Category Archives: Online Services

Library 2.0 : Ken Varnum – RSS Basics and Beyond

Posted on 16 June 2007 by Rick Mason

Ken Varnum – RSS Basics and Beyond : Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most out of Syndicated Content. (PowerPoint) (Handout) Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Data format: RSS, RDF, Atom, etc. data interchange (sharing) : syndication – think of what … Continue reading →

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Open Courseware at MIT

Posted on 11 June 2007 by Rick Mason

There is a great overview of the history and current status of the Open CourseWare (OCW) project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Of interest is the discussion on why to spend millions of dollars to provide free access to … Continue reading →

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Chinese Learning Objects

Posted on 10 June 2007 by Rick Mason

Chinese Learning Objects, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and provided by the National Foreign Language Center, are online materials for learning to read Chinese.  The good news is that, starting in July 2007, the materials will be available for … Continue reading →

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Roy Tenant at OCLC

Posted on 4 June 2007 by Rick Mason

Roy Tenant, formerly of the California Digital Library has been working for OCLC’s RLG Programs division for the past few weeks, and has posted his impressions on the hangingtogether blog.  It is well worth reading, and especially to note that … Continue reading →

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Freebase article on OpenBusiness

Posted on 29 May 2007 by Rick Mason

Freebase is a new project which I described in a posting last March. OpenBusiness recently ran an interview on their blog with the sites founders. from Open Access News

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Pipl

Posted on 29 May 2007 by Rick Mason

Pipl is a search engine geared towards finding people, but it casts a wider net than other people search tools. It searches social networking sites, job sites, and blogs. As you might guess, there are usually a lot of results … Continue reading →

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Wide Open Education

Posted on 26 May 2007 by Rick Mason

Wide Open Education is a new blog from the Online Education Database.  Each of these links is well worth following:  you will find great information and resources related to the open education movement on either. from Open Access News

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BibMe

Posted on 24 May 2007 by Rick Mason

BibMe is a great site for locating and generating bibliographic citations in MLA, APA and Chicago styles, which you can then download to your computer, or store on their server (if you sign up for a free account). In their … Continue reading →

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LibraryThing for Libraries

Posted on 14 May 2007 by Rick Mason

LibraryThing for Libraries has launched!  Without needing to alter your existing ILS software beyond a few lines of javascript in your OPAC’s page footer, you can add the following functionality to your book catalog: Links to other editions and translations. Links to “similar books”. … Continue reading →

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WorldCat Local

Posted on 12 April 2007 by Rick Mason

OCLC is announcing a new pilot project called WorldCat Local, intended to provide tools to help find materials close to the user. These tools will likely include circulation information, full-text capabilities for available resources, and eventually social networking features. The … Continue reading →

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Wikipedia of Public Libraries – Presentation

Posted on 10 April 2007 by Rick Mason

The Wikipedia of Public Libraries : A quickie wiki primer, the PLWiki project, and You (pdf) is a presentation by Andrea Mercado, PLA Blog Manager, on wikis and how they can benefit libraries.   It contains a link to a request … Continue reading →

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libSite.org

Posted on 10 April 2007 by Rick Mason

libSite.org is a brand new, as well as fantastic, site for us library folk to visit, contribute to, and benefit from. It is a wiki that is used to let others know of library-related web sites, blogs, and other resources … Continue reading →

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ALA Library Salary Database

Posted on 7 April 2007 by Rick Mason

The Library Salary Database (press release) from the American Library Association is an online database where you can find out what people earn in various library positions at various places in the country. It seems like a good resource, but … Continue reading →

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eAudiobook Subject Sets

Posted on 4 April 2007 by Rick Mason

NetLibrary has launched what it is calling eAudiobook Subject Sets, which are bundles of downloadable audio books grouped by subject, so that libraries can tailor their purchases to their particular needs. from ResourceShelf

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Online Translator

Posted on 2 April 2007 by Rick Mason

The challenge of finding information in foreign language websites can be daunting.  If you need to translate a single page, then Babel Fish or Google Language Tools can help quite a bit.  What if you need to navigate throughout a … Continue reading →

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eTools.ch

Posted on 31 March 2007 by Rick Mason

eTools.ch is a search engine with a couple of interesting twists… It is a meta-search engine, meaning it doesn’t do its own crawling and indexing of web pages, it sends your search to 10 other search engines, then sorts the … Continue reading →

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Citizendium is now Beta

Posted on 26 March 2007 by Rick Mason

The Citizendium project has officially gone into beta (leaving alpha).  This means that they are officially open for business, but still working the kinks out of the project. For a good overview of the project’s purpose, this USA Today article … Continue reading →

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ERIC links to libraries via WorldCat

Posted on 19 March 2007 by Rick Mason

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) search tool has added a “Find in a library” link to many of their search results, which will open WorldCat in a new browser window with detail on which libraries in your area subscribe … Continue reading →

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FreeBase

Posted on 10 March 2007 by Rick Mason

Freebase is (or will be, if you are like me and waiting for an invite) an online behemoth of a database.  Imagine taking Wikipedia and having users create links to related information, so that you can tap into the information … Continue reading →

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More Free Audio Books

Posted on 10 March 2007 by Rick Mason

Podiobooks.com offers quite a few free, downloadable audiobooks, most with cc licenses. Add this to your list of free audiobook sites. from MetaFilter

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