Electronic Publications

Librarian's Internet Index merging with IPL

zzshupinga — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:16:45 -0400

The well known Librarian's Internet Index (LII) has merged with IPL at Drexel. As many are aware of, and as mentioned in the notice below, LII has had their funding cut by 50% the last two years. The merger with Drexel allows ILL the opportunity to continue sharing of sites.

This notice appeared in their last weekly e-mail:

LII IS NOW ADMINISTERED BY IPL
This week the editors received a press release announcing LII's merger with the Internet Public Library (IPL). IPL is a huge and wonderful Web portal hosted by Drexel University and maintained by a consortium of colleges and universities with programs in information science. It has solid funding and a paid staff augmented by graduate students in library and information studies programs, allowing it to maintain and improve the database's content and aesthetics with new skills and technical tools.
As you may know, in the last two years LII's funding was cut by 50%. Consequently, we had to reduce the number of sites we add each week, halt improvements to the browsing structure, and generally do less of everything. IPL will give LII's years of work continued life and value and we think they'll do a terrific job. The LII editorial staff and the newsletter will continue through April 30, 2009. We will share news with you as it becomes available; for more information, please contact IPL or Linda Crowe at

This was the e-mail they sent to subscribers:

As announced in our last newsletter, Drexel University is merging LII's database into the IPL database. We understand that this will take long enough that we'll have to skip a newsletter, so when that email doesn't come in, it'll be us taking a break while technology happens. We expect to send the next newsletter out on Thursday, October 16, 2008. There may be some ups and downs while all this is going on, so please bear with us and address any questions to IPL.org or Califa.org.
Thank you,
The Editors

I'm glad that LII will continue as they share great sites each week.

Law school profs ponder printed books (Amazon.com no show)

Bibliofuture — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:35:02 -0400

Law professors from around the country gathered in Seattle on Saturday to put the printed textbook on trial.

And because those professors and their universities influence the buying decisions of thousand of law students each year, traditional book publishers as well as representatives from Adobe, Sony and Microsoft participated. A representative from Amazon.com did not attend as expected.

The daylong discussion educed topics ranging from cerebral musings – could information proliferation make lawyers obsolete? – to technical nuance – what's the difference between open source and open access?

At least one conclusion became clear – the fact that about 40 people gathered at Sullivan Hall at Seattle University Law School on a sunny Saturday to ponder life beyond print shows that times are changing in publishing.

Blog entry at seattlepi.com

Three Fee-Free Library Webinars from MaintainIT: Laptops, Training, and Gaming

Anonymous Patron — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:05:21 -0400

Join us for these free webinars. Attend this session from your library, no travel needed!

At the MaintainIT Project (www.maintainitproject.org), we interview hundreds of librarians about how they maintain, support, and sustain their public computers. We then publish all of their experiences, successes, and challenges in FREE guides called Cookbooks, so librarians can learn from the experiences of others who’ve done it before them. The best part? Everything the MaintainIT Project does is FREE (thanks to a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant), and everything is on www.maintainitproject.org . We also produce free webinars every month!

Sept. 30th Cookbook Book Club: How Much Help Should You Provide Patrons With Laptops?
When: 09/30/2008 9:00am - 10:00am Pacific
Where: Register on MaintainIT's webinar space. https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?rfe=1aboa5dakke0&udc=1sjlixarncf42 Download and read the Cookbook chapter (pdf) here: http://www.maintainitproject.org/files/CB2_Meal%20Plan%20Three.pdf
This month Brenda Hough will lead a lively discussion where you can share ideas, feedback, and ask questions about providing help and support to patrons using laptops. Find out how other libraries have handled troubleshooting, security, parking lot surfers, space issues and more!

Oct. 8th Train-the-Trainer: The Power of Stories in Technology Training
When: 10/08/2008 11:00am - 12:00pm Pacific
Where: Register on MaintainIT's webinar space, (https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?rfe=7sdkia97utgq&udc=8yml38uymdo1) and come prepared to share your training tips, too.
Library trainers from around the country are finding this popular webinar series a great opportunity to discuss training tips, techniques and resources. This month we will focus on how storytelling can enhance your participants’ learning and retention.

Oct. 16th 30 Minute Webinar: Get Your Game On: Quick tips to start a gaming program
When: 10/16/08, 11:00am – 11:30am Pacific
Where: WebJunction's webinar space (Please register on WebJunction: http://www.webjunction.org/maintainit-webinars/resources/overview)
Join Lori Reed, Employee Learning Coordinator at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg, as she interviews Beth Gallaway, a library trainer/consultant specializing in gaming, technology, and youth services. This will be a fast-paced and interactive session introducing the idea of gaming programs in libraries.

Thanks!
Stephanie Gerding, MaintainIT Contributor
http://stephaniegerding.com

Google Book Search Now With Embedable Goodness

Blake — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:22:43 -0400

Google: "Today, we're taking a big step towards bringing more books, across more sites, to more people online. We're launching a set of free tools that allow retailers, publishers, and anyone with a web site to embed books from the Google Book Search index. We are also providing new ways for these sites to display full-text search results from Book Search, and even integrate with social features such as ratings, reviews, and readers' book collections."

