April 2000

Caution!! Library Vote Tomorrow

Alabama Live has this article about a library director that will go to any means to have library users vote for the budget.



\”The life of the Bessemer Public Library is at stake Tuesday.

At least that\’s the message Carol Castine, the library\’s director, wants to get across.

To do that, Ms. Castine had the library draped in yellow caution tape, as if it were a homicide scene.

\”I just want to call attention to the library with the vote coming up,\” she said.\”

Alabama Live has this article about a library director that will go to any means to have library users vote for the budget.



\”The life of the Bessemer Public Library is at stake Tuesday.

At least that\’s the message Carol Castine, the library\’s director, wants to get across.

To do that, Ms. Castine had the library draped in yellow caution tape, as if it were a homicide scene.

\”I just want to call attention to the library with the vote coming up,\” she said.\”

\”I hope people will vote for both the school and the library,\” she said.

Mayor Quitman Mitchell said the tax vote is critical for education in general.

\”When you talk about education, you talk about education,\” Mitchell said. \”It\’s important that we support the library. It\’s the first real effort to do something for the library.\”

April 27, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Mad about Harry Potter

The Financial Times has a lengthy Article on the incredible popularity of Harry Potter.

\”From toys and computer games to designer sportswear and pop music, children are, increasingly, a market to be reckoned with. But not until last year, when global sales of J.K. Rowling\’s three Harry Potter books took off, had anyone thought that reading – that most Victorian of pastimes – could seriously compete with the high-tech, multimedia entertainments of today\”

The Financial Times has a lengthy Article on the incredible popularity of Harry Potter.

\”From toys and computer games to designer sportswear and pop music, children are, increasingly, a market to be reckoned with. But not until last year, when global sales of J.K. Rowling\’s three Harry Potter books took off, had anyone thought that reading – that most Victorian of pastimes – could seriously compete with the high-tech, multimedia entertainments of today\”For the publishing industry, it has all been something of an upset. \”I think it\’s helped people to take children\’s publishing very seriously,\” says Sarah Odedina, children\’s editorial director at Bloomsbury, Rowling\’s publisher.


\”It\’s always been seen as something you grow out of, and has been rather sidelined, but suddenly children\’s publishing is being recognised as a real creative powerhouse . . . now people are speaking of children\’s authors with the same kind of respect that they use for writers of adult fiction.\”

April 26, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Paper connected to the internet

R Hadden sent in this story from theNew Scientist, they have a very interesting Story on a nifty sounding paper.


\”IT\’S goodbye to the idea of the paperless office: a new electronic pen could bring paper back with a bang. Instead of tapping away on a computer keyboard, the new pen lets you scribble e-mails freehand on special paper and then send it across the Internet via your mobile phone.\”

R Hadden sent in this story from theNew Scientist, they have a very interesting Story on a nifty sounding paper.


\”IT\’S goodbye to the idea of the paperless office: a new electronic pen could bring paper back with a bang. Instead of tapping away on a computer keyboard, the new pen lets you scribble e-mails freehand on special paper and then send it across the Internet via your mobile phone.\”

As you write an appointment in your organiser, your words are recognised by a camera in the pen and instantly transmitted to a PC where they appear in a Microsoft Outlook organiser package. Similarly, you can draw pictures or write messages in your own scrawl–or have it converted to text–before choosing to e-mail it, fax it or send it as a text message via your mobile phone.


The pen will open up an entirely new market in e-commerce by letting you buy items advertised in a magazine just by scribbling your credit card details on the page and ticking the \”buy\” box. The plan is to have special advertisements on the magazine page printed with the dot pattern to allow the pen to do this.

April 26, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

No E-Books for Roger

Yahoo Internet Life is carrying a rant from Roger Ebert on E-Books.

\”My own time line runs a little differently: By 2002, e-books are being sharply discounted in bins near the door of Best Buy. By 2003, e-book enthusiasts join DiscoVision, Commodore, and Pixelvision fans in trading their relics on eBay. By 2004, several books have analyzed the e-book debacle. By 2020, they\’re all out of print.\”

Yahoo Internet Life is carrying a rant from Roger Ebert on E-Books.

\”My own time line runs a little differently: By 2002, e-books are being sharply discounted in bins near the door of Best Buy. By 2003, e-book enthusiasts join DiscoVision, Commodore, and Pixelvision fans in trading their relics on eBay. By 2004, several books have analyzed the e-book debacle. By 2020, they\’re all out of print.\”

Lately, the people behind Microsoft Reader and other e-books have been promising a utopia where we can download books from the Net and read them on portable screens with ClearType technology so that the page looks — well, as good as paper, they say. Ads for the Reader, for example, bravely show the first page of Moby Dick, with \”Call me Ishmael\” thundering from the page.


Well, not thundering. I had to squint. The Reader\’s type in the ad is too small for me to read easily, and though I KNOW I CAN MAKE IT AS BIG AS I WANT, I still feel like Dave Barry when the type on a restaurant menu is so small that he just points to something, and the waiter asks, \”You\’ll have the No Cigar or Pipe Smoking for dinner?\”

April 26, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Metabrowsing Tool: Onepage

This Traffick interview showcases Onepage, one amongst several \”metabrowsing\” tools. Metabrowsing is a newly-coined term for an activity that may someday gain a following: placing customized info from different websites into a single browser window. It\’s not exactly the same as a customized news page; some would say that it\’s better. Others might wonder if it\’s worth the trouble. Still others might just want to buy a couple of extra computers and leave them on all the time!

Other tools in this genre include Quickbrowse and Octopus.

