talk to workers at either of these technology companies and there is a feeling of technological inevitability: that the printed book is a stepping stone in the evolution of information, and now lies ready to be devoured by its hi-tech successors. Not everybody thinks that way, however, including the Open Library – a project with an audacious goal that it hopes can bring the web and books closer together.

EBSCOhost Debuting Discovery Service, Aims at One-Stop Search Interface - 4/10/2009 - Library Journal

EBSCOhost Debuting Discovery Service, Aims at One-Stop Search Interface - 4/10/2009 - Library Journal.

EBSCOhost Debuting Discovery Service, Aims at One-Stop Search Interface
Josh Hadro -- Library Journal, 4/10/2009

* Service will rely on indexed content
* Three tiers of service based on the EBSCOhost 2.0 plaftorm
* Content partnership includes access to OCLC WorldCat records

As many in the industry predicted, it was only a matter of time until EBSCOhost got in on the discovery game: today, the company announced the EBSCOhost Discovery Service, to be made available by the end of 2009 as a component of its Integrated Search platform.

This buttresses the recent announcement of a federated search option available to libraries that subscribe to EBSCOhost databases. However, unlike federated search that relies on limited access to remote resources via connectors, the Discovery Service product will rely on pre-indexed content and metadata. At a basic level what this means is that users, through a single interface, will be able to search through all of the preindexed materials—potentially including catalog records, subscription databases, and web content—more quickly than with existing metasearch tools and with many more possiblities for the refinement of search results.

ALA | State of America's Libraries Report - April 2009

ALA | State of America's Libraries Report - April 2009.

(screenshot above)

The State of America's Libraries Report 2009

Contact Information
Macey Morales/Jennifer Petersen
ALA Media Relations
ALA Public Information
Office (312) 280-4393/5043 mmorales@ala.org / jpetersen@ala.org

Released April 13, 2009

"Library use increases dramatically as economy sags; funding declines"

Table of Contents | Download Print Version (PDF)