LISNews: Librarian News

The Nando Times is carrying an AP story that LC is grappling with digital preservation. New baseball cards are appearing on three-inch CD-ROM discs, bringing up questions not only of physical preservation but compatible hardware and software.

\"One problem is the hardware,\" [curator Harry] Katz said. \"Technology moves so fast that in a few years today\'s computers may be obsolete. No use keeping the disks if they can\'t be read. How much equipment do we have to preserve, too?\"

Slashdot has a cool Article on Open Source software for maintaining a small to medium sized library
card-catalog. Someone asked for, and got, many suggestions.

\" It seems all the tools are available: a perl module for working with MARC records,
several for working with Z39.50 and XML, and even a web site apparently devoted to nearly this exact
topic. An actual, working, catalog, however, seems to be missing. Is this something that would be valuable?
I, for one, have nearly 5k volumes in my collection, and they\'re begging for some discipline.\"

Be sure to check out oss4lib.org is this kind of thing interests you. Open Source = Free

Thinking about doing online reference? Someone
suggested a link to this Handy resource regarding online refrence. It\'s
a good read for all those considering making this
move. I\'ve seen some discussion on the lists on this
topic, so I think some folks are making the
move.

\"A hundred years ago, the only way to tap
into the expertise of a reference librarian was to
physically travel down to the library. In the past fifty
years, information seekers have had the choice of
visiting the library physically, or placing a phone call to
the reference desk. Today, a few pioneering library
systems are delivering reference service right to the
patron\'s home computer - - -via online communication.
\"

Wired has this story on the next generation of talking books.\"...digital talking books, users can navigate through different pages, chapters, or even sentences. People can search for a given word, or start the audio at any given point using a special keypad.\" -- Read More