Author Archives: Rick Mason

Open Source Government

Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has been asked to write a paper for the Obama administration on the benefits of the United States government using open source software for improved security and lower cost. Yes.  With the right software, … Continue reading

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Buy None, Get One Free

Buy None, Get One Free is an article that appeared in BBC News that does a good job explaining one of the business models for the changes sweeping information services (a broad topic covering anything from music to news to … Continue reading

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SciTopics

Add another “knowledge-sharing resource” to your reference grab-bag:  SciTopics, a free, searchable collection of over 600 science topic (hence Scitopics) pages, has just been officially lauched by Elsevier after a lengthy beta. This is one of those resources that is … Continue reading

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Microformats + RDF + CSS = Semantic Richness

Add Symantic Richness To Your Markup With (RDF) Ease is the title of an article on SitePoint that delves into a topic I find fascinating, yet have only dabbled in in my own website creations. Microformats are one of the … Continue reading

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Using Our Time Wisely

Karen Coyle wrote an excellent post about OCLC’s delayed implementation of the records licensing policy.  An exerpt: Those of us who promote open access must use this time wisely. First, we need to get some solid legal advice. It’s clear … Continue reading

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Papers of the War Department 1784-1800

Papers of the War Department : 1784 to 1800 is a searchable archive of documents from the early history of the United States that, until recently, were thought to have been irretrievably lost in a fire.  Over the past decade, … Continue reading

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By Any Other Name

By any other name is the title of a blog post/essay by Mandy Brown which encapsulates the history of stored writing in just a few paragraphs.  Take a short few moments and read it… you will be glad you did. … Continue reading

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OCLC Creates Review Board of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship

Some big news from OCLC:  They are creating a review board to solicit feedback about their licensing policy (and judging from the press release, the entire concept of sharing library data).  They are drawing from the OCLC Board of Trustees … Continue reading

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New Theme

Not a huge deal, but I just changed the theme of this blog to slight, which was created by Thematology. There are several reasons for this change, including: Wanting a theme that would fit better with the Libology logo (forthcoming) … Continue reading

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Why Libraries Must Reject the OCLC Policy

We are now one month away from the implementation of OCLC’s new records policy.  Tim Spaulding at Thingology has compiled seven arguments why libraries should resist the license. Even if you don’t feel that OCLC intends to take a hard … Continue reading

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CPSIA and Libraries

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), passed by Congress last August and due to be enforced beginning February 10th, is designed to protect children from exposure to products containing unsafe levels of lead or phthalate.  All well and good.  … Continue reading

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HotStuff 2.0

HotStuff 2.0 is described by its creator, Dave Pattern, as “an automatically updated blog… [in which] a daily blog post is generated using a single word that has seen a marked increase in usage over the last few days.”  The … Continue reading

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Nine Inch Nail’s Creative Commons Success

The Creative Commons blog has a thought-provoking post about CC licensed music.  It seems that the latest Nine Inch Nails album, Ghost I-IV, is available under a CC license.  This means that you can legally download it from any of … Continue reading

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LucidChart

LucidChart is a free (with a premium option), web-based flowchart creation tool.  It appears to be quite easy to use, yet very professional. If you are looking for software to install on your PC, remember that OpenOffice (or Go-Oo) offer … Continue reading

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What I Use – 2009

I thought I’d try something new and summarize the software that I use on a regular basis.  I have been thinking about this, as I have recently switched from one software program to another in a couple of areas, and … Continue reading

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A Look Back, A Look Ahead

2008 was an uncertain year for Libraryland.  Ideas and tools abound for how we can do more with what we have, and we are becoming more aware of what it is we have : data and the systems to organize … Continue reading

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Middlespot Search Interface

Think of Middlespot as a Zotero-like organization tool for web searches.  Perform a search, and you have several ways to explore the search results, as well as saving collections of results in what they call a “Workpad”. The fastest way … Continue reading

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Typalyzer

Typalyzer is a simple, straightforward tool that accepts the web address of a blog, then analyzes the contents to determine which of the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types best describes it. Libology comes out as INTJ, which seems fairly close to … Continue reading

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Transcribe Dewey and the Gang

Unshelved is having a transcription party, and we all are invited! Bill and Gene have installed the ohnorobot comic search engine, and all that remains to make every Unshelved comic searchable by character, quote, or topic is for everyone to … Continue reading

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Ohio RFPs for Open Source

The State Library of Ohio has just released a Request For Proposal for an Open Source Statewide Resource Sharing System (Pdf). Their summary page (which will soon contain an F.A.Q.) states that The desired product would provide a seamless resource … Continue reading

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