February 2006

‘Pieces’ author’s book deal nixed

Reuters Reports Author James Frey, who admitted last month he made up parts of his best-selling memoir “A Million Little Pieces,” has been dropped by his publisher, Riverhead Books, Frey’s representative said Thursday.

Frey’s unmasking and public confession to Oprah Winfrey, the daytime television host whose endorsement catapulted the drug-rehab memoir to the top of the bestsellers list, has rocked the U.S. publishing industry, stirring debate about the nature of memoirs and the importance of accuracy.

UK Libraries begin uncertain new chapter

With internet companies such as Google becoming more involved in digitising content, what role does the public library have in today’s web-driven society? John Dolan, the new libraries champion for England, Says: “I see libraries very much as leaping from the 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the 21st century,” says Dolan. “At the same time there is a need to develop on what libraries and other partners in the digital world have been doing.”

Online Degree Study – Call for Participation

Kathryn Kennedy writes “We are writing to ask for your participation in a survey. We are studying the perceptions and prejudices of online degrees in the hiring process in academic libraries. The papers that we have seen in publication about this subject have been broad, covering employment in academic libraries but also in public libraries and school media centers. In our study, we are narrowing the focus to include only academic libraries. We are surveying ARL Libraries and MLS/MLIS degree programs, and our survey solicits input from the following people:

1. Current Library Science students;
2. Recent graduates who found jobs;
3. Recent graduates searching for jobs; and
4. Employers and people who have participated on hiring committees for professional librarian positions.

If you would like to participate, please fill out :
the survey here

If you know other people who might like to participate in this study, please forward this link to them.

You will not be identified when we report the findings of the study.

RIP: Octavia Butler, 1947-2006

Octavia E. Butler was a rare creature: a female African-American science fiction author. Her brilliant writing won recognition from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as various Hugo and Nebula awards. She died on Friday after falling on a walkway outside of her Seattle home.

“Library” Selected To This Top 100 List

stevenj writes “Librarians are likely to feel pleased anytime the “library” gets ranked on a “top” list of any sort, but perhaps its selection for this list is a somewhat dubious distinction. The folks at YourDictionary.com have selected the word library for its 100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English (I had to be careful not to misspell misspelled, which is also on the list). Seems that most folks are thinking about berry patches when it comes to spelling the “L” word. Maybe that’s why so many Liberry schools dropped the “L” word. Find the list at:
http://yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html

New Journal Portal “Open J-Gate” Launches

K S SubbaRao tells us that the world’s biggest Open Access English Language Journals Portal has launched. It’s called Open J-Gate. Here’s what K S has to say:

…a contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd
to promote OAI to provide seamless access to millions of journal articles available
online, was launched by Prof. Jean-Claude Guedon, on 27th Feb. 2006.

What is Open J-Gate?
Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access
domain. It is also a database of journal literature, indexed from 3000+ open access
journals, with links to full text at Publisher sites.

See more below.
K S welcomes our comments and suggestions. There’s a feedback form on the site.

K S SubbaRao tells us that the world’s biggest Open Access English Language Journals Portal has launched. It’s called Open J-Gate. Here’s what K S has to say:

…a contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd
to promote OAI to provide seamless access to millions of journal articles available
online, was launched by Prof. Jean-Claude Guedon, on 27th Feb. 2006.

What is Open J-Gate?
Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access
domain. It is also a database of journal literature, indexed from 3000+ open access
journals, with links to full text at Publisher sites.

See more below.
K S welcomes our comments and suggestions. There’s a feedback form on the site.Open J-Gate Features and
Benefits:
Portal with the largest number of e-journals:
Open J-Gate indexes articles from 3000+ academic, research and industry journals.
More than 1500 of them are peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

Links to one million+ open access articles:
This number is growing with 300000+ new articles added every year. Full-text links
are regularly validated.

Constant updating:
Open J-Gate site is updated every day.

Well designed journal classification:
All journals are classified in a three-level hierarchical system to provide for
better relevancy in search results.

Table of Content (TOC) Browsing:
Users can browse the TOC of latest issue and the back issues.

Easy-to-Use search functionalities:
Database allows various search options for the user’s convenience. The subscriber
can search by Title, Author, Abstract, Authors, Address/Institution, Keywords,
etc.