This Traffick interview showcases Onepage, one amongst several \”metabrowsing\” tools. Metabrowsing is a newly-coined term for an activity that may someday gain a following: placing customized info from different websites into a single browser window. It\’s not exactly the same as a customized news page; some would say that it\’s better. Others might wonder if it\’s worth the trouble. Still others might just want to buy a couple of extra computers and leave them on all the time!

Other tools in this genre include Quickbrowse and Octopus.

Some excerpts from Onepage\’s discussion of what their service is, and why it is useful:

OnePage is a platform that presents individuals with a new way to experience the Web. Instead of clicking through a series of web sites and pages to find meaningful information, they can now access, collect and manage the specific information they want on a single page.

The platform is based on a powerful technology called the Content Collection Agent, which lets users surf to a web site, identify particular content on that page and bring it back to OnePage. Once captured, the windows of information refresh at user-defined intervals.

Users can also create windows from the OnePage catalog. The catalog is OnePage\’s collection of interesting and useful pre-made windows – like weather, news and shopping – to make it fast and easy for users to create their page…

Currently, users who want personalization are bound by the offerings of the various MyPortals and other sites that aggregate information into a proprietary database and give users an interface to that data. But if users want information from their neighborhood school or little league or a local train schedule, none of these services can offer it. For consumers, the central information source in their home is probably the refrigerator door or a bulletin board where this kind of truly useful, everyday information is tacked up. As more and more of these local organizations offer more and more information on the Web, OnePage can serve as a central online place to keep it.

Hmmm… sounds like this could be a new, more visual way of keeping one\’s personal bookmarks. How visual it can be is going to depend on whether you have a 25-inch monitor, I fear… comments?

April 26, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

School Libraries improve reading tests

The Rocky Mountain News has a Story on a study that showed libraries help children score 10 percent to 18 percent higher on reading tests.

\”Further, collaboration between library media specialists and classroom teachers on instruction is key to boosting reading skills, according to the study done by the Library Research Service of the state Department of Education.\”


Check out LRS.org, they have an executive summary PDF available.

The Rocky Mountain News has a Story on a study that showed libraries help children score 10 percent to 18 percent higher on reading tests.

\”Further, collaboration between library media specialists and classroom teachers on instruction is key to boosting reading skills, according to the study done by the Library Research Service of the state Department of Education.\”


Check out LRS.org, they have an executive summary PDF available.The results are especially encouraging, given the emphasis on improving scores on the Colorado Student Assessment Program reading tests. Last year, about 60 percent of students in fourth and seventh grades were proficient in reading, as were 66 percent of third-graders.

\”I\’ve always believed school libraries play a critical role in successful teaching,\” said Dick Elmer, deputy commissioner of education. \”I\’m not surprised they contribute to higher CSAP scores.\”

April 26, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Napster + ILL + Copyright = Docster

(as seen at oss4lib.org)

If you\’re a librarian and you haven\’t thought through what napster means yet, get thinking. Many folks are perturbed about how easy it is to violate copyright using napster. \”Docster: Instant Document Delivery\” describes a napster-like system for libraries which builds copyright compliance in from the start.
btw Blake suggested reposting this here — so it isn\’t entirely shameless promotion on my part. 🙂

April 25, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

The problem with e-books

Upside.com has a nice opinion Piece on E-Books.

\”a long history of research on new products shows consumers resist buying products, even if they have marginal benefits, because they lack compatibility. I\’m not talking about technical compatibility — technologically oriented firms seem to understand this well — but compatibility with consumers\’ past experiences and values. \”

Upside.com has a nice opinion Piece on E-Books.

\”a long history of research on new products shows consumers resist buying products, even if they have marginal benefits, because they lack compatibility. I\’m not talking about technical compatibility — technologically oriented firms seem to understand this well — but compatibility with consumers\’ past experiences and values. \”E-books are also incompatible with the ways people tend to use their leisure time. True, people do spend time surfing the Net, but I\’m not convinced they read long articles on the Net for relaxation. Why? I think most people would say it\’s too difficult, and I\’m convinced it\’s not due to a lack of font clarity.


Look at the way this page is structured, for example. A newspaper, magazine, or book can have long paragraphs. But on the Net it\’s easier for you to read this essay using short paragraphs. Will authors have to write novels using short paragraphs? Would you really give up your books and magazines to read them on an electronic screen?

April 25, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

Old and New Clash at Search Engine Conference

Chris Sherman describes the whirlwind proceedings at the Fifth Annual Search Engine Conference at this Information Today article. He assures us that the sessions generated more heat than light.

Chris Sherman describes the whirlwind proceedings at the Fifth Annual Search Engine Conference at this Information Today article. He assures us that the sessions generated more heat than light.

A scaled-down version of the heroic struggle between the so-called old and new economies was played out to the delight and edification of the 300 attendees of the fifth annual Search Engine Meeting, held at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston on April 10 and 11. Though the talks and panel discussions focused on familiar topics such as information retrieval research, search engine design, and usability issues, a major subtext of the conference was about valuation—specifically, the collision of values between researchers and academics insisting on upholding traditional, formal methods, and search engine entrepreneurs scrambling to keep their businesses alive and thriving at Internet speed.

Google CEO Larry Page had the most heated response to the TREC advocates, at one point calling the entire formal evaluation process “irrelevant.” “I don’t believe that binary relevance rankings are useful,” said Page. He’s convinced that surviving and thriving in the crucible of the Web is sufficient measure of success. “All of us could think of things to do that would make things better if you gave us infinite resources,” he said.

April 25, 2000 by Uncategorized 0

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