LISNews: Librarian News

on “good” repositories:
Back to Chris’ question. Perhaps the “digital” is a red-herring. What if we consider his question in light of traditional libraries? This got me thinking: could Ranganthan and his Five Laws of Library Science serve as a touchstone? Granted, bringing Ranganathan into library discussions is a bit of a cliché. But asking ethical questions like the “goodness” of something is a great excuse to dip into the canon. So put on your repository colored glasses, which magically substitute Repository Object for Book, and …

After over a year of wishing and several hours of searching (spread out over that year) I have finally found an app for my Android powered smartphone which will allow me to add annotations and highlights to Adobe Acrobat .PDF files. The program is called Repligo Reader from Cerience and is available on the Android Market either on your phone or on the web.

Full review at: http://www.ideationizing.com/2011/03/pdf-annotations-on-android.html

P.S. I have nothing to do with Cerience. I just found a good product that meets my demands for allowing me to maintain control over my documents and annotations, and I wanted to tell people about it.

I saw the name and had to share. From the NY Times. Microprocessors are close to reaching the limit on how small they can get and a new approach is needed. Enter Ranganathan:

"Parthasarathy Ranganathan, a Hewlett-Packard electrical engineer, offers a radical alternative to today’s computer designs that would permit new designs for consumer electronics products as well as the next generation of supercomputers, known as exascale processors."

Technologizer takes a fun look back at some ideas and inventions that were ahead of their time.

"Thanks to Google Books’ archives of Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, LIFE, and other magazines that frequently reported on futuristic gizmos, we have a readily accessible record of technology that failed to live up to the initial hype–including random notions that never got off the drawing board, startlingly advanced products that didn’t find a market, and very rough drafts of concepts that eventually became a big deal. The best of them are fascinating, even when it’s not the least bit surprising that they flopped."