My MLS will come in handy here, somehow. I know it.

shoe — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 07:17:07 -0400

I know, my absence of late has left a giant gaping hole in your hearts somewhere right below the left ventricle or something. It's hard to visualize on the ultrasound, because no one in the clinic knows really how to work one of these things...

We'll hold the medical stuff at the moment, at least, as it pertains to me, except to say that we've got a loose name of what has been keeping me from living a normal life for -- well, it's been at least 20 years, but it only got particularly nasty in the last eight, and horribly blood-curdling nasty in the last five. It's a sleep disorder, they can not cure it, and if the case proves to be beyond a moderate sort of manifestation, they really can't treat it terribly effectively. A lot of non-sleep/neurological doctors will tell you that they can... There's this new drug... Uh. No.

Long and the short is, the sleep-neuro-guy says that I function at about 20% capacity on a good day. It isn't going to get better than that at this point, or even in the mid-range future.

So I've come to terms with the fact I am not going back to work in a normal environment. I've come to terms that I will never be able to see a movie in a theater again. I'm trying to deal with the idea that if I can come home and mentally function (or at least not walk into solid objects) after a twenty minute trip to the grocery store, I am having a pretty damn good day.

I hate not doing stuff. You know that, right?

I was blogging previously at Download Squad. Fine, the pay sucked, but it wasn't about that. It had absolutely nothing to do with that. I just didn't want my brain to atrophy. It was fun, too. Kept me to a schedule where I at least felt like I had something to shoot for. And if I was writing, felt crappy, and needed to lay down suddenly, I could do it. I could lay down and get up and lay down every twenty minutes if I needed to. No one would care.

Met some damn fine people there. I am podcasting with one, and we're finally on the road to getting the freakin' sound issues ironed out. Just... don't listen to episode eight. It's not that the subject is bad. It just was so painfully borne of fire, saying "Eight" to Lisa or I will reduce us to tears.

I left DLS a few weeks back. There were several reasons, but mostly I knew I wouldn't do that forever, and there was some writing on the wall that it was just time. Of course, I had the podcast to keep me busy, and I was feeling reasonably confident I could at least do some part time freelance stuff.

Right, so energy's wearing thin, long and short of it: Got picked up by OStatic. Been doing that about two weeks, and yesterday managed to pull off a feat of decent geek-fu that involved a quote on CNET from a piece I wrote, and then it proceeded to get Slashdotted.

That felt way alpha geek of me, and I was into that. Totally bummed that I've got this exorbitantly expensive degree hanging on my wall I am physically unable to put to use. But you have to work with what you've got. And hey, for now, I've got this.

Next-Gen E-Readers Arrive

Blake — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:11:08 -0400

Amazon's Kindle was fun. Now it's time for electronic readers to get to work.

On Monday, Netherlands-based iRex Technologies is slated to unveil the iRex Reader 1000, the first in a wave of e-reader devices that promise bigger screens and improved interfaces and functionality. And unlike Kindle or Sony's Reader, this second generation of e-readers aims to bring innovative E-ink display technology to the more demanding, and possibly more lucrative, world of business.

New E-Newspaper Reader Echoes Look of the Paper

Blake — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:20:50 -0400

New E-Newspaper Reader Echoes Look of the Paper The device, which is unnamed, uses the same technology as the Sony eReader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E Ink Corporation. While both of those devices are intended primarily as book readers, Plastic Logic’s device, which will be shown at an emerging technology trade show in San Diego, has a screen more than twice as large. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents.

Penn State Libraries and English Department Partner in Exploration of Digital Readers

Blake — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:31:19 -0400

This fall, Penn State University Libraries and the English Department begin a year-long pilot project with student groups using the Sony Reader Digital Book, a portable electronic reading device that can hold books, audio files, and other downloaded materials. Sony donated 100 of the devices to the Libraries for the project that will test the utility of e-books in a higher education environment. The study will explore the potential of the Sony Readers in a variety of settings, including the Libraries’ leisure reading program, undergraduate and graduate classrooms, academic research projects, and as a service for people with disabilities.

E-book 'will not threaten paperback'

Blake — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:59:31 -0400

The traditional paper book is not in danger of being killed off by an electronic gadget, the British Library said. Sony will launch an electronic book in Waterstone's stores across the country on Thursday.

The £199 slimline Sony Reader can hold up to 160 electronic books and the capacity can be increased using memory cards. But Stephen Bury, head of European and American collections at the British Library, said the book lover and pleasure reader would not give up the traditional paper book for an electronic gadget.

Esquire to Put Digital Moving Pix on Mag Cover

Blake — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:19:48 -0400

Esquire magazine will print the cover of its 75th anniversary issue on electronic paper, a material that's flexible like real paper but can display moving black-and-white images. The technology is similar to that used in e-books like the Amazon Kindle.