January 2007

Search Engines WEB writes “GoogleBombing has gotten so popular, that new algorithms were introduced today by Google to alleviate the effect.
You can read more over at googlewebmastercentral, or mattcutts.com“

Martin writes “From his vantage point at the reference desk in a high school library, this librarian thinks something is amiss. The books in the stacks are gathering dust. Here is the story. At The Washington Post. A library’s neglected shelves reveal the demise of something important, especially for young readers starved for meaning — for anything profound”.

CNET News.com: A popular computer security Web site was abruptly yanked offline this week by MySpace.com and GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar, raising questions about free speech and Internet governance.

MySpace demanded that GoDaddy pull the plug on Seclists.org, which hosts some 250,000 pages of mailing list archives and other resources, because a list of thousands of MySpace usernames and passwords was archived on the site. GoDaddy claims its customers own about 18 million domains.

Wired News: Tax Takers Send in the Spiders: Websites around the world are getting a new computerized visitor among the Googlebots and Yahoo web spiders: The taxman. A five-nation tax enforcement cartel has been quietly cracking down on suspected internet tax cheats, using a sophisticated web crawling program to monitor transactions on auction sites, and track operators of online shops, poker and porn sites.

Seth Finkelstein writes “I have a
Guardian column
opposing the .XXX domain. Essentially, this has nothing to do with children.
The registry is playing trademark-holders, speculators, and site-owners,
against each other in a game of fear, uncertainty, and doubt — and
collecting a large fee no matter who wins.”

sarahmae writes “Overdue Media, the home of everyone’s favorite library comic Unshelved, has announced the winners of the “Pimp My Bookcart” Contest:

Honorable Mentions“

On Friday the 26th Oprah is going to make another book selection. There is a story in the Kansas City Star about this. The article also has some local KC people saying what book they think should be selected. KC literature lovers say what they think the next pick for her influential book club should be.

AAP hires a PR firm to fight back against open access

Somebody writes “Christina’s LIS Rant made an interesting find yesterday. The Association of American Publishers feels that they are under seige and have hired a pit bull to fight back, apparently.
This is the same AAP that has said they want to get rid of Fair Use, and “We,” Said The AAP, “have a very serious issue with librarians.””

Journal Publishers Fight Free Information Movement

pv_sapl writes “Fresh from Michael Geist’s Blog comes this posting about a Nature News article about how a group of publishers plan to take on the free information movement.

Now, Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has hired the pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available. Some traditional journals, which depend on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and public databases of scientific papers such as the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) PubMed Central, threaten their livelihoods.”

GSO writes “A ‘parasite’ on services financed by libraries or a valuable tool for users? However Google is perceived it should act as an urgent call for libraries to collaborate and digitise ‘Strengthening the library brand?’, Information Scotland, October 2006, read the full article here.”

Somebody writes “EDUCAUSE: E-books offer new ways for readers to interact with content. An e-book that abandons the notion of reading from front to back, for example, encourages readers to take an active, self-directed role in how they learn. E-books incorporating audio, movies, and simulations facilitate deeper understanding of subject matter, while annotation features let users customize a text.
The “7 Things You Should Know About…” series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning practices and technologies. Each brief focuses on a single practice or technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use “7 Things You Should Know About…” briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.”