March 2005

The government of New Zealand has committed $24 million to a National Library-led digital preservation effort:

Penny Carnaby, the National Library’s chief librarian, says much of our history could be lost because of the digital age in which we live.

In pre-internet times, most of our heritage was printed, painted or recorded. But now, a lot of the material that future historians will want to study to give them a sense of what New Zealand was like in 2005 is online.

A lot of information and commentary on recent events that New Zealanders have felt enormously proud of – The Lord of the Rings trilogy or the America’s Cup – is on the web and not in print, says Carnaby.

Complete article from the New Zealand Herald.

Library Journal has a news item this morning about a Google Scholar pilot project that is linking the service to participating academic libraries. Google Scholar is creating a link, through the use of SFX buttons and similar services, to local OpenURL link resolvers. This allows patrons to find items listed in Google Scholar’s results in local libraries. Common services include finding full-text articles, searching the local catalog, or requesting an item through ILL or document delivery.

Anonymous Patron writes “LJWorld.com Reports on Bob Dole. Slowly but surely, Jean Bischoff and her crew of workers and volunteers are making sense of the 4,000 boxes housed in the basement of the Dole Institute of Politics.”

Anonymous Patron writes “Sound solutions: When Indiana University’s Archives of Traditional Music earned a grant to research the best way to digitize its one-of-a-kind recordings, director Daniel Reed knew he wanted to preserve the music that was hardest to make in the first place.”

Anonymous Patron writes “The Globe and Mail Says Mr. Bush is just months into his second four-year term, but competition is already heating up for the privilege of hosting the library, which will house the President’s archives when he steps down.”

Rich writes “Sunday’s Boston Globe reports that the Boston Public Library has fewer new books available for patrons since it stopped leasing books from McNaughton Books, causing a 4 percent drop in circulation at the central library. “The move, obviously, is about money. The BPL budget has averaged a 7 percent hit each of the past two fiscal years and is level funded for 2005. “The choice was to cut heavily into the materials budget to avoid staff layoffs and keep all the branches open.” “To avoid layoffs, the BPL lost $300,000 in state funding this year by failing to devote the required 12 percent of its budget to materials (aquisitions).”

Fang-Face writes “There is an interesting looking article at The Nation which appears to be one part media criticism and one part study of sociology. Unfortunately, I haven’t read all of it, because it is spread out over five separate pages. Ms. Mackinnon wrote in part:

The article consists primarily of excerpts and abridgements from participants of the conference.“

Anonymous Patron writes “The Hindustan Times – India takes a look at The Hindi Book Centre, in New Delhi. Anil Varma, one of the three brothers who owns the store, claims it is the only bookstore that sells titles from over 500 Hindi publications, the largest in country.

These are especially sought by the United States Library of Congress for research scholars in the US universities.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) has an article about the library at the new University of California campus to be opened in Merced in the fall. The head librarian, R. Bruce Miller, describes his vision for the library:

It sounds like Miller has a radically different vision of the academic library. Highly recommended.

The current issue (8:6) of Library Juice has an neat essay by editor Rory Litwin, Library Juice and the “blog people”. Rory has some interesting things to say about what sets Library Juice apart from LISNews, and the rest of the blog people. He says Library Juice though not a blog, borrows some of the attributes of blogs while it can still make a claim to be a part of the world of publishing. Rory runs Libray Juice completely differently that I run things here, and lists several good reasons his work there is clearly not what we think of when we say blog. It’s also interesting to see he says his work is more like a blog than it is like a traditional serial in a number of other ways.
Interesting reading on what sets apart sites like Library Juice and Cites & Insights from sites like LISNews and Library Techtonics. Library Juice, more civilized than the blog people, more fun than the publishables!

“So, while I honestly don’t consider Library Juice a blog, I think I have to admit that I am one of the blog people.“