Category Archives: Libraries

Dear Governor Strickland…

Here are two quick and effective ways for Ohioans to contact the Governor’s office and convey our thoughts on the library aspect of the budget crisis: Contact the Governor is a standard contact form that resides on the official governor’s … Continue reading

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Ohio Libraries Update

A few items of note to update yesterday’s post: The Library is Now Closed (a.k.a. Shuttered Library) is a blog created by an Ohio librarian named Mike (didn’t see a last name) which is compiling links to a vast amount … Continue reading

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Ohio Potentially Cutting Library Support in Half

It’s happening, folks.  State and local budgets are under extreme pressure, and tough decisions are being made by Governors, state officials, countys counties, towns and taxing districts.  Libraries that rely on public funding are now almost certainly facing severe cuts. … Continue reading

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ISBN-UPC-EAN Lookups

If you are involved with the selection or ordering process, then you are very likely to be familiar with searching for items by the International Standard Book Number, or ISBN.  The newer, 13-digit ISBN is actually based on the European … Continue reading

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About Herbs

About Herbs, Botanicals, & Other Products has been launched by the Memorial Sloan-Ketterling Cancer Center. This is a great starting point for finding definitive information on medical use of many nature-derived products and natural healing techniques, including: Zinc (and many … Continue reading

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I love the smell of books in the morning… smells like… library!

Love that New Book Smell?  Or do you prefer Classic Musty Smell?  Perhaps your preference leans towards Crunchy Bacon or Cats? Smell Of Books has got your scent (and Sensibility!). found via LISNews

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One in Twenty

Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest is a New York Times article about blogging, specifically about the study showing an estimated 95% of blogs have not been updated in over 4 months. Does this signal an end to blogging?  The … Continue reading

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HTML 5, Google Wave, and the Future of the Web

Amidst a great many other topics, HTML 5 has been on my mind the past couple of weeks.  It started on Tuesday, May 26th, with Kevin Yank posting HTML 5 : Now or Never? on the SitePoint blog.  He was … Continue reading

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Wiley Gets Flexible

Got an update from Linda Hulbert via SERIALST regarding their issues with Wiley (which I posted on Libology last week).  Wiley demonstrated that they could be flexible, and in doing so has allowed a library to continue to provide their … Continue reading

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National Library of Australia’s Search Prototype

The National Library of Australia has launched the beta of their new search interface, SBDS Prototype (SBDS stands for Single Business Discovery Service, I think), and the search experience is not only better than any other library-related search I have … Continue reading

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Wiley Inflexibility

A post on the SERIALST list yesterday by Linda Hulbert, Associate Director of Collection Management and Services at the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library in St. Paul, Minnesota details one library’s response to contractual conditions being imposed by Wiley.  I found it interesting … Continue reading

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Common Chemistry

Common Chemistry is a resource from Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) which allows one to search for chemical information using a variety of search terms, whether the terms be common names (aspirin, table salt), basic chemical names (acetylsalicylic acid, sodium chloride), … Continue reading

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Information Streams

Eric Shonfeld at TechCrunch writes: “Once again, the Internet is shifting before our eyes. Information is increasingly being distributed and presented in real-time streams instead of dedicated Web pages. The shift is palpable, even if it is only in its … Continue reading

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Copyright Law, Love and Hate

Cory Doctorow has an interesting take on the differing attitude of copyright between those who wish to wish to honor a creative work and those who wish to diminish it.  An excerpt: “The upshot of this is that you’re on … Continue reading

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Google and Microformats

Google has made the jump into supporting Microformats as well as RDFa, calling their implementation “Rich Snippets”! This is great news on several different levels. Semantic markup within web pages provides a way to target searches much more effectively.  TechCrunch … Continue reading

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ICOLC weighs in on OCLC

The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) has weighed in on OCLC’s proposed policy changes.  Of note: “The proposed policy appears to freeze OCLC’s role in the library community based on historical and current relationships. We share the concern, voiced … Continue reading

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Wikipedia and Journalism

Shane Fitzgerald, a Sociology student at University College in Dublin, Ireland (not Ohio), performed an experiment in March in which he placed several fake quotes about death in the Wikipedia entry for Maurice Jarre, who had just died, including this … Continue reading

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Google Book Search Settlement Links

Peter Murray has an incredibly good selection of links about the Google Book Search Settlement on the Disruptive Library Technology Jester blog.  Really.  Spend some time perusing them.

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Swine Flu Resources

I suspect that Swine Flu is likely to be a common research question for reference departments around the world during the foreseeable future.  I have had an interest in the 1918 influenza epidemic pandemic for several years, and have spent … Continue reading

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Neutral Pleasure, Medium Arousal

In its continuing examination of library blogs, HotStuff 2.0 has added a visualization of emotional content. Here is the current visualization for Libology: How to read the information, from HotStuff’s description: The overall scatter of words in the ANEW list … Continue reading

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