Category Archives: News

SOPAC 2.0 @ Darien Library

After much anticipation, version 2.0 of the Social Opac (SOPAC) went live this morning at the Darien Library in Connecticut. It looks very good… excellent, in fact.  I am already looking forward to playing with this version of the software.  … Continue reading

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Beloit College Mindset List

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2012 has been posted!  A couple of samples: 28. IBM has never made typewriters. 60. Students always had Goosebumps. What library-related items can be added to this list?  The absence of … Continue reading

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Google Librarian Central

After more than a year, there has been a bit of activity at the Google Librarian Central site, though not what was hoped for when I heard that they were preparing an update. What they announced in a post titled … Continue reading

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Everything is Still Local

In February, I wrote about the shootings at Northern Illinois University, which happened about 100 yards away from a former co-worker (and current friend). I stressed that until something like this happens in your community, it seems remote and somehow … Continue reading

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TC is PO’d over AP

An interesting situation is brewing over at the TechCrunch blog.  Michael Arrington, upset over the Associated Press going after bloggers who quote from AP stories, has argued that the AP is not taking Fair Use into consideration and has declared … Continue reading

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Death of a Digitization Project

Microsoft announced today that they are shutting down their book digitization project. They also announced that the Live Search Books site will be shut down sometimes next week. This is a disappointment in that I was hoping that the competition … Continue reading

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“You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!”

OCLC and Google are exchanging parts of their data in a way that will likely change the way we view full-text scanned books: Google is providing linking information to OCLC in order to make Google Book Search items discoverable through … Continue reading

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Happy Document Freedom Day!

Its the first annual Document Freedom Day! Document Freedom means open standards and free document formats.  Take a few minutes to check out what this means to libraries, society, and to you. For me, well, I have been a fan … Continue reading

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Sports Illustrated and The Vault

In an article in today’s New York Times about magazines making their backfiles freely available online, there is a discussion about one magazine in particular:  Sports Illustrated. Starting this Thursday, March 20th, the entire run of SI will be available … Continue reading

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Data on Demand in Wisconsin

Data on Demand is a collection of data sets put together by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  It contains data for a variety of topics, such as campaign fundraising, home foreclosures, popular baby names, and school instructional hours. This is a … Continue reading

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TimesMachine

TimesMachine is a complete, easy to use browser for all New York Times editions between September 18, 1851 (their first date of publication) through December 31, 1922 (the day before copyright still exists). from Metafilter

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Are You Prepared?

Today’s horrific news, the campus shootings at Northern Illinois University, has struck fairly close to home for me. Before moving to Columbus, my current residence, I lived in DeKalb for 18 years. I have attended NIU; my former wife was … Continue reading

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Paper Use

Remember how, about 10 years ago, the concept of a “paperless office” began to seem like a weird joke? The proliferation of the desktop computer and the ascent of the internet introduced the potential of foregoing paper documents, relying instead … Continue reading

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OCLC acquires EZProxy

EZProxy, the proxy server created by a librarian for libraries, has been acquired by OCLC. OCLC has been doing some interesting things in the past couple of years… and indications are they will be doing even more in the next … Continue reading

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Presidential Primary Results

I am a bit of a political junkie… and it generally won’t spill over onto this blog. However, one resource that I have found very interesting when examining Ohio and New Hampshire results has been Google Maps coverage of the … Continue reading

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Couch Potato

You have probably noticed the story in the news, but did you know that the winner of the ESPN Zone Ultimate Couch Potato Competition is a librarian from Manhattan? from LISNews

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Monopolies, Libraries, and Challenges

A somewhat rambling essay, but one that is important nonetheless: Joe Wilcox has posted an interesting essay at Microsoft Watch regarding Google’s merger with DoubleClick, the internet advertising company.  I strongly disagree with some of his interpretations (he tries to … Continue reading

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NIH and Public Access

There is a bill being voted upon by the U.S. Senate on October 15th which will potentially open up a great deal of research being done with National Institute of Health (NIH) funding.  The bill will mandate that the public … Continue reading

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New York Times free for all

This seems to be fresh news, in that I can only find it on two sites:  The New York Times is opening their web content to everyone, eliminating the subscription model that has existed for years. Not a bad piece … Continue reading

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Unshelved 2K

Unshelved, the web comic based in the fictional Mallville Public Library, just published its 2,000th comic! By the way, we all know the comic isn’t fiction, don’t we?  They have cameras and microphones hidden somewhere in each of our libraries.  You just can’t make this … Continue reading

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